AGGREGATE OF LIFE, ACCIDENT AND CASUALTY INSURANCE IN UNITED STATES BY HOME AND FOREIGN COMPANIES. This work is cut through the neck of the Chesapeake-Delaware peninsular and has a length of 12.63 miles (66 feet wide and 10 feet deep), with three locks (220 by 24 feet) overcoming a total rise and fall of 32 feet. The principal features of the business of the Company for the five years ending May 31, 1867, are shown in the following statement: Of the coal forwarded in 1866-67, there was forwarded Eastward from th Pennsylvania canals 63,798 tons of semi-anthracite, shipped South from Phila delphia (Schuylkill region) 92,823 tons anthracite, and East from Cumberland re e gions, via canal to Washington, and via railroad to Baltimore, 224,951 tons bituminous. The financial condition of the company on the 1st June, 1867, is shown in the following table: Capital stock (including issues from cancelled loan)... Cost (including old feeder, (110,925) Total Held by Trustees-stocks and bonds... Contingent fund-stocks and bonds Dividend fund-cancelled loan, real estate and cash.... ........... $1,818,963 50 2,254,000 00 $4,072,963 50 $3,264,975 91 240,511 03 51,800 00 405,676 56 Total. $4,072,963 50 The company last year paid a dividend of 3 per cent., and had an available remainder of $83,624 35. It is proposed now to pay regularly semi annual dividends. PROPOSED PROHIBITION OF RAILROAD EXPANSION. The action of the Constitutional Convention at Albany in prohibiting the consolidation of railroad companies with a combined capital of $20,000,000, is a matter deserving the earnest consideration, not only of the business community, but of the public at large. The alleged object of those who supported this important change in the organic law of the State, was to check the accumulation of capital in the hands of corporations, which might abuse their privileges and increased power to the detriment of legislative independence, and to the prejudice of the interests of the people of the whole State. It was urged in support of the proposition, that the great railroad combinations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have proved injurious to industrial progress, and that they exercise a controlling influence upon the action of the respective legislatures. On argument it was stated that the sale of the Pennsylvania canals to the railroad companies actually resulted in an increase in the cost of passenger and merchandise transportation contrary to the conditions of sale, the companies being able to purchase the legislature, and thus prevent any action against them for breach of contract. Hence it was argued that the delegates should by their action prevent the organization or consolidation of great corporations, whose influence might endanger the purity and independance of the Legislature of this State. It is almost inconceivable that so intelligent a body as the Constitutional Convention, should have been led by such reasoning to resort to the unusual expedient of special legislation to check the expansion of a particular branch of industry. If industrial undertakings are to be nar. rowed down to a point below legislative corruptability, then there will be an end to progress. It is obvious that the adoption of this principle would lead to the most serious embarrassments in every department. For the charges of corruption to which certain legislatures of this and other States have rendered themselves liable are by no means limited to railroad transactions. Besides, the argument is too sweeping; the fears of the Convention are groundless. There is a point beyond which even a corrupt legislature will not dare to go; as they have to look to the people for their election, on great questions of public interest they are not generally for sale. It is hardly necessary to point to any other circumstance in illustration, than the continuing of the fare on the Central Railroad at two cents per mile during the whole of the war period. A large majority of the people desired to ride at a cheap rate, and, therefore, the legislature refused to raise the fare, although wages and railroad material were doubled in price, and every consideration of justice and good sense demanded that the railroad should be permitted to charge a higher rate. But, in addition to all this, it should be remembered that the power really always remains with the people of the State. They reserve the right to amend all charters-to cut down prices, to limit profits, in a word, to cure all abuses. Under such circumstances what have we to fear? A corporation might have great influence for a time; but were it to abuse it, it would very soon be crippled by the people. We have great faith in the American public; diseases may develop themselves, but the curative power is always inherent in an elective government. The grand question, however, not only for the people of this city and State, but for the whole Northwestern and Atlantic States, is the means of transportation of the surplus produce of the West to the seaboard. The Empire State lies directly in the track of this vast commerce, and all existing modes of transportation are utterly inadequate for the purpose. Even now we need not only two or three, but may soon require a dozen lines of direct railroad communication between this city and the heart of the great grain region, The principal objection then to the action of the Convention is that it ties us up, and prevents us from competing with other States for this rich commerce. