A certain express company formerly employed one attorney at two thousand dollars a year. It now maintains a legal department occupying an entire floor of an office building, and the officers of the company are in daily consultation lest they violate some state or federal statute and go to the penitentiary. The president of an insurance company told me that if he did in Missouri what he was required to do in Texas, the penitentiary would await him, while if he omitted it in Texas, his punishment would be equally modest. Severity of punishment in the United States has not yet reached the limit witnessed in France late in the eighteenth century when direct government was carried to its logical extreme. At that time the death penalty was prescribed for those who took food products out of circulation and kept them stored without daily and publicly offering them for sale. Failing to make a true declaration of the amount of goods on hand for eight days, and retaining a larger stock of bread than was necessary for daily wants, were punishable by death. Death also awaited the farmer who did not market his grain weekly and the merchant who failed to keep his shop open for business. We may or may not go to this extreme in America. I do not at the moment recall any punishment at the present time in this country more severe than six months in jail and a fine of five hundred dollars for spitting on the sidewalk. CHAPTER XVIII THE INEVITABLE RESULT As soon as the government changed its policy and denied exceptional rewards for exceptional risks virile Americans refused to assume these risks and internal improvements ceased. A distinction is drawn between pioneer capital and improvement capital. The effect of this changed attitude toward internal improvement and business generally is exactly what every thoughtful person foresaw. No railroad construction worth mentioning has been begun in the last decade. A few unimportant extensions have been made. About five years ago, John D. Spreckels attempted the construction of a road from San Diego to the Imperial Valley, but a possible six percent return, if it proved a success, and total loss if it failed, did not prove inviting to capital. Facing disaster, he turned it over to one of the old established lines to be builded on the accumulated credit of that system.