To drop the style of story-telling: Individual enterprise has given us what is admittedly the most efficient railroad system in the world. It has done so whilst making our average capitalization per mile of road less, the scale of wages higher, the average rates lower, the service and conveniences offered to the shipper and the traveler greater than in any other of the principal countries.

It must be admitted that in the pioneer period of railroad development, and for some years thereafter, numerous things were done, and although generally known to be done, were tolerated by the Government and the public, which should never have been permitted. But during the second administration and upon the courageous initiative of President Roosevelt these evils and abuses were resolutely tackled and a definite and effective stop put to most of them. Means were provided by salutary legislation, fortified by decisions of the Supreme Court, for adequate supervision and regulation of railroads.

The railroads promptly fell in line with the countrywide summons for a more exacting standard of business ethics. The spirit and practices of railroad administration became standardized, so to speak, at a moral level certainly not inferior to that of any other calling. It is true, certain regrettable abuses and incidents of misconduct still came to light in subsequent years, but these were sporadic instances, by no means characteristic of railroading methods and practices in general, condemned by the great body of those responsible for the conduct of our railroads, no less than by the public at large, and entirely capable of being dealt with by the existing law, possibly amended in nonessential features, and by the force of public opinion.

Unfortunately, the law enacted under President Roosevelt's administration was not allowed to stand for a sufficient length of time to test its effects. The enactment of new railroad legislation in 1909, largely shaped by Congressmen and Senators of very radical tendencies and hostile to the railroads, and acquiesced in by President Taft with ill-advised and opportunist complacency, established, for the first time in America, paternalistic control over the railroads. It was an unscientific and ill-devised statute, gravely defective in important respects and bearing evidence of having been shaped in heat, hurry and anger. Mr. Taft himself, it seems, has since recognized its faultiness, for he has repeatedly and publicly protested against the over-regulation, the starvation and the oppression of the railroad which were the inevitable and easy-to-be-foreseen consequences of its enactment.

The States, to extent that they had not already anticipated it, were not slow to follow the precedent set by the Federal Government. The resulting structure of Federal and State laws under which the railroads were compelled to carry on their business, was little short of a legislative monstrosity.

---