Great Fortunes from Railroads

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No one section of the capitalist class can be held solely
responsible; nor were the morals and ethics of any one division
different from those of the others. The whole capitalist class was
coated with the same tar. Shipping merchants, traders in general,
landholders, banking and railroad corporations, factory owners,
cattle syndicates, public utility companies, mining magnates, lumber
corporations--all were participants in various ways in the subverting
of the functions of government to their own fraudulent ends at the
expense of the whole producing class.

While the railroad corporations were looting the public treasury and
the public domain, and vesting in themselves arbitrary powers of
taxation and proscription, all of the other segments of the
capitalist class were, at the same time, enriching themselves in the
same way or similar ways. The railroads were much denounced; but
wherein did their methods differ from those of the cattle syndicates,
the industrial magnates or the lumber corporations? The lumber barons
wanted their predacious share of the public domain; throughout
certain parts of the West and in the South were far-stretching,
magnificent forests covered with the growth of centuries. To want and
to get them were the same thing, with a Government in power
representative of capitalism.

SPOLIATION ON A GREAT SCALE.

The "poor settler" catspaw was again made use of. At the behest of
the lumber corporations, or of adventurers or politicians who saw a
facile way of becoming multimillionaires by the simple passage of an
act, the "Stone and Timber Act" was passed in 1878 by Congress. An
amendment passed in 1892 made frauds still easier. This measure was
another of those benevolent-looking laws which, on its face, extended
opportunities for the homesteader. No longer, it was plausibly set
forth, could any man say that the Government denied him the right to
get public land for a reasonable sum. Was ever a finer, a more
glorious chance presented? Here was the way open for any individual
homesteader to get one hundred and sixty acres of timber land for the
low price of $2.50 an acre. Congress was overwhelmed with outbursts
of panegyrics for its wisdom and public spirit.

Soon, however, a cry of rage went up from the duped public. And the
cause? The law, like the Desert Land Law, it turned out, was filled
with cunningly-drawn clauses sanctioning the worst forms of
spoliation. Entire trainloads of people, acting in collusion with the
land grabbers, were transported by the lumber syndicates into the
richest timber regions of the West, supplied with the funds to buy,
and then each, after having paid $2.50 per acre for one hundred and
sixty acres, immediately transferred his or her allotment to the
lumber corporations.

Thus, for $2.50 an acre, the lumber syndicates obtained vast tracts
of the finest lands worth, at the least, according to Government
agents, $100 an acre, at a time, thirty-five years ago, when lumber
was not nearly so costly as now.

The next development was characteristic of the progress of onsweeping
capitalism. Just as the traders, bankers, factory owners, mining and
railroad magnates had come into their possessions largely (in varying
degrees) by fraud, and then upon the strength of those possessions
had caused themselves to be elected or appointed to powerful offices
in the Government, State or National, so now some of the lumber
barons used a part of the millions obtained by fraud to purchase
their way into the United States Senate and other high offices. They,
as did their associates in the other branches of the capitalist
class, helped to make and unmake judges, governors, legislatures and
Presidents; and at least one, Russell A. Alger, became a member of
the President's Cabinet in 1897.

Under this one law,--the Stone and Timber Act--irrespective of other
complaisant laws, not less than $57,000,000 has been stolen in the
last seven years alone from the Government, according to a statement
made in Congress by Representative Hitchcock, of Nebraska, on May 5,
1908. He declared that 8,000,000 acres had been sold for $20,000,000,
while the Department of the Interior had admitted in writing that the
actual aggregate value of the land, at prevailing commercial prices,
was $77,000,000. These lands, he asserted, had passed into the hands
of the Lumber Trust, and their products were sold to the people of
the United States at an advance of seventy per cent. This theft of
$57,000,000 simply represented the years from 1901 to 1908; it is
probable that the entire thefts for 10,395,689.96 acres sold during
the whole series of years since the Stone and Timber Act was passed
reaches a much vaster amount.

Stupendous as was the extent of the nation's resources already
appropriated by 1876, more remained to be seized. The Government
still owned 40,000,000 acres of land in the South, mainly in Alabama,
Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas and Mississippi. Much of this area was
valuable timber land, and a part of it, especially in Alabama, was
filled with great coal and iron deposits,--a fact of which certain
capitalists were well aware, although the general public did not know
it.

