Railroad magnate

“ But if the middle class insisted upon action against the railroad magnates, there was no policy more suitable to these magnates than that of being investigated by legislative committees. They were not averse to their opponents amusing themselves, and finding a vent for their wrath, in volumes of talk which began nowhere and ended nowhere. ”

“ But the principles of humanity never trouble railroad magnates. True to their kind, and like a pack of wolves rending one of their number that has fallen, the three remaining partners stole almost the last cent Mrs. ”

“ The railroad magnates have other powers. Government itself has no power to blot a town out of existence. It cannot strew desolation at will. But the railroad owners can do it and do not hesitate if sufficient profits be involved. One man sitting in a palace in New York can give an order declaring a secret discriminative tariff against the products of a place, whereupon its industries no longer able to compete with formidable competitors enjoying better rates, close down and the life of the place flickers and sometimes goes out. ”

“ Then, shorn of their ill-gotten gains, the mighty railroad kings of the land, will fall from their tall pedestals of pride, where for years, they have posed as owners of the earth. With financial ruin staring them in the face, they, and the whole brood of erstwhile railroad kings, will make urgent haste to sell to the government, at the bare cost of construction, such great through lines as may be necessary to maintain inter-state commerce, and across-the-continent traffic. ”

“ Railroad magnates are on the watch for improvements and devices of any kind that will tend toward saving time, increasing facilities, lessening liability of accident, or saving in cost of construction or equipment. ”

“ It could not move with sufficient quickness to respond to the actual requirements of trade, and too many restrictions would necessarily govern its actions. For these and other equally important reasons governments must always be satisfied to restrict their offices in this direction."
Speaking of the men who are commonly termed railroad magnates, Mr. Kirkman says: "They alone possess the needed administrative ability that the situation demands. They not only provide largely the capital, but they discover the fields wherein it may be used most advantageously. ”

“ These railway kings are among the greatest men, perhaps I may say are the greatest men, in America. They have wealth, else they could not hold the position. They have fame, for every one has heard of their achievements; every newspaper chronicles their movements. They have power, more power—that is, more opportunity of making their personal will prevail—than perhaps any one in political life, except the President and the Speaker, who, after all, hold theirs only for four years and two years, while the railroad monarch may keep his for life. ”

“ It was easy to pillory the railroad corporation as a souless monster ruthlessly monopolizing the public streets and crushing out the lives of golden-haired innocents under the wheels of its iron juggernauts. ”

“ But in order to contribute a clear perspective of the methods and morals of a period when Government was but the mannikin of property— a period even more pronounced now—and to give a deeper insight into the conditions against which millions had to contend at a time when the railroad oligarchy was blown into life by Government edict, a few important facts will be presented here. ”

“ Railroads have opened up homes for millions sent across the sea from overcrowded Europe, have cheapened food, clothing, and shelter, have practically broken down State and sectional lines, and by interfusion of capital and population have done more to weld the Union together than any other influence. The locomotive has proved a giant indeed, capable of bearing heavy burdens, and accomplishing splendid results; yet of late railroad corporations have shown a disposition to abuse their strength for public oppression, and the railroad problem is, how this tendency may be best overcome. ”

“ It is true that a few large fortunes have been made in the railroad business, but no more than in the iron, coal, lumber, and manufacturing businesses, if as much. They are the capital prizes in the lottery of life that are open to every ambitious American. But of the great army of railroad-owners, officers, and employees, a very small proportion obtain more than enough for their daily living, whatever their position in society may be, and some saving for old age and their children outside of that. ”

“ Thus, little by little, the railroad wormed itself into the affections of the people and gradually became an indispensable part of the life it had itself created. Tear up the railroad and life itself is extinguished.
So when the railroad found it could not be dispensed with, it grew dissatisfied with the size of its earnings. Legitimate profits were not enough. Its directors cried out for bigger dividends, and from then on the railroad became a conscienceless tyrant, fawning on those it feared and crushing without mercy those who were defenceless. ”

“ Now, fancy anybody seriously proposing to capitalists to construct railroads, as most of the western railroads were constructed, through a howling wilderness, for the chance of five and a half per cent, whenever the earnings allowed it; and fancy what subjects for spoliation are presented by the bloated owners of railroad property who pocket on the average less than four per cent on the face value of their stock. ”

“ Proud equipages that in their days have housed real magnates and have been the theatres of what we like mysteriously to call “big deals,” once supplanted, drop quickly down the scale of elegance. In their last days they come to the hard use of some itinerant band of entertainers, to squeak their rusty joints and worn frames as if in protest against a fly-by-night existence over jerkwater railroad branches. ”

“ For three hours he walked about talking railroads,—how they had got built so badly in the first place, why so many were bankrupt, errors of policy, capital cost, upkeep, the relative merits of different kinds of equipment, new lines of development, problems of operation. For this was the stuff of his dreams. He devoured it. The idea of a railroad as a means to power filled the whole of his imagination. It was man’s most dynamic tool. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been reserved to railroad managers to demonstrate to the public that a power has been allowed to grow up which has assumed the right to counteract the dispensations of Providence, to enrich the slothful, to impoverish the industrious, to curtail the profits of remunerative industries and revive by bounties those languishing for want of vitality, to humble proud and self-reliant marts of trade and to build up cities in the desert. It will scarcely be claimed even by railroad managers that their policy of thus arbitrarily regulating commerce originated in philanthropic motives. ”

