114 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



overawe and control the entire business of the country. 

 This is no mere figure of speech. Two men equal in 

 intelligence and means own mills situated upon roads 

 converging at a certain point and equidistant from 

 that point. Their conditions may be precisely alike, 

 and both compete for the same market. By the ruling 

 of the judge (in the Coleman case) the 'railroad has 

 a right to make any rule it pleases for its own govern- 

 ment/ and one of the roads makes a rule that its 

 freight tariff shall be double the rates upon the other 

 road. The profit is swept from the manufacturer, and 

 the field given to his competitor upon that other road, 

 his business is ruined, his mill is idle, and becomes 

 worthless ; he is shut up by the railroad. The freights 

 may afford the road an exorbitant profit, but the ' road 

 has a right to make any rule it pleases.' Does the 

 public charter railroad corporations as pecuniary specu- 

 lations against itself? Does the public take away 

 private property and give it to a company of private 

 individuals called a railway corporation, so that it may 

 make any rule it pleases, and though it can carry the 

 public at a handsome profit at two cents a mile, it 

 may charge three, five, or ten cents per mile, at its 

 pleasure ? Does the public intend to furnish a set of 

 men a weapon to cut its own throat? Does it intend 

 deliberately to tax itself through them for a common 

 service, so that a few favored individuals may become 

 inordinately arrogant and rich ? " 



Mr. Coleman was very fortunate in securing sub- 

 stantial justice at the end of his long fight with the 

 railroad. The company fought him persistently, re- 

 sorting to every artifice, and it would seem that it did 

 not hesitate to introduce manufactured testimony for 



