The Lion and the Mouse | Page 2

faces and the eagerness of the employes as they plied each

other with questions.
"Suppose the injunction is sustained?" asked a clerk in a whisper. "Is
not the road rich enough to bear the loss?"
The man he addressed turned impatiently to the questioner: "That's all
you know about railroading. Don't you understand that this suit we
have lost will be the entering wedge for hundreds of others. The very
existence of the road may be at stake. And between you and me," he
added in a lower key, "with Judge Rossmore on the bench we never
stood much show. It's Judge Rossmore that scares 'em, not the
injunction. They've found it easy to corrupt most of the Supreme Court
judges, but Judge Rossmore is one too many for them. You could no
more bribe him than you could have bribed Abraham Lincoln."
"But the newspapers say that he, too, has been caught accepting
$50,000 worth of stock for that decision he rendered in the Great
Northwestern case."
"Lies! All those stories are lies," replied the other emphatically. Then
looking cautiously around to make sure no one overheard, he added
contemptuously, "The big interests fear him, and they're inventing these
lies to try and injure him. They might as well try to blow up Gibraltar.
The fact is the public is seriously aroused this time and the railroads are
in a panic."
It was true. The railroad, which heretofore had considered itself
superior to law, had found itself checked in its career of outlawry and
oppression. The railroad, this modern octopus of steam and steel which
stretches its greedy tentacles out over the land, had at last been brought
to book.
At first, when the country was in the earlier stages of its development,
the railroad appeared in the guise of a public benefactor. It brought to
the markets of the East the produce of the South and West. It opened up
new and inaccessible territory and made oases of waste places. It
brought to the city coal, lumber, food and other prime necessaries of
life, taking back to the farmer and the woodsman in exchange, clothes

and other manufactured goods. Thus, little by little, the railroad
wormed itself into the affections of the people and gradually became an
indispensable part of the life it had itself created. Tear up the railroad
and life itself is extinguished.
So when the railroad found it could not be dispensed with, it grew
dissatisfied with the size of its earnings. Legitimate profits were not
enough. Its directors cried out for bigger dividends, and from then on
the railroad became a conscienceless tyrant, fawning on those it feared
and crushing without mercy those who were defenceless. It raised its
rates for hauling freight, discriminating against certain localities
without reason or justice, and favouring other points where its own
interests lay. By corrupting government officials and other unlawful
methods it appropriated lands, and there was no escape from its
exactions and brigandage. Other roads were built, and for a brief period
there was held out the hope of relief that invariably comes from honest
competition. But the railroad either absorbed its rivals or pooled
interests with them, and thereafter there were several masters instead of
one.
Soon the railroads began to war among themselves, and in a mad
scramble to secure business at any price they cut each other's rates and
unlawfully entered into secret compacts with certain big shippers,
permitting the latter to enjoy lower freight rates than their competitors.
The smaller shippers were soon crushed out of existence in this way.
Competition was throttled and prices went up, making the railroad
barons richer and the people poorer. That was the beginning of the
giant Trusts, the greatest evil American civilization has yet produced,
and one which, unless checked, will inevitably drag this country into
the throes of civil strife.
From out of this quagmire of corruption and rascality emerged the
Colossus, a man so stupendously rich and with such unlimited powers
for evil that the world has never looked upon his like. The famous
Croesus, whose fortune was estimated at only eight millions in our
money, was a pauper compared with John Burkett Ryder, whose
holdings no man could count, but which were approximately estimated

at a thousand millions of dollars. The railroads had created the Trust,
the ogre of corporate greed, of which Ryder was the incarnation, and in
time the Trust became master of the railroads, which after all seemed
but retributive justice.
John Burkett Ryder, the richest man in the world--the man whose name
had spread to the farthest corners of the earth because of his wealth,
and whose money, instead of being a blessing, promised to become not
only a curse to himself but a source of dire peril to all mankind--was