§ 731]

BUSINESS IMMORALITY

609

valuable, first for fertilizing land, then for stock food, and finally for vegetable oils for human food. So, too, in countless other lines.

731. Unhappily, this material growth was accompanied by an amazing growth of business immorality. This tendency, noticeable before the war, had been strengthened by the flaunting success of corrupt army contractors, and was fostered for years afterward by the gambling spirit begotten of an unstable currency and of the spectacle of multitudes of fortunes made overnight in the oil wells of Pennsylvania1 or in the new mining regions of Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana. In later years, too, the tremendous power over credits possessed by railroad kings and by the heads of other great consolidations of capital has tempted them constantly from their true functions as "captains of industry" to play the part of buccaneers in the stock market. Unreasonable profits, too, in the regular line of business draw the controlling stockholders in multitudes of corporations to increase their own shares by juggling the smaller holders out of theirs.

Sometimes the controlling stockholders of a corporation turn its affairs over to an operating company - composed of themselves alone - which then absorbs all the profits of the whole business in salaries or in other ways provided in the contract which the raiders have made with themselves. Or leading members of a railway company organize an inside company - like an express company-to which then the legitimate profits of the first company are largely diverted in the shape of excessive rates on certain parts of the railroad business. Only one degree worse is the deliberate wrecking of a prosperous corporation, by intentional mismanagement, so that the insiders may buy up the stock for a song, and then rejuvenate it—to their huge profit. Step by step, the law has striven to cope with all such forms of robbery; but numerous shrewd corporation lawyers find employment in steering "malefactors of great wealth "2 through the devious channels of " high finance so as to avoid grazing the letter of the law.

1 Petroleum was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859, but no marked development came in production till after the War. Then "to strike oil" soon became a byword for success-equivalent to a "ship come home" in the days of more primitive commerce. In 1872 petroleum ranked among our exports next to cotton, wheat, and meats.

2 A phrase of President Roosevelt's (§ 832).

732. One ruinous consequence of this lack of moral sense in business was a general indifference to the looting of the public domain by business interests and favored individuals. Thus, the timber on the public lands, with decent care, would have supplied all immediate wants and still have remained unimpaired for future generations. But with criminal recklessness, the people permitted a few individuals not only to despoil the future of its due heritage, but even to engross to themselves the vast immediate profits which properly belonged to present society as a whole. And, in their haste to grasp these huge profits, the big lumbermen wasted more than they pocketed, taking only the best log perhaps out of three, and leaving the others to rot, or, along with the carelessly scattered slashings, to feed chance fires into irresistible conflagrations, which, it is estimated, have swept away at least a fourth of our forest wealth. Quaintly enough, this piteous spoliation and waste was excused and commended as "development of natural resources," and laws were made or twisted for its encouragement.

Timber land, especially the pine forests of the Northwest, did not attract the genuine homesteader: too much labor was required to convert such lands into homes and farms, and the soil and distance from market were discouraging for agriculture. Such lands ought to have been withdrawn by the government from homestead entry. But, as the law was then administered, a man could "enter" a quarter section, clear a patch upon it, appear upon it for a night every few months, and so fulfill all legal requirements to complete title, after which he had perfect right to sell the valuable timber, which had been his only motive in the transaction. Multitudes, less scrupulous about legal formalities, sold the timber immediately after making entry, without ever "proving up" at all.

These individual operations were trivial in amount; but the big lumber kings extended their effect by hiring hundreds and thousands of "dummy " homesteaders to secure title in this way to vast tracts of forest and to turn it over, for a song, to the enterprising employer. Nor, in early years, did any one see

§ 733]

SIGNS OF PROMISE

611

wrong in this process. Condemnation, none too severe, was reserved for the lumbermen who took shorter cuts by forging the entries or by using the same "dummies

many times

over, in open defiance of the law. In ways similar, but varied as to details, the State lands, too, became the legalized booty of private citizens.

