Between the Grangers on the one side and the labor unions on the other, the railways are in a tight place. Whatever restrictions great corporations may need, the sort of attack now made on them in the West is altogether irrational. Is it always made from public motives? The legislators of one Western State had been accustomed to receive from the various lines that centred at the capital trip passes, in addition to their personal annual passes. Trip passes are passes that the members can send to their relations, friends, and political allies who want to visit the capital. One year the several roads agreed that they would not issue trip passes. When the members asked the agent for them they were told that they were not ready. As days passed and no trip passes were ready, hostile and annoying bills began to be introduced into the Legislature. In six weeks there was a shower of them. The roads yielded, and began to give out the passes. After that, nothing more was heard of the bills. What the public have a right to complain of is the manipulation of railways in Wall Street gambling. But this does not account for the hostility to the corporations which are developing the West by an extraordinary outlay of money, and cutting their own throats by a war of rates. The vast interests at stake, and the ignorance of the relation of legislation to the laws of business, make the railway problem to a spectator in Chicago one of absorbing interest. In a thorough discussion of all interests it must be admitted that the railways have brought many of their troubles upon themselves by their greedy wars with each other, and perhaps in some cases by teaching Legislatures that have bettered their instructions, and that tyrannies in management and unjust discriminations (such as the Inter-State Commerce Law was meant to stop) have much to do in provoking hostility that survives many of its causes. I cannot leave Chicago without a word concerning the town of Pullman, although it has already been fully studied in the pages of Harper’s Monthly. It is one of the most interesting experiments in the world. As it is only a little over seven years old, it would be idle to prophesy about it, and I can only say that thus far many of the predictions as to the effect of “paternalism” have not come true. If it shall turn out that its only valuable result is an “object lesson” in decent and orderly living, the experiment will not have been in vain. It is to be remembered that it is not a philanthropic scheme, but a purely business operation, conducted on the idea that comfort, cleanliness, and agreeable surroundings conduce more to the prosperity of labor and of capital than the opposites.