Contemporary American History, 1877-1913 Part 15

But this check in Utah did not dampen the ardor of reformers in other commonwealths. In 1902, Oregon adopted the new system; four years later Montana followed; in 1907, Oklahoma came into the Union with the device embodied in the Const.i.tution; and then the progress of the movement became remarkably rapid. It was adopted by Missouri and Maine in 1908, Arkansas and Colorado in 1910, Arizona and California in 1911, Washington, Nebraska, Idaho, and Ohio in 1912. By this time Populists and Democrats had ceased to monopolize the agitation for direct government; it had become respectable, even in somewhat conservative Republican circles.

It should be pointed out, however, that there is a conservative and a radical system of initiative and referendum: one which fixes the percentage necessary to initiate and adopt a measure at a point so high as to prevent its actual operation, and another which places it so low as to make its frequent use feasible. The older and more radical group of propagandists, finding their general scheme so widely taken up in practical politics, soon began to devote their attention rather to attacking the stricter safeguards thrown up by those who gave their support to direct government in theory only.

In its simple form of initiation by five per cent of the voters and adoption by a majority of those voting on the measure submitted, this new device was undoubtedly a revolutionary change from the American system of government as conceived by the framers of the Const.i.tution of the United States--with its checks and balances, indirect elections, and judicial control over legislation. The more radical of the advocates of direct government frankly admitted that this was true, and they sought to strengthen this very feature of their system by the addition of another device, known as the recall, which, when applied to judges as well as other elective officers, reduced judicial control over legislation to a practical nullity. Where judges are elected for short terms by popular vote and made subject to the recall, and where laws are made by popular vote of the same electors who choose the judges, it is obvious that the very foundations of judicial supremacy are undermined.

The recall, like direct democracy, was not new to American politics.

Both were understood, at least in principle, by the framers of the Federal Const.i.tution and rejected decisively. The recall seems to have made its appearance first in local form,--in the charter of Los Angeles, adopted in 1903. From there it went to the Seattle charter of 1906, and two years later it was adopted as a state-wide system applicable to all elective officers by Oregon. Its progress was swiftest in munic.i.p.al affairs, for it quite generally accompanied "the commission form" of city government as a check on the commissioners in their exercise of enlarged powers.

The state-wide recall, however, received a remarkable impetus in 1911 from the controversy over the admission of Arizona, which attracted the attention of the nation. That territory had framed a const.i.tution containing a radical form of the recall based on the Oregon plan, and in August, 1911, Congress pa.s.sed a resolution admitting the applicant, on condition that the provision relating to the recall should be specifically submitted to the voters for their approval or rejection.

President Taft was at once stirred to action, and on August 15 he sent Congress a ringing message, displaying unwonted vigor and determination, vetoing the resolution and denouncing the recall of judges in unmeasured terms. "Const.i.tutions," he said, "are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.... In order to maintain the rights of the minority and the individual and to preserve our const.i.tutional balance we must have judges with courage to decide against the majority when justice and law require.... As the possibilities of such a system [as the recall] pa.s.s in review, is it too much to characterize it as one which will destroy the judiciary, its standing, and its usefulness?"

Acting upon the recommendation of President Taft, Congress pa.s.sed a subst.i.tute resolution for admitting Arizona only on condition that the obnoxious recall of judges be stricken from the const.i.tution of the state.[72] The debates in Congress over the admission of Arizona covered the whole subject of direct government in all its aspects, and these, coupled with the President's veto message, brought the issue prominently to the front throughout the country. Voters to whom it had previously been an obscure western device now began to take a deep interest in it; the press took it up; and one more test for "progressive" and "reactionary" was put in the popular program.

The movement for direct popular partic.i.p.ation in state and local government was inevitably accompanied by a demand for more direct government within the political party; in other words, by a demand for the abandonment of the representative convention in favor of the selection of candidates by direct primary. During the decade of the great Populist upheaval, legislation relative to political parties was largely confined to the introduction of the Australian ballot and the establishment of safeguards around the primaries at which delegates to party conventions were chosen. The direct primary, like the initiative and referendum, grew out of a discontent with social and economic conditions, which led to an attack on the political machinery that was alleged to be responsible for them. Like the initiative and referendum, also, it was not an altogether new device, for it had been used for a long time in some of the states as a local inst.i.tution established by party custom; but when it was taken up by the state legislatures, it made a far more rapid advance.

