Nearly every civilized nation in the world owns all or a part of its system of railroad and telegraph lines, and they have no disposition to turn them over to private corporations. The United States alone permits a few wealthy buccaneers to levy taxes on the people which no government would dare do. An increase of three cents per bushel on corn alone means a tax of fifty millions of dollars to the men who produce that cereal. Until recently the national bankers paid the Government one per cent. on the money the Government loaned them. Then they claimed that it was too much to pay for the use of the money and the credit of the Government, and Congress reduced the rate to one-half of one per cent. But the banker has no conscientious scruples about loaning this money to the people at eight and ten per cent. The railroad companies admit that they violate the law by granting rebates, but set up the claim that if they did not do it they would lose their share of the traffic. It is a very singular plea. It is not half as just as the one that a man steals because he is hungry, or because his wife and children are suffering for the necessaries of life. “We violate the law because somebody else does,” say the railroad companies. Suppose that every criminal would set up the same excuse for the commission of crime. And ordinary criminals have a better right to make that plea in palliation for their crime than the trusts and corporations have. If, as they admit, the railroad managers are so dishonest that one must violate the law because another does, if there is no way to restrain them except to turn the whole matter over to them, and permit them to pool their earnings so that one thief can watch the other thieves, it is about time to abolish the whole system of private ownership and for the Government to take charge of the lines of transportation. The railroad companies make out the worst kind of a case against themselves. They admit that there are enough law-breakers among them to demoralize the whole system.