CHAPTER XXXIV. 



THE PEOPLE VERSUS RAILWAY MONOPOLIES. 



BY HON. W. C. FLAGG, PRESIDENT ILLINOIS STATE FARMERS 

 ASSOCIATION. 



A GREAT PUBLIC DANGER. 



During the last fifteen years, there has grown up in 

 America a distrust, which, at first felt by a few, merged into 

 the fear and finally into the denunciation of railway corpo 

 rations by a large majority of the increasing number who, 

 for any considerable time, have been subjected to the extor 

 tionate rates, the deliberate violation of moral and legal 

 obligations, and the corrupting influence in public and private 

 station that have characterized our railway monopolies. Ad 

 mitting freely, to begin upon, that railway managers and 

 owners are not necessarily nor per se worse than other men, 

 it must be just as frankly stated that railway corporations, 

 as such, have proved one of the worst influences in our State 

 and national affairs. 



Henry C. Carey, the political economist, was one of the 

 few who early saw the danger. Writing to the Hon. L. 

 Sherwood, in 1867, he said: &quot;Nearly twenty years have 

 passed since, without having the smallest personal interest 

 in the question, I spent two years in the effort to free New 

 Jersey from the tyranny that had been there established,&quot; 

 alluding to the railroad monopoly of New Jersey. In his 



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