The following are the conclusions from, A Chapter in Erie, published in 1867 by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., direct descendent of the second president of the United States who served as commissioner of the Union Pacific Railroad during the time chronicled. Adams tells the story about a certain era in the history of the Erie Railroad which highlights the sorry state of corruption that permeated society at the time.
Prophetic minds like Adams, realized that America, at the turn of the century, was at a critical juncture.
No portion of our system was left untested, and no portion showed itself to be sound. The stock exchange revealed itself as a haunt of gamblers and a den of thieves; the offices of our great corporations appeared as the secret chambers in which trustees plotted the spoliation of their wards; the law became a ready engine for the furtherance of wrong, and the ermine of the judge did not conceal the eagerness of the partisan; the halls of legislation were transformed into a mart in which the price of votes was higgled over, and laws, made to order, were bought and sold; while under all, and through all, the voice of public opinion was silent or was disregarded.
Our current time feels eerily reminiscent. The recognition that things feel disjointed and the future of our country bleak has allowed that submerged block of anxiety to rise to the surface once again for those who are paying attention.
This article may seem odd or misplaced given the breathless embrace of the Trump loyalists to the recent presidential proclaimation that the “Golden Era” of America is upon us. I hope that reviving prophetic voices like Adams will serve as smelling salts to those so affected.
In reality, not only has the “rot in the system,” articulated by Adams never fully been addressed in this country...it has now gone global! One hundred and fifty years ago, we had REAL problems indeed.
Today, the forces amassed against truth, liberty and freedom are almost incomprehensible. And yet we do not fear.
Understanding the true extent of any problem is the first and necessary step before examining solutions of substance and not mere band-aides.
Denounce me as a Jeremiah if you will. Our history has been cloaked in mythology. It’s time we brought back those lone voices of the past, drowned out by money and monopoly.
I have excerpted the summary for you below and the podcast is available as well.
The Complete copy of A Chapter of Erie is available free on archive.org. It’s a small work with an unbelievable tale of corruption that will likely astound you.
Let’s us know what you appreciated from the selection and whether you enjoy having audio files of these prophetic voices from the past. I run across these types of voices all the time in my reading and can pass them on relatively easily while still working on the next book.
And by all means… please pass them on to friends and family.
Remember…the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth!
The network of “nobodies” is rising….
Except from, A chapter of Erie by Charles Francis Adams, Jr. Summary section pages ninety-four through ninety-nine. in the mid-nineteenth century
The subsequent history of the Erie Railway, under the management of the men who had thus succeeded in gaining absolute control over it, forms no part of this narrative. The attempt has been made simply to trace the course of events which resulted in placing a national thoroughfare in the hands of unscrupulous gamblers, and to describe the complications which marked their progress to power. The end was finally attained, when, after every opponent had, by fair means or by foul, been driven from the conflict, that strange law was enacted which assured these men, elected for one year, a five years' term of power, beyond the control of their stockholders. From that moment all the great resources of the Erie Railway became mere engines with which to work their lawless will.
Comment would only weaken the force of this narrative. It sufficiently suggests its own moral. The facts which have been set forth cannot but have revealed to every observant eye the deep decay which has eaten into our social edifice. No portion of our system was left untested, and no portion showed itself to be sound. The stock exchange revealed itself as a haunt of gamblers and a den of thieves; the offices of our great corporations appeared as the secret chambers in which trustees plotted the spoliation of their wards; the law became a ready engine for the furtherance of wrong, and the ermine of the judge did not conceal the eagerness of the partisan; the halls of legislation were transformed into a mart in which the price of votes was higgled over, and laws, made to order, were bought and sold; while under all, and through all, the voice of public opinion was silent or was disregarded.
It is not, however, in connection with the present that all this has its chief significance. It speaks ominously for the future. It may be that our society is only passing through a period of ugly transition, but the present evil has its root deep down in the social organization, and springs from a diseased public opinion. Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. Ten years ago such revelations as these of the Erie Railway would have sent a shudder through the community, and would have placed a stigma on every man who had had to do with them.
Now they merely incite others to surpass them by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt combinations. Were this not so, these things would be as impossible among us now as they are elsewhere, or as they were here not many years ago. While this continues it is mere weakness to attribute the consequences of a lax morality to a defective currency, or seek to prevent its outward indications by statute remedies. The root of the disease is deep; severe applications will only hide its dangerous symptoms. It is well to reform the currency, it is well to enact laws against malefactors; but neither the one nor the other will restore health to a business community which tolerates successful fraud, or which honors wealth more than honesty.
One leading feature of these developments, however, is, from its political aspect, especially worthy of the attention of the American people. Modern society has created a class of artificial beings who bid fair soon to be the masters of their creator. It is but a very few years since the existence of a corporation controlling a few millions of dollars was regarded as a subject of grave apprehension, and now this country already contains single organizations which wield a power represented by hundreds of millions.
