have constantly gone hand in hand everywhere with the development
of the public utilities. The relation of franchise corporations
to municipalities is probably the thing which has chiefly opened
the eyes of Americans to certain glaring defects in their
democratic organization. The popular agitation which has resulted
has led to great political reforms. The one satisfaction which we
can derive from such a relation as that given above is that,
after all, it is representative of a past era in our political
and economic life. No new "Metropolitan syndicate" can ever
repeat the operations of its predecessors. Practically every
State now has utility commissions which regulate the granting of
franchises, the issue of securities, the details of construction
and equipment and service. An awakened public conscience has
effectively ended the alliance between politics and franchise
corporations and the type of syndicate described in the foregoing
pages belongs as much to our American past as that rude frontier
civilization with which, after all, it had many characteristics
in common.



CHAPTER VI. MAKING THE WORLD'S AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY

The Civil War in America did more than free the negro slave: it
freed the white man as well. In the Civil War agriculture, for
the first time in history, ceased to be exclusively a manual art.
Up to that time the typical agricultural laborer had been a bent
figure, tending his fields and garnering his crops with his own
hands. Before the war had ended the American farmer had assumed
an erect position; the sickle and the scythe had given way to a