Part 22 (2/2)
The strike would perhaps have been successful had it not been that the entire powers of the National Government, and those of most of the States affected, were used roughshod to crush this mighty labor uprising. The whole newspaper press, with rare exceptions, spread the most glaring falsehoods about the strike and its management. Debs was personally and venomously a.s.sailed in vituperation that has had little equal. To put the strikers in the att.i.tude of sowing violence, the railroad corporations deliberately instigated the burning or destruction of their own cars (they were cheap, worn-out freight cars), and everywhere had thugs and roughs as its emissaries to preach, and provoke, violence.[181] The object was threefold: to throw the onus upon the strikers of being a lawless body; to give the newspapers an opportunity of inveighing with terrific effect against the strikers, and to call upon the Government for armed troops to shoot down, overawe, or in other ways thwart, the strikers.
Government was, in reality, directed by the railroad and other corporations. United States judges, at the behest of the railroad companies (which had caused them to be appointed to the Bench), issued extraordinary, unprecedented injunctions against the strikers. These injunctions even prevented the strikers from persuading fellow employees to quit work. So utterly lacking any basis in law had these injunctions that the Federal Commission reported: ”It is seriously questioned, and with much force, whether the courts have jurisdiction to enjoin citizens from 'persuading' each other in industrial matters of common interest.”
But the injunctions were enforced. Debs and his comrades were convicted of contempt of court and, without jury trial, imprisoned at a critical juncture of the strike. And what was their offense? Nothing more than seeking to induce other workers to take up the cause of their striking fellow-workers. The judges const.i.tuted themselves as prosecuting attorney, judge and jury. Never had such high-handed judicial usurpation been witnessed. As a concluding stroke, President Cleveland ordered a detachment of the United States army to Chicago. The pretexts were that the strikers were interfering with interstate commerce and with the carrying of mails.
VAST PROFITS AND LOW WAGES.
That the company's profits were great at the identical time the workers were curtailed to a starvation basis, there can be no doubt. The general indignation and agitation caused by the summary proceedings during the strike, compelled President Cleveland to appoint a commission to investigate. Cleveland was a mediocre politician who, by a series of fortuitous circ.u.mstances, had risen from ward politics to the Presidency. After using the concentrated power of the Federal Government to break the strike, he then decided to ”investigate” its merits. It was the s.h.i.+ft and ruse of a typical politician.
The Special Commission, while not selected of men who could in the remotest degree be accused of partiality toward the workers, brought out a volume of significant facts, and handed in a report marked by considerable and unexpected fairness. The report showed that the Pullman Company's capital had been increased from $1,000,000 in 1867 to $36,000,000 in 1894. ”Its prosperity,” the Commission reported, ”has enabled the company for over twenty years to pay two per cent. quarterly dividends.” But this eight per cent. annual dividend was not all. In certain years the dividends had ranged from nine and one half, to twelve, per cent. In addition, the Commission further reported, the company had laid by a reserve fund in the form of a surplus of $25,000,000 of profits which had not been divided. For the year ending July 31, 1893, the declared dividends were $2,520,000; the wages $7,223,719.51. During the next year, when wages were cut one-fourth, the stockholders divided an even greater amount in profits: $2,880,000.
Wages went to 4,471,701.39.[182]
If Field's revenue was so proportionately large from this one property--the Pullman works--it is evident that his total revenue from the large array of properties which he owned, or in which he held bonds or stock, was very great.
It is probable that in the latter years of his life his annual net income was, at the very least, $5,000,000. This is an extremely conservative estimate. More likely it reached $10,000,000 a year.
Computing the sum upon which the average of his workers had to live (to make a very liberal allowance) at $800 a year, this sum of $5,000,000 flowing in to him every year, without in the slightest trenching upon his princ.i.p.al, was equal to the entire amount that 6,250 of his employees earned by the skill of their brains and hands, and upon which they had to support themselves and their families.
Here, then, was one individual who appropriated to his use as much as six thousand; men and more who laboriously performed service to the community. For that $5,000,000 a year Field had nothing to do in return except to worry over the personal or business uses to which his surplus revenues should be put; like a true industrial monarch he relieved himself of superfluous cares by hiring the ability to supervise and manage his properties for him.
Such an avalanche of riches tumbled in upon him that, perforce, like the Astors, the Goelets and other multimillionaires, he was put constantly to the terrible extremity of seeking new fields for investment.
Luxuriously live, as he did, it would have required a superior inventive capacity to have dissipated his full income. But, judging his life by that of some other multimillionaires, he lived modestly. Of medium height and spare figure, he was of rather un.o.btrusive appearance. In his last years his hair and mustache were white. His eyes were gray and cold; his expression one of determination and blandly a.s.sertive selfishness. His eulogists, however, have glowingly portrayed him as ”generous, philanthropic and public-spirited.”
