THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 39 



of millions of public money for the purpose of build- 

 ing up and operating a business for the exclusive profit 

 of the said company, to the utter and eternal exclusion 

 of any and all of the millions of other citizens whom 

 the act of incorporation fails to recite. And as with 

 this one particular donation so with scores of others ; 

 it is right and proper for the Government to give away 

 to whom it will so much of the $4,000,000,000 as it 

 dee/ns proper. It develops the country to do this; 

 it is progress; it is in the line of the best patriotic 

 thought; the wilderness is thereby made to bloom 

 and blossom as a rose there are, in short, an infinite 

 variety of fine phrases to conceal the real nature of 

 the breach of trust. One particularly specious plea is 

 that unless the millions were thus robbed in behalf of 

 the scores, the scores could not provide great and 

 beneficent instrumentalities for the use of the millions. 

 It is forgotten that the scores charge the millions as 

 much for the use of the instrumentalities as if they 

 had not been built with the millions' own means, but 

 had come bodily out of the bank accounts of the scores. 

 If a man steal from me enough to buy him a horse and 

 vehicle, and then insists he is doing me an immense 

 service by charging me $5 for carrying me a mile on 

 my own property, he does that on a small scale which 

 subsidized corporations, railroad or any other, do upon a 

 large. Such then is the morality of the subsidy sys- 

 tem, which has been fostered into such magnificent 

 proportions. The natural operation of the system is 

 to generate about it a fine swarm of adventurers, of 

 all grades, from the benevolent looking company presi- 

 dent, whose gold-rimmed glasses would shrivel in the 

 heat of his indignation did any one call him an adven- 



