Great Fortunes from Railroads Part 3

All other official reports consistently relate the same conditions.

[Footnote: "The tract books of my office show," reported Commissioner Sparks, "that available public lands are already largely covered by entries, selections and claims of various kinds." The actual settler was compelled to buy up these claims, if, indeed, he was permitted to settle on the land.--U. S. Senate Ex. Docs., 1885-86, Vol. viii, Doc.

No. 134:4.]

At the same time, while being excluded from soil which had been national property, the working and farming cla.s.s were subjected to either neglect or onerous laws. As a cla.s.s, the capitalists had no difficulty at any time in securing whatever laws they needed; if persuasion by argument was not effective, bribery was. Moreover, over and above corrupt purchase of votes was the feeling ingrained in legislators by the concerted teachings of society that the man of property should be looked up to; that he was superior to the common herd; that his interests were paramount and demanded nursing and protection. Whenever a commercial crisis occurred, the capitalists secured a ready hearing and their measures were pa.s.sed promptly. But millions of workers would be in enforced idleness and dest.i.tution, and no move was made to throw open public lands to them, or appropriate money, or start public works. Such a proposed policy was considered "paternalism"--a catchword of the times implying that Governmental care should not be exercised for the unfortunate, the weak and the helpless.

And here was the anomaly of the so-called American democratic Government. It was held legitimate and necessary that capital should be encouraged, but illegitimate to look out for the interests of the non-propertied. The capitalists were very few; the non-propertied, holding nominally the overwhelming voting power, were many.

Government was nothing more or less than a device for the nascent capitalist cla.s.s to work out its inevitable purposes, yet the majority of the people, on whom the powers of cla.s.s government severely fell, were constantly deluded into believing that the Government represented them. Whether Federalist or anti-Federalist, Whig, Republican or Democratic party was in power, the capitalist cla.s.s went forward victoriously and invincibly, the proof of which is seen in its present almost limitless power and possessions.

CHAPTER II

A NECESSARY CONTRAST

If the whole might of Government was used in the aggrandizement and perpetuation of a propertied aristocracy, what was its specific att.i.tude toward the working cla.s.s? Of the powerful few, whether political or industrial, the conventional histories hand down grossly biased and distorted chronicles. These few are isolated from the mult.i.tude, and their importance magnified, while the millions of obscure are nowhere adequately described. Such sterile historians proceed upon the perfunctory plan, derived from ancient usage in the days when kingcraft was supremely exalted, that it is only the mighty few whose acts are of any consequence, and that the doings of the ma.s.ses are of no account.

GOVERNMENT BY PROPERTY INTERESTS.

Hence it is that most histories are mere registers of names and dates, dull or highly-colored hackneyed splurges of print giving no insight into actual conditions.

In this respect most of the prevailing histories of the United States are the most egregious offenders. They fix the idea that this or that alleged statesman, this or that President or 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 imposing public personages of the different periods, the arbiters of laws and policies have been the men of property. They it was who really ruled both the arena and the arcana of politics.

It was they, sometimes openly, but more usually covertly, who influenced and manipulated the entire sphere of government.

It was they who raised the issues which divided the people into contesting camps and which often beclouded and bemuddled the popular mind. It was their material ideals and interests that were engrafted upon the fabric of society and made the prevailing standards of the day.

From the start the United States Government was what may be called a regime swayed by property.

The Revolution, as we have seen, was a movement by the native property interests to work out their own destiny without interference by the trading cla.s.ses of Great Britain. The Const.i.tution of the United States, the various State Const.i.tutions, and the laws, were, we have set forth, all reflexes of the interests, aims, castes and prejudices of the property owners, as opposed to the non-propertied.

At first, the landholders and the s.h.i.+pping merchants were the dictators of laws. Then from these two cla.s.ses and from the tradesmen sprang a third cla.s.s, the bankers, who, after a continuous orgy of bribery, rose to a high pitch of power. At the same time, other cla.s.ses 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 administration the more their inst.i.tutions were threatened. The factory owners were likewise partic.i.p.ants. However bitterly some of these propertied interests might war upon one another for supremacy, there was never a time when the majority of the men who sat in Congress, the legislatures or the judges did not represent, or respond to, either the interests or the ideals of one or more of these divisions of the propertied cla.s.ses.

Finally, out of the landowners, slaveowners, bankers, s.h.i.+ppers, factory masters and tradesmen a new cla.s.s of great power developed.

This was the railroad-owning cla.s.s. From about the year 1845 to 1890 it was the most puissant governing cla.s.s in the United States, and only ceased being distinctly so when the industrial trusts became even mightier, and a time came when one trust alone, the Standard Oil Company, was able to possess itself of vast railroad systems.

