of a pool than they were before. The explanation appears, however, as the demonstration proceeds and the technical meaning of the terms "long haul" and "short haul" becomes self-evident. Clearly the points we have named become "short hauls" as against (for example) San Francisco, the haul to which is therefore called a "long haul." Now, in establishing rates to San Francisco, certainly it is very apparent that the railroads which have pooled to Salt Lake City or Denver must take a new factor into the account, for San Francisco has a most excellent water communication with the entire world, and is perfectly independent of railways, monopolies or otherwise. In other words, it is Nature and not railroad corporations that have discriminated against Denver and Salt Lake City, and in favor of San Francisco, by making it a commercial fact that (since water is cheaper than land transportation) San Francisco is actually nearer New York than Denver or Salt Lake City. The fact is that—so long as railway rates are regulated by geography—however distorted they may appear to the non-expert, the substitution of arbitrary for geographical rules in framing a tariff would result in rendering them still more distorted and uneven. And if the railways, pooled or unpooled, charge proportionately less rates to San Francisco than to Denver or Altoona or Salt Lake City, the higher power that has ordered it is the irresistible power of Nature. To what lengths of invective and diatribe Mr. Hudson and his kind would proceed, did Nature and geography "pool" with the railways, it is amusing to speculate; but the fact—which oppresses the railway company at present, and imposes upon it the necessity of accommodating its rates to Nature (since Nature will not accommodate herself to the railways)—is that no pool can be made with the ocean, which charges nothing to the sons of men who plow its bosom with their ships, and which is at no expense to keep itself in repair. For, let it be always remembered, in discussing these and like questions, a railroad is not, per se, a means of transportation. Such a definition is very far from being definitive by exclusion, as a definition ought to be. A railroad is a prepared and exclusive highway for traffic by means of the motive power of the locomotive engine, and is available only where locomotives can be used. There are still the foot-path, the bridle-path, the wagon-road, the ocean, the river, the canal, with which it must compete. There is still the inclined plane, with which (for the downgrade, certainly) no locomotive even can compete. And so, even were railway companies the terrible affairs, the grasping monopolies, the enemies of the human race, which Mr. Hudson asserts them, they are only so because the human race uses them, if it uses them at all, in preference to other means of transportation. Should Mr. Hudson induce his clientèle to discontinue their preference, the fact might be different; but in order to accept Mr. Hudson's conclusion (which, be it remarked again, is not the rule of the Interstate Commerce Law) that railways are public enemies because their tariffs sometimes are greater
