Part 5 (1/2)
Fraudulent subst.i.tution was an active factor in many, if not all, of the s.h.i.+pping fortunes. The s.h.i.+ppers and merchants practiced the grossest frauds upon the unsophisticated people. Walter Barrett, that pseudonymic merchant, who took part in them himself, and who writes glibly of them as fine tricks of trade, gives many instances in his volumes dealing with the merchants of that time.
The firm of F. & G. Carnes, he relates, was one of the many which made a large fortune in the China trade. This firm found that Chinese yellow-dog wood, when cut into proper sizes, bore a strong superficial resemblance to real Turkey rhubarb. The Carnes brothers proceeded to have the wood packed in China in boxes counterfeiting those of the Turkey product. They then made a regular traffic importing this spurious and deleterious stuff and selling it as the genuine Turkey article at several times the cost. It entirely superseded the real product. This firm also sent to China samples of Italian, French and English silks; the Chinese imitated them closely, and the bogus wares were imported into the United States where they were sold as the genuine European goods. The Carneses were but a type of their cla.s.s. Writing of the trade carried on by the s.h.i.+pping cla.s.s, Barrett says that the s.h.i.+ppers sent to China samples of the most noted Paris and London products in sauces, condiments, preserves, sweetmeats, syrups and other goods. The Chinese imitated them even to fac-similies of printed Paris and London labels.
The fraudulent subst.i.tutions were then brought in cargoes to the United States where they were sold at fancy prices.
MERCHANTS THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY.
This was the prevalent commercial system. The most infamous frauds were carried on; and so dominant were the traders' standards that these frauds pa.s.sed as legitimate business methods. The very men who profited by them were the mainstays of churches, and not only that, but they were the very same men who formed the various self-const.i.tuted committees which demanded severe laws against paupers and petty criminals. A study of the names of the men, for instance, who comprised the New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, 1818-1823, shows that nearly all of them were s.h.i.+ppers or merchants who partic.i.p.ated in the current commercial frauds. Yet this was the cla.s.s that sat in judgment upon the poverty of the people and the acts of poor criminals and which dictated laws to legislatures and to Congress.
Girard and Astor were the superfine products of this system; they did in a greater way what others did in a lesser way. As a consequence, their careers were fairly well illumined. The envious attacks of their compet.i.tors ascribed their success to hard-hearted and ign.o.ble qualities, while their admirers heaped upon them tributes of praise for their extraordinary genius. Both sets exaggerated. Their success in garnering millions was merely an abnormal manifestation of an ambition prevalent among the trading cla.s.s. Their methods were an adroit refinement of methods which were common. The game was one in which, while fortunes were being ama.s.sed, ma.s.ses of people were thrown into the direst poverty and their lives were attended by injustice and suffering.
In this game a large company of eminent merchants played; Girard and Astor were peers in the playing and got away with the greater share of the stakes.
POST-REVOLUTIONARY CONDITIONS.
Before describing Girard's career, it is well to cast a retrospective fleeting glance into conditions following the Revolution.
Despite the lofty sentiments of the Declaration of Independence--sentiments which were submerged by the propertied cla.s.s when the cause was won--the gravity of law bore wholly in favor of the propertied interests. The propertyless had no place or recognition. The common man was good enough to shoulder a musket in the stress of war but that he should have rights after the war, was deemed absurd. In the whole scheme of government neither the feelings nor the interests of the worker were thought of.
The Revolution brought no immediate betterment to his conditions; such slight amelioration as came later was the result of years of agitation.
No sooner was the Revolution over than in stepped the propertied interests and a.s.sumed control of government functions. They were intelligent enough to know the value of cla.s.s government--a lesson learned from the tactics of the British trading cla.s.s. They knew the tremendous impact of law and how, directly and indirectly, it worked great transformations in the body social. While the worker was unorganized, unconscious of what his interests demanded, deluded by slogans and rallying-cries which really meant nothing to him, the propertied cla.s.s was alert in its own interests.
PROPERTY'S RULE INTRENCHED.
It proceeded to intrench itself in political as well as in financial power. The Const.i.tution of the United States was so drafted as to take as much direct power from the people as the landed and trading interests dared. Most of the State Const.i.tutions were more p.r.o.nounced in rigid property discriminations. In Ma.s.sachusetts, no man could be governor unless he were a Christian worth a clear 1,000; in North Carolina if he failed of owning the required 1,000 in freehold estate; nor in Georgia if he did not own five hundred acres of land and 4,000, nor in New Hamps.h.i.+re if he lacked owning 500 in property. In South Carolina he had to own 1,500 in property clear of all debts. In New York by the Const.i.tution of 1777, only actual residents having freeholds to the value of 100 free of all debts, could vote for governor and other State officials. The laws were so arranged as effectually to disfranchise those who had no property. In his ”Reminiscenses” Dr. John W. Francis tells of the prevalence for years in New York of a supercilious cla.s.s which habitually sneered at the demand for political equality of the leather-breeched mechanic with his few s.h.i.+llings a day.
