Wiscoxsix State Agricultural Society. 493 
secure fair dealing from the railroads; to prevent over-charges and 
unjust discrimination in their dealings with the public, and this we 
have a right to demand from our legislature. 
Hard times and poor crops will periodically injure the agricul¬ 
tural and industrial interests of any people in spite of all legislation, 
and all mere human foresight and precaution, and we are quite sure 
that until some new light shall dawn upon the human intellect— 
until some new order of things shall arise, capital, aggregated and 
concentrated capital will continue to have, as it always has had, a 
very marked and decided advantage over labor; and we feel equally 
sure that labor, and especially unorganized labor, will never be ad¬ 
vantaged and improved by any indiscriminate and unreasoning war¬ 
fare against other interests. 
Eternal vigilance, we are told, is the price of liberty; so it is the 
price of all other human rights. We therefore cannot be too watch¬ 
ful or too much guarded against the encroachments of every spe¬ 
cies of monopoly, which interferes with free trade and free and un¬ 
restricted commerce. 
Nearly everybody who has discussed the question of railroads of 
late has quoted with approval a very eloquent passage from an opin¬ 
ion of the late Justice Paine on the subject. Mr. Carpenter did so 
in his recent speech at Ripon, and Chief Justice Ryan did the same 
in his opinion in the injunction cases. A part of the paragraph 
thus quoted is as follows: Speaking of railroads, he says: “They 
have done more to develop the wealth and resources, to stimulate 
the industry, reward labor, and promote the general comfort and 
prosperity of the country than any other, and perhaps than all oth¬ 
er physical causes combined. 11 If this be in fact a correct apprecia¬ 
tion of what railroads have done for the country—for labor, for in¬ 
dustry and for the people—we should hardly be justified in classing 
them under the head of monopolies , for we have seen that the very 
name of monopoly is odious, and that they are the “canker 11 of all 
trading. Nevertheless, railroads may charge too much and they 
may combine to prevent competition and to do injustice, and in 
many ways they may take undue advantage of the people and thus 
become obnoxious to many of the objections urged against genuine 
monopolies. 
We have briefly referred to the time when, and the place where, 
this great railroad enterprise began in this country and to the pro- 
