The Legislature of Pennsylvania, listening to the repeated demands of the dissatisfied and the call of the Anti-Monopoly Convention, heretofore alluded to, in 1875 appointed a committee to investigate the affairs of the Philadelphia and Reading Company. That commission convened at Atlantic City, New Jersey, the 29th of July, in the same year, and heard such testimony as the complainants could bring before it, as well as the pleadings of the able attorneys representing the prosecutors of the inquiry. Mr. Gowen, the President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company, personally appeared before the committee and made answer to the 347charges. I have deemed it necessary, in order that the careful reader may fully comprehend this entire operation and the extent to which it reached, to give a brief abstract of the principal points in Mr. Gowen's exhaustive, comprehensive, and unanswerable argument, which is hereunto appended:
After furnishing a condensed history of the Reading RailrCompany, which was chartered in 1833, and opened to the coal regions in 1842—enlarging gradually from a line of fifty-eight miles of single track, in 1835, to over one thousand miles, in 1870—468 of these being in the coal fields alone—Mr. Gowen alluded, in fitting terms to the various trials the Company had had in the Legislature, while he was counsel, opposing franchises to other companies securing liberty to mine iron and coal. He succeeded, at one time, by an amendment, in preventing an act, in favor of an antagonistic corporation, having any operation in Schuylkill County. Then the Company bought up large quantities of coal land and had the Franklin Coal Company incorporated. This was followed by the strike of 1871, after which the Reading management determined to enter the field as coal and iron miners and obtain a grant from the Legislature for the formation of an auxiliary coal and iron corporation. This gave rise to the Laurel Run Improvement Company. They bought one hundred thousand acres of land, and it was conveyed to the Company. Forty millions of dollars were thus expended.
Mr. Gowen subsequently traced, in brilliant and striking contrast, the respective positions of New York and Philadelphia, showing the benefits to be conferred upon Pennsylvania by preventing the grasping New York associations from obtaining a monopoly of the southern, as they had of the northern coal fields.
The Reading Company, now that Mr. Gowen's plans have succeeded, ships from the city of Philadelphia, alone, two 348millions five hundred thousand tons of coal a year, in vessels, has shipped as much as ninety thousand tons a week, and the commerce and prosperity of the port of Philadelphia, as a shipping point, are much more dependent upon the industry which it brings to it than upon all others put together. It can now say to the manufacturer: "Here is a Company that owns lines of railrin the heart of a rich agricultural region, where labor is plenty and always will be abundant; we own the coal mines, and you can come here to locate your works, in the confidence that self-interest alone, and the worship of the almighty dollar—generally supposed to be implanted in the breast of a corporation, without regard to any benevolent or philanthropic ideas in the minds of the gentlemen connected with the Company—will induce us to let you have this fuel at less than you can buy it from an individual."
After giving some pertinent figures regarding the productiveness of the coal region—alluded to in an opening chapter of this work—the President went on to state that, at the end of the year, while the Schuylkill had only increased, in 1870, to four millions eight hundred and fifty-one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five tons, or twenty-nine per cent., in the same time the Wyoming region increased from two millions nine hundred and forty-one thousand eight hundred and seventeen tons, to seven millions eight hundred and twenty-five thousand one hundred and twenty-eight tons, or one hundred and sixty per cent. Here was an increase of one hundred and sixty-six per cent., against twenty-nine, due to the fact that the Wyoming region was controlled by large corporations which could expend money in developing the lands, and who were not liable to be prostrated by a monetary panic.
In the four years, from 1870 to 1874, the tonnage of the Schuylkill region has increased thirty-three and twenty-three one-hundredths per cent., and that of the Wyoming only eighteen and one one-hundredth per cent.
349The peculiar business transactions of factors in Philadelphia were then ably discussed, and received at Mr. Gowen's hands the exact treatment they deserved, when he turned his attention to the retail dealers, and some of the iniquities of their system, after which he examined, seriatim, the four principal charges made against the Company, in the following order: 1st, of detention of cars; 2d, of short weights, 3d, of an unfair distribution of cars; and 4th, of a combination, or conspiracy, to control production, which, if proven, renders it amenable to the law, and which shows it to have been guilty of an abuse of its corporate franchises.
As to detention of cars, Mr. Gowen explained the cause to be unavoidable, at times, but said the Company always endeavored to deal justly by its patrons. Detentions were principally from accidents to trains and to cars. They employed a Missing Coal Agent, and did everything in their power to be prompt.
The speaker made a complete demurrer to the charge of short weight, and fairly turned the tables upon those fighting his corporation, exhibiting the result of a test given the retail dealers in Philadelphia, greatly to the discredit of the latter. In many cases these very honorable retailers sold from thirteen to sixteen and eighteen hundred pounds of coal for a ton, annually realizing a handsome percentage from their villainy.
