FURTHER VISTAS OF THE FIELD FORTUNE
But if only to give at the outset a translucent example of Field's
method's in the management of industrial corporations, it is well to
advert here to the operations of one of his many properties--the Pullman
Company, otherwise called the "Palace Car Trust." This is a necessary
part of the exposition in order to bring out more of the methods by
which Field was enabled to fling together his vast fortune.
The artificial creation of the law called the corporation was so devised
that it was comparatively easy for the men who controlled it to evade
personal, moral, and often legal, responsibility for their acts.
Governed as the corporation was by a body of directors, those acts
became collective and not individual; if one of the directors were
assailed he could plausibly take refuge in the claim that he was merely
one of a number of controllers; that he could not be held specifically
responsible. Thus the culpability was shifted, until it rested on the
corporation, which was a bloodless thing, not a person.
FIELD'S PULLMAN WORKS.
In the case of the Pullman Co., however, much of the moral
responsibility could be directly placed upon Field, inasmuch as he,
although under cover, was virtually the dictator of that corporation.
According to the inventory of the executors of his will, he owned 8,000
shares of Pullman stock, valued at $800,000. It was asserted (in 1901)
that Field was the largest owner of Pullman stock. "In the popular
mind," wrote a puffer, probably inspired by Field himself, "George M.
Pullman has ever been deemed the dominant factor in that vast and
profitable enterprise." This belief was declared an error, and the
writer went on: "Field is, and for years has been, in almost absolute
control. Pullman was little more than a figurehead. Such men as Robert
T. Lincoln, the president of the company, and Norman B. Ream are but
representatives of Marshall Field, whose name has never been identified
with the property he so largely owns and controls." That fulsome writer,
with the usual inaccuracies and turgid exaggerations of "popular
writers," omitted to say that although Field was long the controlling
figure in the management of the Pullman works, yet other powerful
American multimillionaires, such as the Vanderbilts, had also become
large stockholders.
The Pullman Company, Moody states, employed in 1904, in all departments
of its various factories at different places, nearly 20,000 employees,
and controlled 85 per cent of the entire industry.[179] As at least a
part of the methods of the company have been the subject of official
investigation, certain facts are available.
To give a brief survey, the Pullman Company was organized in 1867 to
build sleeping cars of a feasible type officially patented by Pullman.
In 1880 it bought five hundred acres of land near Chicago. Upon three
hundred of these it built its plant, and proceeded, with much show and
advertisement of benevolence, to build what is called a model town for
the benefit of its workers. Brick tenements, churches, a library, and
athletic grounds were the main features, with sundry miscellaneous
accessories. This project was heralded far and wide as a notable
achievement, a conspicuous example of the growing altruism of business.
THE NATURE OF A MODEL TOWN.
Time soon revealed the inner nature of the enterprise. The "model town,"
as was the case with imitative towns, proved to be a cunning device with
two barbs. It militated to hold the workers to their jobs in a state of
quasi serfdom, and it gave the company additional avenues of exploiting
its workers beyond the ordinary and usual limits of wages and profits.
In reality, it was one of the forerunners of an incoming feudalistic
sway, without the advantages to the wage worker that the lowly possessed
under medieval feudalism. It was also an apparent polished improvement,
but nothing more, over the processes at the coal mines in Pennsylvania,
Illinois and other States where the miners were paid the most meager
wages, and were compelled to return those wages to the coal companies
and bear an incubus of debt besides, by being forced to buy all of their
goods and merchandise at company stores at extortionate rates. But where
the coal companies did the thing boldly and crudely, the Pullman Company
surrounded the exploitation with deceptive embellishments.
The mechanism, although indirect, was simple. While, for instance, the
cost of gas to the Pullman Company was only thirty-three cents a
thousand feet, every worker living in the town of Pullman had to pay at
the rate of $2.25 a thousand feet. If he desired to retain his job he
could not avoid payment; the company owned the exclusive supply of gas
and was the exclusive landlord. The company had him in a clamp from
which he could not well escape. The workers were housed in ugly little
pens, called cottages, built in tight rows, each having five rooms and
"conveniences." For each of these cottages $18 rent a month was charged.
The city of Chicago, the officials of which were but the mannikins or
hirelings of the industrial magnates, generously supplied the Pullman
Company with water at four cents a thousand gallons. For this same water
the company charged its employees ten cents a thousand gallons, or about
seventy-one cents a month. By this plan the company, in addition,
obtained its water supply for practically nothing. Even for having
shutters on the houses the workers were taxed fifty cents a month. These
are some specimens of the company's many devious instrumentalities for
enchaining and plundering its thousands of workers.
