MONOPOLY OF TRANSPORTATION. 607 



Congress has exercised this right with regard to "for- 

 eign nations" and "Indian tribes," but who has been 

 regulating commerce among the "several States?" 



"Three men meet in a room in New York. They 

 are not called kings, wear no crowns, and bear no scepters. 

 They merely represent trunk lines of railway from the 

 Mississippi to New York. Other points settled, one says, 

 "As to the grain rate; shall we make it fifty from Chi- 

 cago?" "Agreed; crops are heavy, and we shall have 

 enough to do." 



"Business finished, the three enjoy sundry bottles of 

 good wine. The daily papers presently announce that the 

 trunk lines have agreed upon a new schedule of rates for 

 freight, which is, in effect, a trifling increase; on grain, 

 from forty-five to fifty cents from Chicago to New York 

 with rates to other points in the usual proportion. The con- 

 versation was insignificant, the increase trifling. But to 

 the farmers of the Northwest, it means that the will of 

 three men has taken over thirty millions from the cash 

 value of their products for that year. 



"The conversation is imaginary; but the startling 

 tacts upon which it is based are terribly real, as West- 

 ern and Southern farmers have learned. The few men 

 who control the great railway lines have it in their 

 power to strip Western and Southwestern agriculture of 

 all its earnings, not after the manner of ancient high- 

 waymen, by high-handed defiance of society and laws 

 the rush of swift steeds, the clash of steel, and the stern 

 'Stand and deliver!' The bandits of modern civilization, 

 who enrich themselves by the plunder of others, come 

 with chests full of charters; judges are their friends, if 

 not their tools; and they wield no weapon more alarming 

 than the little pencil with which they calculate differences 

 of rate, apparently so insignificant that public opinion 

 wonders why the farmer should complain about such 