These different components of the railroad-owning cla.s.s had gathered in their money by either outright fraud or by the customary exploitative processes of the times. We have noted how many of the landholders secured their estates 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. A portion of the money thus acquired was often used in bribing Congress and legislatures for railroad charters, public funds, immense areas of land including forests and mines, and special laws of the most extraordinary character.

CONDITIONS OF THE NON-PROPERTIED.

Since Government was actually, although not avowedly or apparently, a property regime, what was the condition of the millions of non- propertied?

In order to get a correct understanding of both the philosophy and the significance of what manner of property rule was in force, it is necessary to give an accompanying sketch of the life of the millions of producers, and what kind of laws related to them. Merely to narrate the acts of the capitalists of the period is of no enduring value unless it be accompanied by a necessary contrast of how Government and capitalist acted toward the worker. It was the worker who tilled the ground and harvested the produce nouris.h.i.+ng 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 toilers who have done their work and shuffled off to oblivion?

What were their aspirations, difficulties, movements and struggles?

While Government, controlled by both the men and the standards of property, was being used as a distributing instrument for centering resources and laws in the hands of a mere minority, what were its methods in dealing with the lowly and propertyless?

Furthermore, this contrast is indispensable for another reason.

Posterity ever has a blunt way of asking the most inquisitive questions. The inquirer for truth will not be content with the simple 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 the records allow, they got together that money. Their nominal methods are of no weight; it is the portrayal of their real, basic methods which alone will satisfy the delver for actual facts.

This is not the place for a voluminous account of the industrial development of the United States. We cannot halt here to give the full account of the origin and growth of that factory system which has culminated in the gigantic trusts of to-day. Nor can we pause to deal with the manifold circ.u.mstances and methods involved in that expansion. The full tale of the 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 cla.s.s outsavaging the savage; bribed without intermission; slaughtered legions of men, women and children in the pursuit of profit; exploited the peoples of the globe remorselessly--all of this and more, const.i.tuting a weird chapter of horrors in the progress of the race, will be fully described in a later part of this work. [Footnote: See "Great Fortunes from Industries."]

But in order to contribute a clear perspective of the methods and morals of a period when Government was but the mannikin of property-- a period even more p.r.o.nounced now--and to give a deeper insight into the conditions against which millions had to contend at a time when the railroad oligarchy was blown into life by Government edict, a few important facts will be presented here.

The sonorous doctrines of the Declaration of Independence read well, but they were not meant to be applied to the worker. The independence so much vaunted was the independence of the capitalist to do as he pleased. Few, if any, restrictions were placed upon him; such pseudo restrictions as were pa.s.sed from time to time were not enforced. On the other hand, the severest 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 and landed cla.s.ses for a double purpose. On the one hand, they insisted that it should encourage capital, which phrase translated into action meant that it should confer grants of land, immense loans of public funds without interest, virtual immunity from taxation, an extra- legal taxing power, sweeping privileges, protective laws and clearly defined statute rights.

THE SUPREMACY OF EMPLOYERS.

At the same time, while enriching themselves in every direction by transferring, through the powers of Government, public resources to themselves, the capitalists declared it to be a settled principle that Government should not be paternalistic; they a.s.serted that it was not only not a proper governmental function to look out for the interests of the ma.s.ses of workers, but they went even further.

With the precedents of the English laws as an example, they held that it devolved upon Government to keep the workers sternly within the bounds established by employers. In plain words, this meant that the capitalist was to be allowed to run his business as he desired. He could overwork his employees, pay them the lowest wages, and kill them off by forcing them to work under conditions 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 population of Baltimore is about 25,000; of Chicago, 162,000; of New York, 360,000; of Philadelphia, 35,000" (p. 12). The figures of the average weekly wages per individual of the slum population revealed why there was so large a slum population. In Baltimore these wages were $8.65-1/2 per week; in Chicago, $9.88-1/2; in New York, $8.36, and in Philadelphia, $8.68 per week (p. 64).

In his "Modern Social Conditions," Bailey, basing his statements upon the U. S. Census of 1900, a.s.serted that 109,750 persons had died from tuberculosis in the United States in 1900. "Plenty of fresh 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 combat the disease.

Working in a confined atmosphere, and living in damp, poorly ventilated rooms, the dwellers in the tenements of the great cities fall easy victims to the great white plague." (p. 265).]

The law, which was the distinct expression of the interests of the capitalist, upheld his right to do all this. Yet if the workers protested; if they 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, the whole power of law, with its police, military and judges, descended upon them, and either drove them back to their tasks or consigned them to prison.

The conditions under which the capitalists made their profits, and under which the workers had to toil, were very oppressive to the workers. The hours of work at that period were from sunrise to sunset. Usually this rule, especially in the seasons of long days, required twelve, and very often fourteen and sixteen, hours a day.

