Synopsis
Excerpt from Arguments of the York Cheap Transportation Association: In Favor of Senate Bill No. Providing a Board of Railway Commissioners for This State; Made Before the Committee on Railways, of the Senate, March 28, 1976
More public attention than ever before has, during the last year, been given to the nature and extent Of the relations existing between governments and railroad corporations. This has especially been the case in America, where most unusual activity, and at times an unnecessary degree of temper, have characterized the discussion and consequent political action, while the burden of the discussion has related to the unsatisfactory character Of these relations. The tendency of political action has been toward their close definition, and the drawing Of the machinery of transportation more and more within the range of Government control. In Great Britain, the agi tation has led to the creation by Parliament of a Board Of Railway. And Canal Commissioners, which is apparently designed to act as a special tribunal, having cognizance only of certain questions arismg between railroad companies as among themselves, or between them and the community. In America, it has resulted in prolonged legis lative debates and inquiries, in the passage of numerous laws, and in certain States, of new constitutional provisions. It may be pre sumed, as a result of forty years' expenditure of capital and labor, the general work of railroad construction is now completed, in its larger aspects, or in other words, the more civilized countries of the earth are supplied with improved highways sufficient for their im mediate wants, and the question of adjustment has Succeeded the work of construction, and an enormous mass of machinery, social and political, is assuming its relations with the political with which it finds itself incorporated, and is necessarily exercising a very dis turbing influence upon them: The amount Of this disturbance seems closely proportioned in different communities. The railroad sys tems were in the beginning established upon the relations for an even operation on general economical laws alone, or upon govern ment supervision or control. It would seem to be much greater in the former case and less in the latter. This arises from the fact that all communities which sought to base the regulation Of their rail ways upon the economical laws alone are in some way, and whether consciously or unconsciously, trying to abandon that ground and to get upon some other. It may now be taken as generally conceded, that railroads are, and from the very nature of things must always remain, practical monopolies that the operation of the law of competition as affecting supply and demand can exercise a very limited control over them, and that this limited control is rather of a dis turbing than an equalizing character. The Supply of competing railroads is not, and cannot be, indefinite, nor does the increase in their number tend to decrease the cost of transportation nor when unprofitable in one place can they be moved to another; nor can any excess of capital invested be realized at will and otherwise used.
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