THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 161 



seemed any longer to dispute their right and power to 

 issue as much new stock as might seem to them expe- 

 dient. Injunctions had failed to check them; receivers 

 had no terrors for them. Secure in their power, they 

 now extended their operations over sea and land, leas- 

 ing railroads, buying steamboats, ferries, theatres and 

 rolling-mills, building connecting links of road, laying 

 down additional rails, and, generally, proving themselves 

 a power wherever corporations were to be influenced or 

 legislatures were to be bought. 



" Christmas, the period of peace and good-will, was 

 now approaching. The dreary arguments before Judge 

 Cardozo had terminated on December 18, long after the 

 press and the public had ceased to pay any attention to 

 them, and already rumors of a settlement were rife. 

 Yet it was not meet that the settlement should be 

 effected without some final striking catastrophe, some 

 characteristic concluding tableau. Among the many 

 actions which had incidentally sprung from these pro- 

 ceedings was one against Mr. Samuel Bowles, the 

 editor of the Springfield Republican, brought by Mr. 

 Fisk in consequence of an article which had appeared 

 in that paper, reflecting most severely on Fisk's pro- 

 ceedings and private character his past, his present, 

 and his probable future. On the 22d of December, Mr. 

 Bowles happened to be in New York, and, as he was 

 standing in the office of his hotel, talking with a friend, 

 was suddenly arrested on the warrant of Judge McCunn, 

 hurried into a carriage^ and driven to Ludlow Street 

 Jail, where he was locked up for the night. This 

 excellent jest afforded intense amusement, and was the 

 cause of much wit that evening at an entertainment 

 given by the Tammany ring to the newly-elected Mayor 

 11 



