"We frequently hear about railroad watered stock. It is a hackneyed phrase which is used with which to catch gudgeons, and it has caught a great many. Now, let us see. You can open a bank--five of us sitting here, if we had the money, could open a bank, put up the building and draw our checks, and that is disposed of. We have a million or a million and a half of capital, and, conducting the business of the bank within the law applied to bankers, we can earn any dividend we like, and we can divide it, even up to 40 or 50 per cent., and it has been done, and nobody finds any fault. Now, we might start a manufacturing establishment and we can divide any profits that we can legally make up to 40 or 50 or 100 per cent., or we can start a mercantile establishment and conduct it so as to bring any profit--there is no limit so long as we are within the laws of trade. But take the railroad. "Now, remember, you can run your manufacturing establishment twenty-four hours a day, or you can run it one day in the week, or you can run it half the time and you can close it and it will not affect you, or you need not run it at all; and if you do not like the business you can dispose of it. You can liquidate your bank and go out of business; and so with the mercantile establishment, you can close it at any time. But when you have invested your money in a railway, you have undertaken an obligation to serve the public; you have taken a business risk that is greater than the business risk of any other business in the world. If you do not run it, move your trains with regularity, move your trains so as to accommodate the business, the courts will appoint a receiver and will issue receiver's certificates to an extent that would wipe out your investment. If there were anything left they would hand it back, but the chances are altogether that if you could not make it pay the receiver could not. RAILROAD BIGGEST RISK. "Now, I mention this simply to show that the business risk in building or operating a railway is greater than it is in any other business. There is nothing guaranteed, and sometimes you are told what appliances you may use; you are told what you must not use; you are told whom you can hire, and you are told when you can discharge him, and it has been at least hinted as to what you should pay him--what his wages and condition of work shall be. So that the only privilege that was left for the railroads was to pay the bills. That they are always expected to do, and it would be a great disappointment if they were not able to.