Great Fortunes from Railroads

d the working class? Of the powerful few, whether political or industrial, the conventional histories hand down grossly biased and distorted chron

e in the days when kingcraft was supremely exalted, that it is only the mighty few w

BY PROPERTY

names and dates, dull or highly-colored hackneyed splu

r politician or set of politicians, have been the dominating factors in the decision and sway of public affairs. No greater error could be formulated. Behind the ostentatious and impo

usually covertly, who influenced and man

often beclouded and bemuddled the popular mind. It was their material ideals and interests

s Government was what may be ca

and the shipping merchants were the dictators of laws. Then from these two classes and from the tradesmen sprang a third class, the bankers, who, after a continuous orgy of bribery, rose to a high pitch of power. At the same time, other classes of property owners were sharers in varying degrees in directing Government. One of these was the slaveholders of the South, desperately increasing their clutch on government admini

wning class. From about the year 1845 to 1890 it was the most puissant governing class in the United States, and only ceased being distinctly so when the i

at one time or another by bribery or by invidiously fraudulent transactions; and how the bankers, who originally were either tradesmen, factory owners or landowners, had obtained their charters and privileges by widespread bribery

OF THE NON-

edly or apparently, a property regime, what was

cessary contrast of how Government and capitalist acted toward the worker. It was the worker who tilled the ground and harvested the produce nourishing nations; whose labor, mental or manual, brought forth the thousand and one commodities, utensils, implements, articles and luxuries necessary to the material wants of civilization. Verily, what of the great hosts of toiler

imple statement that many of the factory owners and tradesmen bribed representative bodies to give them railroad charters and bountiful largess. He will seek to know how, as specifically as

he rise and climax of industrial establishments; how they subverted the functions of government to their own ends; stole inventions right and left and drove inventors to poverty and to the grave; defrauded the community of incredible amounts by evading taxation; oppressed their workers to a degree that in future times will read like the acts of a class outsava

roperty- a period even more pronounced now-and to give a deeper insight into the conditions against which millions had to cont

rest laws were enacted against the worker. For a long time it was a crime for him to go on a strike. In the first strike in this country of which there is any record-that of a number of sailors in New York City in 1803, for better wages-the leader was arrested, indicted and sent to prison. The formidable machinery of Government was employed by the ruling commercial

MACY OF E

o themselves, the capitalists declared it to be a settled principle that Government should not be paternalistic; they asserted that i

tions in which the sacrifice of human life was held subordinate to the gathering of profits, or by forcing them to work or live in disease-breeding places. [Footnote: The slum population of the United States increased rapidly. "According to the best estimates," stated the "Seventh Special Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Labor-The Slums of Great Cities, 1894," "the total slum p

air and sunlight," he wrote, "will kill the germs, and yet it is estimated that there are eight millions of people who will eventually die from consumption unless strenuous efforts are made to comba

sought to improve their condition by joining in that community of action called a strike, the same code of laws adjudged them criminals. At once, th

entious cultured and refined classes of the day, saw nothing wrong in this exploitation. The reason was obvious. Their power, their elegant mansions, their silks and satins, their equipage and superior opportunities for enjoyment all were based upon the sweat and blood of these so-called free white men, women and children of the North, who toiled even harder than the

he ruling propertied classes, delight in picturing those times as "the good old times," wh

SSANT W

uncompromising warfare has been going on between oppressors and oppressed. Apart from the class distinctions and the bitterness manifested in settlement and colonial times in this country- reference

terrible instruments for suppressing any attempt at protest, peaceful or otherwise. Notwithstanding this massing of power and force, the working class has at no time been passive or acquiescent. It has allowed itself to be duped; it has permitted its ranks to be divided by false issues; it has often been blind at critical times, and has made no concerted effort as

