roads of that country. Between 1873 and 1878 the government issued bonds and used the profits of the roads to retire the bonds. In 1808 the Swiss government started to nationalize the railroads. It bought the controlling interest in some of the leading lines, levied a heavy inheritance tax on large fortunes, and in this manner confiscated the property of the dead capitalists in order to pay the live ones. This is a very sensible method, inasmuch as dead capitalists never kick, no matter how hard we pull their leg. Mr. Andy Carnegie, in a magazine article a few years ago, gave us a useful hint on how to acquire such property, when he said over his own signature, "Why do the people persist in preventing us working bees from gathering honey. Why don’t they keep hands off, and then take the honey from us when we are dead?" Millionaires die all the time, but the government has many years to live. It may act in the capacity of the smiling heir.
Still another method would be to build our own railroads. In opposition to this, it is urged that it would be too expensive, yet, when we take in consideration that the American railroads are capitalized on an average of $63,000 a mile, and that the people have to pay interest and dividends on this investment, and knowing further that it costs only $20,000 to build and to equip a mile of modern railroad, then it can easily be seen, that even if the government has to borrow every cent of this money, it only would have to pay interest on $20,000 per mile instead of $63,000 per mile, as the American people do now. Besides the railroads would be new and would belong to us.
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