In the panic year of 1893 the Pullman Company reduced wages one-fourth,
yet the cost of rent, water, gas--of nearly all other fundamental
necessities--remained the same. As the average yearly pay of at least
4,497 of the company's wage workers was little more than $600--or, to be
exact, $613.86--this reduction, in a large number of cases, was
equivalent to forcing these workers to yield up their labors for
substantially nothing. Numerous witnesses testified before the special
commission appointed later by President Cleveland, that at times their
bi-weekly checks ran variously from four cents to one dollar. The
company could not produce evidence to disprove this. These sums
represented the company's indebtedness to them for their labor, after
the company had deducted rent and other charges. Such manifold robberies
aroused the bitterest resentment among the company's employees, since
especially it was a matter of authentic knowledge, disclosed by the
company's own reports, that the Pullman factories were making enormous
profits. At this time, the Pullman workers were $70,000 in arrears to
the company for rent alone.
THE PULLMAN EMPLOYEES STRIKE.
Finally plucking up courage--for it required a high degree of moral
bravery to subject themselves and their families to the further want
inevitably ensuing from a strike--the workers of the Pullman Company
demanded a restoration of the old scale of wages. An arrogant refusal
led to the declaration of a strike on May 11, 1894. This strike, and the
greater strike following, were termed by Carroll D. Wright, for a time
United States Commissioner of Labor, as "probably the most expensive and
far-reaching labor controversy which can properly be classed among the
historic controversies of this generation."[180] The American Railway
Union, composed of the various grades of workers on a large number of
railroads, declared a general sympathetic strike under the delegated
leadership of Eugene V. Debs.
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 assailed in vituperation that has had little
equal. To put the strikers in the attitude 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 constituted 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 circumstances, 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 shift 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 principal, 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 unobtrusive appearance. In his
last years his hair and mustache were white. His eyes were gray and
cold; his expression one of determination and blandly assertive
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 debasement 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 class, with its clouds of retainers, turned
out either an increasing flood of praise of these conditions, or masses
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 class.
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 assessors should raise his
assessment, that he would forthwith bundle off his domicile from
Chicago, and reside in a place where assessors 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
class 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 municipal 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 class 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
assessed 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]
The reports of the tax committee of the Boston Executive Business
Association in 1891 estimated that two billion dollars of property in
Boston escaped taxation, and that the public treasury was cheated out of
about $17,000,000 in taxes every year. As for New York City, we have
seen how the Astors, the Schermerhorns, the Goelets--the whole aggregate
of the propertied class--systematically defrauded in taxes for many
decades. It is estimated that in New York City, at present, not less
than five billion dollars of property, real and personal, entirely
escapes taxation. This estimate is a conservative one.
Spahr, after an exhaustive investigation in the United States concluded
more than a decade ago that, "the wealthy class pay less than one-tenth
of the indirect taxes, the well-to-do less than one-quarter, and the
relatively poorer classes more than two-thirds."[185] What Spahr omitted
was this highly important qualification: When the rich do pay. Tenants
of the property owners must pay their rent on time or suffer eviction,
but the capitalists are allowed to take their own leisurely time in
paying such portion of their taxes as remains after the bulk of the tax
list has been perjured away. Thus in a report he made public on February
28, 1908, Controller Metz, of New York City, pointed out that the huge
amount of $102,834,227, was due the city in uncollected taxes, much of
which amount ran several decades back. Of this sum $29,816,513 was owed
on real estate, on which the taxes were a direct lien.
The beauties of law as made and enforced by the property interests, are
herein illustriously exemplified. A poor tenant can be instantly
dispossessed, whether sick or in destitution, for non-payment of rent;
the landowner is allowed by officials who represent, and defer to him
and his class, to owe large amounts in taxes for long periods, and not a
move is taken to dispossess him.
And now by the most natural gradation, we come to those much bepraised
acts of our multimillionaires--the seignorial donating of millions to
"charitable" or "public-spirited" purposes.
Like the Astors, the Schermerhorns, the Rhinelanders and a galaxy of
others, Field diffused large sums; he, like them, was overwhelmed with
panegyrics. Millions Field gave toward the founding and sustaining of
the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago, and to the University of Chicago.
