Great Fortunes from Railroads

by Gustavus Myers

THE BASIS OF POLITICAL PARTIES.

However these parties might differ on various issues, they both stood for the perpetuation of the existing social and industrial system based upon capitalist ownership. The tendency of the Republican party, founded in 1856, toward the abolition of negro chattel slavery was in precise harmony with the aims and fundamental interests of the manufacturing capitalists of the North. The only peril that the capitalist class feared was the creation of a distinct, disciplined and determined workingmen's party. This they knew would, if successful, seriously endanger and tend to sweep away the injustices and oppressions upon which they, the capitalists, subsisted. To avert this, every ruse and expedient was resorted to: derision, undermining, corruption, violence, imprisonment—all of these and other methods were employed by that sordid ruling class claiming for itself so pretentious and all-embracing a degree of refinement, morality and patriotism.

Surveying historical events in a large way, however, it is by no means to be regretted that capitalism had its own unbridled way, and that its growth was not checked. Its development to the unbearable maximum had to come in order to prepare the ripe way for a newer stage in civilization. The capitalist was an outgrowth of conditions as they existed both before, and during, his time. He fitted as appropriate a part in his time as the predatory baron in feudal days.

But in this sketch we are not dealing with historical causes or sequences as much as with events and contrasts. The aim is to give a sufficient historical perspective of times when Government was manipulated by the capitalist class for its own aggrandizement, and to despoil and degrade the millions of producers.

The imminence of working-class action was an ever present and disturbing menace to the capitalists. To give one of many instances of how the workers were beginning to realize the necessity of this action, and how the capitalists met it, let us instance the resolutions of the New England Workingmen's Association, adopted in 1845. With the manifold illustrations in mind of how the powers of Government had been used and were being increasingly used to expropriate the land, the resources and the labor and produce of the many, and bond that generation and future generations under a multitude of law-created rights and privileges, this association declared in its preamble:

Whereas, we, the mechanics and workingmen of New England are convinced by the sad experience of years that under the present arrangement of society labor is and must be the slave of wealth; and, whereas, the producers of all wealth are deprived not merely of its enjoyment, but also of the social and civil rights which belong to humanity and the race; and, whereas, we are convinced that reform of those abuses must depend upon ourselves only; and, whereas, we believe that in intelligence alone is strength, we hereby declare our object to be union for power, power to bless humanity, and to further this object resolve ourselves into an association.

One of the leading spirits in this movement was Charles A. Dana, a young professional man of great promise and exceptional attainments. Subsequently he was bought off with a political office; he became not only a renegade of the most virulent type, but he leagued himself with the greatest thieves of the day—Tweed and Jay Gould, for example—received large bribes for defending them and their interests in a newspaper of which he became the owner—the New York Sun —and spent his last years bitterly and cynically attacking, ridiculing and misrepresenting the labor movement, and made himself the most conspicuous editorial advocate for every thieving plutocrat or capitalist measure.

The year 1884 about marked the zenith of the era of the capitalist seizing of the public domain. By that time the railroad and other corporations had possessed themselves of a large part of the area now vested in their ownership. At that very time an army of workers, estimated at 2,000,000, was out of employment. Yet it was not considered a panic year; certainly the industrial establishments of the country were not in the throes of a commercial cataclysm such as happened in 1873 and previous periods. The cities were overcrowded with the destitute and homeless; along every country road and railroad track could be seen men, singly or in pairs, tramping from place to place looking for work.

Many of those unemployed were native Americans. A large number were aliens who had been induced to migrate by the alluring statements of the steamship companies to whose profit it was to carry large batches; by the solicitations of the agents of American corporations seeking among the oppressed peoples of the Old World a generous supply of cheap, unorganized labor; or by the spontaneous prospect of bettering their condition politically or economically.

Millions of poor Europeans were thus persuaded to come over, only to find that the promises held out to them were hollow. They found that they were exploited in the United States even worse industrially than in their native country. As for political freedom their sanguine hopes were soon shattered. They had votes after a certain period of residence, it was true, but they saw—or at least the intelligent of them soon discerned—that the personnel and laws of the United States Government were determined by the great capitalists. The people were allowed to go through the form of voting; the moneyed interests, by controlling the machinery of the dominant political parties, dictated who the candidates, and what the so-called principles, of those parties should be. The same program was witnessed at every election. The electorate was stimulated with excitement and enthusiasm over false issues and dominated candidates. The more the power and wealth of the capitalist class increased, the more openly the Government became ultra-capitalistic.