Now to show the effect of proposed legislation. In Nebraska a bill has been introduced placing the limit of cars that can be legally handled in one train at fifty. If this bill becomes a law, how long will it be before somebody will want a similar one in Illinois, and if you are going to fix a limit so as to make it necessary to run more trains, and consequently employ more men, and that is the undoubted purpose of the bill, how long will it be before the limit will be reduced to forty, or even twenty-five? Where will the thing end, and when? With the mere possibility of such legislation looming up in the future, can you expect improvements such as I have just described to continue? Would you recommend them if in my place? How long will such legislation find favor in our halls of Congress? Just as long as your representatives think you want it--by you I mean the majority of their constituents--and no longer. Your representatives and senators are human. They seek to obtain political preferment at the polls, and desire to remain in office. They must have a majority of the votes to be elected, and naturally they will shape their course so as to meet your wishes, as they understand them, because by so doing they hope to retain your support. No one today questions the right of the properly constituted authorities to supervise the railroads. No one defends the rebate, or discrimination of any kind, but, as the Supreme Court of the United States has recently well said, "_It must be remembered that railroads are the private property of their owners; that, while from the public character of the work in which they are engaged, the public has the power to prescribe rules for securing faithful and efficient service and equality between shippers and communities, yet in no proper sense is the public a general manager_."