It may be parenthetically added that, (to repeat), he owned, adjacent to
this latter institution, many blocks of land the increased value of
which, after the establishment of the University, more than recouped him
for his gifts. This might have been either accidental or it might have
been cold calculation; judging from Field's consistent methods, it was
probably not chance.
So composite, however, is the human character, so crossed and seamed by
conflicting influences, that at no time is it easy to draw any absolute
line between motives. Merely because he exploited his employees
mercilessly, and cheated the public treasury out of millions of dollars,
it does not necessarily follow that Field was utterly deficient in
redeeming traits. As business is conducted, it is well known that many
successful men (financially), who practice the most cruel and oppressive
methods, are, outside the realm of strict business transactions,
expansively generous and kind. In business they are beasts of prey,
because under the private property system, competition, whether between
small or large concerns, is reduced to a cutthroat struggle, and those
who are in the contest must abide by its desperate rules. They must let
no sympathy or tenderness interpose in their business dealings, else
they are lost.
But without entering into a further philosophical disquisition, this
fact must be noted: The amounts that Field gave for "philanthropy" were
about identical with the sums out of which he defrauded Chicago in the
one item of taxes alone. Probed into, it is seen that a great part of
the sums that multimillionaires have given, represent but a tithe of the
sums cheated by them in taxes. William C. Schermerhorn donates $300,000
to Columbia University; the aggregate amount that he defrauded in taxes
was much more. Thus do our magnates supply themselves with present and
posthumous fame gratuitously. Not to consider the far greater and
incalculably more comprehensive question of their appropriating the
resources of the country and the labor of hundreds of millions of
people,[186] and centering attention upon this one concrete instance of
frauds in taxes, the situation presented is an incongruous one. Money
belonging to the public treasury they retain by fraud; this money,
apparently a part of their "honestly acquired" fortune, is given in
some form of philanthropy; and then by some curious oversetting of even
conventional standards, they reap blessings and glory for giving what
are really stolen funds.
"Those who enjoy his confidence," wrote an effervescent eulogist of
Field, "predict that the bulk of his vast fortune will be devoted to
purposes of public utility." But this prediction did not materialize.
$140,000,000 TO TWO BOYS.
Field's fortune, conservatively estimated at $100,000,000, yet, in fact,
reaching about $140,000,000, was largely bequeathed to his two
grandsons, Marshall Field III., and Henry Field. Marshall Field, as did
many other multimillionaires of his period, welded his fortune into a
compact and vested institution. It ceased to be a personal attribute,
and became a thing, an inert mass of money, a corporate entity. This he
did by creating, by the terms of his will, a trust of his fortune for
the two boys. The provisions of the will set forth that $72,000,000 was
to set aside in trust for Marshall III., until the year 1954. At the
expiration of that period it, together with its accumulation, was to be
turned over to him. To the other grandson, Henry, $48,000,000 was
bequeathed under the same conditions.
These sums are not in money, although at all times Field had a snug sum
of cash stowed away; when he died he had about $4,500,000 in banks. The
fortune that he left was principally in the form of real estate and
bonds and stocks. These constituted a far more effective cumulative
agency than money. They were, and are, inexorable mortgages on the labor
of millions of workers, men, women and children, of all occupations. By
this simple screed, called a will, embodying one man's capricious
indulgence, these boys, utterly incompetent even to grasp the magnitude
of the fortune owned by them, and incapable of exercising the
glimmerings of management, were given legal, binding power over a mass
of people for generations. Patterson says that in the Field stores and
Pullman factories fifty thousand people work for these boys.[187] But
these are the direct employees; as we have seen, Field owned bonds and
stock in more than one hundred and fifty industrial, railroad, mining
and other corporations. The workers of all these toil for the Field
boys.
They delve in mines, and risk accident, disease and death, or suffer an
abjectly lingering life of impoverishment. Thousands of coal miners are
killed every year, and many thousands more are injured, in order that
two boys and others of their class may draw huge profits.[188] More than
10,000 persons are killed, and 97,000 injured, every year on the
railroads, so that the income enjoyed by these lads and others shall not
diminish. Nearly all of these casualties are due to economizing in
expense, working employees to an extreme fatiguing limit, and refusing
to provide proper safety appliances. Millions more workers drudge in
rolling mills, railroad shops and factories; they wear out their lives
on farms, in packing houses and stores. For what? Why, foolish
questioner, for the rudiments of an existence; do you not know that
the world's dispossessed must pay heavily for the privilege of living?