During the Civil War nothing could be attempted in the war-ravaged
South. That conflict over, a group of capitalists set about to get
that land, or at least the valuable part of it. At about the time
that they had their plans primed to juggle a bill through Congress,
an unfortunate situation arose. A rancid public scandal ensued from
the bribery of members of Congress in getting through the charters
and subsidies of the Union Pacific railroad and other railroads.
Congress, for the sake of appearance, had to be circumspect.

THE "CASH SALES" ACT.

By 1876, however, the public agitation had died away. The time was
propitious. Congress rushed through a bill carefully worded for the
purpose. The lands were ordered sold in unlimited areas for cash. No
pretense was made of restricting the sale to a certain acreage so
that all any individual could buy was enough for his own use. Anyone,
if he chose, could buy a million or ten million acres, provided he
had the cash to pay $1.25 an acre. The way was easy for capitalists
to get millions of acres of the coveted iron, coal and timber lands
for practically nothing. At that very time the Government was selling
coal lands in Colorado at $10 to $20 an acre, and it was recognized
that even that price was absurdly low.

Hardly was this "cash sales" law passed, than the besieging
capitalists pounced upon these Southern lands and scooped in eight
millions of acres of coal, iron and timber lands intrinsically worth
(speaking commercially) hundreds of millions of dollars. The fortunes
of not a few railroad and industrial magnates were instantly and
hugely increased by this fraudulent transaction. [Footnote:
"Fraudulent transaction," House Ex. Doc. 47, Part iv, Forty-sixth
Congress, Third Session, speaks of the phrasing of the act as a mere
subterfuge for despoilment; that the act was passed specifically "for
the benefit of capitalists," and "that fraud was used in sneaking it
through Congress."] Hundreds of millions of dollars in capitalist
bonds and stock, representing in effect mortgages on which the people
perpetually have to pay heavy interest, are to-day based upon the
value of the lands then fraudulently seized.

Fraud was so continuous and widespread that we can here give only a
few succinct and scattering instances. "The present system of laws,"
reported a special Congressional Committee appointed in 1883 to
investigate what had become of the once vast public domain, "seem to
invite fraud. You cannot turn to a single state paper or public
document where the subject is mentioned before the year 1883, from
the message of the President to the report of the Commissioner of the
Land Office, but what statements of 'fraud' in connection with the
disposition of public lands are found." [Footnote: House Ex. Doc. 47:
356.] A little later, Commissioner Sparks of the General Land
Office pointed out that "the near approach of the period when the
United States will have no land to dispose of has stimulated the
exertions of capitalists and corporations to acquire outlying regions
of public land in mass, by whatever means, legal or illegal." In the
same report he further stated, "At the outset of my administration I
was confronted with overwhelming evidence that the public domain was
made the prey of unscrupulous speculation and the worst forms of land
monopoly." [Footnote: Report of the Commissioner of the General Land
Office for October, 1885: 48 and 79.]

THE "EXCHANGE OF LAND" LAW. Not pausing to deal with a multitude of
other laws the purport and effect of all of which were the same--to
give the railroad and other corporations a succession of colossal
gifts and other special privileges--laws, many of which will be
referred to later--we shall pass on to one of the final masterly
strokes of the railroad magnates in possessing themselves of many of
such of the last remaining valuable public lands as were open to
spoliation.

This happened in 1900. What were styled the land-grant railroads,
that is to say, the railroad corporations which received subsidies in
both money and land from the Government, were allotted land in
alternate sections. The Union Pacific manipulated Congress to "loan"
it about $27,000,000 and give it outright 13,000,000 acres of land.
The Central Pacific got nearly $26,000,000 and received 9,000,000
acres. To the Northern Pacific 47,000,000 acres were given; to the
Kansas Pacific, 12,100,000; to the Southern Pacific about 18,000,000
acres. From 1850 the National Government had granted subsidies to
more than fifty railroads, and, in addition to the great territorial
possessions given to the six railroads enumerated, had made a cash
appropriation to those six of not less than about $140,000,000. But
the corruptly obtained donations from the Government were far from
being all of the bounty. Throughout the country, States, cities and
counties contributed presents in the form of franchises, financial
assistance, land and terminal sites.

