ght to our lands, but I
DO know that Harran is dead, that Annixter is dead, that Broderson is
dead, that Hooven is dead, that Osterman is dying, and that S. Behrman
is alive, successful, triumphant; that he has ridden into possession of
a principality over the dead bodies of five men shot down by his hired
associates.

"I can see the outcome. The Railroad will prevail. The Trust will
overpower us. Here in this corner of a great nation, here, on the edge
of the continent, here, in this valley of the West, far from the great
centres, isolated, remote, lost, the great iron hand crushes life from
us, crushes liberty and the pursuit of happiness from us, and our little
struggles, our moment's convulsion of death agony causes not one jar in
the vast, clashing machinery of the nation's life; a fleck of grit in
the wheels, perhaps, a grain of sand in the cogs--the momentary creak
of the axle is the mother's wail of bereavement, the wife's cry of
anguish--and the great wheel turns, spinning smooth again, even again,
and the tiny impediment of a second, scarce noticed, is forgotten. Make
the people believe that the faint tremour in their great engine is a
menace to its function? What a folly to think of it. Tell them of the
danger and they will laugh at you. Tell them, five years from now,
the story of the fight between the League of the San Joaquin and the
Railroad and it will not be believed. What! a pitched battle between
Farmer and Railroad, a battle that cost the lives of seven men?
Impossible, it could not have happened. Your story is fiction--is
exaggerated.

"Yet it is Lexington--God help us, God enlighten us, God rouse us from
our lethargy--it is Lexington; farmers with guns in their hands fighting
for Liberty. Is our State of California the only one that has its
ancient and hereditary foe? Are there no other Trusts between the oceans
than this of the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad? Ask yourselves, you
of the Middle West, ask yourselves, you of the North, ask yourselves,
you of the East, ask yourselves, you of the South--ask yourselves, every
citizen of every State from Maine to Mexico, from the Dakotas to the
Carolinas, have you not the monster in your boundaries? If it is not a
Trust of transportation, it is only another head of the same Hydra.
Is not our death struggle typical? Is it not one of many, is it
not symbolical of the great and terrible conflict that is going on
everywhere in these United States? Ah, yo