Great Fortunes from Railroads

en, the two who inherited by far the greater part of it- Cornelius and William K. Vanderbilt-were its rulers paramount. To them descended

railroad affairs; all of the subtle arts and intricacies of finance, and the grand tactical and

state and estate. A signatory stroke of the pen was the only exertion required of them; thereupon architects and a host of artisans yielded s

000 in building a palatial home in the heart of the North Carolina mountains. For three years three hundred stonemasons were kept busy; and he gradually added land to his surrounding estate until it embraced one hundred and eighty square miles. His game preserves were enlarged until they covered 20,000 acres. So, within thirty years from the time their grandfather, Commodore Vanderbilt, was extorting

erto the main antagonistic movement perturbing the magnates was that of the obstreperous and still powerful middle class. Dazed and enraged at the certain prospect of their complete subjugation and eventual

LABOR MOVE

nt is interposed here. Because, inasmuch as it is a part of the plan of this work to present a constant succession of contrasts, this is, perhaps, as appropriate a place as any to give an account of the highly important labor movement

ayed, starved or clubbed into intervals of apathy or submission, they were again in motion, moving forward with a set deliberation and determination which disconcerted the capitalist cl

ear 1886, therefore, was one of general agitation throughout the United States. With rapidity and enthusiasm the movement spread. Presently it took on a radical character. Realizing it to be at basis the first national awakening of the proletariat,

e for a shorter workday, yet its impetus was such that it contained the fullest potentialities for developing into

n the propertied classes of all descriptions on the one hand, and, on the other, the workingmen's organizations. The Farmers' Alliance, essentially a middle-class movement of the employing farmers in the South and West, was counted upon as aligned with the propertied classes. On the part of the capitalists there was no unity of organization in

eed in bribing a labor leader here and there; but the movement had bounded far beyond the elementa

of the workers; why not this? As the great labor movement rolled on, enlisting the ardent attachment of the masses, denouncing the injustices, corruption and robberies of the existing industrial system, the propertied classes more acutely understood that they must hasten to stamp it out by whatever m

* *

IED CLASSES

asting for years. There, in that maddening bedlam, called a city, the acknowledged inferno of industrialism, the agitation was tensest. With its brutalities, cruelties, corruptions and industrial carnage, its hideous cont

im a time extension of his patent rights.] a prolonged strike of many months began in February. Determined not only to refuse shorter hours, but to force his twelve hundred wage workers to desert labor unions, McCormick drove them from his factory, hired armed mercenaries, called Pinkerton detectives, and substituted in the place of the union workers those despised irresponsibles called

[Footnote: The prevailing view of the working class toward the Pinkerton detectives was thus expressed at the time in a chapter on the mine workers by John McBride, one of the trade union leaders: "They have awakened," he wrote, "the hatred and detestation of the workingmen of the United States; and this hatred is due, not only to the fact that they protect the men who are stealing the bread from the mouths of the families of strikers, but to the fact that as a class they seem rather to invite trouble than to allay it.... They are employed to terrorize the workingmen, and to create in the minds of the public the idea that the miners are a dangerous class of citizens that have to be kept down by armed force. These men had an interest in keeping up and creating troubles which gave employers opportunity to demand protection from the State militia at the expense of the State, and which the State has too readily granted."-"The Labor Movement": 264-265.] During the course of the meeting in the afternoon the factory bell rung, and

and the "Arbeiter Zeitung," in German, they unceasingly advocated the interests of the working class. These men were Albert R. Parsons, a printer, editor of the "Alarm;" August Spies, an upholsterer by trade, and editor of the "Arbeiter Zeitung;" Adolph Fischer, a printer; Louis Lingg, a carpenter; Samuel Fielden, the son of a British factory owner; George Engel, a painter; Oscar Neebe, a well- to-do business man, and Michael Schwab, a bookbinder. All of them were more or less deep students of economics and sociology; they had become convinced that the fundamental cause of the prevalent inequalities of opportunity and of the widespread misery was the capitalist system itself. Hence they opposed it uncompromisingly. [Footnote: The utte

so often been pointed out, the pose of being the staunch conservers of law and order. To fasten upon the advanced leaders of the labor movement the stigma of being sowers of disorder, and then judicially get rid of them, and crush the spirit and movement of the aroused proletariat-this was the plan determined upon. Labor leaders who confined their programme to the industrial arena were not feared so much; but P

