railroad company. The pirates and robbers who prey upon mankind are not more dishonest or unscrupulous than are these rings who make the people their prey. They differ only in the degree of punishment received; the former being executed or sent to prison, while, of the latter, many are elected to congress or to other high and responsible offices, or they are appointed to high places of trust and profit in the government. If the reader will look through the Railroad Manual, he will find a long list of names of men, prominent now from the recent raids upon the people and public treasury, who have been engaged in the same business for at least twenty years; men whose names are now as familiar to the western people as "household words," who, like birds of prey, have flitted from one part of the country to another until their blighting influence is felt in the whole land. We are referring of course to the men who have followed the business of "organizing" railroad companies for the purpose of procuring aid in lands, bonds, and taxes, and who have devoted their energies to this class of railroads, and not to those capitalists who, with their own money and credit, have constructed their roads and pursued a legitimate business. Prominent among the men who have devoted their time and talents to railroad enterprises, will be found the names of Thomas C. Durant, John A. Dix, Henry Farnham and others, whose memory will remain fresh with western men, because of their diligence in procuring local aid to railroad companies from counties and cities fifteen or twenty years ago, and who, after obtaining such aid, by some means became the owners of city and county bonds, to a large amount, and then to prompt the people to greater diligence in the payment of taxes, levied to liquidate these bonds, applied to the president of the United States for troops to aid in their collection. Slightly varied, the same organization of men which inaugurated the system of constructing railroads through land grants, donations, and subsidies, is still in the same business. With their headquarters in New York and Boston; with Wall Street as the principal depot for all railroad stocks and bonds, as well as the bonds of the United States, and of such states, counties, and cities as have been duped by them, these raiders upon the treasury and resources

of a people have taken the absolute control of the railroad interest of the country, and "run it" for their own exclusive benefit, to the injury of the country and the absolute destruction of the agricultural interests of the great west. By having placed in their hands the large grants of land and subsidies voted to railroad corporations, they acquired the means of controlling the principal roads throughout the country. Roads in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and in other states and territories, are owned and managed in the exclusive interest of capitalists in the eastern cities who have no interest in the communities where these roads are located, save to realize large dividends by extortions and oppressions. All of the roads receiving large grants and subsidies, whether from the general or state government, or as local aid, are in the hands of this class of men, with their fiscal and transfer agencies in the cities above named.

This statement has its illustration in the Kansas City, St. Joseph, & Council Bluffs company, which has five directors in Boston, two in New York, one in Michigan, and one in Missouri-Fiscal agency and transfer office, Boston. Peoria & Bureau Valley company has its principal office in New York; Chicago & Northwestern-Financial and transfer office, Wall street, New York; Dubuque & Southwestern- all of the directors, save one, and its financial agency, in New York; Atchinson, Topeka, & Santa Fe company-fiscal agency and transfer office, Boston; Galveston, Harrisburg, & San Antonio company-Fiscal and transfer agency, Boston; Leavenworth, Lawrence, & Galveston company-Fiscal agency and transfer office, Boston; Kansas City & Sante Fe company - Fiscal and transfer agency, Boston; Cedar Falls & Minnesota company— All of the directors reside in New York; Iowa Falls & Sioux City company-Of the directors, John B. Alley, Oliver Ames, P. S. Crowell, and W. T. Gilden, reside in Massachusetts, J. I. Blair in New Jersey, and W. B. Allison and Horace Williams in Iowa-Fiscal and transfer agency, Boston; Colorado Central company-Of the directors, Oliver Ames, Frederick L. Ames, and four others, reside in Massachusetts, and 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 other 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 City and the east, and 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 company-John 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-Fiscal 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; Dubuque & Sioux City company-General offices, Dubuque, Iowa, and New York. +Texas and Pacific 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 to the amount 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.

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

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.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE IMPOVERISHING TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM.-THE

WAREHOUSE CONSPIRACY.

O'

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 freights 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 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 enormous charges made by railroad companies for carrying freight. The charters, grants, subsidies, and privileges given to these companies have enabled them to organize a powerful monopoly, through which they demand and receive for transporting 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