As these lads hold, either wholly or partly, the titles to all this
inherited property; in plain words, to a formidable part of the
machinery of business, the millions of workers must sweat and bend the
back, and pile up a ceaseless flow of riches for them.
[Illustration: MARSHAL FIELD III. and HENRY FIELD.
The Boys Who Inherited $140,000,000.]
Marshall Field III., still in knickerbockers, receives $60,000 a week;
his brother Henry, $40,000 a week. The sum in both cases automatically
increases as the interest on the principal compounds. What do many of
the workers who supply this revenue get? Patterson gives this authentic
list of wages:
Pullman Company blacksmiths, $16.43 a week; boiler-makers, $17;
carpenters, $12.38; machinists, $16.65; painters, $13.60, and laborers,
$9.90 a week. As for the lower wages paid to the workers in the Field
stores, we have already given them. And apart from the exploitation of
employees, every person in Chicago who rides on the street or elevated
railroads, and who uses gas, electricity or telephones, must pay direct
tribute to these lads. How decayed monarchial establishments are in
these days! Kings mostly must depend upon Parliaments for their civil
lists of expenditure; but Capitalism does not have to ask leave of
anybody; it appropriates what it wants.
This is the status of the Field fortune now. Let the Field striplings
bless their destiny that they live in no medieval age, when each baron
had to defend his possessions by his strong right arm successfully, or
be compelled to relinquish. This age is one when Little Lord Fauntleroys
can own armies of profit producers, without being distracted from their
toys. Whatever defense is needed is supplied by society, with its
governments and its judges, its superserviceable band of lawyers, and
its armed forces. Two delicate children are upheld in enormous
possessions and vast power, while millions of fellow beings are suffered
to remain in destitution.
FOOTNOTES:
[179] "The Truth About the Trusts":266-267.
[180] "Industrial Evolution of the United States," 313.
[181] Parsons, "The Railways, the Trusts and the People":196. Also,
Report of Chicago Chief of Police for 1894. This was a customary
practice of railroad, industrial and mining capitalists. Further facts
are brought out in other parts of this work.
[182] "Report on the Chicago Strike of June and July, 1894," by the
United States Strike Commissioners, 1895.--Throughout all subsequent
years, and at present, the Pullman Company has continued charging the
public exorbitant rates for the use of its cars. Numerous bills have
been introduced in various legislatures to compel the company to reduce
its rates. The company has squelched these measures. Its consistent
policy is well known of paying its porters and conductors such poor
wages that the 15,000,000 passengers who ride in Pullman cars every year
are virtually obliged to make up the deficiency by tips.
[183] Sweeping as this statement may impress the uninitiated, it is
entirely within the facts. As one of many indisputable confirmations it
is only necessary to refer to the extended debate over child labor in
the United States Senate on January 23, 28, and 29, 1907, in which it
was conclusively shown that more than half a million children under
fifteen years of age were employed in factories, mines and sweatshops.
It was also brought out how the owners of these properties bitterly
resisted the passage or enforcement of restrictive laws.
[184] Eighth Biennial Report of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics,
1894. The report, made public in August, 1909, of the Illinois Tax
Reform League's investigation of the Chicago Board of Review's
assessments, showed that these frauds in evading taxation not only
continue, but on a much greater scale than ever before. The Illinois Tax
Reform League asserted, among other statements, that Edward Morris, head
of a large packing company, was not assessed on personal property,
whereas he owned $43,000,000 worth of securities, which the League
specified. The League called upon the Board of Review to assess J. Ogden
Armour, one of the chiefs of the Beef Trust, on $30,840,000 of personal
property. Armour was being yearly assessed on only $200,000 of personal
property. These are two of the many instances given in the report in
question. It is estimated (in 1909), that back taxes on at least a
billion dollars of assessable corporate capital stock, are due the city
from a multitude of individuals and corporations.
[185] "The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States":143.
[186] "Hundreds of millions of people." Not only are the 85,000,000
people of the United States compelled to render tribute, but the peoples
of other countries all over the globe.
[187] "Marshall Field's Will" by Joseph Medill Patterson. Reprinted in
pamphlet form from "Collier's Weekly."
[188] The number of men killed per 100,000 employed has increased from
267 a year in 1895 to about 355 at present. (See report of J. A. Holmes,
chief of the technological branch of the United States Geological
Survey.) The chief reason for this slaughter is because it is more
profitable to hire cheap, inexperienced men, and not surround the work
with proper safeguards.
END OF VOL. I.
(The index for Volumes I, II, and III will be found in Vol. III.)