”A MODEL OF BUSINESS INTEGRITY.”
In fact, it was a point descanted upon with extraordinary emphasis during Field's lifetime and following his demise that, (to use the stock phrase which with wearying ceaselessness went the rounds of the press), he was ”a business man of the best type.” From this exceptional commentary it can be seen what was the current and rooted opinion of the character of business men in general. Field's rigorous exploitation of his tens of thousands of workers in his stores, in his Pullman factories, and elsewhere, was not a hermetically sealed secret; but this exploitation, no matter to what extremes to which it was carried, was an ordinary routine of prevailing business methods.[183]
Of the virtual enslavement of the worker; of the robbing him of what he produced; of the drastic laws enforced against him; of the debas.e.m.e.nt of men, women and children--of all of these facts the organs of public expression, the politicians and the clergy, with few exceptions, said nothing.
Everywhere, except in obscure quarters of despised workingmen's meetings, or in the writings or speeches of a few intellectual protestors, the dictum was proclaimed and instilled that conditions were just and good. In a thousand disingenuous ways, backed by nimble sophistry, the whole ruling cla.s.s, with its clouds of retainers, turned out either an increasing flood of praise of these conditions, or ma.s.ses of misinforming matter which tended to reconcile or blind the victim to his pitiful drudgery. The masters of industry, who reaped fabulous riches from such a system, were covered with slavish adulation, and were represented in flowery, grandiloquent phrases as indispensable men, without whom the industrial system of the country could not be carried on. Nay, even more: while being plundered and ever anew plundered of the fruits of their labor, the workers were told, (as they are increasingly being told), that they should honor the magnates and be thankful to them for providing work.
HE STEALS MILLIONS IN TAXES.
Marshall Field, as we have said, was heralded far and wide as an unusually honest business man, the implication being that every cent of his fortune was made fairly and squarely. Those fawners to wealth, and they were many, who persisted in acclaiming his business methods as proper and honorable, were grievously at a loss for an explanation when his will was probated, and it was found that even under the existing laws, favorable as they were to wealth, he had been nothing more than a common perjurer and a cheat. It was too true, alas! This man ”of strict probity” had to be catalogued with the rest of his cla.s.s.
For many years he had insisted on paying taxes on personal property on a valuation of not more than $2,500,000; and the pious old shopkeeper had repeatedly threatened, in case the board of a.s.sessors should raise his a.s.sessment, that he would forthwith bundle off his domicile from Chicago, and reside in a place where a.s.sessors refrain from too much curiosity as to one's belongings. But lo! when the schedule of his property was filed in court, it was disclosed that for many years he had owned at least $17,500,000 of taxable personal property subject to the laws of the State of Illinois. Thus was another idol cruelly shattered; for the aforesaid fawners had never tired of exulting elaborately upon the theme of Field's success, and how it was due to his absolute integrity and pure, undented character.
At another time the facts of his thefts of taxes might have been suppressed or toned down. But at this particular juncture Chicago happened to have a certain corporation counsel who, while mildly infected with conventional views, was not a truckler to wealth. Suit was brought in behalf of the city for recovery of $1,730,000 back taxes. So clear was the case that the trustees of Field's estate decided to compromise. On March 2, 1908, they delivered to John R. Thompson, treasurer of Cook County, a check for one million dollars. If the compound interest for the whole series of years during which Field cheated in taxation were added to the $1,730,000, it would probably be found that the total amount of his frauds had reached fully three million dollars.
The chorus of astonishment that ascended when these facts were divulged was an edifying display. He who did not know that the entire propertied cla.s.s made a regular profession of perjury and fraud in order to cheat the public treasury out of taxes, was either deliciously innocent or singularly uninformed. Year after year a host of munic.i.p.al and State officials throughout the United States issued reports showing this widespread condition. Yet aside from their verbose complainings, which served political purpose in giving an air of official vigilance, the authorities did nothing.
PERJURY AND CHEATING COMMON.
As a matter of fact, the evasion of taxes by the Pullman Company had been a public scandal for many years. John P. Altgeld, Governor of Illinois in 1893-95, frequently referred to it in his speeches and public papers. Field, then, not only personally cheated the public treasury out of millions, but also the corporations which he controlled did likewise. The propertied cla.s.s everywhere did the same. The unusually thorough report of the Illinois Labor Bureau of 1894 demonstrated how the most valuable land and buildings in Chicago were a.s.sessed at the merest fraction of their true value--the costliest commercial buildings at about one-tenth, and the richest residences at about one-fourteenth, of their actual value. As for personal property it contributed a negligible amount in taxes.[184]
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