THE FARMER, THE INVESTOR AND THE RAILWAY. 



Agriculture li;ivinu; been the first industry of settled life, we may assume that the 

 farmer lias pursued his calling since Ihe dawu of civilization; yet, necessary as have been 

 such labors, lie has borne mauy burdens from which liis brothers have been exempt, 

 doubtless owing to tlie dilHculty e.\|ierienced in forming comliinations with his lellowa 

 for concerted action, wliile those representing aggregates of capital, being comparatively 

 few in numbers, easily edect such combinations. This is es|)eeially true of llie present 

 era, and of tlioae controlling the great mass of capital represented by the railways of the 

 country, nominally amounting to $9,369,000,000; and appearing to equal 60 |ier cent, while 

 being not over 30 per cent, of the capital invested in farms, yet the influence exerted 

 upon economic and other questions by railway owners and farmers is in an inverse ratio 

 to their respective numbers and the magnitude of their investments. 



One is a compact force, disciplined, alert, living in the midst of the greatest activi- 

 ties: tlie other exceedingly more numerous, undisciplined, leading isolated lives and with 

 few incentives to quickening thought. 



Those familiar with the history of the last sixty years will not question the great 

 benefits resulting from the construction of railways, or grudge the men who have carried 

 forward these great undertakings a rich reward. 



By the aid of the railway the wilderness has been madeproductive, countless farms 

 brought within reach of the great markets, mines opened, mills, factories and forges built, 

 towns and cities brought into existence and populous Stales carried to a higher develop- 

 ment than would have been possible in centuries without such aids. Such are but a part 

 of the beneficent results flowing from the construction of the railway. 



While the builders of the railway have been exploiting a continent and piling up 

 the greatest fortunes ever known, the farmer has taken an unproductive wilderness and 

 literally hewn his way through the great forests which clothed seaboard and central 

 region to the open prairie, there developing the most productive of States, continued his 

 toilsome march up the arid slopes, scaled the mountains and planted orchard, vineyard 

 and farm by the shores of the Western Ocean. 



His labors have enabled the nation to flood the markets with a plethora of bread, 

 meat and fiber; to meet the enormous expenditure of a devastating war; to repair the 

 losses and havoc of those bloody days, and then to turn the balance of trade in our favor. 

 Willingly has the farmer performed this labor, expecting to share in the prosperity 

 of the country, yet not always content with his part of the rewards, and coming to be- 

 lieve that those controlling the carriage of his products were exacting as toll more than a 

 just proportion thereof. He has seen the carrier yearly adding to his property, building 

 new lines from the tolls collected on the old, increasing his wealth and powerand leaving 

 a constantly lessening proportion of the proceeds arising from the sale of farm products 

 to the grower. As population has increased railway property has grown in relative value, 

 as has tlie power of those controlling it, and this increase has been very largely made 

 from revenues derived from tolls levied to pay interest and dividends on the water in the 

 bonds and shares, hence made at the expense of railway users, a large part of whom are 

 farmers. 



All are fairly prosperous except such as are engaged in the basic industry of civil- 

 ization, and the one cloud in the industrial horizon is the unsatisfactory condition of a 

 large part of an agricultural population uuiTiberiug some 25,000,000, and the railway 

 is chargeable with so much of this as results from the exaction of unjust tolls, and this 

 inquiry is instituted for the purpose of ascertaining if the complaints, as to the unreason- 

 ableness of such charges, are well grounded. 



The highe-it tribunals hold that railways are public trusts, and can exercise the 

 power to enter upon and take private property solely in their public character; and that 

 the exercise of such exceptional power can be defended only upon the ground that the 

 good of the public can best be subserved by a corporation under obligation to treat all 

 justly in rendering services which each citizen cannot perform for himself; that the State 

 could perform the functions delegated to railway corporations, which are trusts organized 



