By such a system of dishonesty, extortion, law-breaking, and reckless
disregard of human life as has rarely been known, even in the history of
modern commercialism.
The merchants and farmers throughout the Southern States have been
ruthlessly robbed. The melon growers, the fruit men, the truck gardeners
have, in thousands of cases, been so hounded and harried and victimized
by excessive charges, secret rebates and discriminations in favor of
other shippers, that they have been literally driven out of the field,
broken and despairing.
Roadbeds, bridges, safety appliances, have been so wantonly neglected
that almost every mile of the Southern Railway System from Washington
southward has known its tragedy, where men, women and children were
dashed to sudden, horrible death.
It was not the hard necessity of poverty that drove Sam Spencer to a
policy so heartless as this. He had the means wherewith to put his roads
in first-class order, had he wished to spend the funds in that way. It
was not necessary for him to rob the men who were obliged to patronize
his roads. If a fair, legitimate profit upon actual investment was
all that he sought, he could have got it without doing the slightest
injustice to any human being.
But he wanted more than that. A reasonable return upon the actual
investment was not enough. So, he neglected the bridge until it fell,
with its sickening horror, its shrieking mass of passengers doomed to
frightful death. He neglected the safety appliances, and the full force
of workmen, until some rotten crosstie, or defective rail, or open
switch, or telegram which the dulled brain of an overworked engineer
failed to comprehend, brought about derailments and collisions, with the
heartrending consequence of crushed and burning cars, of crushed and
burning men, women and children.
[Illustration: “The merchants and farmers throughout the Southern states
have been ruthlessly robbed.”]
Had the same proportion of the earnings been used to improve the
property, as is the universal custom in Europe, there would have been the
same security to the passenger that there is in Europe.
But the net profit to Wall Street would have been only a fair return upon
the money actually invested—as it is in Europe.
Wall Street demands more than that. Sam Spencer’s task was to get what
Wall Street wanted.
Have I not already said that Wall Street knows how to pick out its man?
It never chose a better tool for its purpose than Sam Spencer.
He has doubled the _amount_ of their property.
That is good.
But he has done better than that.
He has trebled the gross earnings.
And that is good, too.
But he has done still better than that.
He has increased the NET earnings more than FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE
PER CENT!
Good, _better_, BEST.
That enormous profit had to be made out of somebody.
Freight rates and passenger rates are taxes which the transportation
companies levy upon freight and passengers. When Sam Spencer added 525
per cent. to the net revenue of his masters, he had to tax it out of the
people who patronized the Southern Railroad.
Who were these people? Mostly, Southern people. The tax was levied upon
the South, and paid by the South.
Sam Spencer is a Southern man?
Bless you, yes!
Wall Street hired him to systematize the robbery of his own people, and
he has done it.
[Illustration: “We lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than
we have lost to the railroads under Sam Spencer.”]
During the eleven years of his rule he has plundered his own people of
more money than they lost by Sherman’s “Marching through Georgia.”
The people of the South have lost more to the Wall Street railway
corporations than they lost to the whole of Sherman’s army.
The battles of the Civil War were bloody, for it was Greek meet Greek,
and it was, in truth, the tug of war. Especially were the battles bloody
when Sherman came down against us, for he brought Western troops—the best
that the Union had.
But we lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than we have lost
to the railroads during the eleven years that Sam Spencer has been one
of their most relentless and unscrupulous lieutenants.
He and his allies in plunder and crime killed and wounded, last year, the
staggering total of 92,000 human beings.
The ghastly record grows bloodier every year.
Human life is nothing; dividends are everything.
_Five hundred and twenty-five per cent!_
And Sam Spencer’s bosses pat _him_ on the back and congratulate _him_.
Ah, yes; they were feeling good. They expanded. They bubbled over.
As who should say: “Sam, you are a trump. When we bought you, we believed
we had bought a good thing; now we know it. You have been tried, and you
have proven true. We set you to the task of plundering your own people,
and you have not flinched from the job. You have skinned them to the
queen’s taste. You have doubled our estate, trebled the earnings, and so
squeezed the train-crews, the section hands, the roadbed, the shipper and
the passenger, that you have swelled our profits more than 525 per cent.
We congratulate _you_—and, WE pocket the money.”
_The Ungrateful Negro_
_From a Newspaper_