They are really working for each other, but between the two there is a bridge, and all the food that goes to the city has to go over that bridge, and all the furniture, clothing, etc., that goes to the country will have to go over it. Now this bridge belongs to a fat capitalist, who buys the food for as little as he can from the country folks and sells it for as much as he can to the city people, and he buys the clothing from the city people as cheap as he can and sells it for as much as he can to the people in the country. In this manner, he gets them going and coming. And while the workers on both sides of the river are hungry and go in rags, he grows sleek and fat. The private ownership of railroads works a good deal in the same way.
How Railroads Were Built.
In most countries the railroads were built by the capitalists and now belong to the people. In this country the railroads were built by the people and belong now to the capitalists. All in all, the government of the United States presented the railroad promoters with 266,000,000 acres of land. That is as much land as there is in Germany and France, two countries which support 100,000,000 people. Up to 1896, the land grants of the government to the railroad companies amounted to 9,600 acres of land for every mile of track built in the United States. If the railroad promoters sold this land at an average of $2.00 an acre, they got more money from the government than it cost them to build the railroads. Besides the land grants, our paternal government gave to railroad companies in many cases a cash bonus. The Central Pacific Railroad, for instance, received from Congress every alternate section in a strip of land 40 miles
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