Exhibition—Annual Addresses. 
73 
on the contract for construction, ten per cent, on the labor, ten per 
cent, on the timber and added to all a half dozen or more profits, 
which are regulated, as profits always are, by the prevailing rate of 
interest. You remember, when you were boys, how easy it was to 
count a hundred by tens—it isn’t any harder now that you are 
men, and capital doesn’t seem to find it even so hard. A railroad, 
therefore, represents double the value which is actually in it. For 
every dollar of value there are two dollars to be supported by the 
industries of the country. Every bushel of grain which is trans¬ 
ported must pa} r double freight; every passenger who rides must 
pay double fare; and the rates are established with a view to ten 
per cent, dividends. 
RAILROAD CAPITAL 
does not intend to earn less than the prevailing rate of interest; it 
is the most ravenous capital in the world—its stomach for profits 
is never filled—its appetite for dividends is never delicate. It must 
have its ten per cent, if there is an} r possibility of getting it. The 
shrill whistle of the locomotive, therefore, as it has rolled over the 
western plains, has often been the cruel demand of capital for the 
last drop of the life-blood of our farms. The rumbling of the train 
has often struck terror to the soul of the farmer, who has stopped his 
reaper in the midst of his rich harvests, and, wiping from his brow 
the sweat ofjionest toil, has, despairing, considered whether he had 
better leave the golden grain to rot where it had grown, or garner 
and give it to capital. Blame him for protesting against the out¬ 
rageous feasting of railroad capital upon his life? Mock him if in 
his wild frenzy of dispair he was sometimes fanatical in his demands 
for reform? The spirit which would prompt such feelings would 
make merry with the grinning trophies of death, and reckon as 
melody the dull throbbings of shattered and hopeless hearts. The 
contest of the western farmer with the railroads was, largely, a con¬ 
test with a high rate of interest; it was a battle of life and death; 
it was in the interests of his children; it was to establish the possi¬ 
bility of keeping these farms populated and productive, and of pre¬ 
venting them from again becoming a wilderness. The possibility 
of a man’s having to give his farm to get its yield to market, and 
to throw the crops in besides, would have some tendency to make 
a man fanatical. There are, to-day, locked in the vaults of railroad- 