733. This epidemic of waste and plunder had its golden age from 1870 to about 1890. James Russell Lowell spoke sorrowfully of the degradation of the moral tone in America, and many less robust thinkers despaired openly of democracy. But signs of promise were not wanting. A passion for education possessed the people. The public high school was just taking full possession of its field. A new group of great teachers and organizers at new universities, Andrew D. White at Cornell, James B. Angell at Michigan, Gilman at Johns Hopkins, Eliot at his reorganized Harvard, with their many fellows, — were setting up higher ideals for American scholarship, and connecting scholarship as never before with the daily life of the people. About 1890, such institutions began to send forth. trained, devoted, vigorous young men to the service of the nation in its battle with corruption and with intrenched privilege. Meantime, during the darkest years of material prosperity, some of the fine idealism of the Civil War period lived on — sometimes no doubt in blundering paths—in the movements of the Greenbackers and Prohibitionists and Grangers (§ 782) to regenerate society.

-

FOR FURTHER READING. - Every high school student should read Winston Churchill's In a Far Country, William Allen White's A Certain Rich Man, each a sort of " Pilgrim's Progress" allegory of American life in the decades following the Civil War, — and Booth Tarkington's The Turmoil. The phases, good and bad, of the waste of the public domain are pictured graphically in Stewart Edward White's two related stories, The Riverman and The Rules of the Game.

The difficult and important period since the Civil War is treated well in two small recent volumes, one of which every student should read: Haworth's Reconstruction and Union, and Paxson's New Nation.

CHAPTER LXII

THE POLITICAL STORY, 1876-1896

(Civil Service and the Tariff)

734. UNTIL the Roosevelt administration, the average respectable citizen knew little definitely about the corruption rampant in business and politics, and was usually inclined to dismiss all accusations as groundless. One evil, however, was too spectacular to be ignored. In 1871 public opinion forced the unwilling Congress to pass an Act to rescue the Civil Service from the Spoils system. At first, President Grant seemed to favor the idea; but in practice he let his friends among the spoilsmen thwart the law and drive from office the men who wished to administer it honestly (§ 714). And in 1874 Congress refused to renew the small appropriation for the work,trusting to public disgust at the breakdown of the reform.

President Hayes was in earnest in the matter. His few removals from office were mainly to get rid of spoilsmen-as

§ 735]

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

613 when he dismissed Chester A. Arthur from the New York Collectorship of Customs—and he issued a notable “Civil Service order" forbidding Federal employees to take part in political campaigns (cf. Jefferson's idea, § 448). This order, however, quickly became a dead letter. Post-office officials jeered at it; and the nation had not yet learned that no reform was possible except on this basis.

735. In 1880 the campaign was a struggle for office between the ins and outs to a degree unparalleled since 1824. Neither party took a stand on any live question. The Democrats railed at various Republican shames, but gave no assurance of doing better themselves. With a large part of the youth of the nation they were still discredited as "the party of disloyalty." The Republicans "pointed with pride" to their record as "the Grand Old Party that saved the Union and freed the Slave," but they had no program for the future. Twenty years before, the Republican party had been the party of the plain people, typified by Lincoln; but during its long lease of power the desire for political favors had drawn to it all those selfish and corrupt influences which at first had opposed it. In the West two minor parties had appeared with real convictions, - Prohibitionists and Greenbackers, but their numbers were insignificant.

In the Republican Convention a desperate attempt was made to nominate ex-President Grant, but the tradition against a third term was too strong. Ballot after ballot he received from 302 to 312 votes; but 379 were necessary, and the nomination finally went to a dark horse,—James A. Garfield. For the Vice Presidency the Convention named Chester A. Arthur (§ 734) to rebuke Hayes' reform tendencies. The Massachusetts delegation presented a resolution favoring Civil Service Reform, but it was voted down overwhelmingly certain Flanagan, delegate from Texas, exclaiming indignantly, "What are we here for?"

a

During the campaign, every Federal officeholder received a letter from the Republican National Committee assessing