History of the Great American Fortunes Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ...entry as a monarch of the coal fields. To both we have adverted in a previous chapter, but they will here bear repetition. Every housekeeper using hard coal was taxed to add more millions to Morgan's fortune; the price of stove coal was raised from $1.25 to $1.35 more a ton than had been charged before. The second result was the See Chapter vii, Vol. ii more rapid process of crushing out the independent coal operators. By a concatenation of ruthless methods8 these independents were ruined and driven out, not without much wailing against oppression, and shrill charges of fraud. Yet the very mines which they were virtually coerced into giving up had been secured by fraud, either by them or by their predecessors. The law records of the State of Pennsylvania reveal case after case, before and after the Civil War, of fraudulent tax sales of lands containing coal; and the bribery of the Pennsylvania Legislature by individuals and corporations for coal mining and other kinds of charters and special rights had been so admittedly brazen that, in 1847, the Legislature, with self-righteous display, was constrained to pass an "Act to Define and Punish the Offense of Bribery," making the crime of giving or receiving a bribe a felony, punishable with a fine not exceeding $5,000 or a sentence of five years in prison. This law was treated with levity; it had no other effect than to refine and obscure the methods of bribery. Another act was passed on March 3, 1860, and a third on April 29, 1874, which laws were likewise facetiously regarded by the seekers of vested privileges, and the bribery went on persistently.7 Time 6 See testimony before the House Committee on Interstate Commerce, House Reports, Fifty-second Congress, Second Session, 1892-93, Vol....