to the general public, and not to private parties exclusively. Taking these facts also into consideration, it seems needless to offer further proof of the fact that the business of railway transportation is essentially a monopoly, and that the attempt to regulate it by competition must always prove a failure in the future, as it always has in the past.
Necessarily we have limited our discussion to the most salient points, and have not touched at all many of the complicated details of the railway problem. In a later chapter we can study farther the evils due to railway monopolies, and the proper remedies therefor. At present we have accomplished our purpose in finding out the fact that railways are monopolies, and that they are so by their inherent nature.
Of monopolies in other forms of internal transportation, but little need be said. Our once busy canals and great rivers seem destined, with the constant rapid improvement and cheapening in the carriage of goods by rail, to lose all their former importance. The monopolies small and great that once held sway there have all vanished before their strong rival, the railway.