12 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



to curb the power of the railroad corporations because of the 

 ease with which consolidations were effected. Agreements 

 between the various trunk lines for the maintenance of rates, 

 made necessary by the ruinous rate wars, were also frequent 

 during this period, and nothing could serve better to arouse 

 the anger of the farmers and rural politicians than the thought 

 of two or three railroad magnates meeting together and agree- 

 ing to maintain a certain rate or, as they put it, to impose an 

 additional tax on the products of agricultural labor. 1 It was 

 evident, moreover, that the very nature of the case precluded 

 competition at the vast majority of intermediate stations, and 

 that these might suffer because of increased competition at the 

 junction points. 2 



There were many things in the management of railroads in 

 the early seventies which tended to arouse antagonism on the 

 part not only of the farmers but of the public in general. Prom- 

 inent among those was the uncompromising attitude assumed 

 by the railroad authorities. Shielding themselves behind the 

 Dartmouth College decision and asserting their private character 

 so far as the management of the business was concerned, they 

 denied the right of the public, the states, or the nation to regu- 

 late or in any way interfere with their operations. 3 There 

 seems to have been, also, a general disregard of the convenience 

 of customers on the part of railway officials and employees. 

 Travelers and shippers are said to have been subjected to all 

 sorts of discourtesies and even injuries and any attempt to secure 

 justice was apt to result in persecutions by the powerful cor- 

 poration. 4 The feeling was quite general in the West that 



1 Nation, xvii. 289 (October 30, 1873), x i x - 3 2 6 (November 19, 1874); Speech 

 of Horace Greeley at Minneapolis in 1871, quoted in National Grange, Proceed- 

 ings, xiv. 29 (1880). 



2 Johnson, American Railway Transportation, 213-227; Cook, Corporation 

 Problem, 18, 166-181; A. B. Stickney, The Railway Problem, 224-226; Windom 

 Committee, Report, i. 115-122, app., 219. 



3 Adams, Railroads, 127; Seligman, in Political Science Quarterly, ii. 408 (Sep- 

 tember, 1887); Wisconsin Railroad Commission, Reports, 1874, p. 62. 



4 J. A. Coleman, " The Fight of a Man with a Railroad," and " My Railroad 

 Fight in and out of Court," in Atlantic, xxx. 641-653, xxxi. 610-618 (December, 

 1872; May, 1873). See also Nation, xix. 36 (July 16, 1875); Atlantic, xxxi. 380- 