TRUGGLE FOR BE

take summary action to put it down. As for the capitalists-the shipping merchants, the boot and shoe manufacturers, the iron masters and others-they not only denied the right of the workers to organize, while insisting that they themselves were entitled to combine, but they inveighed against the ten-hour demand as "unreasonable conditions which the folly and ca

e very nerve of industry and good morals by dictating the hours of labor, abrogating the good old rule of our fathers and pointing out the most

aving no time for reading, self-education, social intercourse or acquainting themselves with refinement, they often developed brutal propensities. In proportion to the length of time and the rigor with which they were exploited, they degenerated morally and inte

the period were full of mechanics whom serfdom or poverty had stung on to commit some crime or other. However trifling the offence, or whatever the justifiable provocation, the law made no trades-union memorialized Congress to limit the hours of labor of those employed on the public works to ten hours a day. The pathos of this petition! So unceasingly had the workers been lied to by politicians, newspapers, clergy and employers, that they did not

ork in Relation to The Money Market" complained to Congress in 1833 t

ignorant," th

ur Federal Constitution, chartered many companies to engage in the manufacture of paper mon

earning it, we virtually license them to take so much of the property of the community as they may happen to fancy, witho

l the fruits of labor, are facts beyond dispute; it is equally undeniable that there is a point which capitalists cannot exceed without injuring themselves, for when by their exertions they so far de

s own era; a very different petition, it will be noticed, from the appealing, cringing petitions sent

standing armies to keep order; expensive wars are created merely to lull for a time the clamo

ion among the working classes. And the remedy proposed in the memorial? A settled principle of national policy should be laid down by Congress that the whole of the remaining of the public lands should forever continue to be the public property of the nation "and accordingly, cause them to be laid out from time to time, as the w

ney every cent of which is in the end deriv

measure (the protective tariff system) with a distinct view to promote the interests of labor; and all of the advantages of this one have be

MILITIA AGAINS

urriedly substituted non-union men in their places. When the union men went from dock to dock, trying to induce the newcomers to side with them, the shipping merchants pretended that a riot was under way and made frantic calls upon the autho

the skilled worker was consequently producing far more goods than in former years, the masters-as the capitalis

to the demand. Other capitalists determined to break up the unions on the ground that they were a conspiracy. At the instigation of several boot and shoe manufacturers, the officials of Boston brought a suit against the Boston Journeymen Bootmakers' Society. The court ruled against the bootmakers and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty. On appeal to the Supreme Court, Robert Rantoul, the attorney for the society, so ably demolished the prosecution's p

anization. The possibility of such strength transferred to politics affrighted the ruling classes. Where before this, the politicians had contemptuously treated the worker's petitions, certain that he could always be led blindly to vote the usual partisan tickets, it now dawned upon

THE LAB

held out by the politicians. That adroit master of political chicanery, President Van Buren, hastened to issue an executive order on April 10, 1840, directing the establishment of a ten-hour day, between April and Sept

the established political parties, and to prevent the massing of workers in a party of their own, the politicians began an insidious system of bribing these leaders to turn traito

ies. Caucuses and primaries were packed, votes bought, ballot boxes stuffed and election returns falsified. It did not matter to the corporations generally which of the old political parties was in power; some manufacturers or merchants mig

OF POLITIC

ental interests of the manufacturing capitalists of the North. The only peril that the capitalist class feared was the creation of a distinct, disciplined and determined workingmen's party. This they knew would, if successful, seriously endanger and tend to sweep away the injustices and oppressions upon which they,

t checked. Its development to the unbearable maximum had to come in order to prepare the ripe way for a newer stage in civilization. The capitalist was an o

trasts. The aim is to give a sufficient historical perspective of times when Government was manipulated

ists met it, let us instance the resolutions of the New England Workingmen's Association, adopted in 1845. With the manifold illustrations in mind of how the powers of Government had been used and were being increasingly use

of all wealth are deprived not merely of its enjoyment, but also of the social and civil rights which belong to humanity and the race; and, whereas, we are convinced that reform of those abuses must depend upon ourse

e most virulent type, but he leagued himself with the greatest thieves of the day-Tweed and Jay Gould, for example-received large bribes for defending them and their interests in a newspaper of which he became the owner-the New

that very time an army of workers, estimated at 2,000,000, was out of employment. Yet it was not considered a panic year; certainly the industrial establishments of the country were not in the throes of a commercial cataclysm such

ompanies to whose profit it was to carry large batches; by the solicitations of the agents of American corporations seeking among the oppressed peoples

ce, it was true, but they saw-or at least the intelligent of them soon discerned-that the personnel and laws of the United States Government were determined by the great capitalists. The people were allowed to go through the form of voting; the moneyed interests, by controlling the machinery of the dominant political parties, dictated who the can

