472 THE GROUNDSWELL. 



therefore, that leading minds in Europe predict that the 

 United States will yet pay tribute to commerce as surely as 

 Europe itself once did to the sword. Let but the idea of a 

 centralized and paternal government become fixed in the 

 mind of the nation, and carried into effect, and the thing 

 is done. 



THE FARMERS NOT INIMICAL TO RAILROADS. 



Baseless as the assertion is, it has often been made, that 

 the &quot; Grangers &quot; are at the bottom of all our troubles, and 

 are responsible for our financial difficulties. The term 

 &quot; Granger,&quot; by the way, is used in a derisive or contemptu 

 ous sense. Some writers who have claimed to be recording 

 history have fallen into the traps thus laid, and write, 

 learnedly of the &quot; Grangers,&quot; apparently not knowing that 

 the word was first applied, in contempt, to a class of politi 

 cians who who were wont to go about with rough boots and 

 &quot; hay-seed in their hair,&quot; supposing the farmer to be the 

 stolid boors that a caricaturing and subsidized press sought 

 to make them appear. 



It would be a little singular if this word, originally ap 

 plied in contempt, and innocently used by those who have 

 professed to be writing in their interest, should, in the course 

 of time, be accepted as the honorable title of those who are 

 uniting, not to fight the railroads, but the abuses of chartered 

 powers which go under the name of monopoly. If the rail 

 roads choose to throw themselves in the way of this gather 

 ing storm, we shall have to say, as George Stephenson said 

 of the cow upon the railroad track, &quot; verra awkward for the 

 coo.&quot; 



Not only the Granges, but the Farmers Clubs, are united 

 to resist the encroachments of consolidated monopolies. 



