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question. As early as 1834, Mr. Ropier, the Belgian Finance Minister,, 

 used these words in reply to those who wished to rely upon compe- 

 tition: u No! The state of affairs in which competition arrests the evil 

 does not apply here; whoever holds the railways holds a monopoly, and 

 that should only be allowed to exist in possession of the State.". 



Gladstone, in 1844, asked Captain Laws, a witness before a parlia- 

 mentary committee, this question: 



Q. " Does the consideration that the railroad companies possess, in 

 many respects, something in the character of a monopoly, enter mate- 

 rially into the grounds of your opinion?" 



A. "Yes, it does; and not only monopoly now, but every extension 

 is calculated to increase immensely that monopoly and continuation of 

 monopolies." 



Friends, you all know enough of current history to be aware how fully 

 these prophecies are being literally fulfilled. You know that these 

 monopolies are hourly growing more gigantic and tremendous! You 

 know that they are hourly grasping not only more wealth, but more 

 power, until it is asked on all sides whether the people shall own the 

 railroads, or the railroads own the people. 



What are you going to do about it? Is the independence your fathers 

 bled and died for to become a shadow? Is it to be a reality or simply 

 a name and a memory? The freedom they fought for was simply free- 

 dom from the oppressions of monopoly, the very same monopoly that 

 now threatens to enslave you — the monopoly of power, of privilege, and 

 of wealth, in the hands of a few. Monopoly then masked under the 

 guise of Divine Right and Kingly Privilege. Your kings to-day make 

 no specious plea of divine right, nevertheless they tax you a hundred 

 fold more than King George ever dreamt of taxing your forefathers. 



The remedy is simple. Exercise those powers of self-government 

 your fathers bequeathed you. In the first place know what you want. 

 At present you permit your politicians to " arrange for the public their 

 wants and desires." Your politicians know exactly what they want; 

 and they fool you into ministering to their wants. You even permitted 

 them last election to pen you like sheep in the party fold, and to 

 tar you with the party brush, before you might cast your vote at the 

 primaries, the most important of all elections. Each of the three par- 

 ties imposed this test for those voting: " Will you, at the coming gen- 

 eral election, vote for those nominated by this party at the coming State 

 and County Conventions ? " So that, before a single candidate was 

 nominated, or perhaps even the platform framed, the voter pledged him- 

 self to vote for a set of men whose names he had never heard. Such 

 party docility, or servility, eclipses that of that dyed-in-the-wool par- 

 tisan who boasted that he would vote for a " yaller dorg" if his party 

 put it on the ticket. You might have had a whole ticket-full of " yaller 

 dorgs," and worse yet, a platform full of " yaller dorg " planks and 

 been bound to swallow them all. If you would be free from the chains 

 of monopoly, you must first free yourselves from such degrading chains 

 of party. I congratulate you that last election was a scratched-ticket 

 election. Then you must send men to Congress who will represent you, 

 and not the railroad. Forty years ago Lowell wrote: 



"Wen one's chose to Congriss, ez soon ez he's in it, 

 A collar grows right round his neck in a minit." 