THE SWAY OF

facturing, railroad and banking interests had, on the whole, deemed it wise not to exercise this power directly but indirectly. The representatives sent to Congress were largely lawyers elected by their influence and money.

and directly by them. Presently we find such men as Leland Stanford, of the Pacific railroad quartet, and one of the arch-bribers and thieves of

of Colorado; Knox, of Pennsylvania; Foraker, of Ohio, and a quota of others. The popular jest as to the United States Senate being a "millionaires' club" has become antiquated; much more appropriately it could be termed a "multimillionaires' club." While in both houses of Congress are legislators who represent the almost extinguished middle class, their votes are as ineffective as their declamations are fl

fare. But it is of the greatest and most instructive interest to give a succession of contrasts. And here some complex factors intervene. Those cold, unimpassioned academicians who can perpetuate fallacies and lies in the most polished and dispassionate language, will object to the stat

G OF THE M

o remember that the last few decades have co

t lamented the decay of its own power, and tried by every means at its command to thwart the purposes of the trusts. This middle class had bribed and cheated and had exploited the worker. For decades it had shaped public opinion to support the dictum that "competition was the life of trade." It had, by this

o be done no matter how. It was intolerable that industrial development could be stopped by a middle class which, for self-interest, would have kept matters at a standstill. Self-interest likewise demanded that the nascent combinations and trusts get and exercise governmental power by any means they could use. For a while triumphant in passing certain laws which, it was fatuously expected, would wipe the trusts out of existence, the middle class was hopeless

AND THE U

appalling suffering on every hand the Government remained indifferent. The reasons were two-fold: Government was administered by the capitalist class whose interest it was not to allow any measure to be passed which might

d not suffer themselves to undergo even the farce of prosecution. Such few prosecutions as were started with suspicious bluster by the Government against the Standard Oil Company, the Sugar Trust, the Tobacco Trust and other trusts proved to be absolutely harmless, and have had no result except to strengthen the position

to relieve the unemployed, their meetings were broken up and the assembled brutally clubbed, as happened in Tompkins square in New York City in the panic of 1873, in Washington in 1892, and in Chicago and in Union square, New York City, in the panic of 1908. The newspapers represented these meetings as those of irresponsible agitators, inciting the "mob" to violence. The clubbing of the unemploy

poiling of the working class while the capitalists were using the Government as an expropriating machine. Meanwhile, how was the grea

THE FARMING

dily grew worse. In the hope of improving their condition large numbers migrated fro

ic idea of how vast and widespread were the railroad holdings in the various States, this tabulation covering the years up to 1883 will suffice: In the States of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi about 9,000,000 acres in all; in Wisconsin, 3,553,865 acres; Missouri, 2,605,251 acres; Arkansas, 2,613,631 acres; Illinois, 2,595,053 acres; Iowa, 4,181,929 acres; Michigan, 3,355,943 acres;

er had a bad season or two, and could no longer pay the interest, foreclosure would result. But whether crops were good or bad, the American farmer constantly had to

most improved agricultural machines. For these he was charged five and six times the sum it cost the manufacturers to make and market them. Us

verything that he bought he had to pay excessive prices. He, even more than the industrial working c

they were out of the ground. These crops were sold to the working class at exorbitant prices. The small farmer labored incessantly, only to find himself getting poorer. It served political purpose well to describe glowingly th

THE GREAT

tions, the farmers of many States, particularly of the rich agricultural States of the West, were unable t

by Congress- measures which have been described-land grabbers succeeded in obtaining possession of an immense area in tha

22,500 square miles, a territory three times as large as New Jersey. The stupendous land frauds in all of the Western and Pacific States by which capitalists obtained "an empire of land, timber and mines" are amply described in numerous documents of the period. These land thieves, as was developed in official investigations

00 acres. This grabbing of large tracts has discouraged immigration to California more than any other single factor. A family living on a small holding in a vast plain, with hardly a house in sight, will in time become a very lonely family indeed, and w

