EDITORIAL CONNECTIONS AND FURTHER HONORS.

In 1869, Mr. Flagg became editorially connected with Hearth and Home, as its western correspondent, and since 1872 has edited the horticultural department of the Prairie Farmer. In 1872, at the meeting of Farmers' Clubs, held in Kewanee, Illinois, he was appointed on the State Central Committee, and in pursuance of the duties assigned him, and in association with Mr. S. M. Smith, General L. F. Ross, and others, aided in calling the Bloomington Convention, at which the Illinois State Farmers' Association was organized, and of which association Mr. Flagg is now President.

At the late biennial meeting of the American Pomological Society, held at Boston, Mr. Flagg was unanimously elected Secretary for the ensuing two years.

Such, in brief, are a portion of the life and services of one who unites to high culture a most practical view of that which interests men in every-day life. Always willing to acknowledge a wrong, but strong in his convictions of what constitutes right, as he himself acknowledges, his education had tended to lead astray from rural life; nevertheless, his honest mind has always kept him in the ranks of the people battling for right, although his wealth, inherited as well as earned, has never made him feel the need of labor to supply either the necessities or elegancies of life.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE PEOPLE VERSUS RAILWAY MONOPOLIES.

BY HON. W. C. FLAGG, PRESIDENT ILLINOIS STATE FARMERS' ASSOCIATION.

A GREAT PUBLIC DANGER.

During the last fifteen years, there has grown up in America a distrust, which, at first felt by a few, merged into the fear and finally into the denunciation of railway corporations by a large majority of the increasing number who, for any considerable time, have been subjected to the extortionate rates, the deliberate violation of moral and legal obligations, and the corrupting influence in public and private station that have characterized our railway monopolies. Admitting freely, to begin upon, that railway managers and owners are not necessarily nor per se worse than other men, it must be just as frankly stated that railway corporations, as such, have proved one of the worst influences in our State and national affairs.

Henry C. Carey, the political economist, was one of the few who early saw the danger. Writing to the Hon. L. Sherwood, in 1867, he said: "Nearly twenty years have passed since, without having the smallest personal interest in the question, I spent two years in the effort to free New Jersey from the tyranny that had been there established," alluding to the railroad monopoly of New Jersey. In his

"Social Science," published in 1858, speaking of the political power of railway corporations in Great Britain, he says: "So it is even now in these United States; railroad companies are already controlling the legislation of many of the States, the day for general combination having not yet arrived; but there are many evidences of its near approach. When it shall arrive it will furnish new proof to the fact, that, of all goverments, the most exhausting and oppressive is that of the transporters."

PRIVATE CORPORATIONS GOVERNING STATES.

Geo. P. Marsh, alike eminent in the annals of diplomacy and of philology, in a note to his "Man and Nature" expressed himself as follows, in 1862: "I shall harm no honest man by endeavoring, as I have often done elsewhere, to excite the attention of conscientious and thinking men to the dangers which threaten the great moral and even political interests of christendom, from the unscrupulousness of the private associations that now control the monetary affairs, and regulate the transit of persons and property in almost every civilized country. More than one American State is literally governed by unprincipled corporations, which not only defy the legislative power, but have, too often, corrupted even the administration of justice.

"The example of the American States shows that private corporations—whose rule of action is the interest of the association, not the conscience of the individual-though composed of ultra-democratic elements, may become most dangerous enemies to national liberty, to the moral interests of the commonwealth, to the purity of legislation and of judicial action, and to the sacredness of private rights."

PRIVATE CORPORATIONS GOVERNING STATES.

391

BUREAUDE BUFFALO NAY

Hon. WILLARD C. FLAGG,

President Illinois State Farmers' Association.

These words of warning were unheard by a nation entering upon a struggle with the other and greater vested wrong of slavery; and it was not until after the war for the Union closed, during which time the chartering and construction of railways went briskly on, that such men as Lorenzo Sherwood, Josiah Quincy, and the younger Charles Francis Adams could have an attentive hearing.

RAILWAY CORPORATIONS DEFIANT.

By this time railway corporations had grown bold and defiant. Fisk, Gould, Vanderbilt, and Drew warred among themselves, and were more or less afraid of one another; but they evidently regarded the New York legislature and judiciary as their tools. Their armed minions, like the following of mediævel lords, broke the peace and one another's heads with impunity. In other quarters, it was reported that the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and several southern legislatures and State goverments were the facile tools of other corporations. The Union Pacific and its Credit Mobilier ring invaded the halls of Congress, and brought scandal upon national as well as State governments. The so-called "Farmer's Movement" did not begin an hour too

soon.

Attempts are made to falsify the issue, and to assume that this is a war of farmers against railroads-a class pitted against a useful invention-but they who make this attempt and the assumption lack either clear heads or fair minds. It is the eternal warfare of popular rights against privilege, in a new shape-a conflict just as irrepressible and inevitable in its results, as that other conflict which absorbed the energies and sacrificed the youthful life of the nation for four years.