There are two evils of our present railway system, however, which are not chargeable to monopoly, but to the _attempt to defeat monopoly_, and which are important to our discussion. The first is the waste of competition in railway traffic; the second, the waste of competition by the construction and _threatened_ construction of competing lines where present facilities are ample for the traffic. Of the first it need only be said that in advertising, "drumming," and soliciting patronage the railways spend many millions of dollars every year, which comes out of the pockets of the public. The second is most serious, for it involves a far greater waste. It is a conservative estimate to say that 5 per cent. of the railways of the country were only built to divide the profits of older roads, and that their owners would be delighted to-day to have their money back in their possession and the railroad wiped out. The millions these roads have cost, the millions required every year to maintain and operate them, the millions spent on proposed roads that never reached completion, and the millions squandered in fighting proposed roads by every means short of actual bloodshed,--these are some of the wastes which we have made in our endeavor to create competition in railway transportation. And with all our efforts, and notwithstanding the fact that until within a short time the public sentiment and the railway managers have been united in the belief that free competition was the only mode of regulating railroad rates, we are farther removed from free competition now than ever before. And now consider in addition to all this the fact that every railway company must first of all secure from the State a right to exercise the sovereign power of Eminent Domain, and that it may and does choose and take every advantage of the favorable locations where its road can be built most cheaply; which natural highways, mountain passes, and the like, are gifts of Nature, the right to whose use equitably belongs to the general public, and not to private parties exclusively. Taking these facts also into consideration, it seems needless to offer further proof of the fact that the business of railway transportation is essentially a monopoly, and that the attempt to regulate it by competition must always prove a failure in the future, as it always has in the past. Necessarily we have limited our discussion to the most salient points, and have not touched at all many of the complicated details of the railway problem. In a later chapter we can study farther the evils due to railway monopolies, and the proper remedies therefor. At present we have accomplished our purpose in finding out the fact that railways are monopolies, and that they are so by their inherent nature.