THE FARMERS NOT INIMICAL TO RAILROADS. 473 



They attacked the unjust discriminations of certain rail 

 road companies, which, in their fancied security of power, 

 treated the whole matter in agitation with contempt. 



It is, undoubtedly, true that some railroad corporations 

 have suffered, perhaps, to the extent of actual injustice ; but 

 had not the people suffered untold wrong? And had they 

 not borne and forborne, until forbearance ceased to be a 

 virtue ? 



If the issue had been foreseen as clearly by these cor 

 porations as it was by the writer of these lines, who long 

 ago urged a just compromise between the people and the 

 railroad officials, much of the gall might have been made 

 sweet to the takers on both sides. The real trouble was 

 that the railroad interest of the country was then firmly in 

 the grasp of a few manipulators, who thought themselves so 

 strongly entrenched behind the power of their immense 

 capital, that those honorable railroad officials who would 

 gladly have done what they thought was right were power 

 less to act. The battle is not principally with railroad cor 

 porations as such, but rather with the corrupting influence 

 of subsidized and protected monopolies. The corruption 

 that has already been sloughed off from the festering ulcer 

 the partial crippling of the stock gamblers achieved thus 

 early in the contest gives token of brighter days in the 

 future. These will surely come, if the masses unite to over 

 throw every official of whatever grade who violates the 

 trust reposed in him by the people. 



