HIS issue of THE ARENA contains a strong and Tvaried table of contents that cannot fail to appeal to thoughtful people, especially those who are deeply concerned for the preservation of free institutions and the cause of human rights.

W. B. FLEMING, whose strong and discriminating paper on The Good and the Bad of the President's Policies, which appeared in THE ARENA for December of last year, was so widely and favorably noticed, contributes a timely and highly suggestive paper on The Republican Platform Unmasked. No unprejudiced student of present-day politics in America, who also carefully studied the actions of the Republican bosses and political opportunists at the Chicago Convention, in their effort to frame a platform that would deceive the people in the interests of their real masters, the campaign-contributing and nation-oppressing corporations, trusts, and Wall-Street gamblers, can fail to appreciate this clear-cut and incisive paper by Mr. FLEMING, which might well be entitled The Honest Confessions of the Masters of the Republican Convention, as they might report them to their Wall-Street and trust masters. It is an admirable unmasking of one of the most offensive exhibitions of hypocrisy that has been offered to the American public.

In LUCIA AMES MEAD's masterly paper we have a magnificent reply to the vicious and civilizationretarding sophistry of Captain MAHAN and the coterie of militarists who are doing all in their power to destroy the old Republican ideals of government and replace them with the ideal of a reactionary militarism inimical to free government. Mrs. MEAD'S paper is in many respects the strongest, clearest and in the truest sense of the word, the most statesmanlike presentation of the contentions of the Peace Party that has been made in the compass of a magazine article. The author and her husband, EDWIN D. MEAD, have long been recognized as two of the ablest and most influential workers for world-peace in Western civilization.

gen

The new ideal of solidarity as it applies to organized society is becoming one of the leading moral concepts among democratic thinkers and enlight ened humanitarians the world over, and in proportion as this noble ethical ideal is being incorporated into the state, the condition of the people is materially advanced. To-day New Zealand is leading the way for civilization along this highway of uine progress, but the leaven of moral idealism and vital democracy is at work throughout Christian civilization. So marked, indeed, is this, that it is safe to predict that before another generation passes, world-wide changes of the most momentous character will be effected. In Rev. LEWIS J. DUNCAN'S luminous paper entitled Modern Individualism our readers will find one of the most thought

VOL. 40

No. 226

the past year

have been "hard hit." There has been a shrinkage in the values of their securities that can only be computed in billions of dollars; at the present writing there are between nine and ten thousand miles of railroad in the hands of receivers,* while a number of other lines are threatened with a similar fate in the near future; during this period of depression hundreds of thousands of railroad employés have been discharged;† and for some months past thousands of empty freight cars have been standing idle on every important line in the country while practically no new rolling stock of any sort is being ordered by any of the roads. We find, for example, that for the months of January and February of this year, all the railroads in the United States together ordered only 25 new locomotives, as compared with 912 ordered during the same months in 1907, and ordered only 493 freight cars, in glaring contrast with their

*Twenty-first Annual Report of Inter-State Commerce Commission, December 23, 1907, p. 153, and Railway World, March 13, 1908, p. 203.

+Figures collected by Chicago General Managers' Association.

What is the meaning of these and similar facts which could be multiplied almost ad libitum? And what is to be done to meet this situation which though apparently improving somewhat at the present moment, may at any time take another dangerous turn for the worse?

While doubtless there is a certain amount of truth in the statement that present conditions are more or less due to the "pernicious activity" of President Roosevelt in behalf of the rate bill as well as of other proposed railroad legislation, there would be considerably more truth in the statement to the effect that our present peculiar pathological railroad conditions are the result of the "masterly inactivity" of the President's immediate predecessors and of the studied refusal on the part of Congress after Congress to reform transportation abuses about the existence of which there was and could be no possible dispute.

If the President instead of probing this running sore on our body politic had anointed it with a salve of soft words and Dow Jones & Company Bulletin, March, 1908.

soft soap the present crisis might possibly have been shunted onto the shoulders of the next administration. But it is pretty generally admitted that he deserves the thanks of all honest men for having located the disease and partially checked its ravages, even though he has so signally failed to suggest any remedy for the more fundamental aspects of the disorder. The primary cause of our present transportation difficulties is not therefore the precipitancy of the President but the unintelligent and inexcusable delay of the American people about inaugurating an adequate and effective system of railroad regulation. The fact which perhaps stands out most clearly and prominently in the midst of all our present turmoil is the fact that our present policy of railroad regulation must be continued and perfected, if all of us, farmers, manufacturers, business men and wage-earners are not to be reduced to the status of mere economic dependents upon the men and corporations who control our great lines of transportation.

HELPFUL VERSUS HARMFUL RAILROAD

REGULATION.

Thus far nearly every one is in practical agreement upon this question-but this is not the whole story. There is such a thing as intelligent and wholly beneficial railroad regulation and there is such a thing as unintelligent and pernicious railroad regulation. During the last year in some of our states we have experimented more or less with both of these varieties of legislation. Never in the history of the country, not even during the Granger movement, has such a widespread and strenuous effort been made to regulate railroad transportation as during the past eighteen months. Passenger rates were reduced or affected in some way in twenty-one states and in eleven states railroad commissions were created. "Thirty-five states attempted to enact laws reducing freight and passenger rates, establishing railroad commissions, in

creasing powers of existing commissions, regulating car service, demurrage, safety appliances, block signals, free passes, capitalization, liability for accidents to employés, hours of labor, blacklisting, etc."*

Truly, such a miscellaneous hodgepodge, patch-work collection of laws never has been produced in the same space of time before. Each state and almost every law-maker evidently, worked out his problem to the best of his ability, with little regard for what had been done or was being done by the nation, by other states, or even by other legislators in his own state. Texas alone is said to have had nearly one hundred bills introduced dealing with this one question. Such a lack among the “reform elements" of any mutual comprehension or of any appreciation of the necessity for coördination in their efforts, would be ludicrous if it were not so serious. That it has resulted in a curiously complicated crazy-quilt of railroad legislation which it will take the courts a long time to unravel or to rearrange, is not at all surprising.

That a large portion of this legislation will prove beneficial is unquestionable, but that it could have been infinitely more effective and less liable to judicial nullification, had it been rationally coördinated and made a part of some intelligent and comprehensive plan of procedure, is even

more certain.

It is true that the railroads, by fighting persistently, bitterly and often corruptly, for over half a century, practically every proposal of reform, no matter how reasonable or just it might be, themselves are largely responsible for the present confused and embarrassing state of affairs. And while it is only right that they should suffer for their stupidity and cupidity in the past, it is not so clear that the rest of us should be made to suffer with them. This, however, is precisely what we are doing and must continue to do to an increasing degree, if we do not take pains to frame our regulative legislation with

*The Legislatures and the Railroads," by Emmett Ireton, Review of Reviews, August, 1907.