D. C. Cloud

“ It is not a pleasant truth to acknowledge, that the acquisition of money is the controlling motive in the American mind; yet it is a truth. Nor is it pleasing to admit that corporations control the legislation of our nation and state; but the fact is too patent to be denied. Nor will any one who, without prejudice, examines the history of legislation upon the subject of railroads, deny that legislators have been controlled in their acts by the desire, and from the prospect of receiving personal pecuniary benefit by the passage of acts granting special favors to railroad companies. ”

“ We do not claim that our work is free from errors. We have sought to state the facts correctly. If they are inaccurate, the errors are unintentional. It was not with the wish or intention of doing injustice to any man, class of men, corporations, or officers of the government, that we undertook this work; but with the firm belief and strong conviction that the liberties of the people were being taken from them, while a gigantic oligarchy was obtaining control of the government. We believe the remedy is yet with the people; but to save themselves prompt, speedy, and united action is imperative. ”

“ We do not deny the right to congressmen to become and remain stockholders and directors in railroad corporations, but we do deny their right to vote lands and money to companies in which they are stockholders and directors. They are elected to represent the people, to attend to and protect the public interests. When they form themselves into companies and vote the lands and moneys of the people to themselves, they violate their trust, and instead of protecting the people, plunder them, and divide the spoils. ”

“ The attempt of this great combination of monopolists to obtain absolute control of the government, the finances, and commerce of the country, presents more serious cause for alarm than did the attempt to dissolve the Union. Our institutions cease to be of any value when they are perverted to means of oppression. When men in high official positions trifle with the liberties of the people and encourage their oppressors, an indignant constituency should hurl them from power. ”

“ But when the people's purse and the government finances are subject to the action of corporations and rings, the special favorites of the courts, the people are imperatively called upon to arise and assert their rights as freemen—to throw off this oppressive yoke—to stamp with the seal of condemnation, not only the enunciation of such anti-republican sentiment, but the judge who uttered it. ”

“ No thorough reform of the abuses practiced by railroad companies can be effected until the legislatures, by statutes, compel each and every company to purge its stock of every spurious dollar, so that the stock of each company shall not appear to be in excess of the cost of its road. If the legislature does not possess the power to do this, then it has the power to create a corporation that, by arbitrarily increasing its stock to any amount it may choose, can extort from the people sufficient to pay the interest upon such amount, and defy the power of its creator. ”

“ In a republic even a majority of the people do not possess the inherent right to tax the minority for private purposes. Such taxation can be imposed by no other government than a despotic one, where the will of the despot is the supreme law, and where might rather than right is the controlling power. So conscious are the advocates of this species of taxation of the fact that taxes can be levied for public purposes alone, that they deem it all-important to connect and blend in one—the right of eminent domain and taxation. ”

“ Our great lakes furnish us an outlet for the surplus product of the great west. Our sixty or seventy thousand miles of railroad traverse our country in all directions, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and spreading like a net-work from the lakes to the gulf. Our mines produce immense yields of the precious metals, while our hills and mountains are full of iron, coal, and lead. Petroleum flows in quantities which should add largely to the wealth of our common country. Our timber is not excelled by that of any growth in the world. ”

“ When the restrictions embodied in the constitution are overridden and disregarded in one instance it affords a precedent for a second step in the same direction. Acquiescence in encroachments upon constitutional restriction by the people, undermine and absolutely destroy republican institutions and the government itself. If, for the accomplishment of some private purpose, a community, a state, or the general government disregard the provisions of the constitution, and assume powers not granted them by that instrument, they arbitrarily act the part of the absolute tyrant. ”

“ When by the customs of the country, or by its laws, the line dividing labor and capital is so clearly defined, that the laborer, by a life-time of toil, can accumulate nothing, while the capitalist employing him realizes from ten to one hundred per cent per annum upon the amount invested, the one is but coining the life-blood of the other, and the laborer is but little better than a bond-servant. From time immemorial, those who obtain their support by manual labor have received less attention from government than any other class. ”

“ In name we are a free people, protected by the constitution of our country; in fact, we are the servants of these giant monopolies. We retain of the proceeds of our labor such portion as they graciously permit us to keep. With the congress of the United States, and the legislatures of most of the states, committed to their interests, and the supreme court of the nation issuing its edicts in their favor, they can defy the people and continue their oppressions. ”

