The daily worker., 1931-05-26
By HARRY CANNES

By HARRY CANNES
one of the first American capitalists to use
eangsters in the struggle for industry and
profit was none other than j. P. Morgan, the
elder In 1869 a furious struggle developed for
the control of the important Erie Railroad and
the Albany g. Susquehanna Railroad On the
one hand there was the Jay Gould and Jim
Fisk financial ring seeking to take control; on
the other. j. P Morgan and Joseph H. Ram
sew. At first the courts and the legislature
were used. They were easily bribed by either
side. When Morgan bought one judge who
issued an Injunction favoring his rule OF the
railroad. jim Fisk bought two others who de-
cided the other way Working for Fisk, was
Boss Tweed the patron saint Of Tammany Hall
grafters Tweed's total graft during his ad-
ministration is known to have amounted TO
over s2OOOOOOoo But the Morgan group was
able to buy enough judges to outweigh the.
Tweed ring powerful as it was Then came
open warfare and the introduction of gangsters
and gunner on both sides to take forclble pos
session of the railroads
Their Gunmen In Action.
Jim Fisk forcibly took possession Of the Al
bany & Susquehanna depot at Binghamton,
New York. with the armed Erie employees as
to Albany accompanied by his hired gangsters,
to seize possession of the Albany 65 Susque
hanna offices there He ordered his gunner
to rush in and take possession Of the place.
The superintendent ordered them to get out.
Fisk said that this was his twenty seventh raid
and he proposed to keep the place with the
help of his gangsters. Writing of this attack,
Lewis Corey, in his book THE House Of Nor
gam" says:
Two armed groups were now in possession
Of the Albany & Susquehanna, Receiver Fisk
operating the Binghamton end of the road and
Receiver Pruyn the Albany end. The Morgan
Ramsey superintendent determined upon an Of
fensive and with 450 men marched upon Bing-
hamton while an Erie-Fisk Fould army (of
gunmen) prepared to invade Albany"
Bloody battles ensued in the struggle be-
tween the rival financiers and railroad mag
mates for the control of the road, the courts
being evenly divided between them the graft
ing politicians lined up on both sides. It was
an open war with gangsters doing the job for
the capitalists.
KIan Kierx
In the South. the slave owners had the power
Of life and death over their slaves with but
little interference from the state. Following
the Reconstruction days QS65-1s76), the Ku
OF secret societies representing white large
landowners in the South, reign Of terror
was started against the "emancipated" Negro
masses, to drive them into new forms Of slavery.
The Klan developed weird type OF organ
izaton but its main weapons were lynching,
beatings shootings and other forms of terror
In many instances the Klansmen became open
bandits, and when the southern landowners
achieved their ends, they disbanded the orig
inal Klan, retaining its methods of gangstersm
and terror to be used, whenever occasion arose
to Cypress the Negro masses and to keep them
in the new forms of slavery. The Klan with
all its gangster methods was revived after the
World War with the sharpening class struggle.
Its traditions are still carried on by the capi-
talists and landowners of the South.
AS capitalism consolidated itself after the
Civil War, the individual ideas of terror and
use Of private armies that had grown out OF
The pioneer days we're grated on to the more
higniy develoncd capitalist state Along with
tnls went the wild grating in the city, state
ard federal governments In ths &exsA ths