“ The dry-goods merchant might as well boast of having clad the public as the railroad manager of having built up farming communities by selling to them transportation.
And yet the American people have never ceased to be mindful of the conveniences afforded to them by this modern mode of transportation. On the contrary, they have been but too prone to credit railroad men with being benefactors, when they were but beneficiaries, and this liberality of spirit made them overlook, or at least tolerate, the abuses which grew proportionately with the wealth and power of the companies. ”

“ The great over-shadowing problem of reconciling private capital and the users of railroads, and the contradictions which I have mentioned, are the inheritance of this generation of railroad men; and I have no doubt that this generation, like all previous ones, will be equal to the task put upon it. Out of the painful processes of the last four years, we have emerged with some gains. In the first place, the country now realizes that the one million, five hundred thousand employes and officers of American railroads are not surpassed in integrity by any other similar number of business men. ”

“ The rapid movement of the iron horse seemed to savor of dangerous radicalism, not to say revolution. When the Emperor finally, in 1836, concluded to sign a railroad charter, he based his action upon the dubious ground that "the thing cannot maintain itself, anyhow." ”

“ They posed before the public as the rightful heirs of the laurels of Watt and Stephenson, insisting that their genius, capital and enterprise had built up vast cities and opened for settlement and civilization the boundless prairies of the West. These claims have been persistently repeated by railroad men, though they are so preposterous that they scarcely deserve refutation. ”

“ The managers favor some interests because they are linked with the interests of the railways or the managers, and they favor some other interests because they are forced to. The pressure of private interest is stronger than the pressure of the law, and so the railroad manager fractures his conscience and breaks the statutes and common law into fragments. ”

“ The great fortunes of this country have been amassed within a few years, and chiefly from manipulations of railroad property. If the people permit these practices to go on without restraint but a few years more, the property of the nation [Pg 400] will be largely under the control of a few bold adventurers. The great fortunes of Europe which it has required centuries to accumulate are already outstripped by the "self-made" millionaires of this country. ”

“ There's one of them, now, one of the great railroad kings, not one of your Western bounders, but the real Eastern, New York patriotic brand, one of the brave, daring pioneers who risked all to push great transcontinental railroads through the trackless deserts of the West—with millions furnished by the government—which they dumped into their own pockets while the world was shouting their praises for developing the Nation's resources. ”

“ The people of the United States are engaged in the solution of the railroad problem. The main question to be determined is: Shall the railroads be owned and operated as public or as private property? Shall these great arteries of commerce be owned and controlled by a few persons for their own private use and gain, or shall they be made highways to be kept under strict government control and to be open for the use of all for a fixed, equal and reasonable compensation? ”

“ They looked upon the railroads as the source of their prosperity and upon railroad managers as high-minded philanthropists and public benefactors, with whom to quarrel would be an act of sordid ingratitude, and they paid but little attention to the means employed by them to exact an undue share of their earnings. Railroad men did whatever they could to foster through their emissaries this misplaced adoration. ”

“ The foregoing examples of orthodox railroad methods will suffice to indicate the moral caliber of the unprincipled lot who have managed to steal their way into ownership of our transportation systems. Now, let us glance for a few moments at the way in which they are concentrating and consolidating their forces, in order to exploit Labor the better.
The pioneer railroad capitalists were men of comparatively small means. In the early days hundreds of small companies sprang up, each operating a little stretch of railroad, furnishing transportation to a limited district. ”

“ To recapitulate the many serious disadvantages and losses, direct and indirect, suffered by our railroads through strained relations with their employés, though recognized and felt with anxious solicitude by their executive and administrative officers, would little interest the general public; nor, indeed, as a rule are railroad investors apt to give serious attention to what they consider matters of administrative detail beneath their notice, until, at last, they force themselves into prominence by threatening their profits or speculations. ”

“ These are but a very few of the immensity of extravagant powers conferred by the ownership of these railroad bonds and stocks. Bonds they assuredly are, incomparably more so than the clumsy yokes of olden days. Society has improved its outwards forms in these passing centuries. Clanking chains are no longer necessary to keep slaves in subjection. Far more effective than chains and balls and iron collars are the ownership of the means whereby men must live. ”

“ I do not need to declare my full appreciation of the great blessings which railroad interests and enterprises have brought upon this country and the world. But the vaster the enterprise and its power for good, the greater its opportunity for mischief if its power is perverted. ”

“ Besides this, the construction of a railroad practically banishes at once from its field all other means of land transportation. The railroad has thus a practical monopoly within its territory, and its managers, if left to follow their instinct, will despotically control all the business tributary to it, with unlimited power to build up and tear down, to punish its enemies and to reward its friends. ”

“ Among the more frequent abuses of their official power, we find railroad officers personally buying lands in new territory or mining lands, and then building at the expense of the corporation branch lines to reach these properties and enhance their value; the establishment of manufacturing or business enterprises, in which the railway men are often secret partners, and securing for these enterprises favorable terms, and then contracting with the railroad to do business for less than cost ”