The land grants, especially in the West, were so enormous that
Parsons compares them as follows: Those in Minnesota would make two
States the size of Massachusetts; in Kansas they were equal to two
States the size of Connecticut and New Jersey; in Iowa the extent of
the railroad grants was larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island, and
the grants in Michigan and Wisconsin nearly as large; in Montana the
grant to one railroad alone would equal the whole of Maryland, New
Jersey and Massachusetts. The land grants in the State of Washington
were about equivalent to the area of the same three States. Three
States the size of New Hampshire could be carved out of the railroad
grants in California. [Footnote: "The Railways, the Trusts and the
People": 137.]

The alternate sections embraced in these States might be good or
useless land; the value depended upon the locality. They might be the
richest and finest of agricultural grazing, mineral or timber land or
barren wastes and rocky mountain tops.

For a while the railroad corporations appeared satisfied with their
appropriations and allotments. But as time passed, and the powers of
government became more and more directed by them, this plan naturally
occurred: Why not exchange the bad, for good, land? Having found it
so easy to possess themselves of so vast and valuable an area of
former public domain, they calculated that no difficulty would be
encountered in putting through another process of plundering. All
that was necessary was to go through the formality of ordering
Congress to pass an act allowing them to exchange bad, for good,
lands.

This, however, could not be done too openly. The people must be
blinded by an appearance of conserving public interests. The
opportunity came when the Forest Reservation Bill was introduced in
Congress--a bill to establish national forest reservations. No better
vehicle could have been found for the project traveling in disguise.
This bill was everywhere looked upon as a wise and statesmanlike
measure for the preservation of forests; capitalist interests, in the
pursuit of immediate profit, had ruthlessly denuded and destroyed
immense forest stretches, causing, in turn, floods and destruction of
life, property and of agriculture. Part of the lands to be taken for
the forest reservations included territory settled upon; it was
argued as proper, therefore, that the evicted homesteaders should be
indemnified by having the choice of lands elsewhere.

So far, the measure looked well. But when it went to the conference
committee of the two houses of Congress, the railroad representatives
artfully slipped in the four unobtrusive words, "or any other
claimant." This quartet of words allowed the railway magnates to
exchange millions of acres of desert and of denuded timber lands,
arid hills and mountain tops covered with perpetual snow, for
millions of the richest lands still remaining in the Government's
much diminished hold.

So secretly was this transaction consummated that the public knew
nothing about it; the subsidized newspapers printed not a word; it
went through in absolute silence. The first protest raised was that
of Senator Pettigrew, of South Dakota, in the United States Senate on
May 31, 1900. In a vigorous speech he disclosed the vast thefts going
on under this act. Congress, under the complete domination of the
railroads, took no action to stop it. Only when the fraud was fully
accomplished did the railroads allow Congress to go through the forms
of deferring to public interests by repealing the law. [Footnote: In
a letter to the author Senator Pettigrew instances the case of the
Northern Pacific Railroad. "The Northern Pacific," he writes, "having
patented the top of Mount Tacoma, with its perpetual snow and the
rocky crags of the mountains elsewhere, which had been embraced
within the forest reservation, could now swap these worthless lands,
every acre, for the best valley and grazing lands owned by the
Government, and thus the Northern Pacific acquired about two million
acres more of mineral, forest and farming lands."]

