Great Fortunes from Railroads Part 13

Let us turn from this sickening picture of sordid arrogance and ignorance so historically true of all aristocracies based upon money, from the remotest time to this present day, and contemplate how the organized part of the working cla.s.s regarded the morals of its "superiors."

While the commercial cla.s.s, on the one hand, was determined on beating down the working cla.s.s at every point, it was, on the other, unceasingly warring among itself. In business dealings there was no such recognized thing as friendship. To get the better of the other was held the quintessence of mercantile shrewdness. A flint-hard, brute spirit enveloped all business transactions. The business man who lost his fortune was generally looked upon without emotion or pity, and condemned as an incapable. For self interest, business men began to combine in corporations, but these were based purely upon mercenary aims. Not a microscopic trace was visible of that spirit of fellow kindness, sympathy, collective concern and brotherhood already far developed among the organized part of the working cla.s.s.

As the supereminent magnate of his day, Vanderbilt was invested with extraordinary publicity; he was extensively interviewed and quoted; his wars upon rival capitalists were matters of engrossing public concern; his slightest illness was breathlessly followed by commercialdom dom and its outcome awaited. Hosts of men, women and children perished every year of disease contracted in factories, mines and slums; but Vanderbilt's least ailment was given a transcending importance, while the scourging sweep of death among the lowly and helpless was utterly ignored.

Precisely as mercantile society bestowed no attention upon the crushed and slain, except to advance roughshod over their stricken bodies while throwing out a pittance in charity here and there, so Vanderbilt embodied in himself the qualities that capitalist society in ma.s.s practiced and glorified. "It was strong men," says Croffut, "whom he liked and sympathized with, not weak ones; the self-reliant, not the helpless. He felt that the solicitor of charity was always a lazy or drunken person, trying to live by plundering the sober and industrious." This malign distrust of fellow beings, this acrid cynicism of motives, this extraordinary imputation of evil designs on the part of the penniless, was characteristic of the capitalist cla.s.s as a whole. Itself practicing the lowest and most ign.o.ble methods, governed by the basest motives, plundering in every direction, it viewed every member of its own cla.s.s with suspicion and rapacity.

Then it turned about, and with immense airs of superiority, attributed all of its own vices and crimes to the impoverished ma.s.ses which its own system had created, whether in America or elsewhere.

The apologist may hasten forward with the explanation that the commercial cla.s.s was not to be judged by Vanderbilt's methods and qualities. In truth, however, Vanderbilt was not more inhuman than many of the contemporary shining lights of the business world.

"HONESTY AND INDUSTRY" a.n.a.lYZED.

If there is any one fortune commonly praised as having been acquired "by honesty and industry," it is the Borden millions, made from cotton factories. At the time Vanderbilt was blackmailing, the founder of this fortune, Colonel Borden, was running cotton mills in Fall River. His factory operatives worked from five o'clock in the morning to seven in the evening, with but two half hours of intermission, one for breakfast, the other for dinner. The workday of these men, women and children was thus thirteen hours; their wages were wretchedly low, their life was one of actual slavery.

Insufficient nourishment, overwork, and the unsanitary and disgusting conditions in the mills, prematurely aged and debilitated them, and were a constant source of disease, killing off considerable numbers, especially the children.

In 1850, the operatives asked Borden for better wages and shorter hours. This was his reply: "I saw that mill built stone by stone; I saw the pickers, the carding engines, the spinning mules and the looms put into it, one after the other, and I would see every machine and stone crumble and fall to the floor again before I would accede to your wishes." Borden would not have been amiss had he added that every stone in that mill was cemented with human blood. His operatives went on a strike, stayed out ten months, suffered frightful hardships, and then were forced back to their tasks by hunger. Borden was inflexible, and so were all the other cotton mill owners. [Footnote: The heroism of the cotton operatives was extraordinary. Slaves themselves, they battled to exterminate negro slavery. "The spinner's union," says McNeill, "was almost dead during the [Civil] war, as most of its members had gone to shoulder the musket and to fight... to strike the shackles from the negro. A large number were slain in battle."-"The Labor Movement": 216-217.] It was not until 1874, after many further bitterly-contested strikes, that the Masachusetts Legislature was prevailed upon to pa.s.s a ten-hour law, twenty-four years after the British Parliament had pa.s.sed such an enactment.

