opinion that this is the case, let us as sume for a moment that the rate from the mine to the consumer is 50 cents a ton too great. About 50,000,000 tons are produced and marketed annually, and upon that theory someone is paying $25,000,000 more than ought legitimately to be exacted. And to whom is it paid? To the owners of railway stocks, and they, generally speaking, are the rich and the very rich members of society. All this is no reason why railway property should be treated unjustly. It simply shows that the railway, the railway combination, is one of the most subtle and dangerous instrumentalities in effecting an unjust distribution of wealth by taking from the poor man wrongfully and giving to the rich. The act to regulate commerce insures the widest publicity for all the operations of railways, but that has not and can not prevent the imposi tion of unreasonable rates. Some years ago the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the Sherman antitrust law applied to the operations of interstate railways, and forbade all agreements between them for the establishment or maintenance of rates. Its only effect so far has been to intensify that monopoly. Today, with respect to interstate transportation, and that is the great body of all transportation, the public has no safeguard against railway monopoly. It should have, and there can be but one. In some manner just to all parties the Government must exercise its right to supervise the rate, must compel these carriers to impose in the first instance a reasonable charge. It will hardly be suggested that Congress could directly supervise the interstate railway rates of this country; hence, the only practical method is by the use of a commission. I am not discussing now the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission. There is too little of that power to admit of intelligent discussion. Such a commission should be an expert body, composed of the best men obtainable and occupied entirely in the consideration of such matters. It should obtain the fullest possible information. It should hear all anyone desires to say, but when this has been done its conclusions still must rest in the good judgment of its members. Its decision is the act of an expert body, and just in proportion as the members of that body have had experience, just in proportion as they are men of honest, mature and independent judgment, so is that decision of value. The railway industry is the largest, but one, and the most-important of

all industries. Any unjust interference with it, or any unreasonable embarrassment of it, would be both wrong and foolish. A commission like that suggested, which is at once an investigating and a deciding body, may be to an extent partisan. The questions passed upon are of tremendous importance. Some method ought to exist by which possible mistakes upon its part could be corrected. Such security is already provided to an extent by the Constitution of the United States.

It has long seemed to me that we must create a new tribunal, in the nature of a commerce court, to deal specially with these questions; a tribunal with judicial attributes, but discharging the combined functions of court and commission, as does the English Railway Commission today.

1. Whatever body enforces the orders of a commission must make decrees and execute process. A commission itself can not be invested with these powers; the special court suggested could be.

2. A commission whose members hold office for limited terms is not permanent in its personnel, and might be subject to influences of a sectional or political nature. The members of a tribunal like that suggested would hold office for life, would possess all the conservatism and independence of judges and would afford to property the protection thereby assured.

3. The main objection to entrusting this duty to the present courts is that the questions involved are not properly law questions. A court like that suggested would be occupied mainly in the consideration of such matters and would become even more familiar with them than the commission itself.

4. Such a court would be able to act promptly; and this is the essence of regulation, especially railway regulation. If there were no other reasons for not committing this task to the present courts the interminable delays attendant upon that mode of procedure would be a sufficient one.

What I desire to emphasize is not the method, but the fact that in some way the Government must determine whether railway charges are reasonable, and if not, make them reasonable. It is said that these questions will settle themselves; that in the grand march of human progress these things will somehow all come out right. Just what right may be, or just why the future is to be righter than the present, or for what reason a

thing which is wrong should not be corrected now, is not stated. It is also said that the making of a rate is a matter of such delicacy that only the expert traffic manager can deal with it. One would almost fancy that freight rates were made as birds build their nests, by instinct, and that the entire quantity of rate-making instinct was already monopolized by the railways. Very recently one of these gentlemen testified before the Interstate Commerce Commission that in his opinion all rates were too low. The last annual report of his company shows that it earned during the year ended June 30, 1902, the interest upon its funded debt, a dividend of 7 per cent. upon its preferred stock and nearly 12 per cent. upon its common stock; although it only paid 6. I cheerfully concede the distinguished ability of that gentleman. It all comes

to this: Railway transportation is today a monopoly. This you can not prevent. You can control the monopoly by controlling the charge which it exacts. This should be done wisely and carefully, but it must be done.

The Great Assuan Dam.

