198 THE GROUNDSWELL. 



controlled the railroad system of the United States. Van- 

 derbilt, Tom Scott, Daniel Drew, and Jay Gould, were tHe 

 potentates to whom all must bow the knee. A handful of 

 such men have sought to control the inland navigation of 

 the country, that of the great lakes being the first objective 

 base, from which they hoped, apparently, to extend their 

 supremacy to the rivers.^ 



For years, their scheme seemed to prosper, and &quot; all went 

 merry as a marriage bell.&quot; The farmer saw his profits 

 growing less and less, with each successive season. Still he 

 managed to live and pay his taxes, and if he complained at 

 all, it was but in a whisper. At last, the three great corn 

 seasons in the West filled the great granary of the world to 

 overflowing. The price of their grand staple went down, 

 down, down, and did not rally ; eight cents per bushel was all 

 that the farmer received in some localities. The farmer 

 began to ask himself the reason, why, when it cost only a cer 

 tain moderate sum to transport a car-load from Chicago to 

 New York, nearly a thousand miles, it should cost nearly 

 one-half the amount to transport the same car from his 

 market town to Chicago, or St. Louis, distant perhaps less 

 than one hundred miles. 



In expostulating against this wrong, he naturally blamed 

 the management of these local roads, forgetting that many 

 of the leading lines in the West were really operated by in 

 dividuals in the great seaboard cities, who either owned or 

 controlled the greater part of the stock, and who were, by 

 the unjust discriminations on local traffic, eking out dividends 

 on watered stock, or assisting to swell the lesser profits of 

 the great through transportation lines between Chicago, St. 

 Louis, and Cincinnati, at the West, and Boston, New York, 

 and Philadelphia, at the East. This was but another means 

 of assisting the merchants and forwarders (the middle men) 



