Great Fortunes from Railroads

aggressively set out to grasp a fourth-the Erie Railroad. This was another of the railroads built largely wi

n looted the railroad with such consummate thoroughness that in order to avert its bankruptcy they were obliged to borrow funds from Daniel Drew. This man was an imposing financial personage in his day. Illiterate, unscrupulous, picturesque in his very iniquities, he had once been a drover, and

ock market, careless of the condition of the road. At no time was he put to the inconvenience of even being questioned by the public authorities. On the contrary, the more millions he made the greater grew his prestige and power, the higher his standing in the community

RREACHES

on Drew brought in as fellow directors two young men, then obscure but of whom the world was to hear much-James Fisk, Jr., and Jay Gould. The narrative of how these three men formed a coalition against Vanderbilt; how they betrayed and then outgeneraled him at every turn; proved themselves of a superior cunning; sold him lar

e loot by fraudulently watering the stock, and then bribing the Legislature to legalize it as Gould did-Vanderbilt at once set in motio

ommittee, accepted $75,000 from Vanderbilt and then $100,000 from Gould, kept both sums,-and voted with the dominant Gould forces. It was only by means of the numerous civil and criminal writs issued by Vanderbilt judges that the old man contrived to force Gould and his accomplices into paying for the stock fraudulently unloaded upon him. The best terms that he could get was an unsatisfactory settlement which still left him to bear a loss of about two millions. The veteran trickster had never before been overreac

SOLIDATIO

n his Erie assault. Why not, he argued, combine the New York Central and the Hudson River com

ople of the State, and let them believe that they would get some returns for the large outlay of public funds advanced to the New York Central. No returns ever came. Vanderbilt, and the different groups before him, in control of the road had easily evaded it, just as in every direction the whole capitalist class pushed aside law whenever law conflicted with its aims and interests. It was the propertyless only for whom the execution of law was intended. Profits from the New York Central were far more than eight per cent.; by perjury and fr

remember that the middle class-the factory owners, jobbers, retail tradesmen and employing farmers-were everywhere seeking by the power of law to prevent the too great development of corporations. These, they apprehended, and with reason, would ultimately engulf them and their fortunes and impor

THE TRA

would rise in their wrath, denounce him, call together mass meetings, insist upon railroad competition and send pretentious, firebreathing delegates to the State Capitol. Let them thunder, said Vanderbilt

s which legislators never read, and with immense gravity argue away for hours to committees which had already been bought. The era was that of the Tweed regime, when the public funds of New York City and St

efore Special Investigating Committee of the New York Board of Aldermen. Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1877, Part II. Document No. 8:15-16.] Decades before this, legislators had been so thoroughly taught by the landowners and bankers ho

licans put their figures up to $25,000 each; one of them was bought. About thirty Republicans and Democrats in the New York Legislature organized themselves into a clique (long styled the "Black Horse Cavalry"), under the leadership of an energetic lobbyist, with a mutual pledge to vote as directed. [Footnote: Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1877, Part II, No

D THEFT OF

nderbilt secured, by one bill alone, the right to consolidate railroads, a free grant of franchises, and othe

00 share received a certificate for $180-that is to say, $80 in plunder for every $100 share that he held. [Footnote: Report of Assembly Committee on Railroads, testimony of Alexander Robertson, an expert accountant, 1879, i:994-999.] "Thus," reported the "Hepburn Committee" (the popular name for the New York State Assembly investigating committee of 1879), "as calculated by this expert, $53,507,060 were wrongfully added to the capit

he rich and influential, and the sparing of their feelings by the avoidance of harsh language. "Wrongfully added" would have been quickly changed into such inconsiderate terms as theft and ro

arce would have resulted, for the reason that the criminal machinery, while extraordinarily active in hurrying pett

ed railroads was less than $44,000,000," [Footnote: "Life of Simon Sterne," by John Foord, 1903:179-181.] In increasing the stock to $86,000,000 Vanderbilt and his confederates therefore stole the difference between the cost and the maximum of the stock issue. So great were the profits, both open

in greenbacks as a part of his share of the profits, and he had $20,000,000 more in new stock." [Footnote: "The Vanderbilts": 103. Croffut in a footnote tells this anecdote: "When the Commodore's portrait first appeared on the bonds of the Central, a holder of some called one day and said: 'Commodore, gla

tile interests recovered from their utter bewilderment at being routed than Vander

ion was now working wit

wer advanced; and it became ridiculously easier to get possession of more and more property. His very name became a terror to those of lesser capital, and the mere threat of pitting his enormous wealth against competitors whom he sought to destroy was generally a sufficient warrant for their surrender. After his consummation of the $44,000,000 theft in 18