COAL LANDS EXPROPRIATED

Not merely were the capitalist interests allowed to plunder the
public domain from the people under these various acts, but another
act was passed by Congress, the "Coal Land Act," purposely drawn to
permit the railroads to appropriate great stretches of coal deposits.
"Already," wrote President Roosevelt in a message to Congress urging
the repeal of the Stone and Timber Act, the Desert Land Law, the Coal
Land Act and similar enactments, "probably one-half of the total area
of high-grade coals in the West has passed under private control.
Including both lignite and the coal areas, these private holdings
aggregate not less than 30,000,000 acres of coal fields." These
urgings fell flat on a Congress that included many members who had
got their millions by reason of these identical laws, and which, as a
body, was fully under the control of the dominant class of the day--
the Capitalist class. The oligarchy of wealth was triumphantly,
gluttonously in power; it was ingenuous folly to expect it to yield
where it could vanquish, and concede where it could despoil.
[Footnote: Nor did it yield. Roosevelt's denunciations in no way
affected the steady expropriating process. In the current seizure
(1909) of vast coal areas in Alaska, the long-continuing process can
be seen at work under our very eyes. A controversy, in 1909, between
Secretary of the Interior Ballinger and U. S. Chief Forester Gifford
Pinchot brought a great scandal to a head. It was revealed that
several powerful syndicates of capitalists had filed fraudulent
claims to Alaskan coal lands, the value of which is estimated to be
from $75,000,000 to $1,000,000,000. At the present writing their
claims, it is announced, are being investigated by the Government.
The charge has been made that Secretary of the Interior Ballinger,
after leaving the Land Commissioner's office--a post formerly held by
him--became the attorney for the most powerful of these syndicates.

At a recent session of the Irrigation Congress at Spokane,
Washington, Gov. Pardee of California charged that the timber, the
minerals and the soil had long since become the booty of corporations
whose political control of public servants was notorious.]

The thefts of the public domain have continued, without intermission,
up to this present day, and doubtless will not cease until every
available acre is appropriated.

A recent report of H. H. Schwartz, chief of the field service of the
Department of the Interior, to Secretary Garfield, of that
Department, showed that in the two years from 1906 to 1908 alone,
approximately $110,000,000 worth of public land in States,
principally west of the Mississippi River, had been fraudulently
acquired by capitalist corporations and individuals. This report
disclosed more than thirty-two thousand cases of land fraud. The
frauds on the part of various capitalist corporations in obtaining
vast mineral deposits in Alaska, and incalculably rich water power
sites in Montana and elsewhere, constitute one of the great current
public scandals. It will be described fully elsewhere in this work.

Overlooking the petty, confusing details of the last seventy years,
and focusing attention upon the large developments, this is the
striking result beheld: A century ago no railroads existed; to-day
the railroads not only own stupendous natural resources, expropriated
from the people, but, in conjunction with allied capitalist
interests, they dictate what the lot, political, economic and social,
of the American people shall be. All of this transformation has come
about within a relatively short period, much of it in our own time.
But a little while ago the railroad projectors begged and implored,
tricked and bribed; and had the law been enforced, would have been
adjudged criminals and consigned to prison. And now, in the blazing
power of their wealth, these same men or their successors are
uncrowned kings, swaying the full powers of government, giving
imperial orders that Congress, legislatures, conventions and people
must obey.

AN ARRAY OF COMMANDING FACTS.

But this is not the only commanding fact. A much more important one
lies in the astonishing ease with which the masses of the people have
been discriminated against, exploited and oppressed. Theoretically
the power of government resides in the people, down to the humblest
voter. This power, however, has been made the instrument for
enslaving the very people supposed to be the wielders of political
action.

While Congress, the legislatures and the executive and administrative
officials have been industriously giving away public domain, public
funds and perpetual rights to railroad and other corporations, they
have almost entirely ignored the interests of the general run of
people.

The more capitalists they created, the harder it became for the poor
to get settler's land on the public domain. Congress continued
passing acts by which, in most cases, the land was turned over to
corporations. Intending settlers had to buy it at exorbitant prices.
This took place in nearly all of the States and Territories. Large
numbers of people could not afford to pay the price demanded by the
railroads, and consequently were compelled to herd in industrial
centers. They were deliberately shut off from possession of the land.
This situation was already acute twenty-five years ago. "The area of
arable land open to settlement," pointed out Secretary of the
Interior Teller in a circular letter of May 22, 1883, "is not great
when compared with the increasing demand and is rapidly decreasing."
All other official reports consistently relate the same conditions.
[Footnote: "The tract books of my office show," reported Commissioner
Sparks, "that available public lands are already largely covered by
entries, selections and claims of various kinds." The actual settler
was compelled to buy up these claims, if, indeed, he was permitted to
settle on the land.--U. S. Senate Ex. Docs., 1885-86, Vol. viii, Doc.
No. 134:4.]

At the same time, while being excluded from soil which had been
national property, the working and farming class were subjected to
either neglect or onerous laws. As a class, the capitalists had no
difficulty at any time in securing whatever laws they needed; if
persuasion by argument was not effective, bribery was. Moreover, over
and above corrupt purchase of votes was the feeling ingrained in
legislators by the concerted teachings of society that the man of
property should be looked up to; that he was superior to the common
herd; that his interests were paramount and demanded nursing and
protection. Whenever a commercial crisis occurred, the capitalists
secured a ready hearing and their measures were passed promptly. But
millions of workers would be in enforced idleness and destitution,
and no move was made to throw open public lands to them, or
appropriate money, or start public works. Such a proposed policy was
considered "paternalism"--a catchword of the times implying that
Governmental care should not be exercised for the unfortunate, the
weak and the helpless.

And here was the anomaly of the so-called American democratic
Government. It was held legitimate and necessary that capital should
be encouraged, but illegitimate to look out for the interests of the
non-propertied. The capitalists were very few; the non-propertied,
holding nominally the overwhelming voting power, were many.
Government was nothing more or less than a device for the nascent
capitalist class to work out its inevitable purposes, yet the
majority of the people, on whom the powers of class government
severely fell, were constantly deluded into believing that the
Government represented them. Whether Federalist or anti-Federalist,
Whig, Republican or Democratic party was in power, the capitalist
class went forward victoriously and invincibly, the proof of which is
seen in its present almost limitless power and possessions.

CHAPTER II

A NECESSARY CONTRAST

If the whole might of Government was used in the aggrandizement and
perpetuation of a propertied aristocracy, what was its specific
attitude toward the working class? Of the powerful few, whether
political or industrial, the conventional histories hand down grossly
biased and distorted chronicles. These few are isolated from the
multitude, and their importance magnified, while the millions of
obscure are nowhere adequately described. Such sterile historians
proceed upon the perfunctory plan, derived from ancient usage in the
days when kingcraft was supremely exalted, that it is only the mighty
few whose acts are of any consequence, and that the doings of the
masses are of no account.

GOVERNMENT BY PROPERTY INTERESTS.

Hence it is that most histories are mere registers of names and
dates, dull or highly-colored hackneyed splurges of print giving no
insight into actual conditions.

In this respect most of the prevailing histories of the United States
are the most egregious offenders. They fix the idea that this or that
alleged statesman, this or that President or politician or set of
politicians, have been the dominating factors in the decision and
sway of public affairs. No greater error could be formulated. Behind
the ostentatious and imposing public personages of the different
periods, the arbiters of laws and policies have been the men of
property. They it was who really ruled both the arena and the arcana
of politics.

It was they, sometimes openly, but more usually covertly, who
influenced and manipulated the entire sphere of government.

It was they who raised the issues which divided the people into
contesting camps and which often beclouded and bemuddled the popular
mind. It was their material ideals and interests that were engrafted
upon the fabric of society and made the prevailing standards of the
day.

From the start the United States Government was what may be called a
regime swayed by property.

The Revolution, as we have seen, was a movement by the native
property interests to work out their own destiny without interference
by the trading classes of Great Britain. The Constitution of the
United States, the various State Constitutions, and the laws, were,
we have set forth, all reflexes of the interests, aims, castes and
prejudices of the property owners, as opposed to the non-propertied.
At first, the landholders and the shipping merchants were the
dictators of laws. Then from these two classes and from the tradesmen
sprang a third class, the bankers, who, after a continuous orgy of
bribery, rose to a high pitch of power. At the same time, other
classes of property owners were sharers in varying degrees in
directing Government. One of these was the slaveholders of the South,
desperately increasing their clutch on government administration the
more their institutions were threatened. The factory owners were
likewise participants. However bitterly some of these propertied
interests might war upon one another for supremacy, there was never a
time when the majority of the men who sat in Congress, the
legislatures or the judges did not represent, or respond to, either
the interests or the ideals of one or more of these divisions of the
propertied classes.

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