sweeping rights and properties. In turn, the law interposed no
effective hindrance to the seizing of their possessions by any other
group proving its power to grasp them. All of this was done under
nominal forms of law, but differed little in reality from the methods
during medieval times when any baron could take another baron's
castle and land by armed force, and it remained his until a stronger
man came along and proved his title likewise.

Long before the railroad had been accepted commercially as a feasible
undertaking, the trading and land-owning classes, as has been
repeatedly pointed out, had demonstrated very successfully how the
forms of government could be perverted to enrich themselves at the
expense of the working population.

Taxation laws, as we have seen, were so devised that the burden in a
direct way fell lightly on the shipping, manufacturing, trading,
banking and land-owning classes, while indirectly it was shoved
almost wholly upon the workers, whether in shop, factory or on farm.
Furthermore, the constant response of Government, municipal, State
and National, to property interests, has been touched upon; how
Government loaned vast sums of public money, free of interest, to the
traders, while at the same time refusing to assist the impoverished
and destitute; how it granted immunity from punishment to the rich
and powerful, and inflicted the most drastic penalties upon poor
debtors and penniless violators of the law; how it allowed the
possessing classes to evade taxation on a large scale, and effected
summarily cruel laws permitting landlords to evict tenants for non-
payment of rent. These and many other partial and grievously
discriminative laws have been referred to, as also the refusal of
Government to interfere in the slightest with the commercial frauds