THE PILOTS'*   MONOPOLY.

159

The owners and captains were the only obstruction that lay
between the association and absolute power; and at last this one
was removed. Incredible as it may seem, the owners and captains
deliberately did it themselves. When the pilots' association an-
nounced, months beforehand, that on the first day of September,

A JUSTIFIABLE ADVANCE.

1861, wages would be advanced to
five hundred dollars per month, the
owners and captains instantly put
freights up a few cents, and explained to the farmers along the river
the necessity of it, by calling their attention to the burdensome rate
of wages about to be established. It was a rather slender argument,
but the farmers did not seem to detect it. It looked reasonable to
them that to add five cents freight on a bushel of corn was justifiable