Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/738

 706 Power of raihvay companies. [ISGO- labours of the great entrepreneurs whom the situation brought forth, and the machinations of the audacious plunderers who were mixed up with them in the market. Furthermore, it was through the railroads that the people were for the first time brought face to face with the problem of the new capi- talism and the power of monopoly. When a railroad entered a new region, it seemed by some magic "sesame" to create wealth in its course; but the very fact that that wealth was the creation of the road involved a serious danger. For the first time the people of a large area found their welfare dependent on the action of a single corporation. Wherever competition appeared, discrimination followed ; and in the scramble for business the stronger shippers were favoured at the expense of the weaker. Where there was no competition, the public felt that they were being oppressed by a monopoly, to make up for sacrifice rates elsewhere a feeling which was intensified by the absentee ownership of the western roads. The " Granger movement " against the railroads, which in some of the Western States was the result of these conditions, was unreasoning in its prejudice, misguided in its efforts at legislative reform, and injurious in its immediate results ; but it was the natural protest of a democratic community against the domination of corporate capital. The actual offences of the roads were less important than they were made out to be at the time ; but the masterful men who controlled them, conscious of the great development they were advancing, and eager for their rewards, were little tolerant of public feeling. To them the interference with their property seemed an insolent invasion of private rights. Although the lesson has often been disregarded, it was nevertheless made clear that, if it comes to a struggle between capital and the people, the people can dominate when they will. With such a combination of advantages as has now been briefly described, the progress of industry was inevitably rapid. Some figures for the recent development in special industries will be given in the next section, and it will suffice for the present to point out that almost every industry that had been in existence at the time of the war continued to grow, while a large number of entirely new industries sprang into prominence as the result of new discoveries and inventions. While the population was, roughly speaking, doubled between 1860 and 1890, the capital invested in manufactures increased sixfold, from $1,000,000,000 to over $6,000,000,000, the value of the products above fivefold, the number of persons employed threefold, and their wages nearly fivefold. Such a growth of the factory system as this could not fail to introduce all the problems of organised labour. Trade unions and strikes had been known at an early date ; and the literature of the fifty years before the war shows that our conceptions of the idyllic conditions of the labourer of that period as a democratic artisan are somewhat exaggerated.