Mr. Hadley even goes so far as to defend railroad pools. "Unluckily," he says, "we place these combinations outside of the protection of the law, and by giving them this precarious and almost illegal character we tempt them to seek present gain, even at the sacrifice of their own future interests. We regard them, and we let them regard themselves, as a means of momentary profit and speculation, instead of recognizing them as responsible public agencies of lasting influence and importance." We can partially account for this author's defense of pooling when we are informed that he accepts it as an axiom that "combination does not produce arbitrary results any more than competition produces beneficent ones." Referring to railroad profits, Mr. Hadley says: "The statement that corporations make too much money is scarcely borne out by the facts. The average return of the railroads of this country is only four per cent., the bondholders receiving an average of four and a half per cent., the stockholders of two and a half per cent. True, much of the stock is water, not representing any capital actually expended; but, even making allowance for this, it is hardly probable that the roads are earning more than five per cent. on the total investment. This assumes an average cost of $45,000 per mile, implying that about half of the stock and one-sixth of the bonds are water." Mr. Hadley would probably have come much nearer the truth if he had assumed three-fourths of the stock and one-fourth of the bonds to be water. Even Mr. Poor, who certainly cannot be accused by railroad men of being inimical to their interests, places the average cost of the railroads of this country no higher than at $30,000 per mile; and this estimate, it should be remembered, includes the value of the large donations made to railroad companies by the public. With a full understanding of all the circumstances, Mr. Poor said of railroad investments several years ago that if the water were taken out of them no class of investments in this country would pay as well. In the face of this statement Mr. Hadley would do well to revise his figures.