THE BOSTON AND ALBANY RAILROAD BECOMES THEIRS.
To a great extent, this railroad had been built with public funds raised by enforced taxation, the city of Albany contributing $1,000,000, and the State of Massachusetts $4,300,000 of public funds. Originally it looked as if the public interests were fully conserved. But gradually, little by little, predatory corporate interests got in their delicate work, and induced successive legislatures and State officials to betray the public interests. The public holdings of stock were entirely subordinated, so that in time a private corporation secured the practical ownership.
Finally, in 1899, the Legislature of Massachusetts effaced the last vestige of State ownership by giving the Vanderbilts a perpetual lease of this richly profitable railroad for a scant two million dollars' payment a year. During the debate over this act Representative Dean charged in the Legislature that "it is common rumor in the State House that members are receiving $300 apiece for their votes." The acquisition of this railroad enabled the New York Central to make direct connection with Boston, and with much of the New England coast, and added about four hundred miles to the Vanderbilt system. Most of the remainder of the New England territory is subservient to the Boston and Maine Railroad system in which the American Express Company, controlled by the Vanderbilts, owns 30,000 shares.
To pay interest and dividends on the hundreds of millions of dollars of inflated bonds and stock which three generations of the Vanderbilts had issued, and to maintain and enhance their value, it was necessary to keep on increasingly extorting revenues. The sources of the profits were palpable. Time after time freight rates were raised, as was more than sufficiently proved in various official investigations, despite denials. Conjunctively with this process, another method of extortion was the ceaseless one of beating down the wages of the workers to the very lowest point at which they could be hired. While the Vanderbilts and other magnates were manufacturing law at will, and boldly appropriating, under color of law, colossal possessions in real and personal property, how was the law, as embodied in legislatures, officials and courts acting toward the working class?