MONOPOLY OF TRANSPORTATION. 559 



to and remain in the ocean. But, Nature provides com- 

 pensating laws; the great heating power of the sun trans- 

 forms water into vapor, lifts it into the air where the warm 

 breath of the ocean catches and carries it overland, until 

 it meets a colder current and is again condensed into water, 

 which falls and replenishes the earth. Otherwise, a great 

 dearth would result in ultimate and universal death. 



Money is the life-blood of the nation; if it does not 

 flow freely back and forth in the channels of trade, the 

 industries of the nation languish, sicken and die. Laws 

 that operate to concentrate the wealth of a nation produce 

 congestion, and stagnation of business. 



Money is the great circulating medium of exchange 

 of commodities. Wealth is the source of individual, tem- 

 poral happiness. Money is the representative of wealth. 

 Money is power. The concentration of money is the con- 

 centration of power. 



All history teaches that power lodged in the hands of 

 a few, is more dangerous, more tyrannical, than when in 

 the hands of the many the people. 



Under an equitable system of laws, where labor is 

 protected, where the proper compensating laws are pro- 

 vided, the people, the producers of all wealth, are happy 

 and prosperous. 



But in a government where the laws aid the rich to 

 become richer and the poor poorer, the power passes from 

 the hands of the people into that of the possessors of 

 wealth. The grandeur of the nation is then rooted in the 

 poverty of the people; and we have, as Victor Hugo says, 

 "monstrous opulence" on the one side, and "monstrous 

 misery" on the other. The government then becomes one 

 of aristocracy; of glittering pomp and splendor; but there 

 are "cracks in the foundation," the whole sub-strata of the 

 social structure is in commotion; questions multiply them- 

 selves before the people in their fearful condition of 



