With the rise of the magnates to power comes a growing
self-consciousness of their authority and responsibility. “I am a
citizen of no mean state,” is the reflection of each of them as he
looks upon the emergent order of which he is so large a part; and
thereupon it becomes his mission to live up to his rank and function.
Frequently his benefactions increase, and always he takes on a more
Jovian air, and views with a more providential outlook the phenomena
passing before and about him. He is a part not only, as Tennyson makes
Ulysses say, of all that he has met, but of the primary causes of
things. He is at once the loaf-giver to the needy, the regulator of
temporal affairs, the lord protector of church and society; and he
holds his title directly from the Creator. “The rights and interests of
the laboring man,” wrote the chief of the anthracite coal magnates last
August, “will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators,
but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given
the control of the property interests of the country.” Gradually there
comes the renascent development of the seigniorial mind.
I
“Business” is the main thought, and the apotheosis of “business” the
main cult of the new magnates. “Of gods, friends, learnings, of the
uncomprehended civilization which they overrun,” indignantly writes Mr.
Henry D. Lloyd, “they ask but one question: How much? What is a good
time to sell? What is a good time to buy?... Their heathen eyes see
in the law and its consecrated officers nothing but an intelligence
office, and hired men to help them burglarize the treasures accumulated
for a thousand years at the altars of liberty and justice, that they
may burn their marble for the lime of commerce.”
Though a forcible, it is an extreme view, for it leaves out of
consideration the high professions of morality, the frequent appeal to
Christian ideals, the tender solicitude for honesty, integrity, law and
order, with which our new magnates gild their worship of “business.”
Such of them as have recently invaded literature give edifying glimpses
of the new seigniorial attitude. The artistic career, writes Mr. Andrew
Carnegie in his entertaining volume, “The Empire of Business,” is most
narrowing, and produces “petty jealousies, unbounded vanities, and
spitefulness”; the learned professions also produce narrowness, albeit
often a high specialization of faculty and knowledge. But “business,”
properly pursued, broadens and develops the whole man. It is a view
echoed to greater or less extent by the other literary magnates,
particularly Mr. James J. Hill, Mr. Russell Sage, Mr. S. C. T. Dodd,
Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Hon. Marcus A. Hanna, and Mr. Charles
R. Flint.
A flattering unction that all lay to their souls is the dictum that
success in business is a matter of honesty, intelligence, and energy.
“There is no line of business,” writes Mr. Carnegie, “in which success
is not attainable. It is a simple matter of honest work, ability, and
concentration.” “To rail against the accumulation of wealth,” writes
Mr. Sage, in the _Independent_, “is to rail against the decrees of
justice. Intelligence, industry, honesty, and thrift produce wealth....
So long as some men have more sense and more self-control than others,
just so long will such men be wealthy, while others will be poor.”
Mr. Dodd, in his address to the students of Syracuse University, adds
this contribution: “Why is there still so much poverty? One reason is
because nature or the devil has made some men weak and imbecile and
others lazy and worthless, and neither man nor God can do much for
one who will do nothing for himself.” Mr. Rockefeller appeals both to
evolution and to divine sanction. “The growth of a large business,”
he is reported as declaring in one of his Sunday-school addresses,
“is merely a survival of the fittest.... The American Beauty rose can
be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its
beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it.
This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working out
of a law of nature and a law of God.”
It matters not that many millions of men, tirelessly energetic and
reasonably intelligent, can be shown to have toiled all their lives
without winning even a competence. Nor does it matter that some of
these, in addition to being energetic and intelligent, have been
reasonably honest. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man
picked out of ten thousand; and the fact that most of the greater
affairs of the business world sooner or later find their way into the
courts, for the testing of the amount and quality of honesty involved
therein, might well cause some hesitation in positing this virtue as
a necessary qualification for “business.” But the notion is not to be
argued with; it is a characteristic outcropping of the seigniorial mind.
The praise of labor is the antiphony to the praise of “business,” and
the lyres of all the magnates are strung tensely when chanting tributes
to toil.
