Not all railways can carry upon like terms, any more than can the steamboat and the wheelbarrow. Yet the most radical attorneys for State control maintain that all should receive “ a liberal compensation, wear and tear, repair, and interest on capital; but all beyond this is mere lawless robbery." If, however, the State establish "uniform ratės” so “liberal" that the weak lines live well, the strong will fatten beyond their present "bloated" estate, and the class miscalled "the people" will exchange their present fancy sleevecrape for full sackcloth and ashes. On the other hand, if the State act fairly and schedule to one at three cents the service which another performs at two, it does that which its self-retained attorneys now cite as the most odious feature of corporate conduct-it "bases tariffs on what the traffic will bear;" it "discriminates." Such is the dilemma led to by the logic of "liberal compensation" for all by law. And if it place rates so "uniformly" low that only the strong can live, the weak must die, and again "sackcloth" will symbolize the public feeling. How is it more just that legislation "discriminate" between railways than that railways discriminate between towns and between shippers? Or, is the principle by which, as the indictment runs, corporations sometimes graduate rates by "what the traffic will bear," improved if the State graduate rates by what the roads will bear? Corporations are but men, and in the eye of the law the servant is on a par with his patron. What one may receive and live is no fairer measure of wages than what one may pay and live. Still, another Anti-Monopoly chief prints his opinion that "charges should be based upon cost of service." Why cost rather than value? This, also, would compel "discrimination" between lines. It would cut off those frequent railway contributions to the public wherein railways carry below cost rather than not carry at all. They are better economists than many individuals they keep busy at small pay rather than stand idle at no pay. Nor is it unworthy of consideration at this point, that large improvements depend upon large profits. The public of shippers and travelers demand the former, therefore they must yield the latter. They do not wish the trunk line to become as the backwoods branch whose income exhibits but the margin of a modest living above "cost." And, as a rule, large profits have afforded the public large improvements. With something of strange inconsistency, these gentlemen who purpose the absolute dependence of railways upon legislative bodies complain of the political corruption growing out of their semidependence. Even Congress is invited to the supervision of inter-State lines. Is it wise? By some law of affinity, this issue and corruption seem to combine. Is it clear, this right of Congress to lay hand upon the throttle-valves of the country? Is the constitutional clause, "right to regulate commerce between the States," positive authority to impose commercial plans upon the States, or only something in the line of veto power, admitting interference simply to prevent one State impeding the commerce of other States seeking transit through it? At the sacrifice of harmony, the distinguished Pennsylvanian before quoted herein seems to lean to the latter view. He asks, "Is Congress not strictly within the scope of that authority ['right to regulate commerce between the States'] when it makes a law forbidding carriers through the State to injure, impede, or destroy the general trade of the country by extravagant and discriminating charges ?" The right of "forbidding" is purely the right of veto, not of original direction. Unless, however, the State lay sticks in the way of free transportation, "the general trade of the country” will not be "injured, impeded, or destroyed." For transportation always transports. It needs no insurance against suicide. Its profit lies in promoting, not "impeding" trade. Whatever is free is not hindered, and the railway's freedom helps the purpose of its existence. If "impediments" come needing the Congressional veto, they will wear the likeness of legislation, not of corporate effort. The clause in question seems rather to have been designed as an inter-State remedy-as a peace-maker between States—than for encroachment upon individual or corporate enterprise. And, touching this point, the unanimous opinion of the United States Supreme Court stands in these words: If, also, as by the theory of the "reformers," the railways belong to the States wherein they have a local habitation, can Congress rightfully direct the use of such property? The ground assumed for State control defeats national control. that if maximum rates are fixed for the benefit of the public, the railroads will suffer; and if they are fixed for the railroads, the public will be no better off than at present." The author of the Inter-State Commerce bill also condensed this late, and probably future, effort into these words: "It is proposed to declare that railroads shall not have the power to charge one person more than another; to prohibit the pooling of freights by otherwise competing railroads, and thus give the public all the advantages of fair competition, and to limit the power of railroads to discrimi I have already covered the main points of this bill, aiming to show why one person and one place may fairly enjoy lighter rates than do others. And to prohibit pooling will avail but