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Before setting out to relate in detail the narrative of the amassingof the great individual fortunes from railroads, it is advisable topresent a preliminary survey of the concatenating circumstancesleading up to the time when these vast fortunes were rolled together.Without this explanation, this work would be deficient in clarity,and would leave unelucidated many important points, the absence ofwhich might puzzle or vex the reader.
Although industrial establishments, as exemplified by mills,factories and shops, much preceded the construction of railroads, yetthe next great group of fortunes to develop after, and along with,those from land were the fortunes plucked from the control andmanipulation of railroad systems.
Under the first stages of the old chaotic competitive system, inwhich factory warred against factory, and an intense struggle forsurvival and ascendency enveloped the whole tense sphere ofmanufacturing, no striking industrial fortunes were made.
Fortunate was that factory owner regarded who could claim $250,000clear. All of those modern and complex factors offering suchunbounded opportunities for gathering in spoils mounting into thehundreds of millions of dollars, were either unknown or in aninchoate or rudimentary state. Invention, if we may put it so, wasjust blossoming forth. Hand labor was largely prevalent. Hugecombinations were undreamed of; paper capitalization as embodied inthe fictitious issues of immense quantities of bonds and stocks wasnot yet a part of the devices of the factory owner, although it was afixed plan of the bankers and insurance companies.
The factory owner was the supreme type of that sheer individualismwhich had burst forth from the restraints of feudalism. He stoodalone fighting his commercial contests with persistent personaldoggedness. Beneath his occasional benevolence and his religiousprofessions was a wild ardor in the checkmating or bankruptcy of hiscompetitors. These were his enemies; he fought them with everymercantile weapon, and they him; and none gave quarter.
Apar