“Round swings the hammer of industry, quickly the sharp chisel rings,
And the heart of the toiler has throbbings that stir not the bosom
of kings,”
warbles Mr. Flint in his article on “Combinations and Critics,”
in “The Trust: Its Book.” Toil is the foundation of wealth, they
all aver, though the rhapsodical nature of the tributes prevents a
clear and definite utterance on the question, Of _whose_ wealth is
it the foundation? But there is no lack of definiteness regarding
their attitude toward those defensive societies, the trade-unions,
which the toilers organize to secure a larger part of their product
to themselves. Mr. Flint, indeed, somewhat cautiously acknowledges
an element for good in the unions, but the general attitude of the
seigniorial mind is distinctly inimical. The recent interesting
correspondence between the coal magnates and President Mitchell is an
instance in point; so are the frequent utterances on the subject by the
president of the steel trust, and any number of examples could be given
of a like character. A crowning example of a distinctly feudal attitude
is furnished by a letter from a prominent New York merchant, printed in
the issue of June 9, 1902, of a newspaper which makes a considerable
to-do about the printing of such of the news as it sees fit to print.
The prominent merchant objects very strongly to labor leaders and
walking delegates, describing them in almost as temperate and judicial
language as that of United States District Judge Jackson. The flower of
his contribution is his seigniorial remedy for strikes:--
“The only remedy, in my opinion, for strikes is to get as many men as
there are officers in the different [labor] associations admitted to
their meetings, where they would have a chance to talk to the men in
a businesslike way, explaining matters to them in such a manner as to
bring the effects of a strike very plainly before them.”
Moral suasion, however, is not the only method suggested for bringing
sense to the workers. A hint of more forcible means is occasionally
broached. A New York newspaper, which makes a boast of printing
unimpeachable interviews, reports, in its issue of July 31st last, a
significant warning from the president of the New York, Ontario and
Western Railroad. This is one of the coal-carrying railroads, and the
reference is to the anthracite strike. “After the men return to work,”
he said, “I believe that legal steps will be taken in the United States
courts against those who are responsible for the loss occasioned by the
strike.” The Hon. Abram S. Hewitt echoed this interesting suggestion
in an interview of August 25th. “The consequences of such strikes,” he
says, “are so disastrous, not merely to the parties directly concerned,
but to the whole community, that every effort should be made as soon as
the existing strike has been called off and the excitement is abated to
prevent by appropriate legislation the recurrence of such calamitous
conflicts where everybody is injured and no one is benefited.” Criminal
codes, it may be said generally, depend largely on the economic
conditions of the time and place where they obtain: horse-stealing, in
a community girdled by trolley lines, degenerates to petty larceny,
while in Wyoming or Arabia it is a capital offence. In the new order,
which requires peace and stability for its proper operation, it may
readily enough come about that voluntary leaving of work will be
severely penalized.
II
The new seigniorial attitude toward government and public policy is
also significant. Often it is paternalistic in a princely degree. The
offer of a retired magnate to settle a great national problem by paying
to the Government the $20,000,000 demanded of Spain, on condition
that the Filipinos be “set free,” had in it something of the “grand
style” which Matthew Arnold so extols. The rallying to the defence of
the Government’s gold reserve by certain financiers, several years
ago, need not be instanced, since in certain quarters it is gravely
suspected that their interest was not entirely platonic. But certainly
the recent offer of a wealthy magnate to pay one-third of the cost
of repairing all the roads in the vicinity of Lakewood, N.J., showed
the true seigniorial spirit. Not different in kind, though somewhat
in degree, was the recent action of a Pittsburg magnate, on the rude
refusal of the Department of Public Works to pave his street otherwise
than with blocks at a cost of 65 cents the square yard, in doing the
thing himself at a cost of $4.50 the square yard.
