492 
Annual Report of the 
States, has recently sought to awaken our cupidity by informing us, 
and by endeavoring to show by authority that the state owns all 
the railroads now in operation in it, and that those who advanced 
the money to build them only hold them in trust for the state. We 
are not, I am sure, so easily deceived, and it is to be hoped that we 
are too unselfish and too honest to carry this advice into practice, 
by relieving them of the trust. We may be sure that those of our 
fellow-citizens and those from abroad who advanced their millions 
to build these roads did not understand that the state would own 
them as fast as they were built. Our people certainly did not set 
up such a claim, while they were building, and I don’t think it 
quite honest to do it now after the roads are finished, but if the po¬ 
litical necessities of the times require the consummation of such vil- 
lain} r on the part of our people let it be done at once and let it be 
done all at once, so that those who have hitherto labored under the 
delusion that they owned this property may be relieved from all 
further anxiety about it, in which case we might, perhaps, afford to 
be generous enough to pass a vote of thanks and possibly to erect a 
monument to those rascally monopolists whoso generously furnish¬ 
ed us with two thousand three hundred and sixty miles of railroad 
all equipped and ready for use, on such liberal terms. But serious¬ 
ly, since there is no probability, nor yet possibility that our people 
would follow such advice or fall into such an opinion, it seems 
hardly worth while to express or combat it. 
There is, beyond question, a wide-spread opinion among the peo¬ 
ple of this state that the railroads have in some way been oppres¬ 
sive by unjust discriminations and over-charges, and that by this 
means the agricultural and industrial interests of the people of the 
state have been made to suffer. It would be very strange indeed if 
in the management of such vast and varied interests, intrusted as 
they must be to the hands of so many different persons, something 
of the kind should not have happened, and it would be equally 
strange if the evil, whatever it may be, had not been considerably 
magnified. However this may be, it is certainly a proper subject 
for public and legislative investigation, and we will add in this con¬ 
nection and in conclusion on that subject, that we do not believe 
in injustice being inflicted on the people or upon any interest, great 
or small, in the name of the psople. And we believe, as we have 
before said, that the legislature possesses full and ample power to 
