RAILWAY 'CONSOLIDATION. The consolidation—or as the English say, the amal gamation—of railways consists either (a) in' uniting connecting lines into one continuous line, or (b) in uniting parallel or competing lines into a system. Railways in the United States were originally built for the most part in short, disassociated lines — little stretches of road from A town to B town. Construction had progressed only a little before the desira bility of connection between these lines became obvious. And almost at once such connection. began to be arranged, so that, in the progress of our railway building and some time prior to' about 1870, a great number of these little lines in every part of the country had been amalga mated, with the result of developing our great trunk line systems. Before we had entered upon the last quarter of the 19th century, it had' come to pass, speaking generally, as a result of this tendency to unite connecting lines, that very much the greater and more important part of our railway system consisted of long lines of road under a single management or control, made up, especially in the older parts of the ' country, of a less or greater number of for-. merly disconnected and independent local lines, which had been one after the other taken over' and incorporated into the greater continuous line or system. Almost all the valuable and well located local lines had, 30 years or more ago, thus been absorbed into larger and less local' combinations. Such consolidation, working only benefit to the public and demonstrating its usefulness as it went along, provoked only a small amount of opposition, and these amalga mations of connecting lines usually secured legal sanction, whenever necessary, without the protest of the politicians. But about 1870 now (1917) about a half century ago — a tend ency in the direction of the consolidation of parallel and competing lines developed. What had long been known in Europe to be the true law of railway construction and the sound basis upon which railways must ultimately come to exist .and be operated in every country where there is. enough wealth and commercial activity to make them successful — namely a division of territory and the practical elimination of com petition between parallel lines in the same ter ritory—began to assert itself and to be felt to be applicable here: and directly we entered upon a period of consolidation, not now of con nectjug but of competing lines; and, summing up the whole matter in a single sentence, that process of amalgamation, having now gone on in this country for nearly 50 years, it results that we are now at the aid, substantially, of the second stage of railway combination.
First, we built isolated and disconnected lo cal lines; second, we. united these connecting lines — whenever they did connect — into con tinuons lines; and third, we divided up the ter ritory between theretofore competing lines, by gradually amalgamating either the ownership or the control of such lines in a defined territory, thus securing little by little to a single interest, a territorial monopoly of the carrying services of the locality. This process. carried out to its logical conclusion roughly divides the whole country into railway territories of greater or less extent, within each of which one single railway system is paramount or absolutely con trolling. This readjustment of ownership and control between the greater railway companies of the country goes steadily on. In some sec tions of the country it seems to have been fully and finally accomplished; in other sections it is• in progress; and only where the game isn't worth the candle or where the work has been done, is there an absence of activity in this rection, the tendency so to consolidate, first con-, fleeting and then competing lines, has been universal and inevitable, and such consolidation is in the one case an accomplished fact and in the other an irresistible evolution. Very little effort was made to prevent the earlier consoli dations, that of merely connecting, lines. It is now well understood that' such efforts, if they had been made, would have failed, and it is now not questioned that such consolidations have been beneficial. both to the public and the railways. On the other hand a very great deal of effort has been made by courts and statutes to prevent. and hinder the second form of con solidation, that of competing or parallel lines, These efforts have also for the most part failed,. and it is now coming more and more to be lieved that they will ultimately wholly fail tp. prevent what seems to be the inevitable in way development. Moreover in the case of amalgamation of connecting lines, the mischiefs, which have been apprehended have generally not been realized; .so that now not only most. practical railway men, but many students of the. railway problem believe that in the outcome the balance of benefit both to the carrier and to the public will be also found on the side of tern-, torial division between competing lines. The emphasis of our intelligent thinking and our most efficient effort is now put rather on regu lation than repression.