The commercial cla.s.s, high and low, was impregnated with deceit and dissimulation, cynicism, selfishness and cruelty. What were the aspirations of the working cla.s.s which it was to uplift? The contrast stood out with stark distinctness. While business men were frantically sapping the labor and life out of their workers, and then tricking and cheating one another to seize the proceeds of that exploitation, the labor unions were teaching the n.o.bility of brotherly cooperation. "Cultivate friendship among the great brotherhood of toil," was the advice of Uriah Stevens, master workman of the Knights of Labor, at the annual meeting of that organization on January 12, 1871. And he went on:

And while the toiler is thus engaged in creating the world's value, how fares his own interest and well-being? We answer, "Badly," for he has too little time, and his faculties become too much blunted by unremitting labor to a.n.a.lyze his condition or devise and perfect financial schemes or reformatory measures. The hours of labor are too long, and should be shortened. I recommend a universal movement to cease work at five o'clock Sat.u.r.day afternoon, as a beginning. There should be a greater partic.i.p.ation in the profits of labor by the industrious and intelligent laborer. In the present arrangements of labor and capital, the condition of the employee is simply that of wage slavery--capital dictating, labor submitting; capital superior, labor inferior.

This is an artificial and man-created condition, not G.o.d's arrangement and order; for it degrades man and enn.o.bles mere pelf. It demeans those who live by useful labor, and, in proportion, exalts all those who eschew labor and live (no matter by what pretence or respectable cheat--for cheat it is) without productive work.

LABOR'S PRINCIPLES IGNORED.

Such principles as these evoked so little attention that it is impossible to find them recorded in most of the newspapers of the time; and if mentioned it was merely as the object of venomous attacks. In varying degrees, now in outright abuse and again in sneering and ridicule, the working cla.s.s was held up as an ignorant, discontented, violent aggregation, led by dangerous agitators, and arrogantly seeking to upset all business by seeking to dictate to employers what wages and hours of labor should be.

And, after all, little it mattered to the capitalists what the workers thought or said, so long as the machinery of government was not in their hands. At about the very time Master Workman Stevens was voicing the unrest of the laboring ma.s.ses, and at the identical time when the panic of 1873 saw several millions of men workless, thrown upon soup kitchens and other forms of charity, and battered wantonly by policemen's clubs when they attempted to hold ma.s.s meetings of protest, an Iowa writer, D. C. Cloud, was issuing a work which showed concretely how thoroughly Government was owned by the commercial and financial cla.s.ses. This work, obscurely published and now scarcely known except to the patient delver, is nevertheless one of the few serious books on prevailing conditions written at that time, and is in marked contrast to the reams of printed nonsense then circulated.

Although Cloud was tinged greatly with the middle cla.s.s point of view, and did not see that all successful business was based upon deceit and fraud, yet so far as his lights carried him, he wrote trenchantly and fearlessly, embodying series after series of facts exposing the existing system. He observed:

... A measure without any merit save to advance the interest of a patentee, or contractor, or railroad company, will become a law, while measures of interest to the whole people are suffered to slumber, and die at the close of the session from sheer neglect. It is known to Congressmen that these lobbyists are paid to influence legislation by the parties interested, and that dishonest and corrupt means are resorted to for the accomplishment of the object they have undertaken ... Not one interest in the country nor all other interests combined are as powerful as the railroad interest ... With a network of roads throughout the country; with a large capital at command; with an organization perfect in all its parts, controlled by a few leading spirits like Scott, Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Tracy and a dozen others, the whole strength and wealth of this corporate power can be put into operation at any moment, and Congressmen are bought and sold by it like any article of merchandise. [Footnote: "Monopolies and the People:" 155-156.]

