small in numbers--which controls the road, and in addition to preying upon the public, so arrange the business as to exclude the stockholders of the road from any share in the profits of the dispatch company. Having oppressed the public by extortionate charges for transportation, increased the stock of the railroad company to an amount that precludes profitable dividends, even from the highest of tariffs, and issued and sold bonds of the company to so large an extent as to make it impossible to pay the interest on them, and at the same time meet the running expenses of the road, including their own salaries as officers and managers, having, in short, loaded the railroad companies with burdens greater than they can bear, as a last master stroke of financiering they organize themselves into dispatch companies, and while they enrich themselves they reduce the railroad companies in which they are managing directors to absolute bankruptcy. The stockholders who, confiding in the integrity of these men, elected them directors and managers, are swindled out of their legitimate dividends, their stock becomes worthless, debts accumulate against the company, locomotives, tracks, and cars are worn out in transporting freights for the dispatch company, at rates ruinous to the railroad company, and as a grand _finale_ the road passes into the hands of these conspirators, under the orders or judgments of courts. In the meantime shippers are compelled to pay double prices for freights, because the _railroad companies_ have not the necessary facilities for shipping; all has passed into the hands and under the control of the dispatch companies. By a mere fiction, the managers of the road contracting with themselves as dispatch companies, a competition is permitted to take the control of the carrying trade over the road, control the track and rolling stock, as well as the officers of the railroad company, destroy their business and drive them into bankruptcy. Those not in the secret of the organization fail to comprehend its necessity; why, for example, a train of cars run in the interest of the dispatch companies can travel at double the rate of speed of the trains run in the interest of the railroad company, or why higher rates for transportation should be taxed and paid. The only solution we can give is, that it presents additional means for taking from the producer an additional portion of his product, in the shape of charges supposed to be paid to a company organized for the purpose of aiding in the transportation of freights, but which is, as a matter of fact, a combination in the interest of the managers of the road with the real purpose of making personal gain to themselves at the sacrifice of the interests of the stockholders.