Great Fortunes from Railroads

rtunes in the United States, it now controls, or has exercised a dominant share of the control, over more than 18,000 miles of railway, the total ownership of which is represented by considerabl

r not to be easily ascertained. In the flux of present economic conditions, which, so far as the control of the resources of the United States is concerned, have simmered down to desper

g controlled by the Goulds. Despite this reported loss, the Gould fortune is an active, aggressive and immense one, vested with the most extensive power, and embracing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, land, palaces, or profit-producing proper

ULD'S

nant and indelible impression upon his mind that when testifying before a United States Senate investigating committee forty years later he pathetically spoke of it with a reminiscent quivering. His father was, indeed, so poor that he could not afford to let him go to the public school. The lad, however, made an arrangement with a blacksmith by which he received board in return for

urned out unsatisfactorily. Gould was forced to support himself by making "noon marks" for the farmers. To two other young men who had worked with him upon the map of Ulster County, Gould (as narrat

O THE TANNI

puted to be a model. A paper of his, descriptive of his farm, and containing woodcut engravings, may be found in U. S. Senate Documents, Second Session, Thirty-seventh Congress, 1861-62, v:411- 415.] Pratt, it seems, was impressed by young Gould's energy, skill and smooth talk, and supplied the necessary capital of $120,000. Gould, as t

Gould was ready, and offered him $60,000, which was accepted. Immediately Gould drew upon Leupp for the money. Leupp likewise became suspicious after a time, and from the ascertained facts, had the best of grounds for becoming so. The sequel was a tragic one. One night, in the panic of 1857, Leupp shot and killed himself in his fine mansion at Madison avenue and T

ng of Pratt and Leupp, and Leupp's suicide. According to Houghton, Leupp's friends

AD BONDS WITH

860, Gould set up as a

k directory for that y

rchant, 39 Spruce stre

is his name did not ap

ge bonds of the Rutland and Washington Railroad-a small line, sixty-two miles long, running from Troy, New York, to Rutland, Vermont. These bonds, which he purchased for ten cents on the dollar, gave

he bonds of the Rutland and Washington Railroad, he bought enough stock of the Cleveland and Pittsburg Railroad to give him control of that line. This he manipulated until its price greatly rose, when he sold the line to the Pennsylvania Railroad Com

d-blooded corruptionist, spoliator, and financial pirate of his time; and so thoroughly did he earn this reputation that to the end of his days it confronted him at every step, and survived to become the standing reproach and ter

ED VIEW OF GO

opprobrium? What curious, erratic, unstable judgment is this that selects this one man as the scapegoat of commercial

mes. His career has been presented in the most forbidding colors; and in order to show that he was an abnormal exception, and not a fami

of large fortunes. The same generation habitually addicted to cursing the memory of Jay Gould, and taunting his children and grandchildren with the reminders of his thefts, speaks with traditional respect of the wealth of such families as the Astors and the Vanderbilts.

ppropriate millions, would filch thousands; a pitiless human carnivore, glutting on the blood of his numberless victims; a gambler destitute of the usual gam

ut they gradually managed to weave around themselves an exterior of protective respectability. All sections of the capitalist class, in so fiercely reviling Gould, reminded one of the t

GS OF HIS E

it is not the man so much as the times that are of paramount interest, for it is they which supply the explanatory key. In preceding chapters repeated insights have been given into the methods not merely of one phase, but of all phases, of capitalist formulas

roadcast their prolix homilies on the virtues of a useful life, "rounded by an honorable poverty." But all of these teachings were, in one sense, chatter and nonsense; the very classes which so unctuously preached them were those who most strained themselves to acquire al

y was virtually prescribed as a crime. The impoverished were regarded in law as paupers, and so repugnant a term of odium was that of pauper, so humiliating its significance and treatment, that gr

guarantee of security was wealth, provided its possessor could keep it intact against the maraudings of his own class. Every influence conspired to drive men int

cquisitive young man soon saw that toiling for the profit of others brought nothing but poverty himself; perhaps at the most, some small savings that were constantly endangered. To get wealth

ings and swindlings. Without adverting again to the corruption, reaching far back into the centuries, existing before his time, we

being amassed, not only by fraudulent methods, but by methods often a positive peril to human

* *

SS REEKED

e than one-half of many of the most important chemical and medicinal preparations," Dr. Bailey stated, "together with large quantities of crude drugs, come to us so much adulterated as to render them not only worthless as a medicine, but often dangerous." These drugs were sold throughout the United States at high prices. [Footnote: Report of Select Committee o

wspapers profited more (comparatively) from the publication of patent medicine advertisements; and even after a Congressional committee had

the advertisement of his never-dying hygiene." The committee described how Morrison's nostrums often contained powerful poisons, and then continued: "Morrison is forgotten, and Brandeth is on the high road to the same distinction. T. W. Conway, from the lowest obscurity, became worth millions from the sale of his nostrums, and rode in triumph through the streets of Boston in his coach and six. A stable boy in New York was enro