little. Tacit understanding to collect like tariffs between the same places will accomplish substantially the object of pooling. But, admitting control by the general Government, what are the probabilities of purity! Already, all the way from ward caucus to Congress, corruption is said to keep tavern. Will its guests grow less by clothing every ballot in the country with a bearing on the value of every share of railway stock in the country? What will be the effect as this power condenses into the hands of a Congressional commission, with authority to pre-nate between places." scribe all tariffs? When a vote is worth a million dollars, how many men who seek office will shun the market? If corrupt relations now exist between corporations and people, both deserve punishment. But to reduce the tolls of the bribed community is to reward the recipient at the expense of the giver. And if bribery exists among legislators, will it be lessened by increasing their temptations? The business is not to be bankrupted in that way. So long as merchantable men are foisted into office, they will be likely to find a market. If the venality of the few whom the people recklessly permit to manage politics is not the primary course of all legislative corruption, at least complete cure would come with the expulsion of the venal from political management. Money cannot buy that which is not for sale. It takes two to achieve bribery. There is a beam in the eye that is looking for a mote. The confessions of the leader in Congress for railway regulation by that body are valuable as being those of a student of transportation, and as being adverse to most of the theorists who aim at his mark. From the Tribune's report of Congressman Reagan's remarks before the mass-meeting called by the Anti-Monopoly League at New York in February last, it appears that he made the following statements : "Several remedies have been proposed in Congress for restraining the power of corporations, and among other things the establishment of regular freight rates have been contemplated. This plan has been considered impracticable as thoroughly injurious to the corporations and ultimately so to the public. It has then been suggested to fix maximum rates for inter-State commerce. But upon consideration it appears Any plan of supervision by Congress must also involve an executive commission, or a department head and a corps of subordinates. The favorite thought at times has been the granger method of the West,-to place the detail of rates and enforcement along individual lines with a commission of nine, one from each judicial circuit. such case, a majority would probably constitute a business quorum, and the majority of the quorum. would control action. Practically, then, three men might dictate the income of seven or eight billions of capital they did not own. How many political trios bless the country with virtues so athletic as to throw away this gorgeous temptation, is a very pretty problem for the "reformers." Railways, left to themselves, contend for individual superiority; but, driven together into a single herd, naturally they will contend against the driver; individual ambition to excel must be lost in a common ambition to outgeneral their common enemy. Nor does it appear that the result of conflict between political management and universal business interests would be doubtful unless Congress should attempt to compel stated and ample operation of roads. For let but the inter-State lines run all their locomotives into drydock for thirty days, and popular demand for instant return to the present "robber system" would be intense and universal. My conclusion is that all effort to arbitrarily legislate our vast railway interests into subjection to the will of an opposing interest is weak and temporizing, and its end must be failure. The theory runs counter to the democratic principle of the largest possible liberty to all to do what they will with their own, short of obstruction to others of like will. Present effort is planing the plank against the grain. Its surface will never be other than slivered, and the hands that lay hold of it will bleed. Conceive of Government having accomplished thirty years ago the control now applied for! To-day, national development would wear a pauper cast compared with its actual elegance. For the railway is the drive-wheel to wide development; but private enterprise ends where public tyranny begins. When to put capital into railway construction is to put it beyond personal control, it will be put elsewhere. Possibly there are two approaches to permanent attainment of the ends sought by the complainants. One is that they construct roads which will not pool or discriminate, or otherwise work for the stockholders, but will gratefully sacrifice private interest to public clamor. The other approach is to follow the old Windom committee into State or national construction, or purchase, of one or more trunk lines between the productive great West and the consuming, exporting East; that is, if these political powers are certain that such work falls within their legitimate functions. And if they may assert control in full of old roads they may build new ones. Indeed, if they assume the former task, they must soon undertake the latter, for private capital will not long continue to build roads to be operated by public freak. Neither method, however, would effect complete cure of transportation complaints; the