That is the
simplest possible proposition in any business undertaking."
"And you can't make out to convince the members of the State Railroad
Commission of the simpleness?" asked the man whom the vice-president
addressed as "Senator."
"You know well enough that we can't hope to convince a rabidly
anti-railroad commission," was the half-angry retort.
"Yet you are still running your railroad," suggested the other. "We
don't hear anything about your shutting down and tearing up the track."
"No; luckily, the Transcontinental System does not lie wholly within
your State boundaries. If it did, we might as well surrender our
charter and go out of business--shut down and tear up the track, as you
put it."
"All of which has come to be a pretty old and well-worn story with us,
McVickar," said the listener quietly. "I'm sure you didn't make me motor
thirty miles to hear you tell it all over again. What do you want?"
"We want a square deal," was the curt reply.
"So do the people of this State," asserted the man across the table.
"You bled us, Hardwick--bled us to the queen's taste--while you had the
chance; and the chance lasted a blamed long time. You are equitably, if
not legally, in debt to every man in this State who had ever shipped a
car-load of freight or paid a passenger fare over your line before the
present rate law went into effect.
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