The first of a series of great irrigation undertakings has just been completed in Egypt, which, if followed up as proposed, will restore to the land of the Pharaohs much of its ancient glory and importance. The illustrations published herewith are evidence of the magnitude of the first dam. From the London Engineer the following information is taken:

"Mehemet Ali, the founder of modern Egypt, was eager to emulate the fame of the ancient Pharaohs, who constructed Lake Maris, and he urged on his engineers the importance of resuscitating this lake. It has, however, been the good fortune of Lord Cromer to lay the foundation stone of that series of works which is to usher in an area of prosperity such as we read of in the time of the great Pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty. We live in an age of imperialistic ideas, and the Lake Moris of today will not be an isolated lake in one corner of Egypt, but it will undoubtedly be a series of reservoirs at the sources of the Nile. Lake Tana, at the source of the Blue Nile, with an area of 3,000 square kilometers, and catchment basin of about 18,000 square kilometers, will be able to supply 6,000,000,000 cubic meters of water per annum. Lakes Victoria and Albert Nyanza, at the sources of the White Nile,

with areas of 70,000 and 4,500 square kilometers respectively, will be able to supply 12,000,000,000 cubic meters per annum. Lakes Tana and Victoria, with rocky sills and overfalls at their outlets, will not need to have their surfaces raised. The water will be drawn from them by widening the sills or cutting them down or tunnelling. Lake Albert will need to have its surface raised three or four feet by a weir at its outlet, but this will be done easily, as its shores are perfectly barren and within British territory. Such weirs fear no earthquakes. These mighty reservoirs will be the modern representatives of Lake Maris, and will worthily fulfill their mission, a mission which has been thus described in the report of 1894 on the Nile valley reservoirs : "The day these works are carried out at the sources of the Nile, the lakes will take their proper place in the economy of the water supply, and we shall be able to say of them in their entirety, as we can say of them today in their degree, that what the snows of the Alps are to the Po, Lakes Victoria, Nyanza and Tana are to the Nile; and what the Italian lakes are to the plains of Lombardy, that Lake Albert is to the land of Egypt.'

"In addition to these works at the sources of the Nile, training works will be undertaken in the White Nile itself between Gondokoro and Fashoda. These works will be undertaken with the object of ensuring that the waters issuing from Lake Albert are not being wasted in the marshes of the sudd regions, but are being conducted on to Egypt. They will not only add to the quantity of the water entering Egypt in summer, but also to its quality. Dr. Schweinfurth, the eminent African traveler and savant, was the first to call the attention of the Egyptian government to the necessity of closing the spills from the White Nile to the mouth of Gondokoro, and so beginning the training of the river. He very rightly said: 'Many years would elapse before the desired result would be obtained by the strengthening of the banks, but the works would be increasingly felt every year in Egypt as the works progressed.' These training works, it has just been stated, would improve the quality of the water entering Egypt, and that is a point of vital importance to the country. When the Assuan reservoir was first advocated there was always a good deal of anxiety about the unwholesome water which comes down from the swamp region of the White Nile in May and June during years of low supply, and which pollutes the Nile so

thoroughly that even the aeration it gets as it traverses the six cataracts of the Nile does not succeed in destroying its of fensiveness. During the Sudd cutting operations of 1900 the green water which came down the Nile was held up a few meters at the Assuan dam owing to the building operations, and it became quite fetid in the deep pool of 30 kilometers upstream of the Assuan dam. Moreover, in this reach all the fish died. It was a very unpleasant prognostication of what might happen in the future.

"This green water comes down from the swamps which border on the White Nile south of Lake No; the swamps in years of low supply get cut off from the main

was in the past, a reservoir of extraordinary capacity; which, with the aid of a weir at Tewfikieh or Abu Zeid, or even possibly the Sixth Cataract, would keep the whole reach of the White Nile from Lake No northwards up to the level of the phenomenal summer of 1879, when the water entering Egypt in summer never fell below 1,300 cubic meters per second, capable of irrigating 4,000,000 acres in summer. If this were to happen Lake No should certainly have its insignificant name changed to Lake Moris. It would provide not only abundance of water, but abundance of good water to Egypt. "Egypt has all this wealth of water to

stream and gradually dwindle down owing to evaporation. They become fetid, and when the rising waters overflow them and mingle with them and form one stream, we have the green water so dreaded at Cairo. The larger the quantity of water in the river the less chance is there of these swamps being cut off. Indeed, in years of good supply down the White Nile the green water is not perceptible. The swamps are never cut off from the main stream and never stagnate.

"Now with abundance of water coming down from Lake Albert Nyanza and the spills north of Gondokoro closed, Lake No would again become what it undoubtedly

draw upon, and yet the Egyptian government, acting upon the advice of its technical advisers, has decided to construct, within Egyptian territory, one reservoir which can always be held in reserve to meet contingencies. The reasons for this action are given in the report of 1895 on the Nile valley reservoirs: 'Since then we have further considered the problem, and have concluded that whether the sources of the Nile or the sills of any of the other cataracts of the Nile are utilized for water storage, it is absolutely necessary, in the interests of irrigation, to have near at hand, at the point where the Nile enters Egypt, a reserve of water to meet