Wealth against commonwealth

We have given the prize of power to the strong, the cunning, the arithmetical, and we must expect nothing else but that they will use it cunningly and arithmetically. For what e...

Genius could take so unspeakable a thing as a shirt and sing it into an immortal song, but a barrel--and an oil-barrel, greasy and ill-smelling--even genius could do nothing wit...

The corn of the coming harvest is growing so fast that, like the farmer standing at night in his fields, we can hear it snap and crackle. We have been fighting fire on the well-...

"This business belongs to us." This was the reply the president of the oil combination made to a neighbor who was begging to be allowed to continue the refinery which he had suc...

It was an American idea to "strike oil." Those who knew it as the "slime" of Genesis, or used it to stick together the bricks of the Tower of Babel, or knelt to it in the fire t...

The railroads have become the main rivers of trade and travel, and to control them has become one of our hardest problems in the field where politics and industry meet. The Duke...

With searching intelligence, indomitable will, and a conscience which makes religion, patriotism, and the domestic virtues but subordinate paragraphs in a ritual of money worshi...

There has never been any real break in the plans revealed, "partly born," "and buried" in 1872. From then till now, in 1893, every fact that has come to the surface has shown th...

At this writing there is an old man named Samuel Van Syckel, over eighty years of age, partly paralyzed, but still vigorous, living in an obscure back street of Buffalo, very po...

It was remarkable to see the revival of the passion of freedom of 1776 and 1861 in the editorials, speeches, resolutions of public meetings, and the talk of the common people in...

This "business success" is the greatest commercial and financial achievement of history. Its broad foundation was laid in the years from 1872 to 1879, the severest time of panic...

In 1891 Congress passed the Postal Subsidy law for paying a higher than the market rate of compensation to capitalists who would carry the mails in vessels built in America, of...

The jury was composed of nine farmers, one tailor, one store-keeper, and one railroad foreman. "So intelligent a jury," said the Buffalo _Express_, "is proof perfect that the ve...

Hunting about for tax-dodgers, it was discovered by the authorities of Pennsylvania some years ago that many foreign corporations were doing business within the limits of the Co...

Matthews knew nothing and suspected nothing about the worst part of the plot against him until Albert's lawyer, Mr. Truesdale, nearly four years later, was called upon to testif...

Three hundred years ago Lord Coke, in the "Case of the Monopolies,"[587] declared these to be the inevitable result of monopoly: the price of the commodity will be raised; the c...

The South is the most American part of America. Close observers note as its especial characteristic the preservation of the original Anglo-Saxon types, which gave this country i...

The difference in freights against Rice was so great, as the Interstate Commerce Commission found, after taking hundreds of pages of testimony, that he had to pay $600 to $1200,...

When Judge Jackson refused to enjoin the city from issuing its bonds an appeal was taken. The court and the lawyers of the city were promised that it would be carried up without...

Between May and December, Sherman made his march from Lookout Mountain to the sea, cutting the Confederacy in two. For thirty years the people of Pennsylvania have been trying t...

A spy at one end of an institution proves that there is a tyrant at the other. Modern liberty has put an end to the use of spies in its government only to see it reappear in its...

"Do I understand you that they have not sought in any way to make the operations of refineries outside the trust so unprofitable that parties would either come into the trust or...

If the richest person then in America--that artificial but very real person the Pennsylvania Railroad--could not keep its pipe lines, nobody could. The war for the union, which...

Towns, like men, stamp themselves with marked traits. Toledo had an individuality which showed itself from the start. Its leading men clubbed together and borrowed money as earl...

The District Attorney put the president of the light of the world on the stand. His evidence showed that the purchase of the three-quarter's interest in the Vacuum Company, sold...

Are the combinations, trusts, syndicates of modern industry organized scarcity or organized plenty? Dearness or cheapness? "They are doing their work cheaper," said one of the o...

In the obituary column of the Cleveland _Herald_, of June 6, 1874, was given the news of the death of one of the pioneer manufacturers of Cleveland. He began the refining of pet...

Some day, perhaps, when more of our story-readers have learned that there are things in the world quite as important as the frets, follies, and loves of boys and girls half-grow...

Notwithstanding the ceremonial treaty of equal rights on the railroads to all, which had been secured by the uprising of the people against the South Improvement Company in 1872...

In the midst of the anxious discussion by the citizens of Toledo as to the character of the power which ruled them both by night and by day, the same question arose in the metro...

Rome banished those who had been found to be public enemies by forbidding every one to give them fire and water. That was done by all to a few. In America it is done by a few to...

That which governments have not yet been equal to has been accomplished by the private co-operation of a few citizens. They decree at their pleasure that in this town or that St...

Through all the tangle of this piping and dancing one thread runs clear. The oil combination had up to this time been dependent on the railroads for transportation, but it emerg...

Nature is rich; but everywhere man, the heir of nature, is poor. Never in this happy country or elsewhere--except in the Land of Miracle, where "they did all eat and were filled...

The Canadian Parliament reports that "the Biscuit Association," which had been in existence six years, had kept up the prices of its products, "although the prices of the ingred...