Ryan and William C.Whitney were the powerful, though invisible, powers in Tammany Hall.In Chicago, Charles T.Yerkes controlled mayors and city councils; he even extended his influence into the state government, controlling governors and legislatures.In Philadelphia, Widener and Elkins dominated the City Hall and also became part of the Quay machine of Pennsylvania.Mark Hanna, the most active force in Cleveland railways, was also the political boss of the State.Roswell P.Flower, chief agent in developing Brooklyn Rapid Transit, had been Governor of New York; Patrick Calhoun, who monopolized the utilities of San Francisco and other cities, presided likewise over the city's inner politics.The Public Service Corporation of New Jersey also comprised a large political power in city and state politics.It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in the most active period, that from 1880 to 1905, the powers that developed city railway and lighting companies in American cities were identically the same owners that had the most to do with city government.In the minds of these men politics was necessarily as much a part of their business as trolley poles and steel rails.This type of capitalist existed only on public franchises--the right to occupy the public streets with their trolley cars, gas mains, and electric light conduits; they could obtain these privileges only from complaisant city governments, and the simplest way to obtain them was to control these governments themselves.Herein we have the simple formula which made possible one of the most profitable and one of the most adventurous undertakings of our time.
An attempt to relate the history of all these syndicates would involve endless repetition.If we have the history of one we have the history of practically all.I have therefore selected, as typical, the operations of the group that developed the street railways and, to a certain extent, the public lighting companies, in our three greatest American cities--New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
One of the men who started these enterprises actually had a criminal record.William H.Kemble, an early member of the Philadelphia group, had been indicted for attempting to bribe the Pennsylvania Legislature; he had been convicted and sentenced to one year in the county jail and had escaped imprisonment only by virtue of a pardon obtained through political influence.Charles T.Yerkes, one of his partners in politics and street railway enterprises, had been less fortunate, for he had served seven months for assisting in the embezzlement of Philadelphia funds in 1873.It was this circumstance in Yerkes's career which impelled him to leave Philadelphia and settle in Chicago where, starting as a small broker, he ultimately acquired sufficient resources and influence to embark in that street railway business at which he had already served an extensive apprenticeship.Under his domination, the Chicago aldermen attained a gravity that made them notorious all over the world.They openly sold Yerkes the use of the streets for cash and constantly blocked the efforts which an infuriated populace made for reform.Yerkes purchased the old street railway lines, lined his pockets by making contracts for their reconstruction, issued large flotations of watered stock, heaped securities upon securities and reorganization upon reorganization and diverted their assets to business in a hundred ingenious ways.
In spite of the crimes which Yerkes perpetrated in American cities, there was something refreshing and ingratiating about the man.Possibly this is because he did not associate any hypocrisy with his depredations."The secret of success in my business," he once frankly said, "is to buy old junk, fix it up a little, and unload it upon other fellows." Certain of his epigrams--such as, "It is the strap-hanger who pays the dividends"--have likewise given him a genial immortality.The fact that, after having reduced the railway system of Chicago to financial pulp and physical dissolution, he finally unloaded the whole useless mass, at a handsome personal profit, upon his old New York friends, Whitney and Ryan, and decamped to London, where he carried through huge transit enterprises, clearly demonstrated that Yerkes was a buccaneer of no ordinary caliber.
Yerkes's difficulties in Philadelphia indirectly made possible the career of Peter A.B.Widener.For Yerkes had become involved in the defalcation of the City Treasurer, Joseph P.Mercer, whose translation to the Eastern Penitentiary left vacant a municipal office into which Mr.Widener now promptly stepped.Thus Mr.
Widener, as is practically the case with all these street railway magnates, was a municipal politician before he became a financier.The fact that he attained the city treasurership shows that he had already gone far, for it was the most powerful office in Philadelphia.He had all those qualities of suavity, joviality, firmness, and personal domination that made possible success in American local politics a generation ago.His occupation contributed to his advancement.In recent years Mr.