* *

UP MORE

t of the proceeds to buy a controlling interest in the Lake Shore Railroad, a competing line.

y but dimly, stupidly, grasped the purport. That competition which they had so long shouted for as the only sensible, true

,000 to the retail tradesman, felt very comfortable in being able to look down with a conscious superiority upon the working class from whom their money was wrung. Scoffing at equality, they delighted in setting themselves up as a class infinitely above the

n effort, it viewed sullenly and enviously the development of an established magnate class which could look haughtily and dictatorially down upon it even as it constantly looked down upon the working class. The factory owner and the shopkeeper had for decades commanded the passage of summary legislation by which they were enabled to fleece the w

T AND HIS

his campaign of virulent assault was extremely suggestive. If there was any one line of business in w

udulent substitution of drugs and foods was adverted to. In the middle of the nineteenth century it was far more extensive. In submitting, on June 2, 1848,

year, that this country had become the great mart and receptacle of all of the refuse merchandise of that description, not only from the European warehouses, but from the whole Eastern market. [Footnote: Reports of Committees, First Session, Thirtieth Congress, 1847-48, Vol. iii, Report No. 664:3-The committe

ons having died from eating foods and drugs adulterated with poisonous substances, the Hous

articles used in the every day diet of vast numbers of people has grown, and is now practised, to such an extent as to seriously endanger the public health, and to call loudly for some sort of legislative correction. Drugs, liquors, articles of clothing, wall paper an

re largely of the nature of frauds upon the consumer ... and injure both the health and morals of the people." The committee declared that the practise o

ow that the commercial frauds were continuous, and began long befor

New York State Sealer of Weights and Measures asserted that, in that State alone, $20,000,000 was robbed from the consumers annually by these methods. Recent investigations by the Bureau of Standards of the United States Department of Commerce and Labor have shown that immense numbers of "crooked" scales are in use. It has been conclusively established by the investigations of Federal, State and municipal inspectors of weights and measures that there is hardly an article put up in bottle

d struck back in political action. Yet these were the men-these traders-who vociferously come forth with their ho

, and this self-interest becomes transposed, by a comprehensible process, into moralities. That which is profitable is perverted into a moral code; the laws passed, the customs introduced and persisted in, and the weight of the dominant classes all conspire

ire absence of adequate protection for the buyer of merchandise. Following the old dictum of Roman jurisprudence, "Let the buyer beware," the factory owner could at will oppress his workers, and compel them, for the scantiest wages, to make for his profit goods unfit for consumption. These articles the retailer sold without scruple over his counter; when the buyer was cheated or overcharged, as happened with great frequency, he had practically no redress in law. If the merchant were robbed of even ever so little he could retaliate by sending the guilty one to prison. But the merchant himself could invidiously and continuously rob the custo

into a sphere of superlative grand larceny. They knew with a cynical perception that society, with all its pompous pretensions to morality, had evolved a rule which worked w

M OF GRAN

ts administration of justice, theoretically supposed to be equal, it had made "justice" an expensive luxury available, in actual practice, to the rich only. The defrauder of large sums could, if prosecuted, use a part of that plu

impressive pile of loot. The contempt felt for the pickpocket was the antithesis of the general mercantile admiring view of the man who stole in grand style, especially when he was one of their own class. In speaking of the piratical operations of this or that magnate, it was common to hear many bu

ype were produced. Their methods at basis were not a growth independent of those of the business world and isolated from them. They were simply a development, and not merely one of standards as applied to morals, but of the mechanism of the social and industrial organization itself. Finally it is advisable

ES THE BUY

lroads that he had secured between Buffalo and Chicago, into one line with nearly 1,300 miles of road. The commercial classes were scared at the sight of such a great stretch of railroad-then considered an immense line-in the hands of one man, audacious, all- conquering, with power to enforce tribute at will. Again, Vanderbilt patronized the printing presses, and many more millions of stock, all fictiti

day to this. True, his eulogists admitted then, as they admit now, Vanderbilt was not overscrupulous in getting property that he wanted. But consider, they urge, the improvements he brought about on the railroads

erent reasons. The first consideration was that if the dividends were to be paid on the huge amount of fabricated stock, the road, of necessity, had to be put into a condition of fair efficiency to meet or surpass the competing facilities of other rai

