“ MILKING” THE GOVERNMENT. "THE HISTORY OF GREAT AMERICAN FORTUNES" GUSTAVUS MYERS. THE ANTIDOTE TO AYN RAND FAIRY TALES OF CAPITALISM LIKE "ATLAS SHRUGGED". WRONG. HE CRAPPED. CRONY CARTEL CRAPITALISM. In 1894 the Government had been drawn into handing over two bond issues of $50,000,000 each to these bankers. Their profits ; it is estimated, reached tens of millions. With the advent of the year 1895 the United States Treasury was again emptied of gold. Where had the gold, which the Government had purchased only a short time previously at usurious rates, gone ? The reports of the large banks gave the answer. By the end of January, twenty-six banks in New York City had in their vaults a hoard of $65,000,000 in gold. Presently the amount totaled $129,000,000, all told. The Government shrieked in helplessness ; President Cleveland was reported as saying privately that “ the banks have got the country by the throat.” At the appropriate moment a syndicate of bankers appeared in the open and magnanimously offered to supply gold to the Government in exchange for bonds. This syndicate was composed of J.P. Morgan and Company, August Belmont and Company, representing the Rothschilds : James Speyer, the National City Bank and four other extremely powerful national banks. In the negotiations with President Cleveland for the bond issue, Morgan’s emissary and clever man of law was Francis Lynde Stetson, who had been regular counsel for Morgan since 1887. Stetson had been Jacob Sharp’s attorney at the very time when, in 1884, Sharp had bribed the New York Board of Aldermen with $500,000 to give him a franchise for a surface railroad in Broadway. His activities in Sharp’s transactions caused him to be subjected to some severe questioning in 1886 by the New York State Senate Committee on the Broadway Railroad. After Sharp had successfully bribed the New York Aldermen, Elkins and Widener, who were likewise bribing the Philadelphia Common Council and the Pennsylvania Legislature, and who became multimillionaire street railway magnates, tried (although for the time unsuccessfully), to lease the Broadway Railroad for a term of 999 years, and as an earnest of good faith, deposited 10,000 shares of Broadway stock, which they had secured, with Drexel, Morgan and Company.10 Morgan knew that every one of these shares was the product of bribery, and that the whole Broadway franchise had been so obtained. Perhaps Stetson’s excellent and adroit work for Sharp highly commended him to Morgan. After Cleveland had been defeated in his candidacy in 1888 for a second term as President of the United States, he resumed the practice of law, and formed a partnership with Stetson. Cleveland was reëlected President in 1892 ; thereafter Stetson was a frequent and confidential caller at the White House. These various circumstances were much commented upon, and with particular animadversion, when Cleveland was virtually charged in 1895 with openly selling out the people of the United States to the Morgan syndicate, represented by Stetson.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 12:30:15 +0000
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