82 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



tributed wonderfully to the development of the country, and to the convenience 

 and prosperity of the people. Some people, however, are so given to enlarging 

 •on the benefits the country has derived from railroads that we might be led to 

 believe that railroad companies had built railroads for benevolent purposes, out 

 •of pure charity. I am inclined to the opinion that the charitable part has been 

 with the people, or more properly with the government that represents the 

 people ; for in granting them those extraordinary rights which railroad 

 corporations enjoy, the Government did not protect the people against 

 ■exhorbitant rates, or prevent the companies from making unjust discrimina- 

 tions. They are at liberty to charge whatever the article would bear, with the 

 exception of passenger rates, which have been fixed at three cents per mile. 

 Those were the rates asked and received twenty years ago, in high jjriced times, 

 and the people are paying the same to-day, notwithstanding nearly all the pro- 

 perty has shrunk in value from one-half to two-thirds. 



It takes about as much property now to pay three cents as it would have 

 taken twenty years ago to have paid nine cents per mile ; and the discriminat- 

 ing manner in which they deal with their patrons is such as ought not to be 

 tolerated. I do not claim for a moment that a railroad company should carry 

 a bag of wheat for me at the same rates that they ought to receive for a car lot; 

 but I do claim that they ought to be compelled to furnish me a car just as 

 cheap as they will an individual who may come to your village and advertise 

 hiniself as a grain buyer. He does not produce the grain and there would be 

 just as much to ship if he had not come. He simply steps in and absorbs pro- 

 fits that we, as farmers, might receive by shipping our own grain to better mar- 

 kets. Were it not for the disci iminating rates given to the so-called dealer, 

 and this evil affects those engaged in mercantile business, as well as farmers, 

 large dealers would not have such an advantage over smaller ones, and compe- 

 tition would be fair. 



I wish further to call your attention to the enormous amounts of public land 

 that have been given to railroad corporations. It would seem to me that a 

 paternal government, having the best interests of the people at heart, and with 

 a full knowledge of the evils that afflict the masses in European countries, on 

 account of the monopolies, would have protected the people here against a repe- 

 tition of the same evil, and would have held the public lands to be parceled out 

 in small quantities to actual settlers, as a meflns of absorbing the ever increasing 

 population of the older sections of the country. But what are the facts? 

 We find by the government estimates published that, if in all the land grant- 

 ed to railroad corporations, none of it had reverted to the government through 

 failure of the corporations to fulfil their contracts in the construction of the 

 road, etc., it would have taken two hundred and sixteen million acres of land 

 to have satisfied the claims, and in 1880 the railroad companies still owned, 

 according to the census, seventy-eight million acres, an amount equal to about 

 one-seventh of all the farms in the United States. These figures are almost 

 beyond our comprehension, except by comparison. When we consider that there 

 is only about thirty-six million acres of land in the State of Mchigan, and that 

 it would have taken a territory equal in extent to nearly six of the State of 

 Michigan to have satisfied these grants, and that in 1880 the railroad companies 

 still owned lands equal to two and one-sixth of the State of Michigan, we can 

 form some idea of the magnitude of the gift. 



Friends, was there ever such a magnificent gift made on earth? If so, I have 

 never heard of it. I have read of the gifts Queen Elizabeth made to her court 

 favorites, when she confiscated large tracts of land in Ireland for that purpose, 



