they thus eventually followed his advice although they were considerably older at the time of retirement.

Already, by 1927, the Hills had ceased to be the chief owners of the railroad systems controlled or swayed by their father. A list of stockholders made public in that year showed that Arthur Curtiss James, through the Curtiss Securities Company and the Curtiss Southwest Corporation, was the largest holder of Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railway stock with an ownership of more than 46,000 shares in each line. Arthur Curtiss James was a son of that D. Willis James mentioned in a previous chapter as a partner in Phelps, Dodge & Company, and succeeded his father as one of the leading figures in that concern, continuing as a Director-at least up to 1936-of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. The second largest individual stockholder shown by the 1927 list was the widow of John Stewart Kennedy, New York banker, who at his death in 1909, had left an estate then valued at more than $67,000,000. Among his possessions were 160,000 shares of Northern Pacific Railroad preferred stock. He left legacies of $30,000,000 to various public educational institutions, hospitals and religious organizations, mostly Presbyterian. These bequests were praised in a New York Times leading editorial as "an admirable picture of the nature of the man, his ideals, his interests, his mode of looking at life" and "his modesty and practical application of business judgment in this matter will surely not prevent his memory being cherished with deep respect and gratitude by those who understand the noble work he has done...' Abundantly more were such eulogies on the philanthropic ways in which he dispensed his wealth, but no word was said as to the actual means by which it was amassed. His widow, Emma B. Kennedy, owned, as shown by the 1927 list, 29,737 shares of Northern Pacific, and 21,147 shares of Great Northern stock. She died, in 1932, at the age of 97; of the $13,000,000 inherited by her from her husband's estate, she left a net estate of $9,798,304 which included large blocks of Northern Pacific and Great Northern stock. Her legacies to 53 religious, educational and charitable institutions amounted to $9,000,000.

Other large individual stockholders were the Bakers, New York bankers; George F. Baker owned 14,024 shares of Great Northern, and his son of the same name 15,000 shares of Northern Pacific stock. Baring Brothers & Company, Ltd., London bankers, owned 24,857 shares of Northern Pacific, and 12,323 shares of Great Northern. The Trustees under the Lord Mount Stephen settlement, Montreal, owned 11,054 shares of Northern Pacific stock, and Lady Margaret Strathcona 8,000 shares of Great Northern stock. Various firms, banking, brokerage and trading in New York, London and elsewhere held other large amounts of stock in either or both of the two railroad systems. The 20 largest holders of Northern Pacific railroad stock owned 300,008 shares, or 12 per cent of the 2,480,000 shares outstanding, and the 20 largest holders of the Great Northern Railroad owned 239,367 shares, or not quite 10 per cent of the 2,496,205 outstanding shares. The essential controlling power

of such ownership 'was, however, manifest, considering that, for instance, of the nearly 38,000 Northern Pacific stockholders, the average holding was only 67 for each shareholder.

THE HILLS PASS OUT

The Report, in 1931, of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives further showed the relegation of the Hills as extensive railroad stock owners. Their name did not appear in the listed eight large individual or family holdings of railroad securities. Within less than a generation after the death of James J. Hill, lauded as a great railroad constructor, the railroad which he promoted and that in which he became a powerful owner were dominated by several New York bankers and capitalists by reason of their concentrated large stock holdings. At the date of this report, George F. Baker and his son owned 23,400 shares of Great Northern stock preferred and 21,000 shares of Northern Pacific stock. Arthur Curtiss James owned 52,850 shares of Great Northern, and 52,716 shares of Northern Pacific stock. James was, in fact, the largest single owner of railroad stock in America; he also possessed, among a list of other railroad securities, 51,000 shares of Southern Pacific, and 349,790 shares of Western Pacific Railroad stock. But as the current quotations of Western Pacific stock were at a very low figure, the value of the total of his more than 500,000 shares was considerably less than that of the 490,000 shares of stocks owned by George F. Baker and his son in seven railroad systems. Some few observations may here be properly pertinent and instructive.

The inevitable burden of this work, as is too painfully obvious, has been the frauds and lootings by which many great fortunes were built up. This is not so because the author, in the perverseness of his heart has formulated it so, but because these are the inescapable facts. But why, query certain querulous critics, schooled in sycophantic standards, "enlarge upon the dark side of the picture? Had not all of these men their good points, their kindly streaks, their capacity for some doing of service for their fellow men?"

Be it known that the frauds and plunderings herein described, great and continuous as they have been, are far from being the complete story; for every one fraudulent transaction accidentally coming to public notice, scores of such transactions have unquestionably gone down into the sewers of time, unvisited by a ray of daylight.

This, it is unnecessary to say, is palpably no history of personal traits, dispositions or temperaments; it is a narrative of the means whereby properties have been acquired, and great fortunes possessed. But the academician, strong in the audacity of his soporific mediocrity, may say, "This is no history; it lacks dispassionate style." If "dispassionate style" consists of a dull string of dates, names and phrases, with no glimpses of the roots of matters, nor a clear interpretation of causes and events, then

this work does certainly want "dispassionate style," and well it is that this defect is there. Who, indeed, does not know that there is no more effective medium for inventing, telling and perpetuating falsehoods than this same so-called "dispassionate style"? A heightening and an emphasis of certain tissues of fact, a slighting concealment of other facts, and behold! the trick is done.

