receipts being equal, would return eight per cent. on the increased capital
of sixty-eight and a half millions of dollars.

* * * * *

We have thus shown the combined effects of financial mismanagement and
imperfect construction upon our railway property. But there is a third evil
to be cured before it can become productive.

Under the present system of railway management, everybody is busy getting
rich at the expense of the stockholders. Railway men are as honest as the
average of mankind, but there is no reason why they should be more so; and
if their temptations are greater, a certain percentage of them will
inevitably yield to those temptations,--just as statistical tables show
that the average number of arrests for drunkenness and disorderly conduct
is greater on Sundays and holidays than on working-days.

A few years ago it was impossible to compare the results of the working of
one railway with those of another. The returns were so ingeniously made
out, that only one thing was certain,--the amount of dividend that it
pleased the Board of Directors to declare. If this was three or four per
cent. for the half-year, the stockholders were delighted, and passed a vote
of thanks to those worthy gentlemen for devoting so much valuable time to
their interests gratuitously. What if a dividend was not earned? it was
easy enough to raise money in Wall Street on the Company's paper, until
some excuse could be found for a new issue of bonds or stock. But those
benefactors of the human race, Tuckerman and Schuyler, put a stop to all
this. After their proceedings became public, and still more certainly after
the crash of 1857, if railways did not earn a dividend, they had to say
so. This led to investigations, and stockholders became "posted," as the