corporations, he counseled moderation and lawful reprisals. Land
syndicates, railroads, foreign capital in whatever employment, were prime
necessities in any new and growing commonwealth. The province of the
people was not to wreck the ship, but to guide it. And the remedy for all
ills lay in controlling legislation, faithfully and rigidly enforced.

"My friends: I'm only a plain, hard-handed farmer, as those of you who are
my fellow townsmen can testify. But I've seen what you've seen, and I've
suffered what you've suffered. Year after year we send our representatives
to the legislature, and what comes of it? Why, these corporations, looking
only to their own interests, as they're in duty bound to do, buys 'em if
they can. You can't blame 'em for that; it's business--their business. But
it is our business, as citizens of this great commonwealth, to prevent it.
We have good laws on our statute books, but we need more of 'em; laws for
control, with plain, honest men at the capital, in the judiciary, in every
root and branch of the executive, to enforce 'em. With such laws, and such
men to see that they are executed, there wouldn't be any more extortion,
any more raising of the rates of transportation on the produce of our
ranches and farms merely because the eastern market for that particular
product happened to jump a few cents on the dollar.

"No, my friends; plain, hard-handed farmer though I be, I can see what
will follow an honest election of the people, by the people, and for the
people. The State can be--it ought to be--sovereign within its own
boundaries. If we rise up as one man next Tuesday and put a ticket into
the ballot-box that says we are going to make it so, and keep it so,
you'll see a new commodity tariff put into effect on the Western Pacific
Railroad the day after."

The speaker paused, and into the little gap of silence barked a voice from