Monopolies -- United States; Railroads and state -- United States
has been voted to private railroad corporations; subsidies of untold
millions of bonds, for the same purposes, have become a charge upon the
people, while the fetters of vast monopolies have been fastened closer
and still closer upon the public. It is time that the representatives of
the people were admonished that they are the servants of the people, and
are paid by the people; that their constituents have confided to them
the great trust of guarding their rights and protecting their interests;
that their position and their power is to be used for the benefit of the
people whom they represent, and not for their own benefit, and the
benefit of the lobbyists, the gamblers, and the speculators who have
come to Washington to make a raid upon the treasury."
The above shows the light in which Mr. Washburn, four years ago, viewed
the matters of which we are now treating. Since the delivery of that
speech act after act has been passed by congress in favor of these
corporations, giving them greater privileges, releasing them from their
obligations to government, discharging their liability to government for
many millions of money, and to accomplish this, imposing upon the people
additional burdens and taxes for which no equivalent has been or even
will be given. The determination to plunder the government and people,
seems to control not only the adventurers who go to Washington to lobby
their schemes through congress, but also congressmen themselves, who
become chiefs among this class of money and land grabbers. They vote to
the corporations, of which they are a part, large sums in money and
lands, and then use the means thus obtained for the purpose of bribing
and corrupting their fellow members in favor of other and larger
robberies.
CHAPTER VI.
HOW THE LAND GRANT RAILROADS "DEVELOPE" A COUNTRY.
The ostensible object in granting lands to railroad companies was to aid
new and undeveloped portions of the country in procuring necessary
railroad facilities for communication with the rest of the world; and to
assist, by donations of alternate sections, in their development and
settlement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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