Great Fortunes from Railroads

was the third generation, undistinguished by any marked characteristic, extremely commonplace in its conventions, it yet proved itself a worthy successor of Commodore Vanderbil

modore. Times had changed; that was all. What had once been regarded as outright theft and piracy were now cloaked under high-sounding phrases as "corporate exten

put through many others, both large and small, which were converted into further heaps of wealth. An enumer

w, it is true, proscribed any theft involving more than $25 as grand larceny, but it was law applying to the poor only, and operative on them exclusively. The inordinately rich were beyond all law, seeing that they could either manufacture it, or its interpretation,

000 AREA C

d purposes of a sweep of streets from Sixtieth street to Seventy-second street along the Hudson River Railroad division. What if this property had been bought, laid out and graded by the

sest expressions of regard for the public interests, the railroad officials did not in the slightest demur at signing an agreement with the municipal authorities. In this paper they pledged themselves to cooperate with the city in conferring upon the Board of Street Openings the right to reopen any of the streets at any time. This agreement was but a decoy for immediate popular effect. No such reopening ordinance

s facility with which the great possessing classes everywhere either buy or defy law, and confiscate when it suits them. So cunningly drafted was the act of 1887 that while New York City was obliged to give the exclusive use of this large stretch of property to the company, yet the title to the property-the empty name-remained vested in the city. This being so, a corporation counsel complaisantly decided that the railroad company could not be

cing the New York Central's masonry viaduct approaches with a fine steel elevated system. This fraud cost the public treasury about $1,200,000, quite a

nue. His grandsons now repeated his method. In 1892 the United States Government was engaged in dredging a ship canal through the Harlem River. The Secretary of War, havin

rations in his property, attempted to compel the city to pay all or any part of the cost, he would have been laughed at or summarily dealt with. The Vanderbilts were not ordinary property holders. Having the powe

N TO SUPPLY PR

ch was not merely corrupt, but brazenly and frankly so, as was proved by the

pay the difference. Additional provision was made for the compelling of New York City to pay for the building of the section north of the Harlem River. But who did the work of contracting and building, and who determined what the cost was? The railroad company itself. It charged what it pleased for material and work, and had complete con

derbilt in 1872, this sum of $1,200,000 makes a total amount of $5,200,000 plucked from the public treasury under form of law to make improvements in which the people who have footed the bill have not a moiety of ownership. [Footnote: The facts as to the expenses incurred under the act of 1892 were stated to the author by Ernest Harvier, a member of the Change of Grade Commission representing New York City in supervising the work.] The Vanderbilts have capitalized these terminal approaches as though they had been built with private money. [Footnote: The New York Central

ELIUS VANDERBILT Gr

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distinguished member of the Committee of Seventy, organized in 1894, to combat and overthrow Tammany corruption! Such, as we have repeatedly observed, is the quality of the men who compose the bourgeois reform movements. For th

DE OF ACQ

e that the plundered public frequently had of them was after they had already been accomplished. These frauds comprised corrupt laws that gave, in circumstances of notorious scandal, tracts of land in the Adirondack Mountains to railroad companies now included in the Vanderbilt system. They embraced laws, and still more laws, exempting this or that stock or property from taxation, and laws making presents of valuable franchises and allowing further conso

oad companies. This devious arrangement was intended to conceal the real ownership, and to have a plausible claim in counteracting the charge that many railroads were concentrated in one ownership, and were combined in monopoly in restraint of trade. The plan ran thus: The Vanderbil

nd of the times, and it had the undoubted advantage of promising to save large sums in managing expenses. But this anticipated retrenchment was not the main incentive. A dazzling opportunity was presented o

tock was run up from 115 to about 200. The object of this manipulation was to have a justification for issuing $100,000,000 in three and one-half per cent. New York Central bonds

rs of the New York Central gathered their corpulent and corporate persons about one table and voted to buy the Lake Shore stock. With due formalities they the

ed to the Legislature then in session at Albany. The Assembly balked and ostentatiously refused to pass it. But after the lapse of a short time the Assembly saw a great new light, and rushed it through on March 3, on which same day it passed the Senate. It was at this precise time that a certain noted lobbyist at Albany somehow showed up, it was alleged, with a fund of $500,000, and members of the Assembly and Senate suddenly r

t. This, however, will be eschewed, and attention next turned to the manner in wh

ALBANY RAILROAD

funds. Originally it looked as if the public interests were fully conserved. But gradually, little by little, predatory corporate interests got in their delicate work, and induced successive

ive Dean charged in the Legislature that "it is common rumor in the State House that members are receiving $300 apiece for their votes." The acquisition of this railroad enabled the New York Central to make direct connection with Boston, and with much of the New Eng

le. Time after time freight rates were raised, as was more than sufficiently proved in various official investigations, despite denials. Conjunctively with this process, another method of extortion was the ceaseless one of beating down the wages of the workers to the very lowest point at whi

