THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD.
The Co-opolitan Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1910 to
Chicago. Two years before that the last spike had been driven at
Seattle, on Puget Sound, and trains had since been running regularly on
that portion of the road. The construction of the road through
Washington, Wyoming and South Dakota was not interrupted by any
obstacles or opposition. Indeed, the people of those states offered
every inducement for us to pass through their country.
When we reached the Black Hills in South Dakota we found the route from
Silver City to Rapid City down the narrow valley of Rapid Creek occupied
by a partially completed railroad which the projector had been compelled
to abandon for lack of funds. This we purchased for a small sum. With
that exception the right of way through Washington, Wyoming and South
Dakota cost us practically nothing. Moreover, the farmers in Eastern
South Dakota aided us with their labor, accepting the produce and
merchandise which we brought with us from Idaho for pay. The labor
orders, also, were in demand along that part of our road, and we
established the department stores in the states where these orders were
soon received back for wares.
The state of Washington was at the time our road reached Seattle largely
under the control of the Washington Co-operative Association, and that
Association, being like the Co-opolitan, a creature of the National
Brotherhood of the Co-operative Commonwealth, deemed its interests
identical with ours and aided us materially in pushing our enterprise in
that direction.
In Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois the several legislatures had denied
to all, except domestic corporations, the right to exercise the power of
eminent domain. This law had been passed at recent sessions of their
legislatures at the instance of certain railroad companies to exclude
our line. The people of these several states had been much incensed when
the laws mentioned were enacted. Had the initiative and referendum been
in force there as in Idaho this would not have been a serious
impediment. We could then have gone among the indignant citizens and
procured a petition signed by twenty per cent of the voters of the state
asking that the obnoxious laws be submitted to the popular vote.
Such was the feeling against the corrupt corporations at the time that
people would have hastened to sign such a petition. But they had no
initiative and referendum law, and so were at the mercy of the
corruptionists.
The plain reason why the competing railroads desired to exclude our
line, and why the farmers desired to have it enter these states, was the
understanding that we would reduce all rates, both passenger and
freight, to the great advantage of the farmers.
In fact, we designed to make a reduction in these respects which would
mean ruin for all competing lines.
We were able to do this.
In the first place the road had cost us nothing but labor, except what
we paid in cash to purchase the Rapid Valley Road and the right of way
over the lands of certain hostile farmers. Even this cash represented
our labor and was valuable only as it would purchase other labor or its
products.
Then the competitive roads had been enormously expensive to build. The
projectors were compelled, when they proposed their enterprises, to
bribe a large number of so-called capitalists to advance money which had
doubtless been intrusted to them by laborers for investment. Such
capitalists, having little they could call their own, must needs obtain
it.
So these railroad builders and their financiers placed side by side with
the genuine million won from labor a false and pretended million which
had its inception in and owed its existence to fraud. Then the true and
false were made to pass together, with extended hands demanding of the
toiler a portion of his product as their lawful dues. The one was just,
the other a fiction and a sham.
False stock, which never had any basis in labor; false bonds, which had
no mission except to defraud labor of its product; false pretenses,
which made it possible for knaves to live by their wits, were the
excuses which capitalists put forth for those extortionate rates by
which the people were impoverished.
Our railroad represented no such presumptuous and dastardly pretensions.
We came as labor should come to labor, asking no more and no less than
labor’s honest dues.
No stock, no bonds, no fraudulent construction companies came with us.
We did not deal in dollars nor peddle securities.
We had naught but labor to expend, and pretended nothing more. But we
had all that labor makes and thousands of willing hands.
When we built our road we offered it for use as the creature of labor
and not the creature of capital.
