Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington

by Clinton W. Gilbert

When business figures arose upon the national horizon they were merely these local figures vastly multiplied. As a people we called them "Jim" and "Jay," and "Dan'l," just as we had called the local manufacturer and banker by their first names. All the good will that went to the local business leaders went to them. They put money into our pockets, when they didn't happen to take it out of our pockets; on the whole they were doing the great work of making this country a richer and better land. Some who did not conceive the resources of the printing press in the issuance of new securities had to suffer, but that was their lookout; suffering for some was the way of the world.

Business began to be national in the tying together into systems the little dislocated railroads that local enterprise had laid down and in the creation of a national securities market for the distribution of ownership in the new combinations.

A new era opened when Gould and Fisk and Drew started at full speed their rival printing presses in Wall Street. Look over our whole drab political story from the death of Lincoln to the arrival of Roosevelt, more than a generation, and, if we did not preserve the names of our Presidents in our histories, how many names are there worth remembering? Garfield was shot, which was dramatic. Cleveland was a fat man who used long Latin words. He was also the first Democratic chief executive in more than thirty years. What else? Who else?

Meanwhile an amazing array of business personages diverted attention from the inconspicuous Hayeses, Arthurs, and McKinleys, who were the flower of our public life. Gould, Fisk, Drew, Hill, Carnegie, the Rockefellers, Harriman, Morgan, Ryan—business was fertile of men, politics sterile; you have to go back to the foundation of the government for a period so prolific in men, of the other sort, or to the age of Elizabeth or of Pericles for another as prolific in men, of still another kind. How could the dull sideshow in Washington compete with the big spectacle in New York?

These demigods of business were not only shining personalities; they were doing the work of making America great and rich; we all shared in the prosperity they were creating. To go back to the small town again, who was it increased the opportunities of the storekeeper, the neighboring farmer, or real estate holder? Was it the mayor and the common council by passing ordinances about street signs and sidewalk encumbrances? Or the manufacturer or railroad builder who put the town on the map, giving employment to labor or an outlet for its products?

The government at Washington occupied a place in our consciousness similar to that of the government of the small town. It was charged with our national defense, a function of such little importance that we had hardly an army or a navy. It conducted our economic defense, against the foreigner, with laws written, however, by business itself, which naturally knew best how it wanted to be defended; you could not, in your proper senses, suppose that the Hayeses, Arthurs, and McKinleys were wiser than the Carnegies, Hills, Morgans, or Harrimans. For the rest it was told severely to let well enough alone. To make assurance doubly sure that it would do so it was rather openly given over to the great men who were creating the national wealth.

Starting with the combination of the little speculatively built railroads into systems and the development of a security market to float the shares of stock in the new companies, business took on rapidly a more and more national character. Great bankers arose to finance the consolidations. An investing public with a wider horizon than that which used to put its money in local enterprises entrusted its funds in the hands of the great bankers or took its chances in the market for stocks. Industry went through a similar concentration. Stronger companies absorbed their weaker and less successful rivals. The same bankers who sat in the boards of directors of the railroads representing their investing public took their places in the directorate of manufacturing combinations.

The railroads seeking the business of the big industrial companies and the big industrial companies desiring favors from the railroads placed representatives in each others' boards. This interlocking created a national organization of business dominated by a few striking and spectacular figures.

The popular imagination was as much heated over the discovery of the United States as a single field of enterprise as the imagination of Europe had been centuries earlier over the discovery of the new world.

The psychology of the local industry period carried over into this new period of national industry. The whole country became one vast small town. The masters of industry, banking, and the railroads were the leading citizens. They were "putting the United States on the map," as the local creator of wealth had put the small town on the map. They were doing something vast, from which we all undoubtedly benefited. Perhaps we could not trace our advantage so immediately as we could to the enterprise of the man who brought population to our town, swelling the price of our real estate or increasing the sales at our stores. But what had been a matter of experience on a small scale was a matter of belief on a large scale. The same consequences must follow, with manifold abundance. And the nation was demonstrably growing rapidly, immensely richer; surely cause and effect.