Year: 1868

people take Things 80 calmly.


The Kilkenny Fight Among tho Railroads.


The fight among the railroad giants promises
to be regular Kilkenny affair, and to last
until the extreme end of the bears tail and the
very tips of the bulls horns shall have entirely
disappeared. The war of the rails, like the
war of the roses, is spreading among all classes
and conditions of men, and everywhere people
are dividing up between the houses Of York
and Lancaster-Vanderbilt and Drew. On
Change there are two distinct parties, and the
contest between them is growing 80 fierce as to
affect personal relations. The courts are taking
sides, and the judges are getting at logger
heads among themselves. Injunctions and
counter injunctious orders and counter
orders, writs and stays of proceedings
are flying about as thick as bullets
in the Wilderness. The Legislature and
the lobby are at work, hammer and tongs,
and the rival forces are earning their pay with
a zeal increased by the previous inaction of
the session. The newspapers have as yet had
very little to say upon the subject, with the
exception of the Albany organs, which natu-
rally belong to the lobby, and one morning
journal in this city, which takes narrow,
stockjobbing view of the question, and evi-
IDENTIFY understands nothing of its real merits.
But the fight has extended to States, and while
New York, through her legal terrors, invoked
by the strong arm of the Central, drives the
whole Erie Railway directors over to Jersey,
where no Sunday liquor laws prevail, and
where they are compelled to hold their stated
prayer meetings in the midst of profane oaths
and within the fumes of bald-faced whiskey,
New Jersey throws her shield before the Erie
Company, legalizes its acts upon her soil, and
bestows upon it all the privileges of charter
under her own laws.


All this tempest in teapot is caused by the
attempt of Vanderbilt 10 obtain possession of
the Erie Railway and the efforts of Daniel
Drew to retain the direction in the hands of
himself and his friends. The former gathers
up Erie stock, makes a pool and obtains
proxies sufficient to enable him to outvote the
Drew party at the next election of directors,
and to overthrow them as he overthrew the
Wall street brokers and express rings" in
the Central Railroad Board last December.
Drew and his friends issue a large amount of
new stock for the double purpose of extending
their six feet track and their own lease of
power If the issue can be sustained it will
give them stock enough to swamp Vanderbilts
pool and outvote him at the next election. All
the affected Indignation of one party at
the rascally stock operations of the
other is mere bosh. The morality of
Wall street possesses remarkable elas-
ITCHY, and recognizes nothing uns saintly in
the occupation of bull or bear. The best
man is he who can make the sharpest corner
and profit the most by it. The real matter at
issue is, therefore, the possession of the Erie
Railway direction, and the question whether
that road shall remain under its present man
agement or pass into the same hands that now
control the New York Central, Hudson River
and Harlem roads.


Vanderbilt is an excellent practical railroad
man, and if the Erie road and oil the con-
Meeting roads in the West were managed as he
could manage them the stockholders would
probably be benefited by the change. The
railroad capacity of Daniel Drew is mainly
confined to stock operations, and while the
abuse heaped upon him by jobbing newspapers
is all nonsense, il will not be pretended that
as practical business manager he is equal to
his great rival But our people are
not apt to favor monopolies, and hence
Il, G.~ht -,
Drew as an individual but with the side he
represents. The New York Central road has
always been grasping, overbearing corpora
tion, buying up Legislatures at wholesale and
endeavoring to control the politics of the State.
1t meets with little sympathy outside its own
dependents, and there is general apprehen-
sion that IL it possessed the opportunity,
through a monopoly of all the trunk lines, 1t
would prevent any extension Of the Erie six
feet gauge and would show no mercy to the
public IN its monopoly rates Of fare and freight.
The Legislature, it is true, could always con-
troll and check the power Of monopoly; but
we have already seen that rich railroad cor
porations can too easily control and check the
Legislature.


The passage Of the law now being pushed at
Albany to legalize the issue of the new Erie
stock would defeat the attempt Of Vanderbilt
to obtain possession Of the road, and would in
sure the continued rule Of Drew and his party.
Probably our people would be disposed to cry


"a plague on both your houses" and to trans
fer the road to new hands, If they could have
their way. As II is, the real point in
which they are interested is the completion of
the competing six feet railroad track to Chica-
90, so that the produce Of the West can be
brought to New York in large quantities and at
low freights They care nothing whether this
work may be done under Vanderbilt or Drew as
President of the Erie Railway directors but
they can see no good reason why the COM