It seems dreadful to see a little girl who's as sweet and gentle as can be in every other way, so venomous.

She says the other little girls at school and the boys, too, are all the same way.

Oh, dear," she sighed, "why will the General Office be so unkind and unjust?
Why, I couldn't be happy, with all the money in the world, if I thought that even one little child hated me--hated me so that it would spit and hiss at me.
And it's not one child, it's all of them, so Sidney says; and think of all the grown people who hate the road, women and men, the whole county, the whole State, thousands and thousands of people.

Don't the managers and the directors of the road ever think of that?
Don't they ever think of all the hate that surrounds them, everywhere, everywhere, and the good people that just grit their teeth when the name of the road is mentioned?
Why do they want to make the people hate them?
No," she murmured, the tears starting to her eyes, "No, I tell you, Mr.Presley, the men who own the railroad are wicked, bad-hearted men who don't care how much the poor people suffer, so long as the road makes its eighteen million a year.

They don't care whether the people hate them or love them, just so long as they are afraid of them.