numerous lateral lines would still remain their own managers. But either plan would secure to the trunk line. traffic, without arbitrary intervention, the only principle which guarantees low rates, rapid transit, and maximum convenience-the principle of competition. Competition is satisfaction. Any State or national effort which leaves this out is a failure. And coercive measures will so cross the spirit of the Republic that they cannot live under it; the vast commerce of the country will not kick down the ladder of ties it has climbed by and stands upon. ANOTHER WORLD DOWN HERE. By W. M. WILLIAMS. WHAT a horrible place must this world appear when regarded according to our ideas from an insect's point of view! The air infested with huge flying hungry dragons, whose gaping and snapping mouths are ever intent upon swallowing the innocent creatures for whom, according to the insect, if he were like us, a properly constructed world ought to be exclusively adapted. The solid earth continually shaken by the approaching tread of hideous giants-moving mountains that crush out precious lives at every footstep, an occasional draught of the blood of these monsters, stolen at life-risk, affording but poor compensation for such fatal persecution. Let us hope that the little victims are less like ourselves than the doings of ants and bees might lead us to suppose; that their mental anxieties are not proportionate to the optical vigilance indicated by the four thousand eye-lenses of the common house-fly, the seventeen thousand of the cabbage butterfly and the wide-awake dragon-fly, or the twenty-five thousand possessed by certain species of still more vigilant beetles. Each of these little eyes has its own cornea, its lens, and a curious six-sided, transparent prism, at the back of which is a special retina spreading out from a branch of the main optic nerve, which, in the cockchafer and some other creatures, is half as large as the brain. If each of these lenses forms a separate picture of each object rather than a single mosaic picture, as some anatomists suppose, what an awful army of cruel giants must the cockchafer behold when he is captured by a schoolboy ! The insect must see a whole world of wonders of which we know little or nothing. True, we have microscopes, with which we can see one thing at a time if carefully laid upon the stage; but what is the finest instrument that Ross can produce compared to that with twenty-five thou sand object-glasses, all of them probably achromatic, and each one a living instrument with its own nerve branch supplying a separate sensation? To creatures thus endowed with microscopic vision, a cloud of sandy dust must appear like an THE RED ANT. the drum or tube, the higher will be the note it produces when agitated, and the smaller and the more rapid the aerial wave to which it will respond. The drums of insect ears, and the tubes, etc., connected with them, are so minute that their world of sounds probably begins where ours ceases; that what appears to us as a continuous sound is to them a series of separated blows, just as vibrations of ten or twelve per second appear separated to us. We begin to hear such vibrations as continuous sounds when they amount to about thirty per second. The insect's avalanche of massive rock fragments, and every- continuous sound probably begins beyond three thing else proportionally monstrous. One of the many delusions engendered by our human self-conceit and habit of considering the world as only such as we know it from our human point of view, is that of supposing human intelligence to be the only kind of intelligence in existence. The fact is, that what we call the lower animals have special intelligence of their own as far transcending our intelligence as our peculiar reasoning intelligence exceeds theirs. incapable of following the track of a friend by the smell of his footsteps as a dog is of writing a metaphysical treatise. We are as So with insects. They are probably acquainted with a whole world of physical facts of which we are utterly ignorant. Our auditory apparatus supplies us with a knowledge of sounds. What are these sounds? They are vibrations of matter which are capable of producing corresponding or sympathetic vibrations of the drums of our ears or the bones of our skull. When we carefully examine the subject, and count the number of vibrations that produce our world of sounds of varying pitch, we find that the human ear can only respond to a limited range of such vibrations. If they exceed three thousand per second, the t sound becomes too shrill for average people to hear it, though some exceptional ears can take up pulsations or waves that succeed each other more rapidly than this. Reasoning from the analogy of stretched strings and membranes, and of air vibrating in tubes, etc., we are justified in concluding that the smaller thousand. The blue-bottle may thus enjoy a whole world of exquisite music of which we know nothing. There is another very suggestive peculiarity in the auditory apparatus of insects. Its structure and position are something between those of an ear and of an eye. Careful examination of the head of one of our domestic companions-the common cockroach or black-beetle-will reveal two round white points, somewhat higher than the base of the long outer antennæ, and a little nearer to the middle line of the head. These white projecting spots are formed by the outer transparent |