To build it and equip it we began at the very foundation. The ore we
mined, and smelted it in our own furnaces. We fashioned our own plough
and with it turned the furrow. We made the harrow and followed it
afield. We planted the grain and when it ripened in the golden sun we
harvested it with blades our own hands wrought. We delved again, and
from the mines we brought the ore, and in the blazing furnaces we
moulded the steel automata which, at our bidding, amid the Shoshone’s
roar, reduced our wheat to flour, or wove the wool of our own flocks to
cloth.
Then we made rails of steel, and of the pulp of straw made paper ties,
and threw up grades, or hewed our way through rock-ribbed hills. And so
our road was built to Minnesota’s line and we proposed to build it
through that state and onward to Chicago.
It can be seen that our own road could, when completed, be operated far
cheaper than any of the competitive class. We had our coal in Idaho at
first cost; our iron at first cost; our steel rails, ties and all
necessary equipments at first cost. No brokers or speculators
intervened.
Our railroad force wore clothing which we made, and no retailer exacted
from our employe a profit. We fed him with our own home-grown and
home-made flour, sugar, beef and supplies. How could the competitors
compete with that?
We did not delay long at Minnesota’s boundary. The Brotherhood in that
state soon organized a company under the laws of the state and its stock
was nearly all conveyed to our Association, except just enough to enable
us to have nominal officers in the state as the law required. The same
course was pursued in Wisconsin and Illinois and our road was completed
in due time.
Similar consequences followed the completion of this road that followed
the establishment of our department store and hotel at Boise City.
The business of nearly all the roads to the coast came to the
Co-opolitan. The other roads could not compete with us.
We reduced our rates to one cent a mile. The other roads followed suit,
supposing it possible for them to force us to terms.
The Legislative Council thereupon placed the fare at one dollar for the
through trip from any point along the line to Seattle and one cent per
mile for any distance less than one hundred miles. This was continued
for two years without any change and the travel on the road was enormous
and profitable at that price.
Freight rates were also reduced. The result of this road as to the
manufactures of Idaho was to give them a “boom.”
Our woolen goods were especially salable. We had over four million sheep
in Idaho and our woolen mills were consuming all the wool yield and that
of Washington, Oregon and Montana. These goods were of superior quality
and we were able to sell them cheaper than English manufacturers could
without a tariff.
Two years before our road was completed to Chicago, after the last spike
was driven at Seattle, we began the construction in that city of three
large buildings costing one million dollars each.
These were of the most magnificent character and were equal to anything
which in the competitive system would have compelled us to spend four or
five million each. The reason was that we furnished the stone, slate,
marble, lime and all building material from Idaho and performed all the
work with our own Co-opolitan labor. We also transported men and
material on our railroad.
One of these buildings was a co-operative store, another a co-operative
hotel and a third a Palace of Amusements. This supplied Seattle with all
needed in the way of clothing, food, hotel entertainment or
accommodation and amusement or recreation, and constituted that
combination by which we had successfully defeated all industrial or
competitive opposition in Idaho.
The Washington Co-operative Association had arranged with us that we
should be allowed Seattle as our seaport town, and we proceeded to
establish a steamship line with China and Japan and arranged for other
lines to countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean. This we had no
difficulty in doing, as we had gold and silver in large quantities,
taken from our mines or won from competitors, with which to deal with
the barbarous people who use them.
As for Seattle, it had long been inclined to co-operation. Its business
men and citizens had been for years struggling against every conceivable
disadvantage and were completely at the mercy of trusts and combinations
of the most unconscionable character. They had been approaching closer
and closer to bankruptcy day by day until our “Three Brothers,” as they
called the hotel, department store and amusement hall, received them
into their fraternal arms.
Since Seattle became a co-operative city it has grown to be the great
Pacific seaport of the co-operative world. Its widened avenues, its
magnificent parks, its comfortable cottages, its great wharves and
piers, its forest of masts, its magnificent Industrial Army, its schools
and institutions of learning all bespeak a prosperity which is the pride
of her citizens. And this pride is all the more excusable because the
Seattle of to-day is the property of all her citizens and not the
property of a few.