The cause of the railroad manager has never been without time-servers. Not to speak of those newspaper editors who, for some consideration or another, defend every policy and every practice inaugurated or approved by railroad authorities, there has always been a school of literati who felt it their duty to enlighten, from a railroad standpoint, their fellow-men by book or pamphlet upon the transportation question, to correct what they supposed to be false impressions, and to round up with an apology or defense for the railroad manager, who is invariably represented by them as the most abused and at the same time most patriotic and most progressive man of the age. The benefits derived from the railroad are great. It has been an important factor in the development of our country's resources and the advancement of our civilization. Its value is fully appreciated, but there is no reason why the men who have utilized the inventions of Stephenson and others, and have grown rich by doing so, should be eulogized any more than those who are ministering to the wants of the public by the use of the Hoe printing press, McCormick's reaper, Whitney's cotton gin, or any of the thousands of other modern inventions. These authors doubtless are prompted by various motives. Some have been educated in the railroad school and are therefore blind to railroad evils. Others naturally worship plutocrats, because they hold the opinion that capital is entitled to a larger reward than brains and muscle, for the reason that the latter is more plentiful than the former. But there is a third class of railroad authors, who, there is reason to believe, enter the literary arena in defense of railroad evils not solely for the love they bear the cause, but as the paid advocates of a class of men who feel that their cause is in need of a strong defense at the bar of public sentiment. It would be difficult to account in any other way for the extravagant statements and one-sided arguments made by this class of writers. Yet railroad literature has not confined itself to the retrospective field. Its scope has grown with the significance of its contributors. In more than one instance have men at the head of large railroad corporations, influenced by temporary interest, become the authors of documents containing assertions and prophecies highly pathetic at the time, but subsequently shown to be so replete with falsehoods and absurdities that few railroad managers would to-day be willing to father them. Thus Alexander Mitchell, the late president of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad Company, addressed on the 28th of April, 1874, shortly after the passage of the Wisconsin Granger Law, a letter to Governor Taylor, containing the following passages: