Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Internal Improvements, and of the Internal Commerce, of the United States; With a Review of the Charges of Monopoly and Oppression Made Against Railroad Corporations (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 Excerpt: ...framing bills for relief, and frantically urging their passage; arresting the attention of every one who could be made to listen to their tales of woe, and presenting the most frightful pictures of the rapacity of railroad corporations; of the ruin they had inflicted upon the regions along their lines; of manufacturing establishments deserted and falling to decay, and all private enterprise crushed out by a remorseless tyranny such "as no despot of the Old World ever dared exercise." It was enough to melt a heart of stone. Great bankers, whose opinions were supposed to be as weighty as their purses; leaders of opinion, "representative men," whom the reporters eagerly rush to interview when a great crisis is impending, could not help being moved by the pitiful tale of "the ruin of the canals," by which taxes were to be enormously increased, and of individual disaster and distress, the work of the cruel railroads, to express in a dignified but firm manner "their total disapprobation of all such highly reprehensible proceedings." The Jerry Blacks of the day, too, were promptly at the front to lay down, for a good round fee, the law that the railroads were public highways, and "no more belonged to the stockholders than a custom-house did to its accidental tenant." So tremendous was the din raised on two occasions, at least, that governors of the State, one in 1855, and one in 1860. warmly recommended the imposition upon the railroads of the canal tolls. Underneath all this sound and fury, well set off by an imposing scenery skillfully improvised for the occasion, was an adequate current of common-sense on the part of the people, who saw, in the rivalry between canals and railroads, lower prices for what they had...