is country, especially
of the regions west of Chicago, is to-day managed on principles
which--unless a change of heart occurs, and that soon--must inevitably
lead to financial disaster of the most serious kind. There is among the
lines composing that system an utter disregard of those fundamental
ideas of truth, fair play and fair dealing which lies at the foundation,
not only of the Christian faith, but of civilization itself. With them
there is but one rule--that, many years ago, put by Wordsworth into the
mouth of Rob Roy:

"'The simple rule, the good old plan,
That he shall take who has the power,
And he shall keep who can.'"

As regards the causes of the Granger movement, Mr. Adams says, in the
work above mentioned: "That it [the Granger episode] did not originate
without cause has already been pointed out. It is quite safe to go
further, and to say that the movement was a necessary one, and through
its results has made a solution of the railroad problem possible in this
country. At the time that movement took shape the railroad corporations
were in fact rapidly assuming a position which could not be tolerated.
Corporations, owning and operating the highways of commerce, claimed for
themselves a species of immunity from the control of the law-making
power. When laws were passed with a view to their regulation they
received them in a way which was at once arrogant and singularly
injudicious. The officers entrusted with the execution of those laws
they contemptuously ignored. Sheltering themselves behind the Dartmouth
College decision, they practically undertook to set even public opinion
at defiance. Indeed, there can be no doubt that those representing these
corporations had at this juncture not only become fully educated up to
the idea that the gross inequalities and ruinous discriminations to
which in their business they were accustomed were necessary incidents to
it which afforded no just ground of complaint to any one, but they also
thought that any attempt to rectify them was a gross outrage on the
elementary principles both of common sense and of constitutional law. In
other words, they had thoroughly got it into their heads that they, as
common carriers, were in no way bound to afford equal facilities to all,
and, indeed, that it was in the last degree absurd and unreasonable to
expect them to do so. The Granger method was probably as good a method
of approaching men in this frame of mind as co