LABOR'S WRONGS. 29 



there are two stores and only trade enough for one, their 

 owners combine and arrange the prices, between them, be- 

 ing sure to put them high enough so that both can live. 



It is hardly worth while to dwell upon the evils of giv- 

 ing a mortgage on a crop yet to be raised, or upon the farm 

 animals and implements with which it is made, a practice 

 that is very common among Southern farmers. The idea 

 is so repugnant to common sense, and the practice fraught 

 with such far-reaching evils, that the only wonder is that 

 such a law is permitted to remain upon the statute book 

 among a civilized people. We do not wish to convey the 

 idea that we are making a wholesale onslaught on the 

 means of transportation and the persons engaged therein, 

 and in the trades of various kinds. 



As public benefactors the railroads take their place 

 first among the great discoveries of the nineteenth century; 

 but they should not be used as a means of oppression. 

 Against Jay Gould, Russell Sage and other great railroad 

 men, who, by the force of their genius have acquired con- 

 trol of thousands of miles of railroad and accumulated 

 millions of dollars of wealth, we have no personal fight to 

 make. They were perhaps only actuated by the instinc- 

 tive desire possessed by most men to become rich and 

 powerful. They are perhaps no worse than other men 

 would be occupying the same position. But they are the 

 representatives of the worst system of despotism in exist- 

 ence, and they are shrewd enough to regard the interest of 

 their roads as paramount to that of the public. The 

 constitution gives to Congress the power to regulate com- 

 merce between the States, but for years the presidents of 

 the trunk lines between the Bast and West have been 

 exercising that power, and fixing the price that the farmer 

 shall have for the products of his farm. It is certainly 

 inconsistent with free institutions to lodge such power in 

 the hands of a few men who have every incentive to abuse 