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Norfolk are placed at an advantage. A cheap twenty million dollar railroad will not reach from the prairies to New York; and if the proposed constitutional prohibition should become a law, we must relinquish the contest for commercial supremacy. And yet beyond this. special injury to the State, it will be of still greater detriment to the whole northwest, whose interests require all the avenues to the seaboard capital can give them. Our railroad system has outgrown the local wants for which it was devised. Nearly all the great lines to the West are formed by the consolidation of old railroad companies and the construction of a few missing links. The New York Central, for example, which has proved so advantageous as an outlet for the West, is, as all know, a consolidation of old lines which formerly worked with little concert of action or harmony. It is obvious that if this great highway were broken up and divided into sections, each under different management, that it would operate most injuriously to the interests it now serves. The capital stock of the New York and Erie Railroad is $25,000,000. Yet this and other railroad companies are to be precluded from increasing their accommodations and extending their facilities! There is less reason for this limitation, or, we should rather say, there are more objections to it at the present time than there were a few years since. And there will be still more cogent reasons against it in the future. The time was when direct railroad travel from New York to Albany and Buffalo was regarded as grand achievements. We have got beyond all that now. We require direct railroad transportation, without break of bulk, not only from this city to Chicago and the Mississippi, but also to the Pacific Ocean. The tendencies of the times are all in favor of the consolidation and centralization of capital for industrial enterprises, and it is difficult to see how or why these tendencies, when manifested in the direction of railroad enterprises-upon which all modern commerce depends should be checked by legislative enactments. Our industrial undertakings must be on a larger, on a continually increasing scale, as the industries of the country continue to develope. But we are told that there can be unity of action without consolidation. Most certainly, a person may travel from New York to Omaha and have his baggage checked even if he passes over twenty roads. But is it not self evident that there will be more to overcome to bring about this unity than if one board of directors controlled the entire route? In freight matters union is particularly difficult. The question of charges, of liability for losses, in fact a division of interests in almost every particular arises. The one subject of separate liability would always control with forwarders, (other things being equal) leading them to give preference to the route where there was no division. Then, too, the freight must be carried through without change of cars. But above all we should remember that one management can be more economical than twenty. This is an extremely important element, as it permits lower freights to be charged, and a saving secured in bringing the produce of the west to the seaboard. In a word there seems to us to be no room for argument on this point. The advantages of consolidation are very great-in fact, every day in the development of the country will the importance of through routes under the control of one direction increase. PUBLIC LANDS OF THE UNITED STATES. The Hon. Joseph S. Wilson, Commissioner of U. S. Land Office for 1866, has made a report from which we have prepared the following.He claims that prominent among the indications of the growth and prosperity of the republic is the gradual expansion of actual settlements over the immense fields of the public domain. Our liberal system of land legislation has extended, and still continues to afford facilities for opening new farms, founding new cities, holding out incentives for immigration from the crowded capitals of the elder States and from abroad by stipulations for the acquisition of real estate, either agricultural or city property, on terms so easy as to enable the industrious to secure homesteads almost at nominal rates. That system founded by the illustrious statesmen of the Revolution has been enlarged under the lights of experience to meet the wants of increasing millions of settlers by successive legislative acts, from the ordinance of 1785 for the disposal of the public lands to the legislative enactments of the year 1866. It has not restricted its benefits to merely opening rich and boundless fields to individual settlement; investing title in local communities for school purposes in every township of six miles square; in giving means for the endowment of seminaries of learning and universities; but it has made concessions, on a stupendous scale, for |