Then, at almost the very instant the scheme was to be sprung upon the country, and pressure brought to bear upon the President to secure his coöperation, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated. This made the carrying out of the plan impossible. From the very first day Johnson took the oath of office as President he was at war with Congress, and the invasion of Canada never materialized. Chandler's faith and enthusiasm in the scheme won some of the best minds in the Senate to his proposition. PART VII. THE POLITICAL AND CHAPTER XVIII TWENTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY THE REPUBLICAN MACHINE farmer and the railroad [513] The years immediately following the Civil War saw a 105. The rapid increase in farm acreage and railroad mileage in the United States. The farmers, dependent on the railroads for transporting their crops to the markets and shipping centers of the East, watched with hostile jealousy the rising schedule of freight rates, which the railroads maintained was necessary to pay the current expenses of operation in a thinly populated country and a fair rate of interest on the enormous initial cost of the construction of the roads. In March, 1869, Mr. H. C. Wheeler, a farmer of Illinois, sent out the following call for a convention to be held at Bloomington to consider the case against the railroads : To the Farmers of the Northwest: Will you permit a working farmer, whose entire interest is identified with yours, to address to you a word of warning? A crisis in our affairs is approaching, and dangers threaten. You are aware that the price of many of our leading staples is so low that they cannot be transported to the markets of Europe, or even to our own seaboard, and leave a margin for profits, by reason of the excessive rates of transportation. During the War but little attention was given to the great increase in the price of freights, as the price of produce was proportionately high; but we look in vain for any abatement, now that we are obliged to accept less than half the former prices for much that we raise. We look in vain for any diminution in the carrying rates, to correspond with the rapidly declining prices of the means of living, and of materials for constructing boats, cars, engines, and tracks; but on the other hand, we see a total ignoring of that rule of reciprocity between the carrying and producing interests which prevails in every other department of trade and commerce. Does it not behoove us, then, to inquire earnestly how long we can stand this descending scale on the one hand, and the ascending on the other, and which party must inevitably and speedily go to the wall? I by no means counsel hostility to the carrying interest it is one of the producer's best friends; but, like the fire that cooks our food and warms our dwelling, it may also become the hardest of masters. The fire fiend laughs as he escapes from our control, and in an hour licks up and sweeps away the accumulations of years of toil. As we cherish the fire fiend, so we welcome the clangor of the carrier fiend as he approaches our dwellings, opening up communications with the busy marts of trade. But it needs no great stretch of imagination to hear also the cach! cach! cachinations of the carrier fiend as he speeds beyond our reach, and leaving no alternative but compliance with his exorbitant demands. Many of us are not aware of the gigantic proportions the carrying interest is assuming. Less than forty years ago the first railroad fire was kindled on this continent, [but] which now, like a mighty conflagration, is crackling and roaring over every prairie and through every mountain gorge. The first year produced fifteen miles; the last, five thousand.1 On the same mammoth scale goes on the work of organization and direction. By the use of almost unlimited means it enlists in its service the finest talents of the land as officers, 1 The total mileage, which was about 30,000 in 1860, increased to 52,000 in 1870 and to 87,800 in 1880. |