Altogether, the railroad company seems to be in the position of Mr. Dow's Calvinist:
"You can and you can't,
You will and you won't;
You'll be damned if you do,
And be damned if you don't!"
Twoscore of boards, framed by consent of local politicians, shout: "You railways must operate your trains. You must incur such bills as we Railway and Interstate Commissioners impose upon you, and do just as we say in everything; but you can not collect for your services the wherewithal to pay bills, except at such figures as we see fit to permit you to make. We know nothing about railroading. We are only Republicans, or Democrats, or Prohibitionists, or Women's-Righters. But do as we say; and if, in the doing of it, you kill anybody, or maim anybody, or if we hear of any defaults in payment of fixed charges, look not to us for loving-kindness!" This was Portia's idea of mercy to poor Shylock. And let us admit, for argument's sake (or concede it as certain, for that matter), that the railway company is a Shylock, compelled by law to exact the last penny to which it is entitled. "Cut out your pound of flesh," says Portia; "the court awards it and the law doth give it. But if, in the cutting, you take more or less, by the estimation of a single hair, than just one pound, then your goods are confiscate and your life itself is forfeit to the state"—and in so saying, the divine Portia (who had already admitted that the Jew asked nothing but justice, and was entitled to judgment at every point in his favor) was a by no means unfair prototype of the modern American Legislature, which first charters railway companies to exercise certain and stated functions, and then exercises them itself, leaving to the unhappy railway companies nothing but the responsibility and the punishment for its own blunders. Under the circumstances, is it to be wondered at that, very recently, a certain worm did, in some sort, turn?—that a certain railway company in the distant West, on being commanded by the Iowa Board of Railway Commissioners to turn in to them a statement of the value of its plant, replied that its plant was worth considerably less than before the commissioners began to make rules and regulations; that it would continue to depreciate as long as the commissioners kept on making them; that any estimate as to the aforesaid value would be mere guess-work; and that the only certainty possible in the matter was that enough rules and regulations from the honorable commissioners would ultimately deprive railway plants in their jurisdiction of any value whatever!
There are a few things left which a railway company may do. It may, by a late decision of the Interstate Commission, issue