It was not, however, until the opening of the new century that primary legislation began to engross a large share of legislative activities. In 1903, "the first state-wide primary law with fairly complete provisions for legal supervision was enacted by the state of Wisconsin"; Oregon, making use of the new initiative system, enacted a thoroughgoing primary law in 1904; and the following year Illinois adopted a state-wide measure. Other states, hesitating at such an extensive application of the principle, contented themselves at first with laws inst.i.tuting local primaries, such, for example, as the Nebraska law of 1905 covering cities of over 125,000, or the earlier law of Minnesota covering only Hennepin county. "So rapid was the progress of public opinion and legislation," says Mr. Merriam, "that in many instances a compromise law of one session of the legislature was followed by a thoroughgoing law in the next. For example, the North Dakota law of 1905 authorized direct primaries for all district nominations, but did not include state offices; but in 1907, a sweeping act was pa.s.sed covering practically all offices."

The vogue of the direct primary was confined largely to the West at first, but it steadily gained in favor in the East. Governor Hughes, of New York, in his contest with the old organization of the Republican party, became a stanch advocate of the system, recommended it to the legislature in his messages, campaigned through the state to create public sentiment in favor of the reform, and labored unsuccessfully to secure the pa.s.sage of a primary law, until he closed his term to accept an appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1911, the Democratic party, which had carried New York state at the preceding election, enacted a primary law applicable to local, but not to state, offices. About the same time Ma.s.sachusetts, Maine, and New Jersey joined the long list of direct primary states. Within almost ten years the principle in its state-wide form had been accepted in two thirds of the states, and in some local form in nearly all of the other commonwealths.

Meanwhile, the theory and practice of direct government made their way upward into the Federal government. As early as 1826, Mr. Storrs, a representative from New York, introduced in the House a const.i.tutional amendment providing for the popular election of United States Senators, and from time to time thereafter the proposal was urged upon Congress.

President Johnson, who had long been an advocate of this change in the Federal government, made it the subject of a special message to Congress in 1868; but in his contest with that body the proposed measure was lost to sight. Not long afterward it appeared again in the House and the Senate, and at length the lower house in 1893 pa.s.sed an amendment providing for popular election by the requisite two-thirds vote, but the Senate refused to act. Again in 1894, in 1898 (by a vote of 185 to 11), in 1900 (240 to 15), and in 1902 by practically a unanimous vote, there being no division, the House pa.s.sed the amendment; still the Senate resisted the change.

In the Senate itself were found occasional champions of popular election, princ.i.p.ally from the West and South. Mitch.e.l.l, of Oregon, Turpie, of Indiana, Perkins, of California, Berry, of Arkansas, and Bailey, of Texas, took the leadership in this contest for reform.

Chandler, of New Hampshire, Depew, of New York, Penrose, of Pennsylvania, h.o.a.r, of Ma.s.sachusetts, Foraker, of Ohio, and Spooner, of Wisconsin, leveled their batteries against it. State after state legislature pa.s.sed resolutions demanding the change, until at length three fourths had signified their demand for popular election.

The Senate as a whole remained obdurate. When in the Fifty-third Congress the resolution of the House came before that body, Mr. h.o.a.r, of Ma.s.sachusetts, made, on April 6 and 7, 1893, one of his most eloquent and impa.s.sioned pleas for resisting this new proposal to the uttermost.

He declared that it would transfer the seat of power to the "great cities and ma.s.ses of population," that it would create new temptations to fraud and corrupt practices, that it implied that the Senate had been untrue to its trust, that it would lead to the election of the President and the judiciary by popular majorities, and that it would "result in the overthrow of the whole scheme of the Senate and in the end of the whole scheme of the national Const.i.tution as designed and established by the framers of the Const.i.tution and the people who adopted it." With impatience, he refused to listen to the general indictment which had been brought against the Senate as then const.i.tuted. "The greatest victories of const.i.tutional liberty since the world began," he concluded, "are those whose battle ground has been the American Senate, and whose champions have been the Senators who for a hundred years, while they have resisted the popular pa.s.sions of the House, have led, represented, guided, obeyed, and made effective the deliberate will of a free people."

