As our system is a feeble apology for a railroad system, it
needs defense and apology everywhere. Consequently it estab-
lishes "Bureaus of Information," issues books and pamphlets
filled with "cold statistics," "significant facts and figures" and
learned dissertations by railroad magnates, and thus builds up a
department of railroad apologetics, wherein it may "ad libitum"
throw bouquets at itself, all of which adds an extra expense to
the people. Here we find the most remarkable and amazing
statistics, statistics that "utterly explode the theory that passen-
ger travel is greatly stimulated by low fares;" statistics that ex-
plode everything, except buncombe. In this department of
apologetics, "current fallacies" of "theorists" and "social agi-
tators" are analyzed and crushed. Here through the subtle
alchemy of confusing and of misleading statistics, of forced
comparisons, and of superb buncombe, a decrepit, extortionate,
inefficient and mismanaged railroad system is transmuted into
the ^T}est, safest, cheapest and most efficient system in the
world." Here the irrepressible ^lowest rate per ton per mile"
is worn to a "frazzle" by constant comparison vrith foreign rates
per ton per mile. Here the stuffed and dropsical capitalization
of railroads, that received their right-of-way plus forty miles
of land on each side of the right. of way with twenty thousand
dollars per mile money subsidy besides, as a gift from the
people, is compared with the capitalization of foreign, superbly
constructed and equipped, costly railroads, that paid from
twenty-five thousand to one hundred thousand dollars per mile
for right of way alone. Here is brought into the limelight the
fact that the lucky American citizen has one mile of railroad to
every three hundred and sixty-six inhabitants and has from two
to five times the service in mileage that the European has. But
the fact, that by reason of bad location the American citizen
needs more mileage, is not mentioned; nor the fact that by
reason of duplication he pays for the maintenance of from two



THE MAGNATE OR THE PEOPLE. 55

to five miles, where one mile would suffice nor the fact that a
mile of German railroad moves ten times, and a mile of Belgium
railroad fifteen times more passengers than a mile of the Amer-
icanos system; nor the fact that for every 24 miles of this mileage
one human life must be sacrificed annually.
