distance of 300 miles for a less rate than Iowa flour was carried 100
miles. Certain merchants received from the railroad companies a discount
of 50 per cent. on all their freights and were thus enabled to undersell
all their competitors. The rate on coal in carload lots from Cleveland,
Lucas County, to Glenwood was $1.80 per ton, and from the same point to
Council Bluffs only $1.25, although the latter was about thirty miles
longer haul. Innumerable cases of this kind could be cited. There was
not a town or interest in the State that did not feel the influence of
these unjust practices. Many of the rates complained against, it is
true, were beyond the direct control of the State commission, but there
was an impression among well-informed shippers that if the commission
had the power to fix local rates and exercised it judiciously, the
railroad companies would soon find it to their interest to be as
reasonable in making through rates for Iowans as they expected the
commission, to be in prescribing local tariffs.

The demand of the people for more equitable rates and a more thorough
control of the railroad business increased from year to year. Repeated
attempts were made in the General Assembly to secure the passage of an
act looking to that end, but, owing to shrewd manipulations on the part
of the railroad lobby, every attempt was defeated. There always was, of
course, a large number of members who represented districts not well
supplied with railroad facilities. These, as a rule, honestly opposed
restrictive legislation, believing that such legislation would check
building, and that, on the other hand, competition could be relied upon
to correct abuses. Of those members who had less positive convictions
many were retained as railroad attorneys and were thus made serviceable
to the companies. Other members with political ambition were nattered or
intimidated into subjection, and bribes in disguise, such as passes and
special rates, were not unfrequently resorted to to strengthen the
railroad following in both houses of the General Assembly.

Railroad corruption did not pause here. It is a notorious fact that
large sums of money were paid to venal papers of both parties in
consideration of an agreement on their part to defend transportation
abuses and exert their influence against progressive railroad
legislation. The vilest means were often resorted to by these sheets to
obtain their end. Public men who had the courage