One of the great evils resulting from this bonded subsidy system of building railroads, is that it gives to those who manage them the control of the whole carrying trade of the country, and enables them to impoverish the great agricultural population of the west and south. The wealth of the United States lies in its agricultural products. The greater portion of the people are engaged in agricultural pursuits. Good markets and cheap freights are of the utmost importance to agriculture. However abundant may be the crops, unless a market can be reached without a sacrifice of one-half the product in the shape of freights and commissions the husbandman will be impoverished. If the farmers, the tillers of the soil, do not receive a fair remuneration for their work, all other industrial interests will suffer with them; anything that tends to deprive the producer of the value of his product, tends to the impoverishment of the whole country. Any system of laws, regulations, by government, or combinations of men, or corporations, that are oppressive to the producer, oppress the whole people. It matters not whether these oppressions are in taxes, tariffs, or charges for transportation of the farm product; no matter in what shape it comes, the result is the same. The great oppression now being practiced upon the people is in the enormous charges made by railroad companies for carrying freight. The charters, grants, subsidies, and privileges given to these companies have enabled them to organize a powerful monopoly, through which they demand and receive for transporting meats, grains, and other farm products from the west to the eastern markets, at least one-half the value thereof. The charges of these monopolies are arbitrary, and often fixed by the value of the different kinds of grain carried by them. For instance, they charge one-third more per ton for carrying wheat from the west to the east than for corn and oats; it being worth more in market, they ask a larger dividend from it. It can be carried as cheaply as oats or corn, but, because of its value, will bear a greater charge, and still leave one-half of its value for the producer. There is no good reason why a railroad company should charge thirty cents per hundred for carrying wheat from Muscatine (Iowa) to Chicago, when it charges but twenty cents for carrying oats and corn over the same road, the same distance. Yet such is the fact. Those who are in the interest of these monopolists talk about cheap freights; they argue that railroads can transport freights much cheaper than it can be done over ordinary highways. Let us turn again to the Railroad Manual, and see how the matter is treated. Says the author: "The cost of transporting Indian corn and wheat over ordinary highways will equal twenty cents per ton per mile. At such a rate, the former will bear transportation only 125 miles to a market where its value is equal to seventy-five cents per