Abstract

The Cheap Transportation Report

The opponents of the Cheap Transportation Movement have not refused to believe that there have been great abuses in railroad management; that many roads have been built and worked in a reckless and expensive way, or that there is a close connection between the good management of the enormous railroad system of the country and the cost of breadstuffs; but what they have maintained, and maintained through a good deal of obloquy and abuse, is that any attempt to secure cheap transportation by political means, whether by regulations imposed by State legislatures or by Congress, was sure to prove a failure; that bad as the private management of corporations might be, it was infinitely better, and more likely to produce fair charges for transportation, than any public supervision; that all the experiments tried in this country and abroad pointed to one conclusion: that political regulation always resulted in failure.