EXTORTION AND THEFT COMMON.
The truth is that the bulk of Vanderbilt's original millions were the proceeds of extortion, blackmail and theft.
In the established code of business the words extortion and theft had an unmistakable significance. Business men did not consider it at all dishonorable to oppress their workers; to manufacture and sell goods under false pretenses; to adulterate prepared foods and drugs; to demand the very highest prices for products upon which the very life of the people depended, and at a time when consumers needed them most; to bribe public officials and to hold up the Government in plundering schemes. These and many other practices were looked upon as commonplaces of ordinary trade.
But even as burglars will have their fine points of honor among themselves, so the business world set certain tacit limitations of action beyond which none could go without being regarded as violating the code. It was all very well as long as members of their own class plundered some other class, or fought one another, no matter how rapaciously, in accordance with understood procedure. But when any business man ventured to overstep these limitations, as Vanderbilt did, and levy a species of commercial blackmail to the extent of millions of dollars, then he was sternly denounced as an arch thief. If Vanderbilt had confined himself to the routine formulas of business, he might have gone down in failure. Many of the bankrupts were composed of business men who, while sharp themselves, were outgeneraled by abler sharpers. Vanderbilt was a master hand in despoiling the despoilers.
[Illustration: COMMODORE CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, The Founder of the
Vanderbilt Fortune.]
How did Vanderbilt manage to extort millions of dollars? The method was one of great simplicity; many of its features were brought out in the United States Senate in the debate of June 9, 1858, over the Mail Steamship bill. The Government had begun, more than a decade back, the policy of paying heavy subsidies to steamship companies for the transportation of mail. This subsidy, however, was not the only payment received by the steamship owners. In addition they were allowed what were called "postages"—the full returns from the amount of postage on the letters carried. Ocean postage at that time was enormous and burdensome, and was especially onerous upon a class of persons least able to bear it. About three-quarters of the letters transported by ships were written by emigrants. They were taxed the usual rate of twenty-four or twenty-nine cents for a single letter. In 1851 the amount received for trans-Atlantic postages was not less than a million dollars; three-fourths of this sum came directly from the working class.