NT AN ENGINE

, who emptied it as fast as it was filled. The propertiless and jobless were left to starve; to them no helping arm was outstretched, and if they complained, no quarter given. The State as an institution, while supported by the toil of the producers, was wholly a capitalist State with the capitalists in complet

e work for the unemployed. In the panic of 1893, when millions of men, women and children were out of work, the machinery of government, National, State and municipal, proffered not the least aid, but, on the contrary, sought to suppress agitation and prohibit meetings by flinging the leaders into jail. Basing his conclusions upon the (Aldrich) United

ecent year more railway employees were killed in this country than three times the number of Union men slain at the battle of Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge and Orchard Knob combined. ... In the bloody Crimean War, the British lost 21,000 in killed and wounded- not as many as are slain, maimed and mangled among the railroad men injured [Footnote: of the country in a single year." Various reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission state the same facts.] or slai

NS FOR THE

styled the New York Central's directors as mostly "concentrated absurdities, physically incompetent, mentally unfit, or largely unresident and inattentive."] In reply to a continued agitation for better hours on the part of the Vanderbilt employees, the New York Legislature passed an act, in 1892, which apparently limited the working hours of railroad employees to ten a day. There w

men who had been hired to fill their jobs to quit. What did the Vanderbilts and their allies now do? They fell back upon the old ruse of invoking armed force to suppress what they proclaimed to be violence. They who had bought law and

he strikers were now confronted with bayonets and machine guns. The soldiery summarily stopped the strikers from picketing, that

ut $15,000,000 or $20,000,000. When impecunious counts, lords, dukes and princes, having wasted the inheritance originally obtained by robbery, and perpetuated by robbery, are on the anxious lookout for marriages with great fortunes, and the American money magnates, satiated with vulgar wealth, aspi

ONS FOR A

of reconstruction, its retinue of two hundred servants, and its annual expense roll of $100,000. Millions more flowed out from the Vanderbilt exchequer in defraying the cost of yachts and of innumerable appurtenances and luxuries. Not less than $2,500,000 was spent in building Sutherland House in London. Great as was this expense, it was not so serious as to perturb the duchess' father; his $50,000,000 feat of financial legerd

scribe, "was characterized by elegant simplicity, and was witnessed by only three hundred relatives and intimate friends of the bride and bridegroom." The "elegant simplicity" consisted of gifts, the value of which was estimated at fully a millio

CHESS OF MARLBOROUGH,

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ter. It had long been customary on the part of the very rich, as the New York State Board of Tax Commissioners pointed out, in 1903, to evade the inheritance tax in advance by various fraudulent devices. One of these was to inclose stocks

o his son, Alfred, the unrelenting multimillionaire left the most of his fortune, with a showering of many millions upon his widow, upon Reginald, another son, and upon his two daughters. Cornelius objected to the injustice and hardship of being

e control of laws and industrial institutions, the Vanderbilts possess at all times the power of recouping themselves at voli

ight tens of millions of dollars in the manipulation of the street railways in various cities. His crimes, and those of his associates, were of such boldness and magnitude that even the cynical business classes were moved to astonishment. [Footnote: For a detailed account see that part of this work, "Great Fortunes from Public Franchises."] Cornelius Vanderbilt, jr., married a daughter of R. T. Wilson, a multimillionaire, whose fortune came to a great extent from the public

IUS VANDERBILT, Great

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THE VANDERBIL

he Vanderbilts draw millions in revenue yearly. Formerly they owned their own palace car company, the Wagner, but it was merged with the Pullman. The frauds and extortions of the Pullman Company have been sufficiently dealt with in the particular chapter on Marshall Field. In the far-away Philippine Islands the Vanderbilts are engaged, with other magnates, in

al system, and has directors on the governing board. The probabilities are that the voting power of the New York Central, the Lake Shore and other Vanderbilt lines is passing into the hands of the Standard Oil interests,

derbilt to assume the management of the New York Central on the ground that under his bold direction their profits and loot would be greater, so the lackadaisical Vanderbilts of the present generation perhaps likewise looked upon Harriman, who proved his ability to accomplish vast fraudulent stock-watering operations and consolidations, and to oust lesser magnates. The New York Cen

great advantage over lines like the Erie, the Lackawanna and others with heavy grades, many curves, etc. It has a myriad of small feeders and branches in growing and populous parts of the State of New York, as well as in the sections further to the west. It touches the Great Lakes at various points, operates water transportation for freight to all parts of the lakes; enters Chicago over

F ABILITY

re Vanderbilt and successive generations of Vanderbilts an almost supernatural "constructive genius," and to explain by that glib phrase their success in getting hold of their colossal wealth. This explanation is clumsy fiction that at once falls to pieces u

o mention has been made of their repeated violations of a law prohibiting the granting of rebates-a law which was stripped of its imprisonment clause by the railroad magnates, and made punishable by fine only. Time and time again in recent years has the New York Central been proved guilty in the courts of violat