Within thirteen and one-half minutes her 465 bags of mail were landed and despatched by a special train to London. At 7.40 P.M. her passengers began to disembark, and at 8.15 P.M. they left on another train. At 10 P.M. the Paris commenced unloading her cargo, and in the course of Thursday she was cleared out. She took on board 2400 tons of coal, and, if it had not been for her extraordinarily large return cargo, she would have been ready for sea on Friday evening. As it was, she sailed on Saturday at mid-day, less than sixty-six hours after her arrival, with 250 saloon passengers, with her saloon berths all occupied, and with a fair complement of third-class passengers.

The Paris, at her English terminus, handles her thousands of tons of cargo, her hundreds of bags of mail, and her crowds of passengers, in less time than it takes to handle the load of a petty freight car in New England, and she makes her thousands of miles across the Atlantic almost as quickly as the average American freight car makes its baby trip of 126 miles.

The unloading and loading of a great ship is done in New York quite as quickly as on the other side of the water. On one of her trips, the Berlin arrived at her American terminus at 8 P.M.; by I o'clock P.M. of the following day, within less than eight hours of daylight, she had discharged her load of imports, shipped 1150 tons of coal, taken on her cargo of exports, and sailed for England.

It certainly ought not to take over eight hours of

daylight to load and unload a freight car. I have seen thirty-ton coal cars loaded, in Boston, in less than one hour.

Our total railroad freight revenues for the year ending June 30, 1894, were $699,490,913, less than 1.10 per ton for the 638,186,553 tons handled.

If the 1,205,169 cars belonging to the railroads had made but two paying hauls a week in that year, at $7.00 per car per haul, they would have earned over $877,000,000, and an average load of twelve tons, at an average rate of but 60 cents a ton, would have produced $7.20 per car.

Is there anything so very wild in a plan that leaves first-class freight at $1.20 a ton, second-class at 80 cents, and the cheapest service at 40 cents a ton? Is there anything so very extravagant in the statement that under the equitable rule of the Post-office, with cars sent straight from shipping point to destination over the most economical route, at the highest economical speed, and unloaded and loaded in eight hours, it would be possible for our freight equipment to earn an ample revenue at rates of from $6 to $8 per haul per car? Is there really anything impracticable in the scheme for a two-class freight system, with general merchandise at $1 a ton, and minerals at twenty-five cents a ton, per haul? Is there not, indeed, every reason to believe that, after a very brief experience under such a régime, there would be an enormous increase in the net earnings both of the railways and of the people, and in a short

time it would be possible to even lower these

rates.

The advantages of this reform ought, it seems to me, to be patent to every one. Every station, and every man at every station in the country, would be on a par with every other as to passenger and freight rates. Discriminations between individuals and between places would be forever at an end. The great cities would no longer grow at the expense of the intervening country. The crowding of men and women and little children into narrow and dirty alleys, in order that they may be near the great factories where they must labor, would soon come to an end, for the factories would move out into the open country, where land is less expensive, and where their operatives, enjoying something of God's green earth and clear sky, would do better work and would get something of happiness out of life. There would be no more rebates, no more deadheads. Great armies of soliciting agents would disappear. Freight stamps (for freight taxes would be paid in advance) and baggage stamps and passenger tickets would be on sale at drug stores, hotels, and other convenient places, as ordinary postage stamps are to-day. Cut-rate ticket offices would be abandoned. Speculation in railway rates would cease, for the tariffs, once adopted by the government, would be changed only after due deliberation and with the full knowledge of the whole people.

The adoption of this scheme and of a low cus

tom tariff would go far towards settling the trust business. Combinations of producers would do little harm if the consumer could supply his wants from the farthest station, and from the smallest producer, at the same freight rate as from the biggest trust at the next railway station. It would be difficult to make a corner on coal, if the freight rate from every station in the United States to every other were not over $6.00 per carload of thirty tons, and if every small coal miner in the country were insured equal facilities with his big neighbor in getting his product to market. But if at any time there should be a coal combination that included all the coal mines in the United States, then we could join with other civilized governments in an international transportation arrangement, after the fashion of the International Post, under which we could supply our wants from the ends of the earth.

The application of the postal principle to public transportation, under the control of the Post-office, would make the people once more masters both of the political and the industrial situation. Coal trusts and iron trusts-all sorts of trusts, indeed, would find it to their interest not to restrict, but to increase, their outputs. It would not pay, under such a system, to shut down factories, close up mines, or to destroy farm products, as the old Dutch monopolists did at one time in the East Indies, with the intent of bringing about a scarcity of the necessities of life and consequent high prices and low wages.

We hear much nowadays of over-production, but it is all nonsense. We are not suffering from over-production, but from under-distribution and over-taxation, from laws and customs that fetter trade and burden industry. We are suffering most of all, however, I think, in this country, from a system of managing our great post-roads under which one man, the farmer of the taxes on say 5000 miles of these roads, may decree which out of say a thousand cities and villages in his territory shall prosper and which shall not, and which out of say 10,000 individuals doing business in those cities and villages shall make a living or shall be reduced to beggary.

This world is filled with people, half clothed, half fed, ill-sheltered from the summer's heat and the winter's cold. These people are only too anxious to find occupation, but law, custom, circumstances, all too often deprive them of the opportunity, and when the work is found it not infrequently happens that the workers are robbed of their reward by men intrusted with governmental powers like those now enjoyed by our railway kings. The problem is how to abolish these cruel laws and customs; how to remove the obstacles, natural and artificial, which separate the would-be laborer from the would-be employer; and, finally, how to secure equality of rights and of privileges on our railways and elsewhere for every human being. When all are equally free to labor and to enjoy the products of their labor, there will no longer be any cry of