MARKET

he meeting was proceeding in perfect quiet, so quietly that the Mayor of Chicago, who was present to suppress it if necessary, went home-when suddenly one hundred and eighty policemen, with arms in readiness, appeared and peremptorily ordered the meeting to disperse. It seems that w

we have seen, the Pennsylvania railroad hirelings deliberately destroyed property and incited riot in order to charge the strikers with crime. In the coal mining regions of P

ir views were given wide circulation and commendation; they were the finest types of commercial success and prestige. They were the owners of railroads that slaughtered thousands of human beings every year, because of the demands of profit; of factories which sucked the very life out of their toilers, and which filled the hospitals, slums, brothels and graveyards with an ever-increasing assemblage; every man in that conclave, as a beneficiary of the existing system, had drained his fortune from the sweat, sorrow, miseries and death agonies of a multitude of workers. [Footnote: This seems a very sweeping and extraordinary prejudicial statement. It should be remembered, however, that these cap

RDER OF LAB

housand talesmen summoned, only five or six belonged to the working class. The malignant class nature of the trial was revealed by the questions asked of the talesmen; nearly all declared that they had a prejudice against Soci

, Neebe and Schwab were sentenced to long terms in prison. The four executed leaders met their death with the heroic calmness of martyrdom. "Let the voice of the people be heard!" were Parsons' last words. Fielden, Neebe and Schwab might have rotted away in prison, were it not that one of the noblest-minded and most maligned men of his time, in the person of John P. Altgeld, was Governor of Illinois in 1893. Governor Altgeld pardoned them on these grounds, which he u

UPRISING I

darity, were ripe for independent political action; the effects of the years of active propaganda carried on in their ranks by the Socialists and Single-Tax advocates now began to show fruit. At the critical time, when the labor unions were wavering in the decision as to whether they ought to strike out pol

n independent labor party. To meet this exigency an effort was made by the politicians to buy off Henry George, the distinguished Single-Tax advocate, who was recognized as the leader of the labor party. But this flanking attempt

Such rebellious movements are highly contagious; from the confines of one municipality they sweep on to other sections, stimulating action and inspiring emulation. The New York labor campaign of 1886 was an intrinsic part and result of the general labor movement throughout the United States. And it was the most significant manifestation of the onward march of the workers; elsewhere the labor

to its plans and development. The small capitalists bitterly fought the great; but both agreed that Government with its legislators, laws, pr

r praises as the upholders of law and the conservators of order. In Chicago the same men who had bribed legislators and common councils to give them public franchises, and who had hugely swindled and stolen under guise of law, had been the principals in calling for the executio

T TRIUMPH

e of which the capitalists as a class had proved themselves adepts; they now summ

people to plunder them. It was a powerful, splendidly-organized body of mercenaries and selfseekers which, by trading on the principles of democracy, had been able to count on the partisan votes of a predominating element of the wage- working class. In reality, however, it was absolutely directed by a leader or "boss," who, with his confederates, made a regular traffic of selling legislation to the capitalists, on the one hand,

ion of a moderately rich New York family, and a remarkable character whose pugnacious disposition, indifference to political conventionalities, capacity for exhortation, and bold political shrewdness were mistaken for greatness of personality. The phenomenal success to which he subsequently rose was characteristic of the pre

ole weight of its influence and power. Soaked with the materialist spirit while dogmatically preaching the spiritual, dominated and pervaded by capitalist influences, the Church, of all creeds and denominations, lost no time in subtly aligning itself in

nation against rule by the "mob" had poured in funds which were distributed by the politicians for these frauds. But the vote of the labor forces was so overwhelming, that even piles of fraudulent votes could not suffice to overcome it. One final resource was left. This was to count out Henry George by grossly tampering with the election returns and misrepresenting them. And this is precisely what was done, if the testimony of numerous eye-wi

PARTY EV

eafter collapsed. The capitalist interests had followed up their onslaught in hanging and imprisoning some of the foremost l

Republican local, State or National administrations. Many of the most conspicuous organizers of the labor movement were thus won over, by the proffer of well- paying political posts, to betray the cause in the furtherance of which they had s

of the old political parties, it then humbly begged a few crumbs of legislation from them, only to have a few sops thrown to it, or to receive contempt

asses that the much-dreaded labor movement had been thrust

from the West and South. Laws were passed declaring combinations conspiracies in restraint of trade and prohibiting the granting of secret discriminative rates by the railroads. In 1889 no fewer than eighteen States passed anti-trust laws; five more followed the next year. Every one of these laws was apparently of the most explicit char

