Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/90

86 was grossly exaggerated and misrepresented. The rantings of their more extreme spokesmen were cited as proof that they were wholly without any just ground for complaint. Many thought them bent on confiscation. The hard times following the panic of 1873 were laid at the door of the granger legislation. Nevertheless, the main contentions of the farmers were upheld by the Supreme Court. The granger movement did much toward changing the railway policy of a nation.

Professor Ripley well says:

The demand for equality of opportunity at the hands of the railways is part of a much larger movement. The widespread protest against the undue exactions of public utility enterprises in various cities, and the creation of commissions for their control is but another phase of the same thing. Likewise, the movement for the control of the large industrial combination is at bottom a demand for fair play. The revolt against the business methods exemplified by the Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Companies made these concerns so notorious that the Supreme Court ordered their dissolution. In the course of these decisions, price-cutting limited to a portion of the market or to a single line of goods produced by a trust, trade wars which aim at buying up