Still another popular accusation against big business is the idea that selfish private interests restrain and delay progress when they are threatened with a new invention that might destroy their market. No private interest could or has ever done this, except with government help. The early history of railroads is a good illustration.
The railroads were violently opposed by the owners of canals and steamship companies, who were doing most of the transportation at the time. A great number of laws, regulations and restrictions were passed by various legislatures at the instigation of the canal interests in an attempt to hamper and stop the development of railraods. This was done in the name of “The Public Welfare”.
When the first railroad bridge was built across the Mississippi, the river steamship interests brought suit against its builder and the court ordered the bridge destroyed as a “Material Obstruction and Nuisance”. The Supreme Court reversed the ruling, by a narrow margin, and allowed the bridge to stand*.
Ask yourself what the fate of the entire industrial development of the United States would have been, if that narrow margin had been different, and what is the fate of all economic progress when it is left, not to objective demonstration, but to the arbitrary decision of a few men armed with political power.
* See Frank H. Spearman – The Strategy of Great Railroads (Pgs 273-276)
Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise – Ayn Rand (1959)