PATRIOTISM AT FIFTY PER CENT.
Some of these acts, demanded by the banking interests, made the people of the United States pay an almost unbelievable usurious interest for loans. These banking statutes were so worded that nominally the interest did not appear high; in reality, however, by various devices, the bankers, both national and international, were often able to extort from twenty to fifty, and often one hundred per cent., in interest, and this on money which had at some time or somehow been squeezed out of exploited peoples in the United States or elsewhere.
By these laws the bankers were allowed to get annual payment from the Government of six per cent. interest in gold on the Government bonds that they bought. They could then deposit those same bonds with the Government, and issue their own bank notes against ninety per cent. of the bonds deposited. They drew interest from the Government on the deposited bonds, and at the time charged borrowers an exorbitant rate of interest for the use of the bank notes, which passed as currency.
It was by this system of double interest that they were able to sweep into their coffers hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars, not a dollar of which did they earn, and all of which were sweated out of the adversities of the people of the United States. From 1863 to 1878 alone the Government paid out to national banks as interest on bonds the enormous sum of $252,837,556.77. [Footnote: House Documents, Forty-fifth Congress, Second Session, Ex. Document No. 34, Vol. xiv., containing the reply of Secretary of the Treasury Sherman, in answer to a resolution of the House of Representatives.] On the other hand, the banks were entirely relieved from paying taxes; they secured the passage of a law exempting Government bonds from taxation. Armies were being slaughtered and legions of homes desolated, but it was a rich and safe time for the bankers; a very common occurrence was it for banks to declare dividends of twenty, forty, and sometimes one hundred, per cent.
It was also during the stress of this Civil War period, when the working and professional population of the nation was fighting on the battlefield, or being taxed heavily to support their brothers in arms, that the capitalists who later turned up as owners of various Pacific railroad lines were bribing through Congress acts giving them the most comprehensive perpetual privileges and great grants of money and of land.
Gould saw how all of the others of the wealth seekers were getting their fortunes; and the methods that he now plunged into use were but in keeping with theirs, a little bolder and more brutally frank, perhaps, but nevertheless nothing more than a repetition of what had long been going on in the entire sphere of capitalism.
CHAPTER X
THE SECOND STAGE OF THE GOULD FORTUNE
The first medium by which Jay Gould transferred many millions of dollars to his ownership was by his looting and wrecking of the Erie Railroad. If physical appearance were to be accepted as a gauge of capacity none would suspect that Gould contained the elements of one of the boldest and ablest financial marauders that the system in force had as yet produced. About five feet six inches in height and of slender figure, he gave the random impression of being a mild, meek man, characterized by excessive timidity. His complexion was swarthy and partly hidden by closely-trimmed black whiskers; his eyes were dark, vulpine and acutely piercing; his forehead was high. His voice was very low, soft and insinuating.