People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1895 — Corporate Brigandage. [ARTICLE]

Corporate Brigandage.

The railroads have so coolly and defiantly entered into • shameless conspiracy to rob the people, that even some of those whose sympathies have hitherto been on the side of corporate robbery, cry out with alarm. The compact of the roads, solemnly entered into by their presidents, to pool the railroad business is against .both law and public policy. The government should loose no time in ending this sort of contempt lor law and the rights of the people. The railroad has always been a reckless violator of the law and has always treated the people with the utmost contempt. It has absorbed by illegitimate means millions to which it had not even the shadow of a right, and has been an autocracy that the government has seemed to fear and under the audacious grip of which the people have been utterly helpless. At best the law that has for its purpose the control of the greed and lawlessness of these corporations is loose and weak. The railroads have always been able to defeat legislation that was stringent enough to provide adequate protection to the public and to allow the enactment of only such laws as would provide but a partial remedy for the great evils of railroad extortion. But even such weak legislation as the people have been able to secure has been trodden upon and despised by the roads, who like bold bandits have gone out into the

highways, on our farms and among oiir industries to plunder and outrage the rights of the public. It is useless to have government if we are thus to be exposed as the traveler on the road to Jerico is exposed. The money contributed to support a government that will stand by while the great highways of the nation are organised into a thieving trust, is worse than wasted. The law forbids the formation of this great railroad pool, and thousands of men are in the penitentiary for committing crimes that compared with this conspiracy are brilliant virtues. Will the government do its duty in the premises?—Farmer’s Voice.