Having failed to make an impression on the Senate by a frontal attack, the advocates of popular election set to work to capture that citadel by a rear a.s.sault. They began to apply the principle of the direct primary in the nomination of candidates for the Senate, and this development at length culminated in the Oregon scheme for binding the legislature to accept the "people's choice." This movement gained rapid headway in the South, where the real contest was over nomination, not election, on account of the absence of party divisions. As early as 1875, the Nebraska const.i.tution had provided for taking a popular preferential vote on candidates for the Senate; but no considerable interest seems to have been taken in it at the time. In 1899, Nevada pa.s.sed a law ent.i.tled "an act to secure the election of United States Senators in accordance with the will of the people and the choice of the electors of the state." Shortly afterward, Oregon enacted her famous statute which attempted to compel the legislature to accept the popular nominee; and from that time forward the new system spread rapidly. By 1910, at least three fourths of the states nominated candidates for the Senate by some kind of a popular primary.

It was not until 1911 that the Senate yielded to the overwhelming popular demand for a change in the methods of election provided in the Const.i.tution. In December, 1909, Senator Bristow, of Kansas, introduced a resolution designed to effect this reform, and after a hot debate it was defeated on February 28, 1911, by a vote of 54 to 33, four short of the requisite two thirds. In the next Congress, which convened on April 4, ten Senators who had voted against the amendment had been retired, and the champions of the measure, taking it up again with renewed energy, were able to force it through the upper house on June 12, 1911, by a margin of five more than the two thirds. The resolution went to the House and a deadlock arose between the two chambers for a time over Federal control of elections, provided in the Senate resolution, which was obnoxious to many southern representatives. At length, however, on May 13, 1912, the opponents in the House gave way, and the resolution pa.s.sed by an overwhelming vote. Within a year, the resolution was ratified by the requisite three fourths of the state legislatures, and it was proclaimed on May 31, 1913.

The advance of direct democracy in the West was accompanied by a revival of the question of woman suffrage. That subject had been earnestly agitated about the time of the Civil War; and under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and others it made considerable headway among those sections of the population which had favored the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves. Indeed, it was inevitably linked with the discussion of "natural rights," extensively carried on during the days when attempts were being made to give political rights to the newly emanc.i.p.ated bondmen. Woman suffrage was warmly urged before the New York state const.i.tutional convention in 1867 by Mr. George William Curtis, in a speech which has become a cla.s.sic among the arguments for that cause. During the seventies suffrage pet.i.tions bearing the signatures of thousands of men and women were laid before Congress, and an attempt was made to secure from the Supreme Court an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment which would force the states to grant the ballot to women.

At length the movement began to subside, and writers who pa.s.sed for keen observers declared it to be at an end. The nineteenth century closed with victories for the women in only four states, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. The first of these states had granted the vote to women while yet a territory, and on its admission to the Union in 1890, it became the first state with full political equality. Three years later, Colorado enfranchised women, and in 1896 Utah and Idaho joined the equal suffrage commonwealths. Meanwhile, a very large number of northern and eastern states had given women the right to vote in local or school elections, Minnesota and Michigan in 1875 and other states in quick succession. Nevertheless, these gains were, relatively speaking, small, and there seemed to be little widespread enthusiasm about the further extension of the right.

Of course, the agitation continued, but in somewhat obscure circles, under a running fire of ridicule whenever it appeared in public. At length it broke out with unprecedented vigor, shortly after the tactics adopted by militant English women startled the world. Within a short time new and substantial victories gave the movement a standing which could not be ignored either by its positive opponents or the indifferent politicians. In 1910, the suffragists carried the state of Washington; in 1911, they carried California; in 1912, they won in Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon; but lost Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. These victories gave them nine states and of course a considerable influence in the House of Representatives and the right to partic.i.p.ate in the election of eighteen out of ninety-six Senators. But the defeat in the three middle states led the opponents of woman suffrage to believe that the movement could be confined to the far West. This hope was, however, dashed in 1913 when the legislature of Illinois gave women the right to vote for all statutory officers, including electors for President of the United States. Determined to make use of the political power thus obtained, the suffragists, under the leadership of Alice Paul, renewed with great vigor the agitation at Washington for a national amendment forbidding states to disqualify women from voting merely on account of s.e.x.

_The Rise and Growth of Socialism_

With the spread of direct elections and the initiative and referendum, and the adoption of the two amendments to the Federal Const.i.tution authorizing an income tax[73] and the popular election of Senators, the milder demands of Populism were secured. At the same time, the prosperity of the farmers and the enormous rise in ground values which accompanied the economic advance of the country removed some of the most potent causes of the discontent on which Populism thrived. Organized Populism died a natural death. Those Populists who advocated only political reforms went over to the Republican and Democratic parties; the advocates of radical economic changes, on the other hand, entered the Socialist ranks.