IMMENSE ARE

quote one-that of the Swamp Land Investigating Committee of the California Assembly of 1873. Dealing with the fraudulent methods by which huge areas of the finest lands in California were obtained for practically nothing as "swamp" land, this committee reported, citing from

n some countries, where laws are more rigid and terms less refined, would be termed fraudulent, but we can only designate it as keen foresight and wise (for the land grabbers) construction of

the evidence that "the grossest frauds have been committ

rs, at the option of the applicants. In these cases, parties on the "inside" of the Land Office "ring" had but to wait until some one should come along who want

s as to the "swampy" character of the land. In the mountain valleys and on the other side of the Sierras, the lands are overflowed from melting snow exactly when the water is most wanted; but the simple presence of the water

n, Forty-ninth Congress, 1885-86, Vol. ii.] "I thus found this office," he wrote, "a mere instrumentality in the hands of 'surveying rings.'" [Footnote: Ibid., 166] "Sixteen townships examined in Colorado in 1885 were found to have been surveyed on paper only, no actual surveying having been done. [Foo

hips the "larger portion" of which was not "known" to be of a mineral character. These "regulations," which were nothing more or less than an extra-legal license to land-grabbers, also granted surveys for desert lands and timber lands under the timber-land act. By the terms of this act, it will be recalled, those who entered a

tlers should be partly applied in payment for the lands thus surveyed. Together, these two laws made the grasping of land on an extensive scale a simple process. The "settler" (which so often meant, in reality, the capitalist) could secure the collusion of the Land Office, and have fraudulent surveys made. Under these surveys he c

S EXCLUDED FRO

nd powerful syndicates

ar

entered under the timber land, pre?mption, commuted homestead, timber-culture and desert-land acts. So thoroughly organized has been the entire system of procuring the survey and making illegal entry of lands, that agents a

ufactured as a basis for survey; contracts are entered into and pushed through the General Land Office in hot haste; a skeleton survey is made... entry papers, made perfect in form by competent

100,000 acres of the choicest red-wood lands in that State. These lands were then estimated to be worth $100 an acre. The cost of

sota had been fraudulently seized in the same way. [Footnote: Ibid., 168.] In all of the Western States and Territories these fraudulent surveys had accomplished the seizure of the best and most valuable lands. "To enable the pressing tide of Western immigration to secure homes upon the public domain," Commissioner Sparks urged, "it is necessary... that hundreds of millions of acres of public lands now appropriated should be wrested from illegal control." [Footnote: Ibid.] But nothing was done to recover these stolen lands. At the very time Commissioner Sparks-one of the very few incorruptible Commissioners of Public Lands,-was writing this, the land-grabbing interests were making the greatest exertions to get him removed.

s [Government agencies]; and they menace the Indian agents and others who may interfere with them, with dismission from office through Mr. Astor. They say that a representation from Messrs. Crooks and Stewart (Mr. Astor's ag

PRIVATE LAND

, Arizona, Colorado and other States were obtained by collusion with the Government administrative officials and Congress. These were secured u

as well as by other similar transactions, that one of the American multimillionaires obtained his original millions. This individual was Stephen B. Elkins, at present a powerful member of the United States Sena

M. M. Mills, a member of the New Mexico Legislature. He transferred the title to T. B. Catron, the United States Attorney for New Mexico. Presently Elkins turned up as the principal owner. The details of how this claim was repeatedly shown up to be fraudulent by Land Commissioners and Congressional Committees; how the settlers in New Mexico fought it and sought to have it declared void, and the law enforced; [Footnote: "Land Titles in New Mexico and Colorado," House Reports First Session, Fifty-second Congress, 1891-92, Vol. iv, Report No. 1253. Also, House Reports, First Session, Fifty-secon

than 1,500,000 acres, but Congress conditionally confirmed their claim to the extent of forty-eight thousand acres only, asserting that the Mexican laws had limited to this area the area of public lands that could be granted to one individual. In 1880 the Land Office re-opened the claim, and a new survey was made by surveyors in collusion with the claimants, and hired by them. When the report of this survey reached Washingt

