This may at first seem a sweeping indictment of our form of government, but I say it is just. Suppose we take our railroad system, now amounting to fifty-five thousand miles. At an average cost of eighty thousand dollars per mile for construction and equipment, its total cost would be four billions four hundred millions dollars. To pay the shareholders an eight per cent. dividend for doing nothing, the industries of the country would have to be taxed three hundred and fifty millions dollars over and above the cost of maintenance and operation. Did this enormous drain from the products of the people stop here, the fertility of the country, made use of by the ingenuity of the people, might possibly keep pace with the demand. But it does not stop there. The net earning of the railroads enables their directors to make larger dividends than eight per cent. Do their managers relinquish this increase in favor of the people? Never a bit of it. But they increase their stock either by selling new shares, or by making stock or scrip dividends, and to neither process has there been found any legal bar or cure.
Now, what may the result of such a system be? Why, this. If the stock of all these railroads be increased in the same proportion that some of them have already been increased, it may be raised to a thousand billions of dollars, and the people, instead of being compelled to pay three hundred and fifty millions dollars to provide an eight per cent. dividend on their cost, will have to submit to the extortion of eight hundred million dollars annually to satisfy the demands of these legal despots for an eight per cent. dividend upon stock, a large part of which represent absolutely nothing but the people’s stolen money.
A person who would double the size of another’s note simply because the profits of his business would permit the payment of twelve per cent. interest, so that instead of paying twelve per cent. upon one hundred dollars, which would be an illegal charge, it would be six per cent. upon two hundred dollars, would be deemed and adjudged guilty of forgery. But these railroad magnates sit in their palatial offices and raise their notes at pleasure, and they are considered public benefactors. It is a crime for a single person to steal a dollar, but a corporation may steal a million dollars, and be canonized as saints.