Socialism, as an organized movement in the United States, runs back to the foundation of the Social-Democratic Workingmen's party in New York City, in 1874, which was changed into the Socialist Labor party three years later,--a party that still survives. This group did not enter into national politics until 1892, although its branches occasionally made nominations for local offices or fused with other labor groups, as in the New York mayoralty campaign of 1886. In its vigorous propaganda against capitalism, this party soon came into collision with the American Federation of Labor, established in 1886, and definitely broke with it four years later when the latter withheld a charter from the New York Central Federation for the alleged reason that the Socialist Labor party of that city was an affiliated organization. After the break with the American Federation, this Socialist group turned for a time to the more radical Knights of Labor, but this new flirtation with labor was no more successful than the first, and in time the Socialist Labor party declared war on all the methods of American trades-unionism. Its gains numerically were not very significant; it polled something over twenty thousand votes in 1892 and over eighty thousand in 1896--the high-water mark in its political career. Its history has been a stormy one, marked by dissensions, personal controversies, and splits, but the party is still maintained by a decreasing band of loyal adherents.

The growth of interest in socialism, however, was by no means confined to the membership of the Socialist Labor party. External events were stirring a consciousness that grave labor problems had arisen within the American Commonwealth. The b.l.o.o.d.y strikes at Homestead, Coeur d'Alene, Buffalo, and Pullman in the eighties and early nineties moved the country as no preachments of abstract socialist philosophy could ever have done. That such social conflicts were full of serious portent was recognized even by such a remote and conservative thinker as President Cleveland in his message of 1886 to Congress. In that very year, the Society of Christian Socialists was formed, with Professor R. T. Ely and Professor G. D. Herron among its members, and about the same time "Nationalist" clubs were springing up all over the country as a result of the propaganda created by Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, published in 1887. The decline of the Populist party, which had indorsed most of the socialistic proposals that appealed to Americans tinged with radicalism, the formation of local labor and socialist societies of one kind or another, and the creation of dissatisfaction with the methods and program of the Socialist Labor party finally led to the establishment of a new national political organization.

This was effected in 1900 when a general fusion was attempted under the name of the Social Democratic party, which nominated Mr. Eugene V. Debs for President at a convention held in Indianapolis. The Socialist Labor party, however, declined to join the organization and went on its own way. The vote of the new party, ninety-six thousand, induced the leaders in the movement to believe that they were on the right track, for this was considerably larger than the rival group had ever secured. Steps were immediately taken to put the party on a permanent basis; the name Socialist party was a.s.sumed in 1901; local branches were established in all sections of the country with astonishing rapidity; and a vigorous propaganda was undertaken. In the national election of 1904 over four hundred thousand votes were polled; in 1908, when Mr. Bryan and Mr.

Roosevelt gave a radical tinge to the older parties, a gain of only about twenty-five thousand was made; but in 1912, despite Mr. Wilson's flirtation with western democracy and the candidacy of Mr. Roosevelt on a socialistic platform, the Socialist party more than doubled its vote.

During these years of growth the party began to pa.s.s from the stage of propaganda to that of action. In 1910, the Socialists of Milwaukee carried the city, secured twelve members of the lower house of the state legislature, elected two state Senators, and returned Mr. Victor Berger to Congress. This victory, which was hailed as a turning point in the march of socialism, was largely due, however, to the divided condition of the opposition, and thus the Socialists really went in as a plurality, not a majority party. The closing of the Republican and Democratic ranks in 1912 resulted in the ousting of the Socialist city administration, although the party polled a vote considerably larger than that cast two years previously. In other parts of the country numerous munic.i.p.al and local officers were elected by the Socialists, and in 1912 they could boast of several hundred public offices.[74]

While there was no little difference of opinion among the Socialists as to the precise character of their principles and tactics,--a condition not peculiar to that party,--there were certain general ideas running through their propaganda and platforms. Modern industry, they all held, creates necessarily a division of society into a relatively few capitalists, on the one hand, who own, control, and manipulate the machinery of production and the natural resources of the country, and on the other hand, a great ma.s.s of landless, toolless, and homeless working people dependent upon the sale of their labor for a livelihood.

There is an inherent antagonism between these two cla.s.ses, for each seeks to secure all that it can from the annual output of wealth; this antagonism is manifest in labor organizations, strikes, and industrial disputes of every kind. Out of this contest, the former cla.s.s gains wealth, luxury, safety, and the latter, poverty, slums, and misery.

Finally, if the annual toll levied upon industry by the exploiters and the frightful wastes due to compet.i.tion and maladjustment were eliminated, all who labor with hand or brain could enjoy reasonable comfort and security, and also leisure for the cultivation of the n.o.bler arts of civilization.