CHAPTER VI

THE ENTAILING OF THE VANDERBILT FORTUNE

The richer Commodore Vanderbilt grew, the more closely he clung to his old habits of intense parsimony. Occasionally he might ostentatiously give a large sum here or there for some religious or philanthropic purpose, but his general undeviating course was a consistent meanness. In him was united the petty bargaining traits of the trading element and the lavish capacities for plundering of the magnate cla.s.s. While defrauding on a great scale, pocketing tens of millions of dollars at a single raid, he would never for a moment overlook the leakage of a few cents or dollars. His comprehensive plans for self-aggrandizement were carried out in true piratical style; his aims and demands were for no paltry prize, but for the largest and richest booty. Yet so ingrained by long development was his faculty of acquisition, that it far pa.s.sed the line of a pa.s.sion and became a monomania.

VANDERBILT'S CHARACTERISTICS.

To such an extent did it corrode him that even when he could boast his $100,000,000 he still persisted in haggling and huckstering over every dollar, and in tricking his friends in the smallest and most underhand ways. Friends in the true sense of the word he had none; those who regarded themselves as such were of that thrifty, congealed disposition swayed largely by calculation. But if they expected to gain overmuch by their intimacy, they were generally vastly mistaken; nearly always, on the contrary, they found themselves caught in some unexpected snare, and riper in experience, but poorer in pocket, they were glad to retire prudently to a safe distance from the old man's contact. "Friends or foes," wrote an admirer immediately after his death, "were pretty much on the same level in his estimation, and if a friend undertook to get in his way he was obliged to look out for himself."

On one occasion, it is related, when a candidate for a political office solicited a contribution, Vanderbilt gave $100 for himself, and an equal sum for a friend a.s.sociated with him in the management of the New York Central Railroad. A few days later Vanderbilt informed this friend of the transaction, and made a demand for the hundred dollars. The money was paid over. Not long after this, the friend in question was likewise approached for a political contribution, whereupon he handed out $100 for himself and the same amount for Vanderbilt. On being told of his debt, Vanderbilt declined to pay it, closing the matter abruptly with this laconic p.r.o.nunciamento, "When I give anything, I give it myself." At another time Vanderbilt a.s.sured a friend that he would "carry" one thousand shares of New York Central stock for him. The market price rose to $115 a share and then dropped to $90. A little later, before setting out to bribe an important bill through the Legislature--a bill that Vanderbilt knew would greatly increase the value of the stock--the old magnate went to the friend and represented that since the price of the stock had fallen it would not be right to subject the friend to a loss. Vanderbilt asked for the return of the stock and got it.

Once the bill became a law, the market price of the stock went up tremendously, to the utter dismay of the confiding friend who saw a profit of $80,000 thus slip out of his hands into Vanderbilt's.

[Footnote: These and similar anecdotes are to be found incidentally mentioned in a two-page biography, very laudatory on the whole, in the New York "Times," issue of January 5, 1877.]

In his personal expenses Vanderbilt usually begrudged what he looked upon as superfluous expense. The plainest of black clothes he wore, and he never countenanced jewelry. He scanned the table bill with a hypercritical eye. Even the sheer necessities of his physical condition could not induce him to pay out money for costly prescriptions. A few days before his death his physician recommended champagne for some internal trouble. "Champagne!" exclaimed Vanderbilt with a reproachful look, "I can't afford champagne. A bottle every morning! Oh, I guess sody water'll do!"

From all accounts it would seem that he diffused about him the same forbidding environment in his own house. He is described as stern, obstinate, masterful and miserly, domineering his household like a tyrant, roaring with fiery anger whenever he was opposed, and flying into fits of fury if his moods, designs and will were contested. His wife bore him thirteen children, twelve of whom she had brought up to maturity. A woman of almost rustic simplicity of mind and of habits, she became obediently meek under the iron discipline he administered.

Croffut says of her that she was "acquiescent and patient under the sway of his dominant will, and in the presence of his trying moods."

He goes on: "The fact that she lived harmoniously with such an obstinate man bears strong testimony to her character." [Footnote: "The Vanderbilts": 113.]

