“We, the people of the United States, are the petitioners. (For railroad rate legislation). We are coming here asking through the President that that bill (Hepburn-Dolliver) be passed so as to relieve us from certain abuses practised everywhere by our chartered common carriers, the railroads. And the representatives of those railroads and their allied corporations sit here enthroned; and they decide upon our case. They may decide in our favor but—the intolerable fact of it all is—they decide. They rule; they may be good rulers; but they rule.” That is the deliberate statement of a man who has gained an enviable reputation for thorough-going investigation. He is not a demagogue or a writer of penny-dreadfuls. He is on the ground and supports every one of his general statements with concrete examples. Mr. Steffens blames the people for the present state of affairs. I heartily agree with him. But I believe we should try to reason out where the first big mistake was made and arrive at a conclusion as to the best way out of the difficulty, unless, perchance, our people really like the rule of railroad oligarchy. I believe it is a useless task to chide the people for lack of civic righteousness, for indifference, for supineness, for failure to go to the primaries, etc., unless we point out clearly how complete sovereignty may be secured. It is useless to scold a man for not filling his lungs with oxygen, if you advise him to stay in a room overcharged with carbonic acid gas. The present state of affairs is due primarily to two great causes, or really to one cause operating through two different channels: (_a_) The private ownership of railroads. (_b_) The private control of the issue and circulation of money. The latter cause, in my judgment, is immeasurably greater than the former; but public opinion is now directed toward the former, so that a discussion of it is sure of a careful hearing. I do not insist that permitting the private ownership of railroads was an irremediable mistake; in fact, there is much good argument in favor of the contention that under private ownership the roads were developed faster and better than they, in all likelihood, would have been under public ownership. And we may admit, without at all prejudicing our case, that in the evolution of railroading, private ownership was best at the start. This is not capable of demonstration—but we need not quarrel over it. A railroad is a highway; and a highway is one of the attributes of sovereignty. Whoever owns and controls the road is to that extent a sovereign. And under our aggravated system of _laissez faire_, ownership and control always go together, except with the slightest modifications. Hence, with private ownership of railroads, it was inevitable that we should reach just such a state of affairs as Mr. Steffens pictures. Why shouldn’t “representatives of those railroads and their allied corporations” sit here enthroned?