After the roads are built, the men who have built the same, and issued and sold the bonds, issue to themselves certificates of stock, no part of which they have paid up, and go into Wall street to unload, that is, to sell their stock. If it be in good demand it will bear "watering." More stock is issued and sold, and by this process men who were worth nothing, but who were so fortunate as to get the control of certain railroad companies without having invested to the amount of a dollar, suddenly become immensely rich. The value of the road to those who have paid up their stock, but are not included in the ring, is destroyed; the road is loaded with a debt that destroys its value. This new method of construction meets with favor among a large class of men in all parts of the country, who have combined to aid each other. All that is lacking on their part to take absolute control of the whole country and government is a consolidation of all the railroads of the country under one management. At this time, six or eight great combinations, with a half dozen men at their head, manage the railroad interest of the country. They are extending their power and it may not be long until all will be consolidated in one, which would give this monopoly absolute control, not only of the markets, but of the whole legislation of the country in matters affecting their interests. With packed legislatures, state and national; with paid or intimidated judges, and with civil service of several thousand cunning clerks, and able-bodied brakemen, conductors, and switch tenders, they would be in that position most to be dreaded by all lovers of liberty--a powerful and enormously rich corporation, surrounded by a weak, timid, and helpless public. While we were still engaged in singing pæans over the glorious institutions of our happy country, we would suddenly find that our institutions had disappeared, and that we had, riveted around our necks, a worse despotism than we ever lamented for the down-trodden of other lands. This is really no imaginary picture as all will see who remember the stronghold, absolutely inaccessible to the law, which Fisk and Gould erected, and for a time maintained in New York; or the military operations of the employes of the Erie on the Susquehana road, and who have followed, with any attention, the helpless struggles of the government of the United States--formerly supposed quite able to take care of itself--in the foul toils of the Union Pacific railroad. These corporations foreshadow what must follow when a perfect consolidation is effected. Now at non-competing points they extort from shippers such enormous rates for transportation as absorb almost the entire value of the farm products; while from points at which there are competing lines of road they will carry at greatly reduced rates. They will charge no more for carrying freight one thousand miles from a point where there is a competing road,