If we are to place credibility in current reports, she was forced time and time again to undergo the most violent scenes in interceding for one of their sons, Cornelius Jeremiah. For the nervous disposition and general bad health of this son the father had not much sympathy; but the inexcusable crime to him was that Cornelius showed neither inclination nor capacity to engage in a business career. If Cornelius had gambled on the stock exchange his father would have set him down as an exceedingly enterprising, respectable and promising man. But he preferred to gamble at cards. This rebellious lack of interest in business, joined with dissipation, so enraged the old man that he drove Cornelius from the house and only allowed him access during nearly a score of years at such rare times as the mother succeeded in her tears and pleadings. Worn out with her long life of drudgery, Vanderbilt's wife died in 1868; about a year later the old magnate eloped with a young cousin, Frank A. Crawford, and returning from Canada, announced his marriage, to the unbounded surprise and utter disfavor of his children.

THE OLD MAGNATE'S DEATH.

An end, however, was soon coming to his prolonged life. A few more years of money heaping, and then, on May 10, 1876, he was taken mortally ill. For eight months he lay in bed, his powerful vitality making a vigorous battle for life; two physicians died while in the course of attendance on him; it was not until the morning of January 4, 1877, that the final symptoms of approaching death came over him.

When this was seen the group about his bed emotionally sang: "Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy," "Nearer, My G.o.d, To Thee," and "Show Ye Pity, Lord." He died with a conventional religious end of which the world made much; all of the property sanct.i.ties and ceremonials were duly observed; nothing was lacking in the piety of that affecting deathbed scene. It furnished the text for many a sermon, but while ministerial and journalistic attention was thus eulogistically concentrated upon the loss of America's greatest capitalist, not a reference was made in church or newspaper to the deaths every year of a host of the lowly, slain in the industrial vortex by injury and disease, and too often by suicide and starvation. Except among the lowly themselves this slaughter pa.s.sed unprotested and unnoticed.

Even as Vanderbilt lay moribund, speculation was busy as to the disposition of his fortune. Who would inherit his aggregation of wealth? The probating of his will soon disclosed that he had virtually entailed it. About $90,000,000 was left to his eldest son, William H., and one-half of the remaining $15,000,000 was bequeathed to the chief heir's four sons. [Footnote: To Cornelius J. Vanderbilt, the Commodore's "wayward" son, only the income derived from $200,000 was bequeathed, upon the condition that he should forfeit even this legacy if he contested the will. Nevertheless, he brought a contest suit. William H. Vanderbilt compromised the suit by giving to his brother the income on $1,000,000. On April 2, 1882, Cornelius J.

Vanderbilt shot and killed himself. Croffut gives this highly enlightening account of the compromising of the suit:

"At least two of the sisters had sympathized with 'Cornele's' suit, and had given him aid and comfort, neither of them liking the legatee, and one of them not having been for years on speaking terms with him; but now, in addition to the bequests made to his sisters, William H. voluntarily [sic] added $500,000 to each from his own portion.

"He drove around one evening, and distributed this splendid largess from his carriage, he himself carrying the bonds into each house in his arms and delivering them to each sister in turn. The donation was accompanied by two interesting incidents. In one case the husband said, 'William, I've made a quick calculation here, and I find these bonds don't amount to quite $500,000. They're $150 short, at the price quoted today.' The donor smiled, and sat down and made out his check for the sum to balance.

"In another case, a husband, after counting and receipting for the $500,000, followed the generous visitor out of the door, and said, 'By the way, if you conclude to give the other sisters any more, you'll see that we fare as well as any of them, won't you?' The donor jumped into his carriage and drove off without replying, only saying, with a laugh, to his companions, 'Well, what do you think o' that'"-- "The Vanderbilts": 151-152.] A few millions were distributed among the founder's other surviving children, and some comparatively small sums bequeathed to charitable and educational inst.i.tutions. The Vanderbilt dynasty had begun.

PERSONALITY OF THE CHIEF HEIR.

