lation, and in wearing
out such citizens as seek legal redress for some of the many
outrageous acts of oppression practised by the corporations. Once the
government was in control, these lawyers would be relegated to some
employment where they would do less harm, even if not engaged in a
more honorable vocation than that of trying to defeat justice by the
use of such questionable means as the control of the vast revenues of
the corporations place in their hands.

Is it possible that the railway companies can legitimately use
anything like $14,000,000 yearly in protecting their rights in the
courts?

The president of the Union Pacific tells us that: "The courts are open
to redress all real grievances of the citizen."

There is probably no man in the United States better aware than is
Sidney Dillon that no citizen, unless he has as much wealth as the
president of the Union Pacific, can successfully contest a case of any
importance in the courts with one of these corporations which make a
business, as a warning to other possible plaintiffs, of wearing out
the unfortunate plaintiff with the law's costly delays; and failing
this do not hesitate to spirit away the plaintiff's witnesses, and to
pack and buy juries--retaining a special class of attorneys for this
work--the command of great corporate revenues enabling them to
accomplish their ends, and to utterly ruin nearly every man having the
hardihood to seek Mr. Dillon's lauded legal redress, and when they
have accomplished such nefarious object, the entire cost is charged
back to the public, and collected in the form of tolls upon traffic.
Laws are utterly powerless to restrain the corporations, and Mr.
Dillon tells us how easy it is to evade them by pleading compliance,
when there has been no compliance, and then having the expert servants
of the corporation swear there has been.

With the government operating the railways, every citizen riding would
pay fare adding immensely to the revenues. Few have any conception of
the proportion who travel free, and half a century's experience
renders it doubtful if the pass evil--so much greater than ever was
the franking privilege--can be eliminated otherwise than by national
ownership. From the experience of the writer, as an auditor of railway
accounts, and as an executive officer issuing passes, he is able to
say that fully ten per cent. travel free, the result being that the
great mass of railway users are yearly mulcted s