L. Ames, and four others reside in Massachusetts, the Fiscal agency is in Boston, and the principal office in California; Cedar Rapids and Missouri River company-John B. Alley, Oliver Ames, and nine others of the directors are in the eastern states, and James F. Wilson, and three others, are of Iowa; Northern Pacific company - Principal office, New York; Hannibal & St. Joseph company-Fiscal and transfer office, New York; Burlington & Missouri River company-Fiscal and transfer office, New York; Union Pacific (central branch)—All but two of the directors in Washington and the east, and the principal office in New York; Union Pacific-Among the directors are Oliver Ames, Oakes Ames, and eleven others in New York and Massachusetts, one in Illinois, and G. M. Dodge in Iowa-Fiscal agency, Boston; transfer offices, Boston and New York; Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley companyJohn B. Alley, of Boston, John I. and D. C. Blair, of New Jersey, C. G. Mitchell, of New York, and three Cedar Rapids men, directors (this is a part of the Sioux City & Pacific road); Winona & St. Peters company - Fiscal and transfer office, Wall street, New York; Burlington & Missouri River (in Nebraska) -Principal office, Boston; Sioux City & Pacific company Directors, Oakes Ames, and six others, in the east, and G. M. Dodge, of Iowa - Fiscal and transfer office, Boston; Missouri River, Fort Scott & Gulf company - Fiscal and transfer office, Boston; Central Pacific company-local offices, San Francisco and New York; *New Orleans, Mobile & Texas company-Oakes Ames and twelve other directors, resident in New York and the east, and two in New Orleans; principal office, New York; Houston & Texas company-Fiscal agency and transfer office, New York; Chicago & Northern Pacific. Air Line company- Principal office, New York; Elizabeth, Lexington & Big Sandy company Principal office, New York;

*NOTE.-This company has a donation from the state of Louisiana of $3,000,000; a subscription of stock by the same state of $2,500,000; and the same state has indorsed the company's bonds to the amount of $12,500 per mile. This company has also received other large sums in municipal aid and other donations.

Dubuque & Sioux City company-General offices, Dubuque, Iowa, and New York. *Texas & Pacific company - Principal office, New York.

We might continue the above list indefinitely, but think we have extended it sufficiently to sustain our charges. If the reader is desirous of learning who compose these various companies, the Railroad Manual will disclose the same set of leading men, divided into three or four principal squads or companies, who raid from one end of the country to the other; control all the roads that have received aid, and at once place them under the direction of the central railroad combinations in Boston and New York; diverting the grants and donations supposed to have been made for the benefit and in the interest of the people, to their own selfish purposes; making the aid thus granted a means of oppression to the people, rather than an agency for their relief.

* NOTE. This company has a grant of 13,440,000 acres of land and other aid.

THE IMPOVERISHING

CHAPTER XIV.

TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM.-THE WAREHOUSE

CONSPIRACY.

ONE

NE of the great evils resulting from this bonded subsidy system of building railroads, is that it gives to those who manage them the control of the whole carrying trade of the country, and enables them to impoverish the great agricultural population of the west and south. The wealth of the United States lies in its agricultural products. The greater portion of the people are engaged in agricultural pursuits. Good markets and cheap freights are of the utmost importance to agriculture. However abundant may be the crops, unless a market can be reached without a sacrifice of one-half the product in the shape of freight and commissions the husbandman will be impoverished. If the farmers, the tillers of the soil, do not receive a fair remuneration for their work, all other industrial interests will suffer with them; anything that tends to deprive the producer of the value of his product, tends to the impoverishment of the whole country. Any system of laws, regulations, by government or combinations of men, or corporations, that are oppressive to the producer, oppress the whole people. It matters not whether these oppressions are in taxes, tariffs, or charges for the transportation of the farm product; no matter in what shape it comes, the result is the same. The great oppression now being practiced upon the people is in the enor mons charges made by railroad companies for carrying freight. The charters, grants, subsidies, and privileges given to those companies have enabled them to organize a powerful monopoly, through which they demand and receive for transportating meats, grains, and other farm products from the west to the eastern markets, at least one-half the value thereof. The charges of these monopolies are arbitrary, and often fixed by

the value of the different kinds of grain carried by them. For instance, they charge one-third more per ton for carrying wheat from the west to the east than for corn and oats; it being worth more in market, they ask a larger dividend from it. It can be carried as cheaply as oats or corn, but because of its value, will bear a greater charge, and stili leave one-half of its value for the producer. There is no good reason why a railroad company should charge thirty cents per hundred for carrying wheat from Muscatine (Iowa) to Chicago, when it charges but twenty cents for carrying oats and corn over the same road, the same distance. Yet such is the fact. Those who are in the interest of these monopolists talk about cheap freights; they argue that railroads can transport freights much cheaper than it can be done over ordinary highways. Let us turn again to the Railroad Manual, and see how the matter is treated. Says the author: "The cost of transporting Indian corn and wheat over ordinary highways will equal twenty cents per ton per mile. At such a rate, the former will bear transportation only 125 miles to a market where its value is equal to seventy-five cents per bushel; the latter only 250 miles when its value is $1.50 per bushel. With such highways only, our most valuable cereals will have no commercial value outside of a circle having radii of 125 and 250 miles, respectively. Upon a railroad the cost of transportation equals one and onefourth cents per ton per mile. With such a work, consequently, the circle within which corn and wheat at the price named, will have a marketable value, will be drawn upon radii of 1,600 and 3,200 miles respectively. The arc of a circle with a radius of 125 miles is 49,087 square miles; that of a circle drawn upon a radius of 1,600 miles is about 160 times greater, or 8,042,406 square miles. Such a difference, enormous as it is, only measures the value of the new agencies employed in transportation, and the results achieved compared with the old."

Here the fact is acknowledged that freights can be transported over railroads for one and one-fourth cents per ton per mile. At this rate, a ton of freight transported from Muscatine, Iowa, to Chicago, would cost less than $2.50 This is

what the advocates of aid to railroad companies publish to the world as a fact, and from it deduce the argument in favor of increased facilities for their construction, with greater privileges to be granted to the companies constructing them. The same rate of charges for transportation from the state of Iowa to the city of New York would not amount to more than from twelve to fifteen dollars per ton, and would allow the producer a fair price for his product. But while it is admitted that the above stated amount will compensate the railroads for transporting freights, the amounts actually charged range from twenty-five to fifty dollars per ton from Iowa to Chicago, with a proportionate increase to New York and other eastern cities. Where commerce is open to competition, a fair remunerative price for carrying freights is all that is demanded or paid. If the railroads of the country were not owned and controlled by the same combinations; if they in any degree answered the ends anticipated by the public when their charters were granted, and privileges were bestowed upon the companies constructing them, these excessive charges would not be made or paid.

We have attempted to show that all the railroads in the country are owned, controlled, and operated in the interest of eastern capitalists, with their headquarters in New York or Boston; and that the only interest these capitalists have in the producer is to extort from him all they can get, even at the risk of ruining the whole country. These monopolists, taking advantage of the great privileges granted them, and of the necessities of the agricultural and producing classes, have combined, and defying all competition, as well as the legal restrictions sought to be placed upon them, are now, and for some time past have been charging such unjust rates for transportation as to render the farm products of the west of little or no value. Corn, worth from sixty to seventy cents in New York, is worth only from fifteen to twenty-five in Iowa — two-thirds of its eastern value being absorbed in charges for transportation, storage, etc. Wheat, worth from $1.50 to $2.00 in New York, is worth but from ninety cents to $1.25 in Iowa, the difference being absorbed in charges for transportation, storage, commissions, and in passing it through elevators. It will be