THE MAGNATE OR THE PEOPLE. 291

If we thus survey our railway problem analytically and permit
a few simple basic economic principles to guide us, we shall get
a more thorough and more comprehensive grasp of the eflfects
of the practice of this "practical^^ railroad system of ours. We
shall begin to lose faith in our own perspicacity. Our optimism
and know-it-all apathy will receive jolt upon jolt, as the system^s
far-reaching crowning evils and countless increasing lesser evils
rapidly unfold themselves and amaze us. Our minds will not be
able to fully grasp its incalculable direct and indirect cost to the
people. We shaU see in its deformity, not a railroad system,
but a hideous and destructive Frankenstein of the people. Its
^^owest rate per ton per mile^' jolly will pall on us. All of its
indescribabAallow^and absurd aiumen^ts, from "public own-
ership a failure,^^ and "deficit,^^ down to the "development of the
eountiy^ and "infinitesimal" charge arguments, will not even
have time to amuse us as jokes, for back of them all will loom
up a blighting evil, a frightful and appalling source of national
waste and impoverishment. This survey will raise but one
question in our minds; why have we "slumbered at the switch,"
why have we tolerated this MAD-MAN'S SYSTEM so long?

To cover the ground and bring all of the far-reaching evils,
blighting and retarding effects of this system to full view,
would be, a hopeless and endless task. If this work succeeds
but partially in impressing the reader, with the tremendous im-
portance of the subject in every way to the nation and to its
people; if it has enabled him to grasp the few simple principles
underlying the solution of our railroad problem; if it suggests
new lines of thought and opens to him a clearer vista on the
subject, impelling him to further investigation, it will have
accomplished all that it set out to do. There will be but one
result, in the reader's mind, the unshakable conviction that of all
inscrutable folly, none can compare with that, which for a
eiDgle moment tolerates private ownership and control of a
medium so vitally essential to a nation's progress and prosper-
ity as is its railroad system. 