contractors that are unjust and cruel, and the men themselves that are
not 'wide awake enough' in allowing themselves to be so imposed upon."

The whole fault is yours, "Uncle," and lies at the doors of the people,
who, having the power to protect the laborer by law, neglect to exercise
that power, and, by this their neglect of duty, create your Van
Stingeys, your Lofins, your Blind Bill Timenses, your Whinnys, and other
villains, who are a disgrace to our country, and whose crimes,
encouraged by our silence and tolerance, will ultimately bring the
vengeance of Heaven on us and our children. _Quod avertat Deus_.

It has been remarked by some, that if the tears shed by emigrants on the
bosom and on the banks of the great Father of Waters, the Mississippi,
were preserved in a great reservoir, they would form a lake many fathoms
in depth and many miles in circumference. With less exaggeration can it
be stated, if the number of men killed, murdered, and otherwise cut off,
on the railroads of the Union, by the ill treatment, neglect, cruelty,
avarice, and malice of contractors, storekeepers, overseers, and
bosses,--if all these men's dead bodies were placed within three feet of
one another, or even side by side, they would cover, from end to end,
the ten thousand miles of railroad that are within the United States.
And if the tears shed on the Mississippi would make a lake the size of
the Lakes of Killarney, the tears shed on the railroads would form a
body of salt, burning water, as great in bulk as Lakes Superior and
Ontario together. If there be any irresponsible, cruel, barbarous
despotism on earth, in savage or civilized life, it is emphatically in
the discipline that prevails on the railroad _régime_. There is no man
daring enough to speak a word in favor of the cruelly-oppressed railroad
man, except an odd priest here and there; and even he has often to do it
at the risk of having a revolver presented at him, or having his