Usually, however, the seigniorial attitude toward government is
somewhat more in the direction of intervention. The seasonal migration
to Washington of representatives of all the great commercial interests
has become a salient datum in political zoölogy. Curiosity regarding a
proposed parcels post or government telegraph alone draws hundreds of
these birds of passage there. The rights of private initiative must be
maintained at any cost. In the great West one of the prime necessities
for a living is the access to water for irrigation purposes. One
may have land; but, if he has not water to irrigate it, the soil
is worthless. The prevailing sentiment is for public ownership of
waterways, since, in many places, monopoly controls the supply. At the
electrical convention held at San Francisco recently, the presiding
officer, who is also the president of a public-service corporation,
after denouncing organized labor and municipal ownership, added:
“For us a far more dangerous agitation is that which now proposes
State appropriation of all water rights. The scheme advocated makes
the appropriation little less than sheer confiscation.” Luckily the
seventy-one mile envelope of air that encases the globe yet eludes
monopolization.
“Hands off!” is the warning to government; and though occasionally
government puts hands on, they are not very closely or tenaciously
applied. The report of the Interstate Commerce Commission (1901),
for instance, employs a rather pessimistic tone regarding government
control of traffic rates. “We simply call attention to the fact,” it
recites, “that the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the
Trans-Missouri case and the Joint Traffic Association case has produced
no practical effect upon the railway operations of the country. Such
associations, in fact, exist now, as they did before those decisions,
and with the same general effect.” “Should the Supreme Court declare
the Northern railways consolidation unconstitutional,” one of the
interested magnates is reported as saying, “we shall simply do the
thing in another way. It is something that must be done.” Cynically
frank is Mr. Dodd, in his Syracuse address, regarding the Anti-trust
law. “A modern Federal law also exists,” he says, “which, literally
interpreted, forbids business of any magnitude; but Federal judges have
thus far found it easier to dismiss proceedings under it than to guess
at its real meaning.” The president of the Southern Pacific Railroad
takes the bull by the horns, and denounces all interference. In an
interview given to the press June 2d of the present year, he declares
that “the legislation of the future must be pro-railroad instead of
anti-railroad.... I believe commissions are things of the past. I do
not think transportation companies should have to submit to dictation
or control by bodies who do not know anything about transportation.”
The Contract-labor law is another measure, to the seigniorial mind,
unnecessary and obstructive, and its provisions, therefore, are but
lightly observed. Known evasions have been numerous; and, were the full
truth revealed, it would probably be found that this law has met with
about the same degree of observance as have the Interstate Commerce
and Anti-trust laws. As recently as July 16th, comes word from Berlin
to the Chicago _Daily News_ that “agents of American railroads are
canvassing the Polish and Slavic districts of Europe for laborers,
to whom they offer $2.50 a day and board, regardless of the Federal
Contract-labor law.”
Not only do the magnates demand immunity from government interference
in their business affairs, but they demand also a more real, if not
a more obvious, share in the operations of government. The invasion,
during the last ten years, of the National Senate by a number of the
magnates or their legates is a part of the process; but something more
to the point is their insistence on the right to be consulted in grave
affairs by the President and Cabinet. A New York daily newspaper,
edited by the distinguished scholar who delivers lectures on journalism
before Yale University, published last February an account of a
remarkable gathering at Washington. It verges closely upon contumacy to
mention the names of the attending magnates, such is their eminence,
and they will therefore not be given. Their purpose was to protest
to the President against a repetition of his action in the Northern
Securities case. “The financiers declare,” says this newspaper, “that
they should have been notified of the intended Federal action last
week, so that they could be prepared to support the stock market, and
that their unpreparedness came very near bringing on a panic. Had
not the big interests of the street been in possession of the bulk
of securities, instead of speculators and small holders, there would
have been a panic, the capitalists assert.” It is, when considered, a
modest claim--the powers of an extra-constitutional cabinet, intrusted
with the conservation of the public peace. There is no proof that the
claim has been conceded, though some light is thrown on the problem by
the newspaper’s further declaration that the chief magnate, after an
interview with the President, “felt very much better.”
Something of the same nature was revealed in the negotiations last
March between the Mayor of New York City and the directors of the New
York Central Railroad Company. The company requested the Mayor to
secure the withdrawal of the Wainwright bill in the State Assembly,
compelling the railroad to abandon steam in the Park Avenue tunnel by
a fixed date, and promised to do the required thing in its own time
and at its own pleasure. The letter of the Mayor to Assemblyman Bedell
records the result: “This letter [of the directors] seems to me to
lay a good foundation for the waiving a fixed date to be named in the
bill;” and the date was accordingly “waived.”
