nence.

Iclude that it is the force thus obtained for the individual which has built up the country and carried it forth to its present emiHence it must be with reluctance and the gravest feeling of responsibility that any new feature tending toward the limitation of the personal freedom is made a political or social, a commercial or industrial, issue.

Nevertheless the time seems to have come to have this done. We lack the curbing influence of European nobilitations, titles, or decorations, and must find other means for the legislative and executive divisions of our government to keep the social and industrial evolution within proper bounds. We have in the so far successful struggle for a reformed civil service a precedent that ought to show us the way to follow when a proper base is built.

Let us, therefore, for a time turn our mind from the higher political agitation for an abstract solution of the general trust problem, and let us sketch a picture of what other nations, less occupied by political activity, have done to deprive this question of its acuteness before we again give vent to political excite

ment.

By examination we shall find that the main difference between public or quasi-public institutions related to transportation and commerce of this and other countries consists in the ownership. While in Europe all these features, or bearers, of modern social life are owned, maintained, or managed as public institutions by state or municipality, or by corporations subjected to such strict control that they are reduced to financial or administrative middlemen, we have allowed these features to grow entirely into the uncontrolled ownership and management o private persons or corporations, and we have with the weakest or protests seen this done so thoroughly that the public in many cases finds itself situated like the miners to the corporation store. That is, the public has to pay prices for necessities and commodities of life as fixed by private interests, with but little controlling influence of competition, without any alternative but to pay the fixed price for the quality offered, or starve. In this fact lies the gravity of the trust problem.

There is, first, the railroad corporation. It is the owner of the one of our quasi-public institutions most closely connected with our economical evolution. Being the most important factor, it naturally dictates where it can, and, by monopolizing, leads the traffic into channels most profitable to itself, in spite of competition between the several companies. This phase of the trust problem, however, has a too long, eventful, and well-known history in this country to need more than a few passing remarks as to its relation to the spreading and the form of the national trust problem. Directly, the railroad company gives little cause for complaint, and is doing its best to further trade and traffic; but indirectly it is, and has always been, a nursery for the trust idea. Its officials are reared under the spell of an imperious discipline, and they subsequently demand from their subordinates a service whose nature is in absolute contrast to the spirit of our national institutions. This must be considered of grave consequence, because so great a part of the population is engaged in railroading or directly connected with this traffic.

The railroad problem is kept alive in the public mind by continuous scheming and efforts toward merging-by the larger road trying to gobble up the smaller and weaker one—in order to diminish competition. Efforts like these may, when successful, be fraught with dangers to the national commerce, but as a local problem they always tend to simplify the commerce and to benefit the industries by eliminating extra charges for running cars from one line into or over another. Hence the unwillingness of the industrial and commercial part of the public to become alarmed. If the question of governmental ownership could be solved as a local problem, if the cities could be the owners of tracks, lines, and yards inside a connecting belt line, maintaining them and charging a wheelage fee for their use, equal for all, then the same ends could probably be gained as aimed at by complete ownership, and the problem would thus lose its tremendous financial proportions. But, to leave the railroad problem, the attention of the general public is sufficiently centered to remove any fear of immature legislation.

The next source of extraordinary evolution of the trust can

be found in our harbor system. Our harbors have, as a result of the above-mentioned pronounced individualistic development, remained in the same condition as before the introduction of steam as a means of locomotion. While the nations of the Old World have introduced a new class of harbors providing proper facilities for modern vessels and adequate connection with the railroads, we have-save for some dredging, lengthening of piers, improvement of breakwaters, and the like— left our harbors just as they were when the first steamer and the first locomotive were built. Each corporation, railroad, or mercantile firm has a little harbor of its own-a dock line, a pier, a slip, or whatever name they happen to give to it; and thus the harbor of our modern metropolis in reality is a shorter or longer chain of small individual harbors, with the most limited facilities in direction of hoisting machinery, storage room, and railroad connection.

This form of harbor is good and sufficient for certain forms of traffic or industry; it accommodates the local consumption through the large wholesale merchants, and the several railroad companies for their coal and ore traffic, and it is properly maintained in every metropolitan city; but as an accommodation for the national commerce it is too expensive and time-wasting. Besides this form of harbor, or in addition to it, there has, in the larger commercial centers of Europe, grown up a new class of harbor, as different from it as the printing-press of our dailies is from the old-time hand-press. We may properly class the present form of our harbor as industrial, for it accommodates our factories and our lumber and coal yards, distributed over the town as they are; while the new and modern harbor may be classed as commercial. wherein they differ.

A short discription will suffice to show

A commercial harbor consists of several large basins, directly open for admission of the vessels, permitting these, on the simplest possible sailing or maneuver lines, without need of towing, without passing of locks, gates, bridges, or any sort of obstruction, to run directly to the moorings. Moored here, movable steam, electric, or hydraulic cranes are placed directly opposite the hatchways; these opened, the unloading goes on

immediately. The cranes will place the cargo on railroad cars placed directly behind them, or send it across the tracks to the warehouse, in the shortest possible time. The railroad tracks have, as a matter of course, connection with all lines of the city; so it matters not which company will have to do the further transporting. As soon as thus loaded, the cars are removed, others with load for transshipment are taking their places, and their freight is transferred to the empty hold, together with goods that may be taken from the warehouses or from city trucks.

The governing principle of these harbors is not so much the time-saving, the skilled handling of the freight, or the unlimited connection with the country's railways, important as these advantages are; but the fact that no private concern or corporation owns a foot of dock or ground in the plant. It does not matter whether a firm has a single barrel of stuff or a whole shipload to handle, it will have the same right. There is the least possible charge to pay to the drayman, and goods can be left in the warehouses for a stipulated fee until wanted, and can with the issued certificate change hands without being moved. Such harbors have special basins for special substances, as ore, coal, oil, and explosives. It has grain elevators, and at a convenient place a large 100- or 150-tons stationary crane.

Harbors of this class are not so very new. The first basin of the sort was Sandthor Haven, in Hamburg, opened for traffic in 1866. It proved so successful that another basin was soon added; but as the German political unification just at that period threatened the independence of the old Hanseatic town, the development of the harbor was delayed some time, until she in the eighties, by surrendering her independence to the new German empire, got money for which the present mighty harbor plant was built. This was simultaneously made a free harbor and soon became the center for the rapidly growing German trans-ocean trade.

The harbor of Copenhagen is newer, and in fact an effort to offset and neutralize the effects of Hamburg's new plant. It is, though smaller, more interesting to the student of civics, for its modern improvements and the happy way in which it has met