NDS FOR P

passenger terminus in New York City. The entrance of the New York Central and the Harlem Railroads is by way of Park (formerly Fourth) avenue. This franchise, as we have seen, was obtained by bribery in 1832. But it was a qualified franchise. It reserved certain nominal restrictions in behalf of th

e of Fourth avenue. Dozens of dangerous crossings had resulted in much injury to life and many dea

ing even those petty reforms for which the people have contended, the ruling classes have ever deftly turned about when they could no longer withstand the popular demands, and have made those very reforms the basis for more spoliation and for a further intrenchment of their power. [Footnote: Commodore Vanderbilt's descendants, the present Vanderbilts, have been using the public outcry for a reform of conditions on the West Side of New York City, precisely as the original Vanderbilt utilized that for the improvement of Fourth avenue. The Hudson River division of the

ng the city to bear one-half the expense and giving him a perpetual franchise. This was in Tweed's time when the Common Council was composed largely of the most corrupt ward heelers,

osition of the people's rights and interests than the most hardened politicians, because they are not suspected of being corrupt, and their measures have the appearance of being enacted for the public good. The Tweed clique had been broken up, but the capitalists who had assiduously bribed its members and profited so hugely from its political acts, were untouched and in greater power than ever before. The source of all this corruption had not been struck at in the slightest. Tweed, t

ractically revoked the qualified parts of the charter of 1832. It also compassionately relieved him of the necessity of having to pay out about $4,000,000, in replacing t

AS IT W

ninth street only, this line was then the second most profitable in New York City. In 1864, for instance, it carried nearly six million passengers, and its gross earnings were $735,000. It did not pay,

imposed a tax of five per cent, on all gross receipts above Seventy-ninth street." When, however, the time came to collect, Vanderbilt innocently pretended that he had no means of knowing whether the fares were taken in on that section of the line, free of taxation, below Seventy-nint

y 1, 1872, the New York Council of Political Reform charged that in the single item of surface railways, New York City for a long period had been swindled annually out of at least a million dollars. This was an underestimate. All other sectio

tors and their families many severe deprivations; working for such low wages every cent obviously counted in the management of household affairs. But the methods of the capitalist class in deliberately pyramiding its profits upon the sufferings of the working class were evidenced in this c

n Street Railway Company, controlled by those eminent financiers, William C. Whitney and others, whose monumental briberies, thefts and piracies have frequently been uncovered in offi

giving him for nothing immensely valuable grants of land, shore rights and rights to land under water, more authorizations to make further consolidations and to issue more w

T'S CHIEF

rbilt sends to Albany every winter to say 'haw' and 'gee' to his cattle up there."] Every one who could in any way be used, or whose influence required subsidizing, was, in the phrase of the day, "taken care of." Great sums of money were distributed outright in bribes in the legislatures by lobbyists in Vanderbilt's pay. Supplementing this, an even more insidious system of bribery was carried on. Free passes f

d. This Depew continued as the wriggling tool of the Vanderbilt family for nearly half a century. Astonishing as it may seem, he managed to pass among the uninformed as a notable man; he was continuously eulogized; at one time he was boomed for the nomination for President of the United States, and in 1905 when the Vanderbilt family decided to have a direct representative in the United States Senate, they ordered the New Yor

ited States Senate, the President's Cabinet and the courts. Their long service as lobbyists or as retainers was the surest passport to high political or judicial position; their express duty was to vote or decide as their masters' interest bid them. So it was (as it is now) that men who had bribed right and left, and who had put their

great criminals absolve themselves and at the same time declare drastic punishment for the petty criminals. The property obtained by theft is converted into a sacred vested institution; the men who commit the theft or their hirelings sit in high places, and pass laws surrounding the p

lt's next move? The usual fraudulent one of securing exemption from taxation. He and other railroad

ow that he had his hundred millions he had the means to demand adulation and the semblance of respect, if not respect itself. The commercial world admired, even while it opposed, him; in his methods it saw at b

y fraud. But the prevalence of this fraud did not argue its practitioners to be inherently evil. They were victims of a system inexorably certain to arouse despicable qualities. The memorable difference between the two classes was that the workers, as the