Of the seigniorial attitude toward the police law, the abundant crop
of automobile cases alone furnishes signal testimony. Dickens made a
highly dramatic, though perhaps rather unhistorical, use in his “A Tale
of Two Cities” of the riding down of a child by a marquis, and the long
train of tragic consequences that ensued. We do the thing differently
in our day: we acquit, or at most fine the marquis, and the matter
rests; we are too deferential to carry it further. Fast driving in the
new “machines” has become one of the tests of courage, manliness, and
skill,--what jousting in full armor was in the fifteenth century, or
duelling with pistols in the early part of the nineteenth,--and if the
police law interferes, the exploit is the more hazardous and therefore
the more emulatory. The scion of a great house who recently, on being
arrested for fast driving and then bailed, subsequently sent his valet
to the police court to pay the fine, showed the true seigniorial
spirit. Possibly, though, had his identity been known before arrest,
he would have escaped the irritating interference of the law; for it
happened, about the same time, on the arrest for the same offence of a
millionnaire attorney, companioned by a Supreme Court judge, that a
too vigilant policeman came to learn his severest lesson--that to know
whom not to trouble is the better part of valor.
At Newport, the summer home of the seigniorial class, the automobile
enforces a right of way. This is not sufficient, however, for the
automobilists, who would prefer a sole and exclusive way. In the summer
of 1901 the resident magnates fixed upon a certain Friday afternoon for
their motor races, and demanded exclusive control of Ocean, Harrison,
and Carroll avenues between the hours of two and four o’clock. In
the “grand style” characterizing the dealings of this class with the
public, the magnates offered to pay all the fines if the races led to
any prosecutions. This meant, of course, that the ordinance prohibiting
a speed greater than ten miles an hour was to be overlooked, since
the races would surely have developed speed up to forty, fifty,
and sixty miles an hour. The deferential City Council acquiesced.
For once, however, the ever serviceable injunction was found to be
available against other persons than striking workmen. A few property
owners sought refuge in the Supreme Court, a temporary injunction was
issued by Judge Wilbur, and, though the magnates hired lawyers to
fight it, the order was made permanent. It is but natural that keen
resentment should follow this high-handed action of the courts. It is
announced that some of the magnates are tiring of Newport, and one of
the wealthiest of them has recently threatened to forsake the place
entirely.
Laws are like cobwebs, said Anacharsis the Scythian, where the
small flies are caught and the great break through. Yet that even
the great can sometimes bow to the reign of law, and particularly
that the seigniorial mind can on occasion be conciliatory, is well
illustrated by the recent action of the governors of the Automobile
Club, in suspending two members and disciplining a third, for fast
driving. The troublesome restrictions of the law on this point are
probably destined, however, to be soon abolished. Already the Board
of Freeholders of Essex County, N.J., a region much frequented by
automobilists, has advanced the speed limit in the country districts
to twenty miles per hour. Further changes are expected, and it will
probably be but a short time before a man with a “machine” will enjoy
the God-given right of “doing what he will with his own.”
III
Most of the magnates show a frugal and a discriminating mind in their
benefactions; but it is a prodigal mind indeed which governs the
expenditures that make for social ostentation. It is probable that
no aristocracy--not even that of profligate Rome under the later
Cæsars--ever spent such enormous sums in display. Our aristocracy,
avoiding the English standards relating to persons engaged in trade,
welcomes the industrial magnate, and his vast wealth and love of
ostentation have set the pace for lavish expenditure. Trade is the
dominant phase of American life,--the divine process by which,
according to current opinion, “the whole creation moves,”--and, as it
has achieved the conquest of most of our social institutions and of
our political powers, that it should also dominate “society” is but a
natural sequence. Flaunting and garish consumption becomes the basic
canon in fashionable affairs. As Mr. Thorstein Veblen, in his keen
satire, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” puts it:--
“Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of
reputability.... As wealth accumulates on his [the magnate’s] hands,
his own unaided effort will not avail sufficiently to put his opulence
in evidence by this method. The aid of friends and competitors is
therefore brought in by resorting to the giving of valuable presents
and expensive feasts and entertainments. Presents and feasts had
probably another origin than that of naïve ostentation, but they
acquired their utility for the purpose very early, and they have
retained that character to the present.”
