There is an association of old fossils at New York calling themselves
the “Anti-Monopoly League,” that has taken the job on their hands of
saving the country from eternal and everlasting ruin at the hands of
the gigantic monopolies, the railroads, and this league, through its
President, L. E. Chittenden, is sending editorials and extracts from
speeches delivered by great men who have been refused passes, or who
have not been retained by railroads to conduct law suits as much as they
think they ought to be, to newspapers all over the country requesting
their publication.
_The Sun_ gets its regular share of these documents each week, which
go into the waste basket with a regularity that is truly remarkable,
considering that we are not a railroad monopoly. But there is something
so ridiculous about these articles that one cannot help laughing. They
claim that the country is in the grasp of the gigantic monopolies, and
that they will choke the country to death and ruin everybody, though
what the object can be in running the country and everybody in it, is
not stated.
These monopolies have taken the country when it was as weak as gruel,
and hoisted it by the slack of the pants to the leading position among
nations. The monopolies have built their track all over God's creation,
where land could not be given away, have hauled emigrants out there
and set them up in business, and made the waste land of the government
valuable. They have made transportation so cheap that the emigrant from
Germany of last year can send wheat from Dakota to the Fatherland, and
Bismarck and King William can get it cheaper than they can wheat grown
within a mile of their castles.
These monopolies that the played out nine-spot anti-monopoly leagues
are howling against have made the country what it is, and if there
is anybody in this country that don't like it, they can get emigrant
tickets and go to Germany or Norway and take the places of the men that
the monopolies are causing to settle here. Of course we could all run
railroads better than the owners run them, but as long as we have not
got money enough to buy them we better shut up our yap and let Jay Gould
and his fellows do what they please with their own, as long as they
permit the country to prosper as it is prospering now. The anti-monopoly
leaguers had better go to driving street cars.