THE LATEST TRADE OUTRAGE!
(Scene from the New and Unpopular Sensation Drama of "The Monopoly-Monster and the Maid Forlorn.")
["A large number of complaints have reached the Board of Trade with regard to increase in the new rates adopted by Railway Companies as from January 1 ... among other complaints of increase of rates for the conveyance of milk, grain, hay and other agricultural produce, firewood, live stock, coal and coke, iron and hardware."—Sir Courtenay Boyle to the Secretary of the Railway Companies Association.]
Oh! who'll bring a rescue or two to the help of a much-injured Maid,
Thus cruelly bound hand and foot, and by miscreants ruthlessly laid
On the lines, in the Pathway of Peril? The Monster snorts nearer! Bohoo!
'Tis a Melodrame-crisis of danger!—and who'll bring a rescue or two?
The Maid (British Trade), has been harried and hunted by villains and robbers,
By bold, bad, black-masked foreign foes, and by home-bred monopolist jobbers.
In town or in country alike the poor dear has been chevied and chased.