Yet the so-called statesmen and the pretentious cultured and refined cla.s.ses 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 chattel black slave of the South, and who did not receive a fraction of the care and thought bestowed, as a corrollary of property, upon the black slave. Already the capitalists of the North had a slavery system in force far more effective than the chattel system of the South--a system the economic superiority of which was destined to overthrow that of black slavery.

Most historians, taking their cue from the intellectual subserviency demanded of them by the ruling propertied cla.s.ses, delight in picturing those times as "the good old times," when the capitalists were benevolent and amiable, and the workers lived in peace and plenty.

AN INCESSANT WARFARE.

History in the main, thus far, has been an inst.i.tution for the propagation of lies. The truth is that for thousands of years back, since the private property system came into existence, an incessant, uncompromising warfare has been going on between oppressors and oppressed. Apart from the cla.s.s distinctions and the bitterness manifested in settlement and colonial times in this country-- reference to which has been given in earlier chapters--the whole of the nineteenth century, and thus far of this century, has been a continuous industrial struggle. It has been the real warfare of modern times.

In this struggle the propertied cla.s.ses had the great advantage from the start. Centuries of rulers.h.i.+p had taught them that the control of Government was the crux of the mastery. By possession of Government they had the power of making laws; of the enforcement or non- enforcement of those laws; of the directors.h.i.+p of police, army, navy, courts, jails and prisons--all terrible instruments for suppressing any attempt at protest, peaceful or otherwise. Notwithstanding this ma.s.sing of power and force, the working cla.s.s has at no time been pa.s.sive 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 yet to get intelligent possession of the great strategic point,-- governmental power. Nevertheless, despite these mistakes, it has been in a state of constant rebellion; and the fact that it has been so, that its aspirations could not be squelched by jails, prisons and cannon nor by dest.i.tution or starvation, furnishes the sublimest record in all the annals of mankind.

THE WORKERS' STRUGGLE FOR BETTER CONDITIONS.

Again and again the workers attempted to throw off some of their shackles, and every time the whole dominant force of society was arrayed against them. By 1825 an agitation developed for a ten-hour workday. The politicians denounced the movement; the cultured cla.s.ses frowned upon it; the newspapers alternately ridiculed and abused it; the officials prepared to take summary action to put it down. As for the capitalists--the s.h.i.+pping 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 ent.i.tled to combine, but they inveighed against the ten-hour demand as "unreasonable conditions which the folly and caprice of a few journeymen mechanics may dictate." "A very large sum of money," says McNeill, "was subscribed by the merchants to defeat the ten-hour movement." [Footnote: "The Labor Movement": 339.] And as an evidence of the intense opposition to the workers' demands for a change from a fourteen to a ten-hour day, McNeill quotes from a Boston newspaper of 1832:

Had this unlawful combination had for its object the enhancement of daily wages, it would have been left to its own care; but it now strikes the 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 direct course to poverty; for to be idle several of the most useful hours of the morning and evening will surely lead to intemperance and ruin.

These, generally speaking, were the stock capitalists arguments of the day, together with the further reiterated a.s.sertion that it was impossible to conduct business on a ten-hour day system. The effect of the fourteen-hour day upon the workers was pernicious. Having 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 intellectually. This was a well-known fact, and was frequently commented upon by contemporaneous observers. Their employers could not fail to know it, yet, with few exceptions, they insisted that any movement to shorten the day's labor was destructive of good morals.

This p.r.o.nouncement, however, need not arouse comment. Ever has the propertied cla.s.s set itself up as the lofty guardian of morals although actuated by sordid self-interest and nothing more. Many workers were driven to drink, crime and suicide by the exasperating and deteriorating conditions under which they had to labor. The moment that they overstepped the slightest bounds of law, in rushed the authorities with summary punishment. The prisons of 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 pet.i.tion! So unceasingly had the workers been lied to by politicians, newspapers, clergy and employers, that they did not realize that in applying to Congress or to any legislature, that they were begging from men who represented the antagonistic interests of their own employers. After a short debate Congress laid the pet.i.tion on the table. Congress at this very time was spinning out laws in behalf of capitalist interests; granting public lands, public funds, protective tariffs and manifold other measures demanded or lobbied for by existing or projected corporations.

A memorial of a "Portion of the Laboring Cla.s.ses of the City of New York in Relation to The Money Market" complained to Congress in 1833 that the powers of the Government were used against the working cla.s.s.

"You are not ignorant," they pet.i.tioned,

That our State Legislatures have, by a usurpation of power which is expressly withheld by our Federal Const.i.tution, chartered many companies to engage in the manufacture of paper money; and that the necessities of the laboring cla.s.ses have compelled them to give it currency.