Dr. Lyman Abbott published this letter! In his editorial comment
thereon he said that he did not know which of two biblical
injunctions to follow: "Answer not a fool according to his folly,
lest thou be thought like unto him"; or "Answer a fool according
to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit". I replied by
pointing out a third text which the Reverend Doctor had possibly
overlooked: "He that calleth his neighbor a fool shall be in
danger of hell-fire." But the Reverend Doctor took refuge in his
dignity, and I bided my time and waited for that revenge which
comes sooner or later to us muck-rakers. In this case it came
speedily. The story is such a perfect illustration of the
functions of religion as oil to the machinery of graft that I ask
the reader's permission to recite it at length.
For a couple of decades the political and financial life of New
England has been dominated by a gigantic aggregation of capital,
the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. It is a "Morgan"
concern; its popular name, "The New Haven", stands for all the
railroads of six states, nearly all the trolley-lines and
steamship-lines, and a group of the most powerful banks of Boston
and New York. It is controlled by a little group of insiders, who
followed the custom of rail-road-wrecking familiar to students of
American industrial life: buying up new lines, capitalizing them
at fabulous sums, and unloading them on the investing public;
paying dividends out of capital, "passing" dividends as a means
of stock manipulation, accumulating surpluses and cutting
"melons" for the insiders, while at the same time crushing labor
unions, squeezing wages, and permitting rolling-stock and
equipment to go to wreck.
All these facts were perfectly well known in Wall Street, and
could not have escaped the knowledge of any magazine editor
dealing with current events. In eight years the "New Haven" had
increased its capitalization 1501 per cent; and what that meant,
any office boy in "the Street" could have told. What attitude
should a magazine editor take to the matter?
At that time there were still two or three free magazines in
America. One of them was Hampton's, and the story of its wrecking
by the New Haven criminals will some day serve in school
text-books as the classic illustration of that financial piracy
which brought on the American social revolution. Ben Hampton had
bought the old derelict "Broadway Magazine", with twelve thousand
subscribers, and in four years, by the simple process of straight
truth-telling, had built up for it a circulation of 440,000. In
two years more he would have had a million; but in May, 1911, he
announced a series of articles dealing with the New Haven
management.
The articles, written by Charles Edward Russell, were so exact
that they read today like the reports of the Interstate Commerce
Commission, dated three years later. A representative of the New
Haven called upon the editor of Hampton's with a proof of the
first article--obtained from the printer by bribery--and was
invited to specify the statements to which he took exception; in
the presence of witnesses he went over the article line by line,
and specified two minor errors, which were at once corrected. At
the end of the conference he announced that if the articles were
published, Hampton's Magazine would be "on the rocks in ninety
days."
Which threat was carried out to the letter. First came a campaign
among the advertisers of the magazine, which lost an income of
thousands of dollars a month, almost over night. And then came a
campaign among the banks--the magazine could not get credit.
Anyone familiar with the publishing business will understand that
a magazine which is growing rapidly has to have advances to meet
each month's business. Hampton undertook to raise the money by
selling stock; whereupon a spy was introduced into his office as
bookkeeper, his list of subscribers was stolen, and a campaign
was begun to destroy their confidence.
It happened that I was in Hampton's office in the summer of 1911,
when the crisis came. Money had to be had to pay for a huge new
edition; and upon a property worth two millions of dollars, with
endorsements worth as much again, it was impossible to borrow
thirty thousand dollars in the city of New York. Bankers,
personal friends of the publisher, stated quite openly that word
had gone out that any one who loaned money to him would be
"broken". I myself sent telegrams to everyone I knew who might by
any chance be able to help; but there was no help, and Hampton
retired without a dollar to his name, and the magazine was sold
under the hammer to a concern which immediately wrecked it and
discontinued publication.