338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



poses than the aforesaid honest farmer's acres in his interior precincts. 

 But he does complain, and, what is more, raakes his complaint a politi- 

 cal engine for passing Interstate Commerce and " Granger " laws, when 

 he finds that his produce can not be marketed anywhere except upon 

 these very few square feet, and that the railway will persist in charg- 

 ing him more money to haul his product from Vermont to New York, 

 or from Central Illinois to Chicago, than it does to carry it to the heart 

 of the great American desert, if he shipped it so. Is it not true that 

 it must cost more to go where everybody wants to go, than to go 

 where nobody wants to go ? Is there, in other words, a mundane con- 

 dition in which the laws of demand do not regulate the laws of sup- 

 ply ; and, interchangeably, the laws of supply the laws of demand ? 

 Surely, it seems a kindergarten sort of business to even ask the ques- 

 tion ; and yet, honestly, is not this the very bottom of the non-railroad 

 public's objection to railroads (their unconscious objection, no doubt, 

 but still their objection and their grievance), viz. : that, after all these 

 years of railroads, the business centers are just where they always 

 were — New York, Boston, Chicago ; that the railroads have not di- 

 verted the business of the continent from the trade-centers and planted 

 them elsewhere, and so given other merchants than those of the first 

 commercial center a chance to grow rich ? Is it not, in other words, 

 not hecaitse they have, but because they have not made arbitrary cen- 

 ters and " diverted trade from its natural channels," that thej' are put 

 under the centralized dictatorship and power of an Interstate Com- 

 mission ? The Almighty set the bounds within which the Atlantic 

 Ocean and Lake Michigan roll and fret. If Senator Cullom states 

 facts when he says that railways built by human hands can divert 

 trade from its natural channels and create by favoritism natural cen- 

 ters of trade, then it is unjust and monstrous that these railroads 

 should still operate themselves on the Scriptural principle, "that to 

 them that hath shall be given, while from them that hath not shall be 

 taken away even that they hath " ; and still wickedly cater to the At- 

 lantic Ocean and Lake Michigan ports (which were there before the 

 railways were built), instead of equalizing matters and making trade- 

 centers for the interior where there are no Atlantic Oceans and Lakes 

 Michigan. Why should the railroads cruelly carry trade to and from 

 those ports which are already trade-centers by reason of their water- 

 ways ? Let the railroad companies be just and fair. To be sure, rail- 

 ways in Europe still despotically carry to Liverpool, Antwerp, Mar- 

 seilles, but this is a land of equal rights. Let all its citizens have 

 equal privileges, and equal opportunities of getting rich. The New 

 York merchant and the Chicago merchant have grown rich because 

 they have the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Michigan over which to do 

 business. Now let the railways (who have only, according to Senator 

 Cullom, to turn their hands over to oblige us) build some trade-centers 

 for the honest farmer, or the interior merchant. Let us have as many 



