26 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



' liquor compounders,' and are in reality mixtures compared 

 with which the ' hell broth ' of Macbeth's witches might be 

 called an innocent and nutritious soup." 



This is very bad, but the same kind of selfish immorality 



is found in every walk of life You hesitate now 



about taking stock in any company. The reason is well 

 understood. You have lost confidence. The career of the 

 great railroad men and speculators in Europe and America, 

 in part, explains the cause. How many corporations have 

 been wrecked, how many families have been broken up, the 

 happiness of how many individuals destroyed, by the specula- 

 tions and the "corners" in Wall Street? Such transactions 

 are entirely illegitimate. What is a " corner " but an attempt 

 by men who have capital, and a certain knowledge, to rob 

 those who have capital but not the knowledge? And we 

 have " corners " in silk, " corners " in grain, " corners " in coal, 

 " corners " in the luxuries and the very necessities of life. 

 Last summer, when a yacht was wrecked off Staten Island, 

 and a young, generous and wealthy merchant perished while 

 endeavoring to rescue his wife, a sentiment of pro found 

 though smothered indignation pervaded the neighborhood for 

 some time. Why was this? There exists a ferry-boat 

 monopoly which oppresses the people who pass daily from 

 Staten Island to New York, and this wealthy gentleman had 

 established an opposition line for the relief of those people. 

 It was believed that his yacht was wrecked designedly ; that 

 he, in a word, was assassinated, with his wife and friends, by 

 the company which he had opposed. This suspicion was 

 undoubtedly not true. But the astonishing thing is that it 

 could be harbored ; that public sentiment could be in such 

 a state as to entertain such a suspicion, not deeming it 

 improbable. 



One more observation, and we have done. Alfred Wallace, 

 one of the noblest spirits of modern times, spent several years 

 among the savages of the Malay Archipelago, and contrasting 

 the moral condition of those savages with the morality prac- 

 tised in Christian lands, he freely remarks: "It is not too 

 much to say that the mass of our populations have not at all 

 advanced beyond the savage code of morals, and have in 

 many cases sunk below it. A superficial morality is the 