Unequal distribution of cars was equally well refuted. Then the opponents of the company said: "Philadelphia is not the place to make the investigation in. We must 'beard the lion in his den.' We must go right up to Pottsville. The newspapers of Philadelphia are worth nothing. They are all in the interest of the Company, and as for Mr. Gowen, he will not venture ten miles out of Philadelphia; if he does, he will be shot by the miners. We will take the committee where everybody is opposed to the Company." It was just where Mr. Gowen wanted to go. His adversaries 350had two weeks, and then there was an adjournment of nearly ten days more, in which to prepare for the Pottsville campaign. Mr. Bronson moved his headquarters to Pottsville, and examined the matter carefully. Mr. Gowen was present. Threats did not intimidate him. What was the result? The allegations were abandoned. Even the discharged employés of the Reading Company, when put on the witness' stand, said nothing to reflect upon its management.
As to the charge of unlawful confederation, the speaker was equally felicitous. The object in entering into alliance with the New York Companies was simply this—to announce as the future policy of the Company that the price of coal should be lowest at the mines, and increase with every mile of distance over which it was carried; that it should be just that much higher in the city of New York than it was in the city of Philadelphia as was due to the increased distance of the former from the region where the coal was produced. It was so adjusted that, instead of coal being a dollar a ton cheaper in New York, the difference between the price of coal in the port of Philadelphia and in the city of New York was exactly one dollar a ton in favor of Philadelphia; and coal in Boston was exactly so much higher than coal in Philadelphia as was due to the cost of carrying it from Philadelphia to Boston—namely, about one dollar and sixty cents per ton.
After speaking of the loss from deterioration of coal, by exposure to the atmosphere, the risk of capital invested, and faulty veins, Mr. Gowen thus alluded to troubles in the coal region: "It will not do to say that these troubles result from the inadequacy of the price paid for labor, because, without exception, the rates paid are the highest in the world. The high rates have had the effect of attracting to the coal region a surplus of labor, more than sufficient to do the work required; and it is the effort of this surplus to receive an 351employment which it cannot really get that has led to all these disturbances." He would not be understood as reflecting in any manner upon the laboring class of the community. He believed ninety-five out of every one hundred of the men employed about the mines in the coal region to be decent, orderly, law-abiding, respectable men; but there is among them a class of agitators—a few men, trained in the school of the Manchester cotton spinner—brought here for the purpose of creating confusion and to stir up dissension between the employer and the employed. Mr. Gowen here grew earnestly eloquent, and his language is quoted in full:
"I yield to no man living in the respect and admiration that I pay to the workingman. Let him who will erect an altar to the genius of labor, and, abject as an eastern devotee, I worship at its shrine,
"'Gathering from the pavement crevice, as a floweret from the soil,
The nobility of labor, the long pedigree of toil.'
"I ask your attention, therefore, for a few moments to my advocacy of the rights of labor. I stand here as the champion of the rights of labor—as the advocate of those who desire to work and who have been prevented from doing so. I stand here to arraign before you a class of two or three men out of every one hundred, who, by their machinations and by their agitation, have held in absolute idleness and starvation thousands and thousands of men for months. Why, gentlemen, look at what we have undergone. When people object to a profit of twenty-five or thirty cents upon the ton of coal, I ask them to look at what those who mine coal have had to submit to during the last six months. I have had printed for your use a statement, from the daily reports coming to me during the strike, of the outrages in the coal region. Here I want to correct an impression that goes out to the public, that these outrages are intended to injure the 352property of the employer. They are not. We do not believe that they are. They are perpetrated for no other purpose than to intimidate the workingmen themselves and to prevent them from going to work. I shall not read the list; it is at your service; and you can look over it and see the position we have occupied for months. But let me mention a few of the glaring instances of tyranny and oppression. At a colliery, called the Ben Franklin Colliery, the employés of which were perfectly satisfied with their wages, had accepted the reduction early in the season, and were working peacefully and contentedly, the torch of the incendiary was applied to the breaker at night. These men, having families to support, working there contentedly and peacefully, were driven out of employment by a few dangerous men, simply for the purpose of preventing them from earning their daily bread. I had some interest in the subject of the amount of their wages, and I asked the owner of the colliery what his miners were actually earning at the time when they were prevented from working by the burning of the structure in which they were employed, and he told me that the lowest miner on his pay-list earned sixty dollars a month, and the highest one hundred and thirty dollars; and yet, although these men were peaceful, law-abiding men, they were driven out of employment by an incendiary fire. At another colliery, within five or six miles of this, a band of twenty or thirty men, in the evening—almost in brdaylight—went to the breaker, and by force drove the men away and burnt the structure down. It belonged to a poor man. It was a small operation. The savings of his lifetime were probably gone, and his own employés, who had nothing against him, and who were perfectly willing to work, were thrown out of employment, and probably remain out of employment to this day."
All schemes for causing the miner to provide for himself when sickness and trouble came, having been found unavailing, 353from the improvidence of the men themselves, the Company announced, in January, 1876, a rule that, whenever a man was killed in its service, a certain sum should be paid for his funeral expenses; that his widow should receive a fixed payment each week, in money, for a definite period, or so long as she remained a widow, and that every minor child of the deceased, unable to work, should have a designated amount, weekly, all of which was to be paid out of the treasury of the Company. Even this charitable and beneficent plan was ridiculed by the people whose business it was to destroy confidence and create trouble in the coal region.