PITALISTS' L

med to be victory was the rattle of the slow death struggle. At first, the great capitalists made no attempt to have these laws altered or repealed. They adopted a slyer and more circuitous mode of warfare. They simply evaded them. As fast as one trust was dissolved by court

luence to secure the appointment of men favorable to them as Attorneys General of the United States, and of the States, and they carried on a definite plan of bringing about the appointment or election of judges upon whose decisions they could depend. The laws pass

ery hand, and their ranks were increased by the accession of new members. From the chaos of middle-class industrial institutions, one trust after another sprang full-armed, until presentl

to a narrative of the complex, tortuous methods by which they possessed themselves of these railroads. By the beginning of the year 1893 the Vanderbilt system embraced at least 12,000 miles of railways, with a capitalized value of several hundred million dollars, and a total gross earning power of more than $60,000,000 a year. "All of the best railroad territory," says John Moody in his sketch entitled "The Romance of the Railways," "outside of New England, Pennsylvania and New Jersey was penetrated by the Vanderbilt lines, and no other railroad system in the country, with the single notable exception of the Pennsylvani

owned by separate companies or operators, each independent of the other. But by about the year 1867 the railroads penetrating the coal regions had conceived the plan of owning the mines themselves. Why

oc. No. 2. This investigation fully revealed how the railroads detained the cars of the "independent" operators, and otherwise used oppressive methods.] As was proved in subsequent lawsuits, the railroads frequently declined to carry coal for this or that mine, on the pretext that they had no cars available. Every means was used to crush the independent operators and depreciate the selling value of their property. It was a campaign of ruination; in law it stood as criminal co

extending an ownership over the coal mines. The more powerful independent operators struck back early at them by getting a constitutional provision passed in Pennsylvania, in 1873, prohibiting railroads from owning

desperate and intolerable enough under the old company system. The small coal-owning capitalists, who had emitted such wailings at their own oppression by the railroads, had long relentlessly exploited their tens of thousands of worke

erable wages paid out, these were company-owned merchandise stores in which the miners were compelled to buy their supplies. In many collieries the

he company had increased so many dollars." [Footnote: "Organized Labor": 359. Mitchell's comments were fully supported by the vast mass of testimony taken by the United States Anthracite Coal Commission in 1902. Mitchell is, at this writing (1909), in the employ of the Civic Federation, an organization financed by capitalists. Its alleged purpose is to bring about "harmony" between capital and labor.] Mitchell adds that the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed anti-truck store laws, "but the operators who have always cried out loudest against illegal action by miners openly and unhesitatingly violated the act and subsequently evaded it by

LROADS AND

ates for redress of some kind. The magnates abruptly refused, and went on extending and intrenching their authority. The Vanderbilts manipulated themselves into being important factors in the Delaware and Hudson Railroad,

controlled by this railroad. The ownership of the Reading Railroad, with its subordinate lines, was the pivotal requisite towards getting a complete monopoly of the anthracite coal deposits. William H. Vander

magnates. With immense confidence in his plans and in his ability to carry them out, he set out to monopolize the anthracite coal supply and to make the Reading Railroad a great trunk line. To perfect this monopoly he leased some coal-

eld out-and decided that it was precisely what they themselves should control and nobody else. Second, in his aim to have his own railroad connections with the rich manufacturing and heavily-populated New England districts, McLeod had arranged w

IN WHICH I

the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad likewise had no intention of allowing such a powerful competitor in its own province. These magnates viewed with inte

nto their own divisible ownership; second, the securing of their personal hold on the connecting railroads that McLeod had leased; and, finally, the obtaining of undisputed sovereignty over a great part of the anthracite

ed as being in a very bad state. As the railroad had borrowed immense sums of money both to finance its coal combination and to build extensive terminals and other equipment, large payments to creditors were due from time to time. To pay these creditors the railroad had to borrow more; but when the credit of the railroad was assailed, it found that its sources of borrowing wer

et railways in Philadelphia and other cities were so notorious a scandal; John Wanamaker, combining piety and sharp business;-these were three of them. But they were no match for the much more powerful and wily Vanderbilt-Morgan forces. They were comp

