Fifty years in Wall Street
highest figures of prosperous times, refusing meanwhile to listen to any
terms of wage readjustment to the situation as it is. These are
extenuating circumstances, but two wrongs do not make a right; and the
best way of adjusting these differences is a difficult corporation and
labor problem of itself.
It may surprise some to learn that the great power concentrated in the
President’s hands by Congress has made the great corporations, including
the railway companies and banking institutions, ambitious and eager to
control the Federal Government itself, and they are resolutely working
to control it as far as they can by the force of capital, but as
unobtrusively as possible. They know that their designs to make the
money power supreme would arouse popular indignation, so they are
engaged in a still hunt, and Samuel J. Tilden used to say that this is
what wins in politics and a political campaign.
The Government control of the Trusts, the railways and other
corporations has become so great that it is hardly to be wondered at
that the great object that they have now in view should be to control
the government’s policy, and already they are _sub rosa_ powerful
political machines. In this connection it is significant that some large
railway and banking interests have identified themselves with the
Presidential movement. Every fresh extension by Congress of the
President’s power over corporate interests has made the large
corporations—industrial, railway and financial—with their enormous
capital and resources, more and more bold and determined in their
efforts to control the Presidency, if indeed that is possible; and this
motive underlies a great and growing amount of corruption in our
National politics.
We can therefore see in the attitude and views of the great
corporations, with their wealth and political influence, a possible
menace to our Republic and its free institutions.
This is a matter of vast and vital concern to our citizens, and it is
high time that their serious attention should be called to the fact that
the powers with which the President is invested over the business of all
classes of corporations have become so extended and far reaching that
the Trusts and their railway and financial allies, are ready to
sacrifice any moral principle, and pay any price within their power, to
control the policy of the Federal Government.
So the greatest of all the National corporation problems we have now to
deal with is how to curb and regulate, without injustice, the increasing
political power and pernicious political activity of these and other
corporations, and prevent them from accomplishing their great object,
Government control, for this indeed would be a National calamity.
To President Roosevelt we are almost entirely indebted for the
development we have witnessed in the National control of corporations
under the authority of that provision of the Constitution which invests
Congress with the power to regulate commerce between the States. This
was a great task well performed, and only second to it in importance has
been his activity in promoting Congressional legislation for the
investigation, conservation and increase of the country’s National
resources, including the irrigation of arid regions, the establishment
in the public domain of forest reserves, which had been too long
neglected, and the extension and increased efficiency of the geological
survey.
Closely allied to those National interests and the Federal management
and control of corporations has been the President’s direction of the
work of the Department of Commerce and Labor, the act creating which
provides that it shall be its duty “to foster, promote and develop the
foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing and fishing
industries, the labor interests and the transportation interests of the
United States.”
As all the business of the country outside of banking and finance, is
practically covered by this Department, its importance can hardly be
overestimated, especially in relation to the great corporations; and it
is in co-operation between these and the commercial organizations of the
United States, in common with all the other designated business
interests of the country, and this branch of the Federal Government,
that harmony and good corporate management can be best promoted, and the
political power and aspirations of the Trusts, the railways and the
other corporations be effectually regulated and permanently curbed. To
this result that Department’s energies should steadily tend, for the
political domination of this country by Trusts and the money power would
be an intolerable evil, however much it might be hidden and disguised.
It would be inimical to our form of government, and the spirit of all
American institutions, and to ward off this threatened danger, by
nipping it in the bud, is a public duty that the government owes to the
people.
It is indeed likely to become our great National corporation problem;
all the other problems relating to the Trusts, the banks and the
railways being subordinate to this in importance, for it aims at
political power for Capital, which would undermine the very foundations
of our great and glorious republic—the government for which the patriots
of the American Revolution fought so bravely at Bunker Hill, and then,
crowned with victory, made 1776 glorious with the Declaration of
Independence.
But forewarned, forearmed, and public opinion the great court of appeal,
will always govern and keep the Trusts as well as all our other great
business interests in line for the advancement of our National welfare
and the prosperity of the people.
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CHAPTER XC.
WHY I AM AN AMERICAN.
I came to this country from England over fifty years ago, expecting to
stay for merely a short visit. I had barely learned the localities of
the public buildings and the principal streets, when I began to perceive
the possibilities that presented themselves to a young man, who had the
courage to push, to compete for a place in the race for wealth and
position. I liked the hustle and the bustle that contrasted so vividly
with the slow and easy style which prevailed in my native country. I
could not escape being drawn into the spirit which surrounded me, and I
made up my mind that I would make my stand in life in New York, and I
sought and found employment. Fortunately I had letters of introduction
to people of culture and refinement, so my social surroundings were both
attractive and beneficial. In a few years the Civil War broke out and
the leaven was thereby added to the liking I had for the flag which
floats for freedom, and I became a more ardent American than though this
had been my native soil. I had the good fortune to meet the great men of
those days and they whetted my appetite to rise to their level, and much
of my success is due to the quiet influence they exerted upon my young
mind. When I landed in New York, most o what is now the great West, was
boundless prairie or dense forest, but even then the indomitable spirit
of people around me yearned to subdue this wilderness and make it
blossom and bear fruit. Millionaires were few in those days and
truthfulness and honesty, combined with a willingness to work, were the
necessary requisites to enable a young fellow to succeed. The fact that
this was a government for the people, and by the people, did much to
determine me that here I had found the promised land. No aristocracy to
contend with but the aristocracy of brains and courage; no traditions of
centuries to hang between you and your right to toe the scratch with any
man. The country was growing beyond its population and immigration was
invited in such an attractive way that the desirable classes from all
over Europe were drawn to our shores. The fact that men born in humble
life had become some of the world’s leaders proved the possibilities
that might come to any one who cared to try and who had the courage not
to know when he was beaten. In this country Congress has always made,
and is still making, laws that benefit all kinds and conditions of men
who behave themselves. Before the law neither blue blood nor family tree
protects any man who violates the statutes, for all are free and equal.
This nation has never fought for conquest of territory and wherever our
flag floats it has a moral and undisputed right to do so.
The foregoing is but a summary of the volumes I might add to the reasons
why I am an American. One more is that I cannot help being an American
and I don’t want to.
HENRY CLEWS.
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CONCLUSION.
In conclusion I wish to ask public indulgence on account of omissions.
There are many brilliant financiers and skillful operators of the
younger generation in Wall Street who have thus far shown that they are
probably destined to a prosperous, and in some instances, an illustrious
career.
Again, there are others of various ages and long experience, whose
achievements have been of a quiet, unostentatious character and whose
business lives and operations have been conducted with great reserve,
yet with marked success.
Although these two classes have not yet done much to make their
existence conspicuous in the public eye, while some of them, through
excess of modesty, perhaps, have even shunned publicity, yet their lives
have been replete with noteworthy events and the acquisition of very
useful knowledge which, if preserved and recorded, would be highly
interesting in the present, and probably not unworthy of being
transmitted to the future.
I have a considerable number of these clever and worthy gentlemen in
“the volume of my brain,” for whom I have no space in this book, as it
has already exceeded the dimensions which I had originally designed, but
in an additional volume I intend that they shall be duly remembered
according to the best of my humble ability and my opportunities of
forming a just estimate of their deserts.
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ The page number of final chapter ("CONCLUSION") was added to the
Table of Contents.
○ A few illustrations were moved to be closer to the appropriate
text.
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_);
was in bold by is enclosed by “equal” signs (=bold=).