“ The assumption of the right to tax the people for any and every purpose that to congress shall seem expedient, irrespective of constitutional prohibition, is at once destructive of the rights that were supposed to be guaranteed and preserved to the whole people by the constitution. If the will of those men who happen to occupy seats in congress (and that will too often controlled by personal interest) is to govern, then all constitutional government is at an end, and the liberty and property of the citizen have no constitutional safeguard. ”

“ We do not comprehend the wisdom of fixing and limiting the amount of currency the country may have for a circulating medium, and empowering one man to decide, how, when, and where it shall be distributed. Conceding to the general government the power to charter banks and issue treasury notes, the power is not exclusive. There is no limit to the volume of gold and silver, and if government should attempt to limit the amount of coin, it could not do it. ”

“ The people of Iowa, through their legislature, have always been eminently friendly to the construction of railroads and the promotion of the railway interests. In proof of this, witness the whole history of our legislation; witness our magnificent land grants, subsidies, bonds, subscriptions, and taxes, to the amount of five per cent of our entire valuation, in one year, as free gifts to railroad corporations. And yet some of these corporations have cheated us as people never were cheated before. ”

“ The great army of laborers, instead of controlling the political affairs of the country in their own interest, become the instruments in the hands of the monopolists of their own oppression. With sufficient strength to shape the whole policy of the government they are content to let others control them, while they toil from day to day for the small compensation allowed them, and derive no benefit from the proceeds of their labor. ”

“ Men travel over the country, examine all machinery and farming implements, not for the purpose of making new or useful discoveries or improvements, but for the purpose of learning whether they cannot so contrive as to collect royalty from others for an invention long in use, but for which the inventor had not asked or received a patent. Add this monopoly of patent rights to the other monopolies now cursing the country, and the need of a speedy reform, or the alternative of poverty and bankruptcy among the producing classes, becomes still more apparent. ”

“ We all feel a deep interest in the election of legislators, for the reason that all are to be affected by the laws enacted, but we seem not to realize to its full importance the fact that all laws passed by congress or a state legislature are liable to be declared null and void by the courts; that the interpretation and construction of statutes belong exclusively to the courts; that the men elected to judicial positions, under the constitution, are clothed with a power superior to that of the legislative and executive departments of the government ”

“ Credit currency, whether issued by the states or the United States, or by private corporations or individuals, is not recognized by the constitution as the standard of value, nor can it be made such by any law which congress or the states can pass, as the laws of trade are stronger than any legislative enactment. Commerce requires a standard of value, and all experience warrants the prediction that commerce will have it, whether the United States agree or disagree, as the laws of commerce in that respect are stronger than the laws of any single nation of the commercial world. ”

“ It is not to be expected that those men filling official places in the legislative and judicial departments of the government, who, from interest and custom, have become addicted to the habit of giving new meanings and interpretations to the constitution, will reform the abuses that have been rapidly accumulating, or that they will manifest any zeal or alacrity in stripping the railroad corporations and other monopolies of the great powers conferred upon them, or that any real reformation can be effected without a thorough change of public servants. ”

“ To compel the property of individuals to alone bear the burdens which should be shared by that of corporations violates both the letter and spirit of the constitution. All public burdens should bear equally upon all people, associations, and corporations. The legislature has as much right to say that the property of one-half of the citizens of a state shall pay the entire expenses of the government, while no taxes shall be imposed upon the property of the other half ”

“ I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power, but it is evident that it would furnish to men disposed to usurp a plausible pretence for claiming that power. They might urge, with a semblance of reason, that the constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication that a right to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. ”

“ We now complain of our lack of shipping upon the ocean, and of the fact that the balance of trade is against us. With our large annual product of cereals, meats, cotton, and yield of precious metals, the balance of trade is in favor of England; and American shipping, once the equal of England's, is now classed with only third and fourth rate nations. One of the chief causes of this deplorable state of affairs is the absolute control obtained by these petted monopolists over our inland commerce, and their tyrannical extortions in rates for transportation. ”

“ With high or protective tariffs, farmers and producers pay much more than their just proportion to the support of the government. The consumer simply pays tariff duties on what he consumes, while the producer not only pays on what he consumes, but his product must pay a large part of the duty upon what is consumed by others. The products of the country are its wealth. No matter who is obliged to pay the duty in the first instance, ultimately the producer must pay it. ”