Another item of expense which grows out of all proportion to railway revenue or national development is taxation. In 1890 the taxes paid by all the railroads aggregated $31,207,469; in 1910 they had risen to $103,795,701; for 1911 they are estimated at $109,000,000 and may be a couple of millions more. The increase in twenty years up to 1910 is 233 per cent. This is by direct act of the people. The extravagance of all modern legislative bodies, the doubling of state and national expenses within a few years and the continuous issue of bonds for all sorts of public purposes formerly met by general taxation have drained the ordinary sources of revenue. The railroad treasury has come to be looked upon as the public milch cow, from which a new supply of nourishment may always be obtained. So railway taxes have risen by leaps and bounds. Each mile of line in the country paid $199 in taxes in 1890, and $431 in 1910. The owner of capital will not be over-anxious to lend it to concerns which, if the present tendency is not checked or reversed, will presently see all receipts beyond a bare living income diverted by taxation to the public treasury. When the state appropriates out of the earnings of the railways, as it did in 1910, more than one-fourth as much as was paid in dividends to all the stockholders, the interest rate naturally rises and the possible supply of new capital for railway investment threatens to vanish altogether. If you take two dollars out of your purse each time you put a dollar in, bankruptcy will happen in time. The railroads are not yet reduced to the point of collapse, because most of them are still permitted to earn and retain dividends. But their borrowing power has been cut down until it suffices only for hand-to-mouth improvement. Their credit must be so far restored as to make it equal to carrying forward the creative and constructive work which we have seen to be a condition of continued national growth. How does their record for trustworthiness stand? What have they done to show themselves fit for that larger liberty of action which is indispensable if they are to perform all the functions belonging to the proper conduct of their business? The railroads of the United States are entitled to both confidence and relief because they have not abused their trust in the matter of capitalization. While, to make possible the raising of money, stock-bonuses undoubtedly were given in their earlier history, it is true of them as a whole today that they have by far the smallest capitalization per mile in the world; and that they have kept their capitalization low by using for betterments millions of earnings which anywhere in Europe would have been handed over to stockholders, leaving the cost of improvements to be charged to capital account. This is one of the best-established facts in railroad history, though few people yet realize how great is the difference in our favor.