SPEECH OF GRAND MASTER SMEDLEY. 267 



are vacant chambers ; but God s purposes are accomplished, and the 

 stain that for so long had darkened our fair nation s fame was effaced, 

 and we began to say we were a nation of freemen. 



But we had scarcely begun to congratulate ourselves on our suc 

 cess when a new enemy appeared. Circumstances growing partly 

 out of a long and terrible war, and partly from other causes, had led 

 to the creation of immense and powerful corporations, which threat 

 ened the safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people. Thought 

 ful men began to be troubled, and to look with painful anxiety as to 

 the probable result of a condition which threatened to usurp the 

 government, which destroyed confidence in our judiciary, and which 

 held in their hands the prosperity of all industrial and producing 

 classes. The national banks, although created to meet the exigency 

 of the darkest days of the war the system designed by good men, 

 and serving, for a time, a wise purpose had become an enormous 

 power, and one which, in the hands of designing men, might be 

 used as an instrument of oppression. Our system of railroads, de 

 signed by the beneficent genius 

 of good men, to bring vast and 

 incalculable blessings to all the 

 capitalist and the laborer alike 

 had become a power beyond the 

 control of the government, and 

 an engine of unheard-of oppres 

 sion. Here were new enemies. 

 Here was an unhappy condition, 



Dan er! an&amp;lt; ^ nones t me n began to look 



about for means of relief. It 



was seen that the whole agricultural interests of the country, more 

 especially of the West, was made productive or unproductive, just 

 as the whim or caprice of those who controlled these corporations 

 led. The industry of a whole commonwealth might, and oftentimes 

 was, made of just such a nature as they desired, and people were 

 simply tools in their hands, with just such remuneration as they 

 pleased to give them. Men came to see that it was only a question 

 of time when these monopoly interests should be as absolute in their 

 ownership of the -agricultural and producing classes of the country 

 as the nobles of Russia are of the serfs. We saw, too, that this evil 

 was gainingln strength every clay, and unless some means was found 



