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 masses, 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 mass 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 classes. 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 class 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 class. 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 passed the line of a passion 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 associated 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 pronunciamento, "When I give anything, I give it myself." At another time Vanderbilt assured 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.]