At the present time, runs the Socialist platform of 1912, "the capitalist cla.s.s, though few in numbers, absolutely controls the government--legislative, executive, and judicial. This cla.s.s owns the machinery of gathering and disseminating news through its organized press. It subsidizes seats of learning,--the colleges and the schools,--even religious and moral agencies. It has also the added prestige which established customs give to any order of society, right or wrong." But the working cla.s.s is becoming more and more discontented with its lot; it is becoming consolidated by cooperation, political and economic, and in the future it will become the ruling cla.s.s of the country, taking possession, through the machinery of the government, of the great instrumentalities of production and distribution. This final achievement of socialism is being prepared by the swift and inevitable consolidation of the great industries into corporations, managed by paid agents for the owners of the stocks and bonds. The transition from the present order will take the form of munic.i.p.al, state, and national a.s.sumption of the various instrumentalities of production and distribution--with or without compensation to the present owners, as circ.u.mstances may dictate.[75] Such are the general presuppositions of socialism.

The Socialist party had scarcely got under way before it was attacked from an unexpected quarter by revolutionary trade-unionists, known as the Industrial Workers of the World, who revived in part the old principle of cla.s.s solidarity (as opposed to trade solidarity) which lay at the basis of the Knights of Labor. The leaders of this new unionism, among whom Mr. W. D. Haywood was prominent, did not repudiate altogether the Socialist labors to secure control of the organs of government by the ballot, but they minimized their importance and pressed to the front the doctrine that by vigorous and uncompromising ma.s.s strikes a revolutionary spirit might be roused in the working cla.s.s and the actual control of business wrested from the capitalists, perhaps without the intervention of the government at all.

This new unionism was launched at a conference of radical labor leaders in 1904, at which the following program was adopted: "The working cla.s.s and the employing cla.s.s have nothing in common. Between these two cla.s.ses a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a cla.s.s, take possession of the earth and machinery of production and abolish the wage system. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing cla.s.s. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry.... Moreover the trade unions aid the employing cla.s.s to mislead the workers into the belief that the working cla.s.s have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working cla.s.s upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or a lockout is on in any department thereof.... We must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolish the wage system.'"

This new society made a disturbance in labor circles entirely out of proportion to its numerical strength. Its leaders managed strikes at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, at Lawrence, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1912, and at other points, laying emphasis on the united action of all the working people of all the trades involved in the particular industry. The "new unionism" appealed particularly to the great ma.s.s of foreign laborers who had no vote and therefore perhaps turned with more zeal to "direct"

action. It appeared, however, that the membership of the Industrial Workers was not over 70,000 in 1912, and that it had little of the stability of the membership of the old unions.

What the effect of this new unionism will be on the Socialist party remains to be seen. That party at its convention in 1912 went on record against the violent tactics of revolutionary unionism, and by a party vote "recalled" Mr. Haywood from his membership on the executive committee. The appearance of this more menacing type of working-cla.s.s action and the refusal of the Socialist party to accept it with open arms gave a new turn to the att.i.tude of the conservative press toward regular political socialism of the strict Marxian school.

_The Counter-Reformation_

Just as the Protestant Revolt during the sixteenth century was followed by a counter-reformation in the Catholic Church which swept away many abuses, while retaining and fortifying the essential principles of the faith, so the widespread and radical discontent of the working cla.s.ses with the capitalist system hitherto obtaining produced a counter-reformation on the part of those who wish to preserve its essentials while curtailing some of its excesses. This counter-reformation impress upon American political thinking and made a deep legislation at the turning of the new century. More than once during his presidency Mr.

Roosevelt warned the capitalists that a reform of abuses was the price which they would have to pay in order to save themselves from a socialist revolution. Eminent economists turned aside from free trade and _laissez faire_ to consider some of the grievances of the working cla.s.s, and many abandoned the time-honored discussions of "economic theories," in favor of legislative programs embracing the principles of state socialism, to which countries like Germany and Great Britain were already committed.

Charity workers whose function had been hitherto to gather up the wrecks of civilization and smooth their dying days began to talk of "a war for the prevention of poverty," and an examination of their concrete legislation proposals revealed the acceptance of some of the principles of state socialism. Unrestricted compet.i.tion and private property had produced a ma.s.s of poverty and wretchedness in the great cities which const.i.tuted a growing menace to society, and furnished themes for socialist orators. Social workers of every kind began the detailed a.n.a.lysis of the causes of specific cases of poverty and arrived at the conclusion that elaborate programs of "social legislation" were necessary to the elimination of a vast ma.s.s of undeserved poverty.