* *

S GOULD L

t is on record that the American army in Mexico threw them away upon the sands in disgust. But it was during the Civil War that Northern capitalists of every kind coined fortunes from the national disasters, and from the blood of the very armies fighting for their interests shown how Commodore Vanderbilt and other shipping merchants fraudulently sold or leased to the Government for exorbitant sums, ships for the transportation of soldiers-ships so decayed or otherw

chapters on the Astor fortune, joined with John Jacob Astor and others in signing a testimonial certifying to the honesty of the Tweed Regime. A select Congressional committee, inquiring into Government contracts in 1862-63, brought forth volumes of facts that amazed and sickened a committee accustomed to ordinary political

r chatter any other b

the Winfield Scott

ern

r how

d dollars each, and on

few days after they

ittee to Inquire into

-seventh Congress, Th

No. 4

urchase of vessels, and that he based his judgment upon "the chartered and purchased vessels I am acquainted with, and the enormous sums wasted there to my certain kn

* *

RLIES RESP

"A large proportion of our troops," reported a Congressional Commission in 1862, "are armed with guns of very inferior quality, and tens of thousands of the refuse arms of Europe are at this moment in our arsenals, and thousands more are still to arrive, all unfit." [Footnote: House Reports of Committees, Thirty- seventh Congress, Second Session, 1861-62, vol. ii, Report No. 2: lxxix.] A Congressional committee appointed, in 1862, to inquire into the connection between Gov

and sailing vessels; that when our arsenals had been robbed of arms, gold could not be weighed against cannon and muskets; that the Government must be excused if it suffered itself to be overreached. Yet, after the lapse of two years, we find the same system of extortion prevailing, and robbery has grown more unblushing in its exactions as it feels secure in its immunity from punishment, and that species of fraud which shocked the nation in the spring of 18

essional committees had to be appointed at the same time to carry on an adequate investigat

d at $11,000,000. His entire fortune was said to approximate $50,000,000. His chief heir, Marcellus Hartley Dodge, a grandson, married, in 1907, Edith Geraldine Rockefeller, one of the richest heiresses in the world. Hartley was the principal owner of large cartridge, gun and other factories.] admitted that he had sold a large consignment of Hall's carbines to a member of the New York Union Defense Committee. In a sudden burst of contrition he went on, "I think the worst thing this Government has been swindled upon has been these confounded Hall's carbines; they have been elevated in price to $22.50, I think." [Footnote: House Report No.2, etc., 1861-62, vol. ii: 200-204] He could have

y "could better keep dry out of them than under." [Footnote: House Report No. 64, etc., 1862-63: 6.] Great frauds were perpetrated in passing goods into the arsenals. One manufacturer in particular, Charles C. Roberts, was awarded a contract for 50,000 haversacks and 50,000 knapsacks. "Every one of these," an expert testified, "was a fraud upon t

ffee at all

t is

t coffee as nea

y of other substances, with just coffee enough to give it a taste and a

vestigated by a Pennsylvania Legislative Committee, and also in several dubious railroad transactions in Maryland.] was at that time Secretary of War. Whom did he appoint as the supreme official in charge of railroad transportation? None other than Thomas A. Scott, the vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Scott, it may be said, was another capitalist whose work has so often been fulsomely described as being that of "a remarkable constructive ability." The ability he displayed during the Civil War was unmistakable. With his collusion the railroads extorted right and left. The committee described how

f the impoverished and depleted Treasury of the United States, at a time when her every

oming noted for their fine respectability and "solid fortunes." So many momentous events were taking place during the Civil War, that amid all the preparations, the battles and excitement, those frauds did not arouse that general gravity of public attention which, at any other time, would have inevitably res

OF GOULD'

ut the older capitalists, veterans at bribing, who for years had been corrupting Congress and the Legislatures, supplied him with the necessary information. Not voluntarily did they do it; their greatest ally was concealment; but one crowd of them had too baldly bribed Congress to vote for an act giving an enormous land grant in Iowa, Minnesota and ot

ts." But this particular committee, surprisingly enough, handed in no such flaccid, whitewashing report. It found conclusively that corrupt combinations of members of Congress did exist; and in recommended the expulsion of four members whom it declared guilty to receiving either money or land in exchange for their votes. One of these four expelled member, Orasmus B. Matteson, it appeared, was a leader of

ions of the capitalist class were, as we have seen, swindling manifold hundreds of millions of dollars from a hard-pressed country, and reaping fortunes by exploiting the lives of the v

M AT FIFT

orded that nominally the interest did not appear high; in reality, however, by various devices, the bankers, both national and international, were often able to extort from twenty

could then deposit those same bonds with the Government, and issue their own bank notes against ninety per cent. of the bonds deposited. They drew interest from

s as interest on bonds the enormous sum of $252,837,556.77. [Footnote: House Documents, Forty-fifth Congress, Second Session, Ex. Document No. 34, Vol. xiv., containing the reply of Secretary of the Treasury Sherman, in answer to a resolution of the House of Representatives.] On the other hand, the banks were entirely reliev

efield, or being taxed heavily to support their brothers in arms, that the capitalists who later turned up as owners of various Pacific rail

ow plunged into use were but in keeping with theirs, a little bolder and more brutally frank, perhaps, but n