family." was fraudulently surveyed and enlarged to 103,959.31 acres-a survey amended later by reducing the area to 23,661 acres. [Footnote: House Reports, etc, 1885-86, ii: 172.] The B. M. Montaya grant in New Mexico, limited to forty-eight thousand acres, under the Mexican colonization laws, was fraudulently surveyed for 151,056.97 acres. The Estancia grant in New Mexico also restricted u

large number of forged or

94,515 acres, and the Sangre de Cristo grant 998,780.46 acres. All of these were corruptly obtained. [Footnote: See Resolution of House Committee on Private Land Claims, June, 1892, demanding a thorough investigation. The House took no action.-Report No. 1824, 1892.] Scores of other claims were confirmed for lesser areas. Du

URY AND FRAUD

ch more liable to be imposed upon by fraudulent title papers." [Footnote: "The Public Domain," etc. 1124. Also see next Footnote.] In fact, the many official reports describe with what cleverness the claimants to these great areas forged their papers, and the facility with which they bought up witnesses to perjure for them. Finding it impossible to go back of the aggregate and corrob

ch grants in New Mexico, it is not possible to accept the statement of this witness as to the west boundary of this grant, which he locates at such a distance from the east line as to include more than four times the amount of land actually

sfied that thousands of claims without foundation in law or equity, involving millions of acres of public land, have been annually passed to patent upon the single proposition that nobody but the Government had any adverse interest. The vast machinery of the land department has been devoted to the chief result of conveying the ti

is area. The House Committee on Private Land Claims reported on April 29, 1892: "A long list of alleged Mexican and Spanish grants within the limits of the Texas cession have been confirmed, or quit claimed by Congress, under the false representation that said alleged grants were

thods of the seizure of land by the capitalist

eep. In about the year 1874, the agricultural movement began; large numbers of intending farmers migrated to Texas, particularly with the expectation of raising cattle, then a highly profitable business. They found huge stretches of the land already preempted by

secured the ownership of large bodies of land." [Footnote: House Reports, Second Session, Forty-eighth Congress, 1884-85, Vol. xxix, Ex. Doc. No. 267:43.] The committee went on to describe how, to a very considerable extent, "foreigners of large means" had obtained these great areas, and had gone into the cattle business, and how the titles to these lands were se-cured not only by individuals but by forei

s party, to a great extent, was composed of the Western farming element. In his letter accepting the nomination of that

and occupy the few acres remaining, has been scouted, ridiculed, and defeated in Congress. In consequence of this stupendous system of land-grabbing, millions of the young men of America, and millions more of industrious people from abroad, see

OF FARM

-involving an extended work in themselves-some

main by the Government, and converted into forest reservations. Large portions of such of the agricultural, grazing, mineral and timber lands as were not seized by various corporations and favored individuals before 1880, have been expropriated west of the Mississippi since then, and the process is still going, notably in Alaska. The nominal records of the General Land

nters. One-fourth of all the farms in the United States were cultivated by men who did not own them. Furthermore, and even more impressive, there were 3,323,876 farm laborers composed of men who did not even rent land. Equally significant was the increasing tendency to the operating of large farms b

facts, and whose volume upon the subject issued at the time is we

cultivating the soil; 1,508,828 capitalist or speculating owners, who own the soil and employ laborers; 804,522 of well-to-do farmers who

goes on t

ootnote: "Labor, Land and Law": 353. It is difficult to get reliable statistics on the number of mortgages on farms, and on the number of farm tenants. The U.S. Industrial Commission estimated, in 1902, that fifty per cent, of the homesteads in Eastern Minnesota were mortgaged. Although admitting that such a condition had been general, it represented in its Final Report that a large

DISPOSSESS

as been going on unceasingly. If the process was so marked in 1900 what must it be now? All of the factors operating to impoverish the farming population of the United States and turn them into homeless tenants have been a thousandfold intensified and augmented in t

ut in the last few years an extraordinary sight has been witnessed. Hundreds of thousands of American farmers migrated to the virgin fi

of capitalist: if not hostile to the industrial working classes, he has been generally apathetic. But now he is being forced to the point o

omain to the few, while dispossessing the tens of millions, we will now