Under the stimulus of these and other forces, state legislatures in the more industrially advanced commonwealths began to pour out a stream of laws dealing with social problems. These measures included employers'

liability and workmen's compensation laws, the prohibition of child labor, minimum hours for dangerous trades like mining and railroading, minimum wages for women and girls, employment bureaus, and pensions for widows with children to support. While none of the states went so far as to establish old-age pensions and general sickness and accident insurance, it was apparent from an examination of the legislation of the first decade of the twentieth century that they were well in the paths of nations like Germany, England, and Australia.

_Criticism of the Federal System_

All this unsettlement in economics and politics could not fail to bring about a reconsideration of the fundamentals in the American const.i.tutional system--particularly the distribution of powers between the Federal and state governments, which is made by a const.i.tution drafted when economic conditions were totally different from what they are to-day. In fact, during the closing years of the nineteenth century there appeared, here and there in American political literature, evidence of a discontent with the Federal system scarcely less keen and critical than that which was manifested with the Articles of Confederation during those years of our history which John Fiske has denominated "The Critical Period."

Manufacturing interests which, at the time the Federal Const.i.tution was framed, were so local in character as to be excluded entirely from the control of the Federal government had now become national or at all events sectional, having absolutely no relation to state lines. As Professor Leac.o.c.k remarks, "The central fact of the situation is that economically and industrially the United States is one country or at best one country with four or five great subdivisions, while politically it is broken into a division of jurisdictions holding sway to a great extent over its economic life, but corresponding to no real division either of race, of history, of unity, of settlement, or of commercial interest."[76] For example, in 1900 the boot and shoe industry, instead of being liberally distributed among the several states, was so concentrated, that out of the total product 44.9 per cent was produced by Ma.s.sachusetts; nearly one half of the agricultural implements for that year were made in Illinois; two thirds of the gla.s.s of the whole country was made in Pennsylvania and Indiana; while Pennsylvania alone produced 54 per cent of the iron and steel manufactured. The political significance of this situation was simply this: the nation on which each of these specialized industries depended for its existence had practically no power through the national government to legislate relative to them; but in each case a single legislature representing a small fraction of the people connected with the industry in question possesses the power of control.

The tendency of manufacturers to centralize was accompanied, as has been pointed out above, by a similar centralization in railways. At the close of the nineteenth century, the Vanderbilt system operated "some 20,000 miles reaching from New York City to Casper, Wyoming, and covering the lake states and the area of the upper Mississippi; the Pennsylvania system with 14,000 miles covers a portion of the same territory, centering particularly in Ohio and Indiana; the Morgan system, operating 12,000 miles, covers the Atlantic seaboard and the interior of the Southern States from New York to New Orleans; the Morgan-Hill system operates 20,000 miles from Chicago and St. Louis to the state of Washington; the Harriman system with 19,000 miles runs from Chicago southward to the Gulf and westward to San Francisco, including a Southern route from New Orleans to Los Angeles; the Gould system with 14,000 miles operates chiefly in the center of the middle west extending southward to the Gulf; in addition to these great systems are a group of minor combinations such as the Atchinson with 7,500 or the Boston and Maine with 3,300 miles of road."

Corresponding to this centralization in industries and railways there was, as we have pointed out, a centralization in the control of capital, particularly in two large groups, the Standard Oil and the Morgan interests. As an expert financier, Mr. Moody wrote in 1904: "Viewed as a whole, we find the dominating influences in the trusts to be made up of an intricate network of large and small groups of capitalists, many allied to one another by ties of more or less importance, but all being appendages to, or parties of the greater groups which are themselves dependent on and allied with the two mammoth or Rockefeller and Morgan groups."

Facing this centralized national economy was a Federal system made for wholly different conditions--a national system of manufacturing, transportation, capital, and organized labor, with a national government empowered, expressly, at least, to regulate only one of those interests, transportation--the other fundamental national interests being referred to the mercy of forty-six separate and independent state legislatures. But it is to be noted, these several legislatures were by no means free to work out their own program of legislation; all of them were, at every point, subjected to Federal judicial control under the general phrases of the Fourteenth Amendment relative to due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.[77] To state it in another way, the national government was powerless to act freely with regard to nearly all of the great national interests, but it was all powerful through its judiciary in striking down state legislation.