Freight rates and passenger rates are taxes which the transportation companies levy upon freight and passengers. When Sam Spencer added 525 per cent. to the net revenue of his masters, he had to tax it out of the people who patronized the Southern Railroad.
Who were these people? Mostly, Southern people. The tax was levied upon the South, and paid by the South.
Sam Spencer is a Southern man?
Bless you, yes!
Wall Street hired him to systematize the robbery of his own people, and he has done it.
“We lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than we have lost to the railroads under Sam Spencer.”
During the eleven years of his rule he has plundered his own people of more money than they lost by Sherman’s “Marching through Georgia.”
The people of the South have lost more to the Wall Street railway corporations than they lost to the whole of Sherman’s army.
The battles of the Civil War were bloody, for it was Greek meet Greek, and it was, in truth, the tug of war. Especially were the battles bloody when Sherman came down against us, for he brought Western troops—the best that the Union had.