Another of what may be called—for purposes of distinction—the numerous small frauds at this time, was that foisting upon New York City the cost of replacing the New York Central's masonry viaduct approaches with a fine steel elevated system. This fraud cost the public treasury about $1,200,000, quite a sizable sum, it will be admitted, but one nevertheless of pitiful proportions in comparison with previous and later transactions of the Vanderbilt family.
We have seen how, in 1872, Commodore Vanderbilt put through the Legislature an act forcing New York City to pay $4,000,000 for improving the railroad's roadway on Park avenue. His grandsons now repeated his method. In 1892 the United States Government was engaged in dredging a ship canal through the Harlem River. The Secretary of War, having jurisdiction of all navigable waters, issued a mandate to the New York Central to raise its bridge to a given height, so as to permit the passing under of large vessels.
To comply with this order it was necessary to raise the track structure both north and south of the Harlem River. Had an ordinary citizen, upon receiving an order from the authorities to make improvements or alterations in his property, attempted to compel the city to pay all or any part of the cost, he would have been laughed at or summarily dealt with. The Vanderbilts were not ordinary property holders. Having the power to order legislatures to do their bidding, they now proceeded to imitate their grandfather, and compel the city to pay the greater portion of the cost of supplying them with a splendid steel elevated structure.
PUBLIC TAXATION TO SUPPLY PRIVATE CAPITAL.
The Legislature of 1892 was thoroughly responsive. This was a Legislature which was not merely corrupt, but brazenly and frankly so, as was proved by the scandalous openness with which various spoliative measures were rushed through.
An act was passed compelling New York City to pay one-half of the cost of the projected elevated approaches up to the sum of $1,600,000. New York City was thus forced to pay $800,000 for constructing that portion south of the Harlem River. If, so the law read on, the cost exceeded the estimate of $800,000, then the New York Central was to pay the difference. Additional provision was made for the compelling of New York City to pay for the building of the section north of the Harlem River. But who did the work of contracting and building, and who determined what the cost was? The railroad company itself. It charged what it pleased for material and work, and had complete control of the disbursing of the appropriations. The city's supervising commissions had, perforce, to accept its arbitrary demands, and lacked all power to question, or even scrutinize, its reports of expenditures. Apart from the New York Central's officials, no one to-day knows what the actual cost has been, except as stated by the company.
South of the Harlem River this report cost has been $800,000, north of the Harlem River $400,000. At practically no expense to themselves, the Vanderbilts obtained a massive four-track elevated structure, running for miles over the city streets. The people of the city of New York were forced to bear a compulsory taxation of $1,200,000 without getting the slightest equivalent for it. The Vanderbilts own these elevated approaches absolutely; not a cent's worth of claim or title have the people in them. Together with the $4,000,000 of public money extorted by Commodore Vanderbilt in 1872, this sum of $1,200,000 makes a total amount of $5,200,000 plucked from the public treasury under form of law to make improvements in which the people who have footed the bill have not a moiety of ownership. [Footnote: The facts as to the expenses incurred under the act of 1892 were stated to the author by Ernest Harvier, a member of the Change of Grade Commission representing New York City in supervising the work.] The Vanderbilts have capitalized these terminal approaches as though they had been built with private money. [Footnote: The New York Central has long compelled the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad to pay seven cents toll for every passenger transported south of Woodlawn, and also one-third of the maintenance cost, including interest, of the terminal. In reporting an effort of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad to have these terms modified, the New York "Times" stated in its financial columns, issue of December 25, 1908: "As matters now stand the New Haven, without its consent, is forced to bear one-third of the charge arising from the increased capital invested in the Central's terminal"]
[Illustration: CORNELIUS VANDERBILT Grandson of Commodore
Vanderbilt.]
At this point a significant note may be made in passing. While these and other huge frauds were going on, Cornelius Vanderbilt was conspicuously presenting himself as a most ardent "reformer" in politics. He was, for instance, a distinguished member of the Committee of Seventy, organized in 1894, to combat and overthrow Tammany corruption! Such, as we have repeatedly observed, is the quality of the men who compose the bourgeois reform movements. For the most part great rogues, they win applause and respectability by virtuously denouncing petty, vulgar political corruption which they themselves often instigate, and thus they divert attention from their own extensive rascality.