The conspicuous consumption of other days was, however, as compared
with that of the present, but a flickering candle flame to a great
cluster of electric lights. Against the few classic examples, such
as those of Cleopatra and Lucullus, our present aristocracy can show
hundreds; and the daily spectacle of wasteful display might serve to
make the earlier Sybarites stare and gasp. Present-day fashionable
events come to be distinguished and remembered not so much on the score
of their particular features as of their cost. A certain event is known
as Mr. A’s $5,000 breakfast, another as the Smith-Jones’s $15,000
dinner, and another as Mrs. C’s $30,000 entertainment and ball.
Conspicuous eating becomes also a feature of seigniorial life. The
“society” and the “yellow” journals are crowded with accounts of
dinners and luncheons, following one after another with an almost
incredible frequency. And not only is the frequency remarkable, but the
range and quantity of the viands furnished almost challenge belief. So
far, it is believed, the journals which usually deal in that sort of
news have neglected to give an authoritative menu for a typical day
in the life of a seigniorial family. We have dinner menus, luncheon
menus, and so on, but nothing in the way of showing what is consumed
by the individual or family during a term of twenty-four hours. Some
light on the subject, however, is furnished by Mr. George W. E.
Russell, the talented author of “Collections and Recollections,” in his
recent volume, “An Onlooker’s Note-book.” Objection may be made to the
effect that Mr. Russell is an Englishman, and that he is describing an
English royal couple. But the demurrer is irrelevant, since it is well
known that our seigniorial class founds its practices and its canons
(excepting only the canon regarding persons engaged in trade) upon
English precedents, and that English precedents are made by the Royal
Family. And not only does our home nobility imitate English models, but
it piles Pelion upon Ossa, and seeks constantly to outshine and overdo
the actions of its transatlantic cousins. Mrs. George Cornwallis-West
(formerly Lady Randolph Churchill) recently stated that the vast sums
spent by Americans in England have lifted the standard of living to a
scale of magnificence almost unknown before. So for whatever is shown
to be English custom, something must be added for American improvement
and extension when assuming its transplantation to these shores. Mr.
Russell writes:--
“A royal couple arranged to pay a two nights’ visit to a country house
of which the owners were friends of mine. For reasons of expediency,
we will call the visitors the duke and duchess, though that was not
their precise rank. When a thousand preparations too elaborate to be
described here had been made for the due entertainment of them and
their suite and their servants, the private secretary wrote to the lady
of the house, enclosing a written memorandum of his royal master’s and
mistress’s requirements in the way of meals. I reproduce the substance
of the memorandum--and in these matters my memory never plays tricks.
The day began with cups of tea brought to the royal bedroom. While the
duke was dressing, an egg beaten up in sherry was served to him, not
once, but twice. The duke and duchess breakfasted together in their
private sitting room, where the usual English breakfast was served to
them. They had their luncheon with their hosts and the house party, and
ate and drank like other people. Particular instructions were given
that at 5 o’clock tea there must be something substantial in the way
of eggs, sandwiches, or potted meat, and this meal the royal couple
consumed with special gusto. Dinner was at 8.30, on the limited and
abbreviated scale which the Prince of Wales introduced--two soups, two
kinds of fish, two entrées, a joint, two sorts of game, a hot and cold
sweet, and a savory, with the usual accessories in the way of oysters,
cheese, ice, and dessert. This is pretty well for an abbreviated
dinner. But let no one suppose that the royal couple went hungry to
bed. When they retired, supper was served to them in their private
sitting room, and a cold chicken and a bottle of claret were left in
their bedroom, as a provision against emergencies.”
All the men of great wealth are not men of leisure. Some of them
work as hard as do common laborers. For such as these the tremendous
gastronomy recounted by Mr. Russell would be impossible as a daily
exercise. When, therefore, it is assumed of any of our seigniorial
class, it must be limited to magnates on vacation, to their leisurely
sons, nephews, hangers-on, and women, and to those who have retired
from active pursuits. But there are other canons of social reputability
besides personal leisure and personal wasteful consumption. These
are, to quote again from Mr. Veblen, vicarious leisure and vicarious
consumption--the leisure and lavishness of wives, sons, and daughters.