These bodies are the creatures of single States; but in New York, in Pennsylvania, in Maryland, in New Jersey, and not in those States alone, they are already establishing despotisms which no spasmodic popular effort will be able to shake off. Everywhere, and at all times, however, they illustrate the truth of the old maxim of the common law, that corporations have no souls. Only in New York has any intimation yet been given of what the future may have in store for us should these great powers become mere tools in the hands of ambitious, reckless men. The system of corporate life and corporate power, as applied to industrial development, is yet in its infancy. It tends always to development, — always to consolidation, — it is ever grasping new powers, or insidiously exercising covert influence. Even now the system threatens the central government.
The Erie Railway represents a weak combination compared to those which day by day are consolidating under the unsuspecting eyes of the community. A very few years more, and we shall see corporations as much exceeding the Erie and the New York Central in both ability and will for corruption as they will exceed those roads in wealth and in length of iron track. We shall see these great corporations spanning the continent from ocean to ocean, — single, consolidated lines, not connecting Albany with Buffalo, or Lake Erie with the Hudson, but uniting the Atlantic and the Pacific, and bringing New York nearer to San Francisco than Albany once was to Buffalo. Already the disconnected members of these future leviathans have built up States in the wilderness, and chosen their attorneys senators of the United States.
Now their power is in its infancy; in a very few years they will re-enact, on a larger theatre and on a grander scale, with every feature magnified, the scenes which were lately witnessed on the narrow stage of a single State. The public corruption is the foundation on which corporations always depend for their political power. There is a natural tendency to coalition between them and the lowest strata of political intelligence and morality; for their agents must obey, not question. They exact success, and do not cultivate political morality. The lobby is their home, and the lobby thrives as political virtue decays. The ring is their symbol of power, and the ring is the natural enemy of political purity and independence. All this was abundantly illustrated in the events which have just been narrated. The existing coalition between the Erie Railway and the Tammany ring is a natural one, for the former needs votes, the latter money. This combination now controls the legislature and courts of New York; that it controls also the Executive of the State, as well as that of the city, was proved when Governor Hoffman recorded his reasons for signing the infamous Erie Directors' Bill.
It is a new power, for which our language contains no name. We know what aristocracy, autocracy, democracy are; but we have no word to express government by moneyed corporations. Yet the people already instinctively seek protection against it, and look for such protection, significantly enough, not to their own legislatures, but to the single autocratic feature retained in our system of government, — the veto by the Executive. In this there is something more imperial than republican. The people have lost faith in themselves when they cease to have any faith in those whom they uniformly elect to represent them.The change that has taken place in this respect of late years in America has been startling in its rapidity. Legislation is more and more falling into contempt, and this not so much on account of the extreme ignorance on the subject, as because of the corrupt motives which are believed habitually to actuate it. The influence of corporations of class interests is steadily destroying that belief in singleness of purpose which alone enables a representative government to exist, and the community is now accustoming itself to look for protection, not to pubic opinion, but to some man in high place and armed with great executive powers. Him they now think they can hold to some accountability. It remains to be seen what the next phase in this process of gradual development will be.
History never quite repeats itself, and, as was suggested in the first pages of this narrative, the old familiar enemies may even now confront us, though arrayed in such a modern garb that no suspicion is excited. Americans are apt pupils, and among them there are probably some who have not observed Fisk and Vanderbilt and Hoffman without a thought of bettering their instructions. No successful military leader will repeat in America the threadbare experiences of Europe ; — the executive power is not likely to be seized while the legislative is suppressed. The indications would now seem rather to point towards the corruption of the legislative and a quiet assumption of the executive through some combination in one vigorous hand of those influences which throughout this narrative have been seen only in conflict.
As the Erie ring represents the combination of the corporation and the hired proletariat of a great city; as Vanderbilt embodies the autocratic power of Caesarism introduced into corporate life, and as neither alone can obtain complete control of the government of the State, it, perhaps, only remains for the coming man to carry the combination of elements one step in advance, and put Caesarism at once in control of the corporation and of the proletariat, to bring our vaunted institutions within the rule of all historic precedent.
It is not pleasant to take such views of the future; yet they are irresistibly suggested by the events which have been narrated. They seem to be in the nature of direct inferences.
The only remedy lies in a renovated public opinion; but no indication of this has as yet been elicited. People did indeed, at one time, watch the development of these matters, but the feeling excited was rather one of amazement than of indignation. Even where a real indignation was excited, it led to no sign of any persistent effort at reform; it betrayed itself only in aimless denunciation in sad forebodings.
The danger, however, is day by day increasing, and the period during which the work of regeneration should begin grows always shorter.
It is true that evils ever work their own cure, but the cure for the evils of Roman civilization was worked out through ten centuries of barbarism.
It remains to be seen whether this people retains that moral vigor which can alone awaken a sleeping public opinion to healthy and persistent activity, or whether to us also will apply these words of the latest and best historian of the Roman republic:
"What Demosthenes said of his Athenians was justly applied to the Romans of this period; that people were very zealous for action so long as they stood round the platform and listened to proposals of reform; but, when they went home, no one thought further of what he had heard in the market-place. However those reformers might stir the fire, it was to no purpose, for the inflammable material was wanting."
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