Show Xo Wonder the Shippers Kick Do you know I never until recently re-cently felt the iron hand of a gigantic monopoly close upon my throat and so realized how slowly it was tightening constricting folds like the deadening upas tree over whose blighted valley there flies no living bird and compare tivelr few dead ones as it were upon I the life of the nition I Aoplause and loud cries of Go on If Needless is it to say that I refer to the railroad I live in a small village on the 11e of the Pennsylvania Railway We have no competing line We lie at the feet of the monopoly that hauls us in and out ot town we are passive and helpless The other day I had two boxes of freight to send west bv this monopoly I went crouching into the office of the freight agent When I told him I had two boxes of stuff to send to Chicago a distance of about SCO miles I saw his eyes ligbt up with the keen glare of savage greed He said be would ask Harrisburg for rates which I knew was a mere subterfuge to gain time while he conld guess how much money I could raise this fide of the grave and then aHn 0 Ho 4 > fr a ouitcsa corporation charged me docents do-cents for carrying two big boxes SOO miles Whats more he made me pay It Its no wonder that shippers kick I am only surprised that they dont boycott the railroads Let us return to the days and the quiet way of our good old fathers wnen by paving one half of the price of the bout I could have sent my boxes to Buffalo by canal and the rest of the way by lake boat end got them through to Chtcaeo or the bottom the same year Burdette in Brooklyn Eagle |