It is these who, in large part, at New York, Lenox, and Newport,
support the social reputation of their seigniorial husbands and
fathers. The “dog parties,” wherein the host “puts on a dog collar and
barks for the delectation of his guests,” the “vegetable parties,”
wherein host and guests, perhaps from some latent sense of inner
likeness, make themselves up to represent cabbage heads and other
garden products, the “monkey parties,” the various “circuses” and like
events, are given and participated in more generally by the vicarious
upholders of the magnate’s social reputation than by the seignior
himself.
But in ways more immediate--by means which do not conflict with
his daily vocation--the working magnate gives signal example of
that virtue of capitalistic “abstinence” which is the foundation of
orthodox political economy. The splendors of his town house, his
country estate, and his steam yacht, to say nothing of his club, are
repeatedly described to us in the columns of popular periodicals. His
paintings, decorations, and bric-à-brac, his orchids and roses, his
blooded animals and his $10,000 Panhard, are depicted in terms which
make one wonder how paltry and mean must have been the possessions of
Midas and how bare the “wealth of Ormus and of Ind.” And when, for a
time, he lays down the reins of power, and betakes himself to Saratoga
or Newport or Monte Carlo, yet more wonderful accounts are given of
his lavish expenditure. The betting at the Saratoga race-tracks last
August is reported to have averaged $2,000,000 a day. “The money does
not come,” said that eminent maker of books, Mr. Joe Ullman, “from any
great plunger or group of plungers, but from the great assemblage of
rich men who are willing to bet from $100 to $1,000 on their choices
in a race.” On the transatlantic steamers, in London and in Paris,
the same prodigality is seen. A king’s ransom--or what is more to the
point, the ransom of a hundred families from a year’s suffering--is
lost or won in an hour’s play or lightly expended for some momentary
satisfaction.
IV
There remain for brief mention the benefactions of the magnates.
Most of these come under the head of “conspicuous giving.” Gifts for
educational, religious, and other public purposes last year reached
the total of $107,360,000. In separate amounts they ran all the way
from the $5,000 gift of a soap or lumber magnate to the $13,000,000
that had their origin in steel. It is an interesting list for study in
that it reveals more significantly than some of the instances given
the standards and temper of the seigniorial mind. An anonymous writer,
evidently of Jacobinical tendencies, some time ago suggested in the
columns of a well-known periodical a list of measures for the support
of which rich men might honorably and wisely devote a part of their
fortunes:--
“He [the rich man] could begin by requiring the assessors to hand him a
true bill of his own obligations to the public. He could continue the
good work by persuading the collector to accept a check for the whole
amount. This would make but a small draft upon his total accumulations.
A further considerable sum he could wisely devote to paying the
salaries of honorable lobbyists, who should labor with legislative
bodies to secure the enactment of just laws, which would relieve
hard-working farmers, struggling shopkeepers, mechanics trying to pay
for mortgaged houses, and widows who have received a few thousand
dollars of life insurance money, from their present obligation to
support the courts, the militia, and other organs of government that
protect the rich man’s property and enable him to collect his bills
receivable. Finally, if these two expenditures did not sufficiently
diminish his surplus, he could purchase newspapers and pay editors to
educate the public in sound principles of social justice, as applied to
taxation and to various other matters.”
Perhaps it is not singular that no part of the gifts of the great
magnates is ever devoted to any of these purposes. Doubtless they see
no flaw, or at least no remediable defect, in the present industrial
régime. It is the régime under which they have risen to fortune and
power, and it is therefore justified by its fruits. Their benefactions
are thus always directed to a more or less obvious easement of the
conditions of those on whom the social fabric most heavily rests.
Hospitals, asylums, and libraries are the objects, though recently
a bathing beach for poor children has been added to the list. The
propriety of securing learned justification of the existing régime
causes also a considerable giving to schools, colleges, and churches.
But nowhere can there be found a seigniorial gift which, directly or
indirectly, makes for modification of the prevailing economic system.