"A MODEL OF BUSINESS INTEGRITY."
In fact, it was a point descanted upon with extraordinary emphasis during Field's lifetime and following his demise that, (to use the stock phrase which with wearying ceaselessness went the rounds of the press), he was "a business man of the best type." From this exceptional commentary it can be seen what was the current and rooted opinion of the character of business men in general. Field's rigorous exploitation of his tens of thousands of workers in his stores, in his Pullman factories, and elsewhere, was not a hermetically sealed secret; but this exploitation, no matter to what extremes to which it was carried, was an ordinary routine of prevailing business methods.[183]
Of the virtual enslavement of the worker; of the robbing him of what he produced; of the drastic laws enforced against him; of the debasement of men, women and children—of all of these facts the organs of public expression, the politicians and the clergy, with few exceptions, said nothing.
Everywhere, except in obscure quarters of despised workingmen's meetings, or in the writings or speeches of a few intellectual protestors, the dictum was proclaimed and instilled that conditions were just and good. In a thousand disingenuous ways, backed by nimble sophistry, the whole ruling class, with its clouds of retainers, turned out either an increasing flood of praise of these conditions, or masses of misinforming matter which tended to reconcile or blind the victim to his pitiful drudgery. The masters of industry, who reaped fabulous riches from such a system, were covered with slavish adulation, and were represented in flowery, grandiloquent phrases as indispensable men, without whom the industrial system of the country could not be carried on. Nay, even more: while being plundered and ever anew plundered of the fruits of their labor, the workers were told, (as they are increasingly being told), that they should honor the magnates and be thankful to them for providing work.
HE STEALS MILLIONS IN TAXES.
Marshall Field, as we have said, was heralded far and wide as an unusually honest business man, the implication being that every cent of his fortune was made fairly and squarely. Those fawners to wealth, and they were many, who persisted in acclaiming his business methods as proper and honorable, were grievously at a loss for an explanation when his will was probated, and it was found that even under the existing laws, favorable as they were to wealth, he had been nothing more than a common perjurer and a cheat. It was too true, alas! This man "of strict probity" had to be catalogued with the rest of his class.
For many years he had insisted on paying taxes on personal property on a valuation of not more than $2,500,000; and the pious old shopkeeper had repeatedly threatened, in case the board of assessors should raise his assessment, that he would forthwith bundle off his domicile from Chicago, and reside in a place where assessors refrain from too much curiosity as to one's belongings. But lo! when the schedule of his property was filed in court, it was disclosed that for many years he had owned at least $17,500,000 of taxable personal property subject to the laws of the State of Illinois. Thus was another idol cruelly shattered; for the aforesaid fawners had never tired of exulting elaborately upon the theme of Field's success, and how it was due to his absolute integrity and pure, undented character.
At another time the facts of his thefts of taxes might have been suppressed or toned down. But at this particular juncture Chicago happened to have a certain corporation counsel who, while mildly infected with conventional views, was not a truckler to wealth. Suit was brought in behalf of the city for recovery of $1,730,000 back taxes. So clear was the case that the trustees of Field's estate decided to compromise. On March 2, 1908, they delivered to John R. Thompson, treasurer of Cook County, a check for one million dollars. If the compound interest for the whole series of years during which Field cheated in taxation were added to the $1,730,000, it would probably be found that the total amount of his frauds had reached fully three million dollars.
The chorus of astonishment that ascended when these facts were divulged was an edifying display. He who did not know that the entire propertied class made a regular profession of perjury and fraud in order to cheat the public treasury out of taxes, was either deliciously innocent or singularly uninformed. Year after year a host of municipal and State officials throughout the United States issued reports showing this widespread condition. Yet aside from their verbose complainings, which served political purpose in giving an air of official vigilance, the authorities did nothing.