At this time William H. Vanderbilt was fifty-six years old. Until 1864 he had been occupied at farming on Staten Island; he lived at first in "a small, square, plain two-story house facing the sea, with a lean-to on one end for a kitchen." The explanation of why the son of a millionaire betook himself to truck farming lay in these facts: The old man despised leisure and luxury, and had a correspondingly strong admiration for "self-made" men. Knowing this, William H.

Vanderbilt made a studious policy of standing in with his father, truckling to his every caprice and demand, and proving that he could make an independent living. He is described as a phlegmatic man of dull and slow mental processes, domestic tastes and of kindly disposition to his children. His father (so the chronicles tell) did not think that he "would ever amount to anything," but by infinite plodding, exacting the severest labor from his farm laborers, driving close bargains and turning devious tricks in his dealings, he gradually won the confidence and respect of the old man, who was always pleased with proofs of guile. Croffut gives a number of instances of William's craft and continues: "From his boyhood he had given instant and willing submission to the despotic will of his father, and had made boundless sacrifices to please him. Most men would have burst defiantly away from the repressive control and imperious requirements; but he doubtless thought that for the chance of becoming heir to $100,000,000 he could afford to remain long in the pa.s.sive att.i.tude of a distrusted prince." (sic.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM H. VANDERBILT, He Inherited the Bulk of His Father's Fortune and Doubled It]

The old autocrat finally modified his contemptuous opinion, and put him in an executive position in the management of the New York and Harlem Railroad. Later, he elevated him to be a sort of coadjutor by installing him as vice president of the New York Central Railroad, and as an a.s.sociate in the directing of other railroads. It was said to be painful to note the exhausting persistence with which William H. Vanderbilt daily struggled to get some perceptions of the details of railroad management. He did succeed in absorbing considerable knowledge. But his training at the hands of his father was not so much in the direction of learning the system of management. Men of ability could always be hired to manage the roads. What his father princ.i.p.ally taught him was the more essential astuteness required of a railroad magnate; the manipulation of stocks and of common councils and legislatures; how to fight and overthrow compet.i.tors and extend the sphere of ownership and control; and how best to resist, and if possible to destroy, the labor unions. In brief, his education was a duplication of his father's scope of action: the methods of the sire were infused into the son.

From the situation in which he found himself, and viewing the particular traits required in the development of capitalistic inst.i.tutions, it was the most appropriate training that he could have received. Book erudition and the cultivation of fine qualities would have been sadly out of place; his father's teachings were precisely what were needed to sustain and augment his possessions. On every hand he was confronted either by compet.i.tors who, if they could get the chance, would have stripped him without scruple, or by other men of his own cla.s.s who would have joyfully defrauded him. But overshadowing these accustomed business practices, new and startling conditions that had to be met and fought were now appearing.

Instead of a mult.i.tude of small, detached railroads, owned and operated by independent companies, the period was now being reached of colossal railroad systems. In the East the small railroad owners had been well-nigh crushed out, and their properties joined in huge lines under the ownership of a few controlling men, while in the West, extensive systems, thousands of miles long, had recently been built. Having stamped out most of the small owners, the railroad barons now proceeded to wrangle and fight among themselves. It was a characteristic period when the railroad magnates were constantly embroiled in the bitterest quarrels, the sole object of which was to outdo, bankrupt and wreck one another and seize, if possible, the others' property.

THE RISE OF THE FIRST TRUST.

It was these conflicts that developed the auspicious time and opportunity for a change of the most world--wide importance, and one which had a stupendous ultimate purport not then realized. The wars between the railroad magnates a.s.sumed many forms, not the least of which was the cutting of freight rates. Each railroad desperately sought to wrench away traffic from the others by offering better inducements. In this cutthroat compet.i.tion, a coterie of hawk-eyed young men in the oil business, led by John D. Rockefeller, saw their fertile chance.

The drilling and the refining of oil, although in their comparative infancy, had already reached great proportions. Each railroad was eager to get the largest share of the traffic of transporting oil.

Rockefeller, ruminating in his small refinery at Cleveland, Ohio, had conceived the revolutionary idea of getting a monopoly of the production and distribution of oil, obliterating the middleman, and systematizing and centralizing the whole business.