Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-02-17
TIE REAL ENEMY OF PROGRESS.

| it, if untrammeled, might work out good
have found their proper level. 1t has been
handicapped from the outset, and its posi-
Bile usefulness destroyed from the exterior.
1t has been, and still is, the victim of
worn.out ex State officials riding the anti.
corporation hobby-the body on which
an anoplura order of political parasites
feed it has been fretted and urged to hot
haste by crew OF corporation wreckers
who would build political fortunes upon
the ruin of material interests of self.
seekers and their cappers, whose sole aim
is to seat intellectual incompetence in the
United States Senate; coerced and prodded
on to extremes by INSCRIPTIONS small
bodies, who assume TO dominate the domi-
nant party against the express will of the
better elements of that organization. One
of the representative men of the party,
one who stands head aud shoulders above
the motley crew hanging upon the skirts of
the Legislature, a man of State reputation
and unimpeachable honesty of purpose,
may be quoted as expressing the disgust
of the party over the scenes in the State
House corridors and party rendezvous, and
the manifest power of the INSCRIPTIONS
bosses, and declaring that the time had
come for the decent Democracy to rebuke
the shameless usurpation. The houses
have been at the mercy of as reckless a
horde of political blackmailers as ever
chanted anti-railroad and anti-progress, or
devised cinch BILL
There is some consolation in the refiec.
ton that in the end the truth must pre-
vail but error runs a league while truth
is pulling its boots on some consolation
in knowing that the people whose name
has been SO foully mouthed by believing
demagogues, will rise in their wrath and
hurl the whole starved horde of whippers.
in Z" headlong from the ethereal sky of
their pure public sentiment. But in the
meantime these hollow. bellied vampires
have their suctorial mouths upon the vitals
of the State, and unless shaken off will alb
sorb, through legislative t;midity, the
commercial vitality of the commonwealth
Ignorance, envy and selfshness
are the procreators of the folly that
is manifest in measures to cinch the
life out of leading industries of more
than one class. The crew airing its
animosity at the Capitol, browbeating
Senators and Assemblymen, branding men
for avowal of honest convictions, printing
their names in funereal array as traitors
and recreants, and threatening with politi-
cal damnation and social ostracsm every
man who does not make obeisance to the
cap of the modern Gessler it has hoisted on
the anti railroad pole-this crew legislates
whenever it can for the legislators, assumes
to dictate the course of those who would
spurn them if they dared, and holds high
carnival in the halls of State.
So long as these baleful influences are
commanding, of what use is it to point
out that the California railway companies
have followed substantially the tried,
approved and universal practice of
railroad management throughout the
world in the arrangement of their rates
OF what use is it to point out that interior
villages cannot, by legislative enactment,
be erected into commercial competitors
with cities by river and sea that the
feeble legislator can no more turn the re-
tering dire results, than he can attempt to
stem Niagara without being swept out of
existence by its torrents? What use to
demonstrate for the thousandth time that
throughout the world the commercial law
reigns supreme that for short distances,
or excessive grades, or high value goods, or
bulky articles, or in sparse settlements, or
where change and interchange are irregu-
lar, high rates are charged, and low rates
for opposite causes? What profits it to
explain to the self seeking demagogue why
it is that in certain cases a distant point
shall pay no more, or near point no less,
for freight transportation to a common
objective terminus, because of conditions
recognized as factors in the fixing
of rates over every through line
of transportation? Why labor to
establish the truth again and again, that in
all business, the world around, rates are
largely dependent upon the conditions gov.
erning the demand?
Such automatic citations and proofs the
bowling crew will drown in vociferations
of railroad oppression, corporate tyranny
and of the dying State struggling in the &C.
topian embrace of soulless transporters, etc.
What will it avail to deny their array of
false charges, when the reply will be but
the denial of denials-the resort of the
dogmatic, unreasoning and dishonest. To
paraphrase the epigram of a brilliant writer,
ignorance and error can make no permanent
Roadway against truth and the right,
unless the latter stop to handy words with
them. This policy Of resistance would
be the better policy to pursue-to permit
the north wind to blow out its fullest will,
were it not true that there is power in
error, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, may
eat its way to the vitals if not eradicated.
1t is useless to attempt to convince those
already in armed resistance to the truth,
but their baleful influence upon others
must be negatived. The contest must
therefore go on, and the transport
ers of the country, the conductors of
great enterprises and industries demand
ing aggregation of capital and corporate
union of effort must resist the rabid crowd
the real enemy of progress seeking to
eriuple their energies, content to know