Success Quote by John Moody

A whole economy is lined up like plaintiffs in a class-action suit, and Moody’s sentence reads like an early map of American capitalism’s pressure points. By stacking “farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and the traveling public” into one breathless roll call, he frames transportation not as a niche industry squabble but as the central artery of daily life. The railroad (and its cousins in shipping and freight) isn’t just moving goods; it is deciding who gets to participate in the market on fair terms.

Moody’s intent is managerial and political at once: to argue that the “transportation lines” have become powerful enough to manufacture conflict across sectors, turning private pricing and routing decisions into public crisis. The subtext is that complaints are not isolated gripes; they’re symptoms of structural imbalance. When he says “troubles,” he’s politely pointing at rate discrimination, monopolistic practices, and the opaque deals that let some shippers thrive while others hemorrhage. “Struggles” does double duty, hinting at both economic hardship and the rising confrontations of the era: regulatory fights, populist agitation, and the growing belief that infrastructure demands oversight.

His most telling move is the evasive phrase “that problem,” as if naming it too sharply would sound radical. That vagueness is strategic. It invites consensus among business and public readers while keeping the proposed remedy open-ended: stronger regulation, antitrust action, or reorganized corporate governance. The closing note - “apparently far from solution” - isn’t despair so much as a warning: when the pipes of commerce are privately controlled, every sector eventually discovers it’s bargaining from weakness.