Finally, there have been those who rushed forward to press this question: “Did not the founders and perpetuators of the great fortunes have their good qualities?" The question is arrant superfluity; so they have had and have. But do the good people who are so solicitous on this score ever think of making the same interrogatory as to the hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers, or of the great numbers of convicts in the United States? Is any consideration or extenuation demanded for them? For the poor, the wretched, the degraded everywhere? And yet the crimes for which petty malefactors are punished are not a thousandfold as criminal as those committed by the founders and holders of wealth; even solitary murder lapses far into insignificance compared to the never-ending catalogue of the mass of indirect murders brought about by the greed for profit and wealth.

EPILOGUE

To detail the story of the acquisition of other great American fortunes, would, even if presented in the most compact way, require a whole series of further volumes.

The important facts alone of the fortunes derived from the Standard Oil Company-the Rockefellers and the associated lesser but large fortunes such as the Flagler, Archbold, Harkness, Rogers and otherswould, at the very least, fill a large volume. This company was a generator of multimillionaires. The ways by which the power and wealth of the Standard Oil Company, formed in 1870, were built up were set forth in many an official investigation in the past, the whole making a narrative of the debauching of politics and law-making bodies, the frequent control of the judiciary, defiance or circumvention of law, obtaining of secret rebates from railroad companies, ruthless crushing of competitors, and arrogation of monopoly. The Standard Oil Company was the first trust devised, and its example was followed by many other industrial organizations.

Soon after its formation, the Standard Oil Company adopted the method of bringing persuasion or pressure to bear upon railroad owners to discriminate in its favor in giving low freight rates. This, in 1878, moved William H. Vanderbilt to declare before the New York Legislative Committee Investigating Railroads that if the policy continued, the Standard Oil Company interests, with the enormous profits they were making, could soon own the railroads of America. This apprehension or prediction turned out to be considerably true.

Public agitation was furious, for the doctrine that free competition was the life of trade was then deeply rooted in the popular mind. In the West and Southwest the Farmers' Alliance, and in the East the Knights of Labor, demanded legislation against monopolies and railroad favoritism. Likewise the large number of small manufacturers and dealers. In response, State after State enacted laws which, of course, had no jurisdiction outside of State boundaries. But to prevent even such laws from being enforced, public officials were subsidized and political organizations corrupted. Then came a popular demand for a national law; resolutions and memorials denounced trust oppression and the acts of "arrogant millionaires" and "plutocratic nabobs." The Interstate Commerce Commission was established in 1887 to propitiate public opinion demanding a regulatory power over railroads, but its powers were long weak.

In introducing his bill for the suppression of trusts, Senator John Sherman, in 1890 related how "the popular mind is agitated with probems that disturb the social order, and among them none is more threatenng than the inequality of condition, of wealth and of opportunity that has grown within a single generation out of the concentration of capital nto vast combinations to control production and trade and to bring down competition." Various powerful members in the United States Senate at hat very time were either Standard Oil beneficiaries or lawyers who had represented great corporations. Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust act which declared combinations in restraint of trade illegal. But as the law contained only a slight penalty, making a mere misdemeanor of the act of monopolizing products, it did not in the slightest degree prove a deterrent.

"THE POLITICS OF BUSINESS"

The Sherman Anti-Trust law as well as other laws were indifferently brushed aside by the magnates rushing forward to organize trusts; only a year after the enactment of the Sherman Anti-Trust law, the Havemeyers and associates formed the American Sugar Refining Company, a combination of one hundred and twenty-one plants. From their sugar refinery, that of Havemeyer & Elder, the Havemeyers had already become multimillionaires, and their fortune and the fortunes of their associates were enormously enhanced by the inordinate profits of the Sugar Trust. While the Rockefellers and their colleagues ever maintained a policy of profound silence, acknowledging nothing and disclosing nothing, Henry O. Havemeyer frankly, realistically admitted before a special committee of the United States Senate, in 1894, that trusts, railroad companies, corporations of all kinds, and rich individuals periodically contributed large amounts for campaign election purposes; such "politics of business," he testified, was the custom of "every individual and corporation or firm, trust or whatever you like to call it." Always in State campaigns, he further testified, the dominant party received the contribution.

This corruption was widespread and continuous. In return, official favors and immunity from molestation, or at any rate from serious prosecution was expected-and was given. And in such cases as disclosures and the indignation of public opinion forced officials to take some action, the result did not inconvenience the money magnates. This fact was illustrated by many cases, one of which is here to the point. In a previous chapter we have passingly referred to the great custom-house frauds committed for the benefit of the combination called the Sugar Trust, but now that we are specifically touching upon the origin of the Havemeyer and other fortunes from that industry, an extensive elucidation is called for. Under the caption "Frauds upon the Revenue," the 1909 Annual Report of the Attorney-General of the United States (pp. 11 and 12) gave this account: