Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-02-24
STANDARD OIL.
III. d. LLOYD'S "STORY OF 4 GREAT
MONOPOLY"
A Remarkably Interesting Resume of the
How States are Bought and Sold and Held
in Subjection-The Enormous Profits of
the Cleveland Gang.
[Atlantic Monthly for March,


no steamboats, or railroads. He was thirty
five years old when the first locomotive
was put into use in America. When he
died, railroads had become the greatest
force IN modern industry, and Vanderbilt
was the richest man of Europe or Ameri-
ca, and the largest owner Of rail-
roads in the world - He used the
finest business brain of his day and the
franchise of the State to build up king
don within the republic, and like king
he bequeathed his wealth and power to
his eldest son. BancrOft's history of the
United States and our railroad system
we're begun at the same time. The his
tory is not finished, but the railroads owe
on stocks and bonds 81, 900, 100000, more
than twice our national debt of $780,
100000, and tax the people annually
S49O, OOO, 900, one and half times more
than the governments revenue last year
of $274, 100000. More than any other
class, our railroad men have developed
the country, and tried its institutions.
The evasions of almost all taxes bv the
New York Central railroad has thrown
upon the people of New York State more,
than fair share of the cost of govern
ment, and illustrates some of the methods
by which the rich are making the poor
poorer sViolations of trust by Credit Mo-
biliers, Jay Gould's wealth and the power
ty of Erie stockholders, such corruption
of legislatures as gave the Pacific Mail its
subsidies, and nicknamed New Jersey
'sThe State of Camden and Amboy," are
sins against public and private faith on
scale impossible in the early days of re-
publics and corporations. A lawsuit still
pending, though begun ten years ago by
a citizen of Chicago, to recover the value
of baggage destroyed by the Pennsylvania
ders for the Erie ring: the surrender of
its judicial integrity by the supreme court
of Pennsylvania at the bidding of the
Congress by President Gowen, of the
Reading railroad the veto by the Stand
ard Oil company of the enactment of a
law by the Pennsylvania legislature to
carry out the provision of the constitu
ton of the State that every one should
have equal rights on the oads,-these
are few of the many things that have
happened to kill the confidence of our
citizens in the laws and the administra
| ton of justice. No other system Of tax
alton has borne as heavily on the people
as those extortions and inequalities Of
railroad charges which caused the grang-
er outburst in the West, and the recent
uprising in New York. In the actual
physical violence with which rail-
roads have taken their. rights
Of way through more than
one American city, and in the railroad
strikes of 1876 and 1877 with the anarchy
that came with them, there are social dis
orders we hoped never to see in America.
These incidents in railroad history show
most of the points where we fail, as be-
tween man and man, employer and en-
ployed the public and the corporation,
the State and the citizen, to maintain the
equities of "government'-an employ
ment-"of the people, by the people, for
the people,
Our treatment of ''the railroad prob
LEM will show the quality and calibre of
our political sense. 1t will go far in fore
shadowing the future lines of our social
and political growth. 1t may indicat e
| whether the American democracy, like
all the democratic experiments which
have preceded it, is to become extinct be-
cause the people had not wit enough or
virtue enough to make the common good
supreme.
The remarkable series of eight railroad
strikes, which begun during the centen-
NAL exposition of the prosperity of our
| first century and the perfection of our in
situations, eliminated on July Is, 1877, IN
the strike on the Baltimore & Ohio rail-
road at Martinsburg, West Virginia. This
spread into the greatest labor disturbance
on record. For fortnight there was an
American reign of terror. We have for
gotten it-that is, it has taught us moth
ing; but if freeman outlives us to finish
his history of federal government from
the Achaian league to the disruption of
the United States, he will give more than
one chapter to the labor rising of 1877.
The strike at Martinsburg was instantly
felt at Chicago and Baltimore in the stop
page of shipments In few hours the
Baltimore s. Ohio, one of the chief COM
mercial arteries of Maryland, Virginia,
West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Hi
nois, was shut up. The strike spread to
the Pennsylvania, the Erie and the New
York Central railroads, and to the Great
Western lines, with their countless
branches, as far west as Omaha and To-
peka, and as far south as the Ohio river
and the Texas Pacific The feeling of the
railroad employees all over the country
was expressed by the address of those of
the Pennsylvania railroad to it's stock
holders. The stockholders were remind
ed that ''many of the railroads men did
not average wages of more than seventy
five cents day." that s'the influence of
the road had been used to destroy the
business of it's best customers, the oil
producers, for the purpose of building up
Individual interests" ':What Is the re-
suit! The traffic has almost disappeared
from the Pennsylvania railroad, and in
place of $1,000, 900 revenue this year, al
though shipments are in excess of last
year, your road will receive scarcely half
the amount This alone would have en-
abled your company to pay us enough for
living.s The address also refers point
edly to the abuses of fast freight lines,
rolling stock companies, and other rail
road inventions for switching business
into private pockets. Other workingmen
followed the example of the railroad en-
ployes At GAINESVILLE, Ohio, fifty manu-
factories stopped work. Baltimore ceased
to export petroleum. The rolling mills,
foundries, and refneries of Cleveland
were closed Chicago, st. Louis, Cincin-
natl, all the cities large and small, had
the same experience. AT indianapolis,
next to Chicago the largest point for the
eastward shipment of produce, all traffic