The American farmers of the West are getting very angry
with the Railway lords, the Factory lords, and the Ring lords, and threaten to form a party which shall put all these things down. The Railway lords tax their produce too much, the Factory lords double, treble, or quadruple the price of everything they want, and the Ring lords raise the value of money on them whenever they like. They are forming associations, therefore, with the view of electing members both of Congress and of their own Legislatures who will not do these things. They will be beaten, of course, as they will choose poor men of the political class, who will be bought up wholesale ; and the threatened interests have besought the Railway lords to inflict some severe punishment upon them, perhaps not to carry their corn at all. We have no objection whatever. If men of common- sense and accustomed to politics will grant monopolies to cor- porations, instead of doing their own business themselves, they deserve all they receive. They are not much sillier than the British public, who are deprived by the Railway oligarchs of half the wealth they might obtain from cheap transit for their goods, and not only suffer in silence, but send them to Parlia- ment for taxing them so successfully. We shall, before long, have to treat Railway Directors and Brewers as we do Peers, and invalidate every election in which they interfere.
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