The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

“Since the dawn of history, the great thoroughfares have belonged to the people, have been known as the king’s highways or the public highways, and have been open to the free use of all, on payment of a small uniform tax or toll to keep them in repair. But now the most perfect and by far the most important roads known to mankind are owned and managed as private property by a comparatively small number of private citizens.

“In all its uses the railroad is the most public of all our roads; and in all the objects to which its work relates, the railway corporation is as public as any organization can be. But in the start it was labeled a private corporation; and, so far as its legal status is concerned, it is now grouped with eleemosynary institutions and private charities, and enjoys similar immunities and exemptions. It remains to be seen how long the community will suffer itself to be the victim of an abstract definition.

“It will be readily conceded that a corporation is strictly and really private when it is authorized to carry on such a business as a private citizen may carry on. But when the State has delegated to a corporation the sovereign right of eminent domain, the right to take from the private citizen, without his consent, a portion of his real estate, to build its structure across farm, garden, and lawn, into and through, over or under, the blocks, squares, streets, churches, and dwellings of incorporated cities and towns, across navigable rivers, and over and along public highways, it requires a stretch of the common imagination and much refinement and subtlety of the law to maintain the old fiction that such an organization is not a public corporation.

“In view of the facts already set forth, the question returns, what is likely to be the effect of railway and other similar combinations upon our community and our political institutions? Is it true, as asserted by the British writer quoted above, that the state must soon recapture and control the railroads, or be captured and subjugated by them? Or do the phenomena we are witnessing indicate that general breaking-up of the social and political order of modern nations so confidently predicted by a class of philosophers whose opinions have hitherto made but little impression on the public mind?

“The analogy between the industrial condition of society at the present time and the feudalism of the Middle Ages is both striking and instructive.

“In the darkness and chaos of that period the feudal system was the first important step toward the organization of modern nations. Powerful chiefs and barons intrenched themselves in castles, and in return for submission and service gave to their vassals rude protection and ruder laws. But as the feudal chiefs grew in power and wealth they became the oppressors of their people, taxed and robbed them at will, and finally in their arrogance, defied the kings and emperors of the mediæval states. From their castles, planted on the great thoroughfares, they practiced the most capricious extortions on commerce and travel, and thus gave to modern language the phrase, ‘levy black-mail.’

“The consolidation of our great industrial and commercial companies, the power they wield and the relations they sustain to the state and to the industry of the people, do not fall far short of Fourier’s definition of commercial or industrial feudalism. The modern barons, more powerful than their military prototypes, own our greatest highways and levy tribute at will upon all our vast industries. And as the old feudalism was finally controlled and subordinated only by the combined efforts of the kings and the people of the free cities and towns, so our modern feudalism can be subordinated to the public good only by the great body of the people, acting through the government by wise and just laws.

“I shall not now enter upon the discussion of methods by which this grand work of adjustment may be accomplished. But I refuse to believe that the genius and energy which have developed these tremendous forces will fail to make them, not the masters, but the faithful servants of society.”

This chapter has so far been devoted to General Garfield’s public life during this period. One would think that what has been recounted occupied all his time and powers. Not so. With his political and financial studies he kept up his literary life. On June 29, 1869, he delivered an oration, before the Commercial College in Washington City, on the “Elements of Success.” We select a few thought-flowers from the blooming garden of the address. At the outset he said:

“I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than a man. I never meet a ragged boy on the street without feeling that I owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his shabby coat. When I meet you in the full flush of mature life, I see nearly all there is of you; but among these boys are the great men of the future—the heroes of the next generation, the philosophers, the statesmen, the philanthropists, the great reformers and molders of the next age. Therefore, I say, there is a peculiar charm to me in the exhibitions of young people engaged in the business of education.”...