r cent. of the entire capital stock of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company." "Report on Discriminations and Monopolies in Coal and Oil, Interstate Commerce Commission, January 25, 1907": 46.] The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad grasped the New York and New England Railroad from the Reading's broken hold, and there were further far-reaching changes militating to increase the railroad, and other, possessions of both parties. [Footnote: A good account of this expropriating transact

others, notably a report in 1842, by the judiciary committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, state that it was 5,000,000 acres. Nicholson was a leading figure in the Pennsylvania Land Company which had obtained most of its vast land pos

e. How they did it is told in many legislative documents; the fraud and theft connected with it were a great scandal in Pennsylvania for forty-five years. We will quote only one of these documents. Writing on January 24, 1842, to William

wealth was seriously injured by the manner in which it was carried out by some of the agents. It was made use of principally for the benefit of land speculators; and the very small sums received by the State treasurer for large and valuable tracts sold and compromised, show that the cunning and astute land jobbers could easily overreach the Board of

igh Valley Railroad with its unmined coal deposits of 400,000,000 tons. In 1908 they disposed of their Lehigh Valley Railroad ownings, receiving an equivalent in either money or some other form of property. The ownership of the Delaware, Lackawana and Western Railroad with its equally large unmined coal deposits is divided between the Vanderbilt family and the Standard Oil interests. The Vanderbilts, according to the latest offici

. By further fraudulent methods, based upon bribery of lawmaking bodies, he obtains more railroads and more wealth. His son, following his methods, adds other railroads to the inventory, and converts tens of millions of fraudulently-acquired millions into interest-beari

ON OF THE C

ost absolutely the production and prices. That the Vanderbilt family and the Morgan interests were the main parties to this combination was well established. [Footnote: Final Report of the U. S. Industrial Commission, 1902, xix: 462-463

er and heavier tribute. By the mandate of the Coal Trust, housekeepers were taxed $70,000,000 in extra impositions a year, in addition to the $40,000,000 annually extorted by the exorbitant prices of previous years. At a s

in cash. But they had not resumed work before they discovered the hollowness of these concessions. Two years of futile application for better conditions passed, and then, in 1902, 150,000 men and boys went on strike. This strike lasted one hundred and sixty-three days. The magnates were generally regarded as arrogant and defiant; they contended that they had nothing to arbitrate; [Footnote: It was on this occasion that George F. Baer, president of the Philadelphia

ther classes of mine workers, who formed more than sixty per cent, of the labor forces, did not receive an annual wage of $450. Yet Roberts quotes the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics as saying that "a family of five persons requires $754 a year to live on." The average number in the family of a mine worker is five or six. "This small income," Roberts observes, "drives many of our people to live in chea

NOUS COAL

of the New York Central Railroad, they own various ostensibly independent bituminous coal mining companies. The Clearfield Corporation, the Pennsylvania Coal and Coke Co., and the West Branch Coal Company are som

e report reads on after going into the question of ownership in detail, "that, as a matter of fact, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, the Norfolk and Western Railroad Company, and the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company were practically controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Comp

oad magnates have resorted to, and still practice, in the throttling of the small capitalists, and in guaranteeing themselves a monopoly. A great array of facts are to

ggling process of stocks and bonds, bought in the mines with the expenditure of scarcely any actual money. Having done this they formed a monopoly and raised prices which, in law, was a criminal conspiracy. The same weapons destructively used against the small coal operators years ago are still being employed against the few independent companies remaining in the coal fields, as was disclosed, in 190

FITS FROM TH

their extortions reach hundreds of millions of dollars every year is a patent enough fact. Some of the accompaniments of this process of extortion have been referred to;- the confiscation, on the one hand, of the labor of the whole consuming population by taxing from them more and mo

d. The number of fatalities was 1,033 more than in 1906. "These figures," the report explains, "do not represent the full extent of the disasters, as reports were not received from certain States having no mine inspectors." Side by side with these appalling figures must be again brought out the fact adverted

age wherein profits must take precedence over every other consideration, which principle has been most elaborately enunciated and established by a long list of exalted court decisions. Yea, and the very magnates whose power rests on force and fraud are precisely those who insidiously dictate what men shall be appointed to these omniscient courts, before whose edicts all men a