The Magnate Or the People Author:John Martin Johnson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW. No government that failed to assert the principle and to rigidly adhere to the principle of Equality under the law, with speci... more »al privileges to none, could ever be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. No government that ever entrusted to private corporate control its railroad system, adhered to the principle of Equality under the law. In every charter which it granted to a railroad corporation the government trampled that principle under foot, legalized special privileges, and established monopoly. The very life of democracy, the very life of a government, of, by, and for the people, rests upon the inviolable adherence to the principle of Equality -under the law. Yet, under the law, we have established nation-wide monopoly. That is why our government is not a government of, by, and for the people; but a government of, by, and for the railroads, trusts, special privilege, and Big Business. Was it because we did not understand the term democracy, or because we did not understand that a railroad was a monopoly that we allowed railroads to be established under private control? Was it because we believed we were so great and so powerful that we could do what no other people had ever succeeded in doing, do the impossible;—establish special privilege and monopoly in a government that was to be of, by, and for the people? Was there no statesmanship to perceive the monopoly character of the railroad, before the people felt its monopoly power and sought relief in the folly of competition, only to make a bad situation worse? Do all the people perceive its monopoly and special privilege character now? To call the government that grants charters to private railroad corporations and grants other special privileges, a democracy; to s...« less