Theoretically, religious standards were the prevailing ones; in actuality the ethics and methods of the propertied cla.s.s were all powerful. The Church might preach equality, humility and the list of virtues; but nevertheless that did not give the propertyless man a vote.
Thus it was, that in communities professing the strongest religious convictions and embodying them in Const.i.tutions and in laws and customs, glaring inconsistencies ran side by side. The explanation lay in the fact that as regarded essential things of property, the standards of the trading cla.s.s had supplanted the religious. Even the very admonition given by pastors to the poor, ”Be content with your lot,” was a preachment entirely in harmony with the aims of the trading cla.s.s which, in order to make money, necessarily had to have a mult.i.tude of workers to work for it and from whose labor the money, in its finality, had to come. In the very same breath that they advised the poverty-stricken to reverence their superiors and to expect their reward in heaven, the ministers glorified the aggrandizing merchants as G.o.d's chosen men who were called upon to do His work.[50]
Since the laws favored the propertied interests, it was correspondingly easy for them to get direct control of government functions and personally exercise them. In New England rich s.h.i.+powners rose at once to powerful elective and appointive officers. Likewise in New York rich landowners, and in the South, plantation men were selected for high offices. Law-making bodies, from Congress down, were filled with merchants, landowners, plantation men and lawyers, which last cla.s.s was trained, as a rule, by a.s.sociation and self-interest to take the views of the propertied cla.s.s and vote with, and for, it. A puissant politico-commercial aristocracy developed which, at all times, was perfectly conscious of its best interests. The worker was regaled with flattering commendations of the dignity of labor and sonorous generalizations and promises, but the ruling cla.s.s took care of the laws.
By means of these partial laws, the propertied interests early began to get tremendously valuable special privileges. Banking rights, ca.n.a.l construction, trade privileges, government favors, public franchises all came in succession.
THE RIGORS OF LAW ON THE POOR.
At the same time that laws were enacted or were twisted to suit the will of property, other laws were long in force oppressing the poor to a terrifying degree.
Poor debtors could be thrown in jail indefinitely, no matter how small a sum they owned. In law, the laborer was accorded few rights. It was easy to defraud him of his meager wages, since he had no lien upon the products of his labor. His labor power was all that he had to sell, and the value of this power was not safeguarded by law. But the products created by his labor power in the form of property were fortified by the severest laws. For the laborer to be in debt was equal to a crime, in fact, in its results, worse than a crime. The burglar or pickpocket would get a certain sentence and then go free. The poor debtor, however, was compelled to languish in jail at the will of his creditor.
The report of the Prison Discipline Society for 1829 estimated that fully 75,000 persons were annually imprisoned for debt in the United States and that more than one-half of these owed less than twenty dollars.[51] And such were the appalling conditions of these debtors'
prisons that there was no distinction of s.e.x, age or character; all of the unfortunates were indiscriminately herded together. Sometimes, even in the inclement climate of the North, the jails were so poorly constructed, that there was insufficient shelter from the elements. In the newspapers of the period advertis.e.m.e.nts may be read in which charitable societies or individuals appeal for food, fuel and clothing for the inmates of these prisons. The thief and the murderer had a much more comfortable time of it in prison than the poor debtor.
LAW KIND TO THE TRADERS.
With the law-making mercantile cla.s.s the situation was very different.
The state and national bankruptcy acts, as apply to merchants, bankers, storekeepers--the whole commercial cla.s.s--were so loosely drafted and so laxly enforced and judicially interpreted, that it was not hard to defraud creditors and escape with the proceeds. A propertied bankrupt could conceal his a.s.sets and hire adroit lawyers to get him off scot-free on quibbling technicalities--a condition which has survived to the present time, though in a lesser degree.[52]
But imprisonment for debt was not the only fate that befell the propertyless. According to the ”Annual Report of the Managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in New York City,” there were 12,000 paupers in New York City in 1820.[53] Many of these were dest.i.tute Irish who, after having been plundered and dispossessed by the absentee landlords and the capitalists of their own country, were induced to pay their last farthing to the s.h.i.+ppers for pa.s.sage to America. There were laws providing that s.h.i.+p masters must report to the Mayors of cities and give a bond that the dest.i.tutes that they brought over should not become public charges. These laws were systematically and successfully evaded; poor immigrants were dumped unceremoniously at obscure places along the coast from whence they had to make their way, carrying their baggage and beds, to the cities the best that they could.