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the patent office, where the only pre-requisite for the granting of letters patent for almost anything, where the application is not contested, is a model and the patent office fee. The effect of this free and easy course in the department is to bring into disrepute the really valuable invention and discovery, and to impose upon the people useless burdens.

F

IRST. We have sought to call the reader's attention to

some of the monopolies existing in our land, and to show

their power and influence with the government, and their control of the commercial and agricultural interests of the country. It now remains for us to direct his attention to the effect of these monopolies upon the people and prosperity of the country. No country in the world has been as bountifully supplied by the Creator with all the means to make a nation prosperous and happy as ours. It is vast in extent of territory. Its soil is rich, and most of it new. Lying in all latitudes, it produces fruits of every climate. The husbandman is assured of an abundant crop. All agricultural and horticultural pursuits are rewarded with large growths and bounteous harvests. Our shores are washed by oceans, which afford us highways, over which we can avail ourselves of the markets of the world; while flowing through the agricultural portions of our common country are our great rivers, upon whose waters the produce and manufactures of the land are transported to market. Our great lakes furnish us an outlet for the surplus product of the great west. Our sixty or seventy thousand miles of railroad traverse our country in all directions, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and spreading like a network from the lakes to the gulf. Our mines produce immense yields of the precious metals, while our hills and mountains are full of iron, coal, and lead. Petroleum flows in quantities which should add largely to the wealth of our common country. Our timber is not excelled by that of any growth in the world. Our lands are rich in fertility, and poor only in price.

The Creator has done for us all that could be desired to make us prosperous and contented. Our government is, or was intended to be, based upon the will of the people. Our constitution recognizes no royal rulers, no lords, no titled gentry. Under it we are all equal. They who administer the laws are selected by the people. In contemplation of law, all are equal -all are free and independent. With all these blessings and advantages we ought to be the happiest and most prosperous people on the earth. Peace, plenty, and contentment should reign supreme throughout the land. What are the facts? Throughout the entire length and breadth of our land, mutterings and complainings are heard. From the farmers, the mechanics, and laborers alike, the complaint is heard, "We cannot pay our taxes and support our families;" "Our wages will not enable us to buy the necessaries of life, because of the large duties laid upon them;" "Our farm products will not pay taxes, charges for transportation, and other burdens imposed upon us, and leave us any margin; "We had better let our lands lie idle than to attempt to cultivate them." These and like complaints are heard from the laboring and producing classes. Nor are their complaints without cause. Another interest has arisen in the land-it has become all-powerful. This interest penetrates the remotest portions of the country. It calls upon the laborer, the operative, the mechanic, the farmer, and all private citizens, for a division of the products of their labor. It enters the halls of legislatures and of congress, and demands, and not unfrequently purchases, special privileges and powers. It visits the executive department of the government, and there secures special favors. It stalks boldly into the courts of the country, and there procures unjust decisions in its interest. It indeed places its own men upon these seats of justice, that the judiciary of the country may not fail to support its aims. It has already obtained complete control of the finances of the country. It has corrupted legislatures and congressmen, until the law-making power has become a party to schemes of robbery and plunder. By corrupt legislation and ex parte judicial decisions, it has destroyed all the old republican landmarks, overridden the provisions of the constitution, and substituted for the government prepared for

us by our forefathers an oligarchy that rules the land and holds the people at its mercy, and their property as its lawful booty. This great oppressor of the people is the railroad corporations and their associates, of which we have been treating. Railroad and other corporations, brokers, and stock-jobbers, have obtained such complete control over the government, the people, and the financial and commercial interests of the country, that they who depend upon agricultural pursuits, or upon their labor, for a support, are deprived of those God-given rights which formed the base of our political superstructure.

Formerly, the people, through the ballot box, governed the country; they were sovereign. In this republic no rival power existed, and it was our boast that our people were free and independent. Our fundamental law is still the same. In theory, our people are still sovereign; in fact, most of their sovereignty has been legislated from them. Statutes are enacted compelling the people to divide their hard-earned substance with private corporations without any consideration; and the highest courts of the country have affirmed the constitutionality of these laws. The freedom and equality which was our national boast have disappeared, and instead thereof the people are ruled by cruel and oppressive task-masters, who are fostered and supported by legislatures and courts in their united purpose of controlling the country. These oppressions have been endured by the people, with but feeble efforts to regain their rights, until the alternative is presented of organized resistance or absolute ruin. Throughout the length and breadth of our common country, the laboring and producing classes are struggling for the necessaries of life, whilst those who own and manage the corporations of the country have firmly grasped and now control the financial and commercial interests of the country, and are amassing princely fortunes and rolling in wealth. To stay the course of their oppressors, and get back some of their rights, the laboring classes are organizing, and demanding of their employers such compensation as will enable them to supply the common necessaries of life. They demand that their wages shall be increased in proportion to the increased cost of living, occasioned by special grants and privileges bestowed upon corporations and monopolies; that

instead of being treated as vassals of the despots who now rule the country and control the government, that their rights as freemen shall be recognized.

The operatives and mechanics are banding together for the same purpose. They are all seeking, in the same degree, to counteract the evil effects of the grants and privileges conferred upon monopolies. The farmers, who, as a class, have always been deemed the most independent in the country, are so impoverished by these monopolies that they have been compelled to band together for mutual protection. No choice was left them. The bestowal of such great powers and special privileges upon corporations presented the alternative of utter financial ruin, or united and combined efforts on the part of the people, to check the great and growing power which now is fattening upon their toil and industry. While under ordinary circumstances, all class organizations are attended with some bad results, yet when any interest becomes so powerful as to oppress all others, when it has such strength that it can defy all ordinary attempts at reform, then any and all organizations having for their object the correction of abuses, the restoration of the rights of the people, the destruction of an oligarchy that has already obtained such power in the land as to subvert the very nature of free institutions, is not only right, but its objects are patriotic. Though the organization may have for its object the protection of a single interest, the correction of a single abuse, the restoration of a single right, it benefits all classes who suffer like oppressions. It is fortunate that while the grants of great bounties and special privileges to corporations have resulted in great wrongs and oppressions to the people generally, they have also been the means of effecting organizations that will eventually restore to the people those rights which in our government are considered as inalienable. When the agriculturalists of the whole country become united in their demands for redress, neither the state legislatures, the congress of the nation, or the courts, will dare to disregard their demands. Numbering more than all who are engaged in other pursuits, being a majority of the whole people, when their united voice is heard it will not be an “uncertain sound." It will command obedience. Grants of boun