When Mr. Gowen concluded, the committee made its report, showing that there was no ground of action, and that was the last heard of Legislative intermeddling with the Company.
The reader will observe that Mr. Gowen's address appeals directly to the workingman, and that his blows are mainly showered upon the Mollie Maguires and their evil and violent associates. Wishing to show the good the miner is capable of doing, he speaks plainly, and without affectation, so that the illiterate can understand as clearly as the learned. He also desires to point out, and is successful in depicting, the benefits actually accruing to Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania through action of the two great companies that he so ably represents.
It was the sixth of July that the committee was in Pottsville, where they supposed Mr. Gowen would not dare to show himself; but in this the gentlemen prosecuting the case were entirely in error. Mr. Gowen was there. Thinking, as excitement ran high, and outrages were being almost daily and nightly perpetrated in all portions of the coal country, that the threats of the Mollie Maguires to kill the President of the Company, might, if unprevented, be carried out, I took precautions to block the enemies of that 354gentleman in this regard. Detectives were sent from Philadelphia, unknown to him, to watch over Mr. Gowen, and McParlan, alias McKenna, was ordered to Pottsville to see that the Mollies were not allowed a chance of preparation to strike at the President without the knowledge was communicated to others. It was during this excitement that McKenna met with a mishap, which I must briefly describe.
He was, one fine morning, walking about the city, and came upon a suspicious looking man, who, the detective thought, was throwing himself more frequently than absolutely necessary in the presence of Mr. Gowen, and determined to see who he was and what disposition he made of himself. Informing Linden of this intention, he started. The person under surveillance first entered Dormer's Sheridan House, remained there a short time and, coming out, went to Hughes' drinking place, in Center Street. In this way he consumed the time until ten o'clock at night, McKenna keeping continually on his trail, but entirely unseen and unsuspected by the visitor. This constituted some twelve hours of continuous shadowing, and the operative had discovered nothing, except that his man consumed a large quantity of liquor and walked very fast, occasionally talking a short time with leading Mollies. He was well tired of the business, but determined to see where the party made his headquarters before he left him. It was surprising how many people that comparative stranger knew in Pottsville, and equally miraculous how fast he flew over the uneven ground, climbing the hills like a native, and never stumbling or falling, even after imbibing whisky enough to kill an ox. McKenna, meanwhile, had been unable to secure anything to appease either hunger or thirst and was nearly prostrated.
Finally the man traveled, at a late hour, on a hurried walk, up Mahantongo Street, and, after a long and toilsome pilgrimage, which the operative thought would never end, 355paused before a small house in an eastern suburb of the city, looked cautiously about, to see that nobody observed him, and then, leaping the garden fence, entered the rear door of the premises. A light still burned in the kitchen, and the detective, assuring himself by actual observation that his party did not live in the dwelling, but was courting the cook in the back apartment, secreted himself in the shadow of a large tree, on the opposite side of the street, and awaited results. The stranger stopped more than an hour. McKenna, his patience and strength quite spent, still persevered in maintaining his watch.
Presently he heard unsteady footsteps approaching, and, fearing discovery, the operative sat down on the sidewalk, took off his boot, and pretended to be very busily engaged in extracting some apocryphal sand and gravel which had worked into it through an indefinite hole in the upper-leather. To the surprise of McKenna, he was accosted by a thick, lubberly, short-set city policeman, evidently a German. Seeing the pseudo Mollie, he rolled along toward his resting-place, and, in a decidedly thick and drunken tone, demanded:
"What for you lofe about here, eh?"
McKenna examined his boot more attentively, and answered respectfully:
"Begorra! Me boot hurts me foot! Sure, an' I am gittin' some gravel stones out of it, when I mane to start for home!"
"Py tam! I shows you what for you lounge around in der dark! Get away from dis! Marsch along on der schtreets!"
Without waiting for McKenna to obey him, which he was preparing to do, by drawing on his boot—meanwhile keeping a sharp eye upon the door of the house in which his friend was concealed—the brutal and besotted wretch struck the detective a savage blow on the head with his heavy club. 356Although it was an entirely unprovoked attack, and the stroke brought blood freely from his forehead and nostrils, the agent gave no answer, and made no effort to retaliate. A second stroke, intended for his head, was parried skillfully with his arm, and he walked away, down the street. The vagabond policeman staggered along a few paces and fell down upon the walk, in a state of drunken unconsciousness. Continuing until he reached the shadow of the Catholic church, McKenna stopped, bound up his head as well as he could, and, then seeing his man emerge from the kitchen, he once more started in pursuit. It seems that the fellow had been merely paying a visit to his sweetheart, as he took the rfor the country, and, after following him several miles, the operative dropped the trail and returned to his boarding-house.
The next day McKenna was a horrible sight to look upon. With eyes clad in mourning, scalp bound up in plasters, clothing torn and soiled, and limbs bruised, he thought he had learned quite enough of Pottsville and its policemen. And Pottsville had had enough of him, in his character of a Mollie Maguire. It is fair to say that the particular watchman spoken of did not remain on the force many weeks longer, his place having been filled by worthier material.
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