444 THE GROUNDSWELL. 



tares, and, by the judicious location of their extensive shops, 

 create cities. In the vicinity of these thriving centers, one 

 acre is worth more than a hundred or, perhaps, (as in 

 Chicago) a thousand were before the railways had trans 

 formed the prairie into a populous hive of industry. Why 

 is England, to-day, the richest nation on the globe ? Sim 

 ply because -she is one vast workshop. The same enviable 

 result is possible here if the people are educated aright. 

 Then they will not be duped into the belief that this con 

 tinent depends upon any one class for existence. Such, 

 teaching is un-American. Yet it is the average Granger s 

 staple utterance, albeit, it does savor of despotism and old- 

 time feudalism. We are mutually dependent. The farmer 

 can not flourish unless the citizen buys his corn, and th^ 

 latter must get from him enough to supply his wants. 

 This inexorable law prevents the creation of privileged 

 classes. 



Railways educate the people. They render industrial exr 

 positions both practicable and accessible. Excursion rates 

 are given, placing it within the reach of the poorest to 

 view all that science or industry can produce, or ingenuity 

 suggest. It thus enables those living in districts most se 

 cluded to participate in all the amenities of civilized life. 

 And, as the sharp ring of the pioneer s axe on the forest 

 tree disturbs and causes to flee away the croaking birds 

 and howling beasts, so the advancing head-light of the 

 locomotive dispels the darkness of ignorance, and carries 

 light and busy life wherever it speeds its way. 



Were these benefits candidly acknowledged, they would 

 give tone and consideration to the partial harangues of the 

 Granger s oracles. They would then remind their impa 

 tient hearers, as one has pertinently observed, that the 

 broad prairies of the West, being a thousand miles distant 