ON BY ST

of forms, some of which are not ordinaril

ndering power in the hands of such men as Vanderbilt, Gould and Huntington, they were themselves exploiting and bribing on a widespread scale. Their great pose was that of a thorough commercial respectability; it was in this garb that they piously went to legislatures and demanded investigations into the rascally methods of the railroad magnates. The facts, said they, should be made public, so as to base on them appropriate legislation which would curtail the power of such autocrats. Contrasted with the baseness and hypocrisy of the trading class, Vande

familiar with the records of such cases as I have referred to. Inventors, however gifted in other respects, are known to be confiding and thriftless; and being generally without wealth, and always without knowledge of the chicaneries of law, they too often prove but children in those rude conflicts which they are c

empts to obtain patents by improper means." Several cases of "attempted bribery" had occurred within the year, stated Commissioner Mason. (Executive Documents, First Session, Thirty-third Congress, 1853-54, Vol. vii, Part I: 19-2

factory system transcended belief. In, for instance, the State of Massachusetts, vaunting itself for its progressiveness, enlightenment and culture, the textile factories were a horror beyond description. The Convention of the Boston Eight Hour League, in 1872, did not overstate when it declared of the factory system that "it employs tens of thousands of women and

ir system unchanged, because it was profitable to work children eleven and a half hours a day in a temperature that in summer often reached 108 degrees and in an atmosphere certain to breed immorality; [Footnote: "Certain to breed immorality." See report of Carrol D. Wright, Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1881. A cotton mill operative testified: "Young girls from fourteen and upward learn more wickedness in one year than they would in five out of a mill." See also th

ained patents by fraud; who had so often bribed members of Congress to vote for a high tariff; the same, too, who had bribed legislatures for charters, water rights, exemptions from taxation, the right to work employees as long as, and under whatever conditions, they wanted to. This manufacturing aristocracy professed to look down upon Vanderbilt socially as a

ese superior days. Let a man steal in colossal ways and then surrender a small part of it in charitable, religious and educational donations; he at once ceases being a thief and straightway becomes a noble benefactor. Vanderbilt now shed his life-long irreverence, and gave to Deems, a minister o

ING OF THE "

aining the life blood of the workers to provide them with wealth, luxuries and power, were those upper strata of society known as the "best classes." These "b

made slaves of the workers, threw them into degradation and poverty, drove multitudes of girls and women into prostitution, and made the industrial field an immense concourse of tears, agony and carnage. Hanging on to this supreme class of wealth, fawning to it, licking its very feet, were

ue of all aristocracies based upon money, from the remotest time to this present day, and co

was held the quintessence of mercantile shrewdness. A flint-hard, brute spirit enveloped all business transactions. The business man who lost his fortune was generally looked upon without emotion or pity, and condemned as an incapable. For self interest, business me

rossing public concern; his slightest illness was breathlessly followed by commercialdom dom and its outcome awaited. Hosts of men, women and children perished every year of disease contra

ones; the self-reliant, not the helpless. He felt that the solicitor of charity was always a lazy or drunken person, trying to live by plundering the sober and industrious." This malign distrust of fellow beings, this acrid cynicism of motives, this extraordinary imputation of evil designs on the part of the penniless, was characteristic of the capitalist class as a whole. It

t to be judged by Vanderbilt's methods and qualities. In truth, however, Vanderbilt wa

ND INDUSTR

er. His factory operatives worked from five o'clock in the morning to seven in the evening, with but two half hours of intermission, one for breakfast, the other for dinner. The workday of these men, women and children was thus thirteen hours; their wages were wretchedly l

ill was cemented with human blood. His operatives went on a strike, stayed out ten months, suffered frightful hardships, and then were forced back to their tasks by hunger. Borden was inflexible, and so were all the other cotton mill owners. [Footnote: The heroism of the cotton operatives was extraordinary. Slaves themselves, they battled to exterminate negro slavery. "The spinner's union," says McNeill, "was almost dead d

tness. While business men were frantically sapping the labor and life out of their workers, and then tricking and cheating one another to seize the proceeds of that exploitation, the labor unions were teaching the nobility of brot

vise and perfect financial schemes or reformatory measures. The hours of labor are too long, and should be shortened. I recommend a universal movement to cease work at five o'clock Saturday afternoon, as a beginning. There should be a greater participa

nnobles mere pelf. It demeans those who live by useful labor, and, in proportion, exalts all those who esch

RINCIPLES

the object of venomous attacks. In varying degrees, now in outright abuse and again in sneering and ridicule, the working class was held up as an ignorant, discontented,

d wantonly by policemen's clubs when they attempted to hold mass meetings of protest, an Iowa writer, D. C. Cloud, was issuing a work which showed concretely how thoroughly Government was owned by the commercial and financial classes. This work, obscurely published and now scarcely known except to the patient delver, is nevertheless one of the few serious books on prevailing conditions written

he parties interested, and that dishonest and corrupt means are resorted to for the accomplishment of the object they have undertaken ... Not one interest in the country nor all other interests combined are as powerful as the railroad interest ... With a network of roads throughout the country; with a large capital at command; with an organiza