traffic are almost clear profit. Nor is this all. The practical impossibility of distinguishing additional* traffic from other traffic, and the enactment of State and National laws requiring uniform rates to be charged, places all traffic on a common basis; and the same cause which makes it more profitable to carry additional traffic for a song than to lose it, makes it better for a railroad to carry traffic, temporarily at least, for less than the actual running expenses of the road, rather than to lose it. The train and station service, the general office and shop expenses, must all be kept up, though the freight and passengers carried dwindle to almost nothing; and the capital invested in the road is a total loss, unless the line is kept in operation and earns some income, even though it be small. This last influence, as we shall see later, is a most important and far-reaching one in its effect on industrial competition.
The cause of the intensity of competition in railway traffic is now evident. And from what we have seen, it follows that two railway lines competing freely with each other cannot possibly do business at a profit. Let us see what are the actual results of this law of practical railway management. Evidently the managers of two competing railway lines have but two possible courses open. They may, by tacit or formal agreement, unite in fixing common rates on both the roads, or they may attempt to do business with free competition. But we have already proven that the latter course must result in reducing the income of the road certainly below the amount necessary to pay the operating expenses and the interest on the bonds, and probably it will be insufficient to pay the running expenses alone. The inevitable result, then, is the bankruptcy of the weaker road, the appointment of a receiver, and its sale, in all probability to its stronger competitor. This is the chain of cause and effect which has wrought the consolidation of competing parallel roads in scores of cases, and which, if free competition is allowed to act, is sure to do so.
We can now appreciate the necessity which managers of competing lines are under to agree upon uniform rates for traffic over their roads, and at