James F. Hudson, the author of "The Railways and the Republic," is a very exhaustive and instructive writer upon the subject of railroad abuses. His material is well selected, and the subject ably presented. To the assertion of railroad managers, that railroad regulation injuriously affects the value of railroad property, he makes the following reply: "Suppose that it were true, as these jurists and writers claim, that by the assertion of the public right to regulate the railways the value of their property is decreased, are there no other property rights involved? Do railway investments form the only property in the land which requires the protection of the law? Are we to understand these judgments and their indorsers to mean that because railroad property will depreciate if certain principles of justice prevail, therefore justice is to be set aside for the benefit of railway property? If the magnitude of interests involved is to be of weight in deciding such questions, let us put against 'the hundreds of millions' of railway property on the one side the thousands of millions of private property on the other. Railway regulation, according to a writer in the _Princeton Review_, is 'confiscation of railroad property;' but this puts wholly out of the question the idea of private property which is rendered possible by leaving unchecked the power of the railways over commerce and manufactures through the manipulation of freight rates. Of the two parties in interest the shippers represent far greater property interests than the carriers, although the latter, by their organization, are more powerful. I have yet to hear of a single case where restrictive railway legislation has seriously damaged the honest valuation of any railway. I have yet to learn of any seriously proposed scheme of regulation that has proposed to cut down railway profits below a fair dividend on capital actually invested. But the entire Nation knows of one notorious case in which the discriminating policy of the leading railways of the country has resulted in the wholesale confiscation of private property for the benefit of a favored corporation." Concerning the inconsistency presented by the plea of railroad managers for a legalized pool, Mr. Hudson says: