whole industrial capital of the United States. A transfer of ownership to the State would mean the payment to the present railway owners of an enormous sum of money that would naturally seek investment in other industries.
These industries are already about at the point of crystallizing into monopolies owing to plethora of capital and the advent of such an enormous flood of money set free by the expropriation of the railroad owners would not only complete the process but would cause the amalgamation of trusts into one huge trust, the coming trust of trusts.
Nationalization of the railways would be letting free such a flood of capital that the ark of state would be immediately floated into socialism.
During the last twelve months the enormous sum of $48,000,000 has been paid in dividends by the Standard Oil Trust. It may be noted that the investing public pay no attention to the intrinsic value of a stock, i. e., by what the property owned by a corporation cost. A share of stock may be nominally worth $100—as is Standard Oil stock, but as it pays 48 per cent dividends investors are willing to pay $540 for each $100 share. On the other hand there are some corporation stocks where each $100 share actually represents $100 invested, yet owing to various conditions dividends do not amount to 2
