Another serious objection to pooling is that it invariably leads to periodic wars, which unsettle all business, and but too often introduce into legitimate trade the element of chance. These wars give, moreover, to designing railroad managers an opportunity to enrich themselves by stock speculations at the expense of the stockholders, whose interests they use as a football for the accomplishment of their selfish ends. When rates are reduced to a right level, and are properly adjusted, and are equal to all, even railroad men will find no necessity for pools. The desire for such a combination is a desire to impose upon somebody, or some locality, or the public at large. The proposition to give legal sanction to pools, made by railroad managers, is preposterous; and even a pool to be approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission is out of the question, as it would cause the railroads to increase their efforts to control the appointment of the commission. However honest it may look on its face, however plausible may be the arguments produced in its favor, it should not be permitted. There is no doubt but under the proposed pooling arrangement railroad interests, watered stocks and all, would be cared for, but there is every reason to believe that public interests would not be properly protected. So long as servility by a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission to railroad influences serves as a stepping-stone to a high position in the employ of railroad combinations, with a salary of three or four times that of an Interstate Commerce Commissioner, so long will it be unsafe to permit such powers to be vested in that commission. Pooling by railroads should not be permitted, if permitted at all, so long as representatives of speculative interests have a voice in their management, and not until all fictitious valuations are altogether banished from the equation, and until the roads are brought under complete Government control. There is no more necessity for pools among railroads than there is among merchants and manufacturers. The capital actually invested in railroads is now receiving larger returns than investments in other lines of business, and their incomes are increasing from year to year.