Men of Wealth (1944) - Ludwig von Mises Institute

484 MEN OF WEALTH
the New York Central and one of its directors. And with this his
career in the reorganization of American railroads was launched.
VII
The modern arsenal of money-getting weapons now lay ready
to hand for Morgan's use. For centuries men had been slowly fabricating
the instruments for accumulating wealth. It was a far
cry from the crude and barbarous simplicity of the ancient Egyptian
system by which the Pharaoh, under the fiction of divine ownership
of his subjects and of the land they walked on, could cut
himself in for a share of the production of a whole nation. Slowly
through the centuries one device after another was invented to
enable the strong man to take for himself a fraction of the product
of many men. Generally the strong men rendered some service
in return for this levy—but also generally the toll taken was out of
proportion to the service. But in time the weapons were multiplied
and refined—money, merchandising, credit, banks, bills of exchange,
checks, machines, corporations, classes of securities, speculative
exchanges with their bag of tricks.
All of these were available to Morgan. Pioneers had preceded
him for centuries, experimenting with them and perfecting the
techniques. The corporation—the mightiest weapon of all—was
just coming into its full flower. Corporation charters were granted
by legislative act and were few in number. Generally, industrial
corporations consisted of a few stockholders who were the active
managers as well as owners of the business. But the railroads had
many stockholders. The corporation manager dominated the property.
But even here in many cases the manager was the owner, as
in the case of William H. Vanderbilt and his eighty-seven per
cent of the New York Central stock. But already the promoter
had squeezed himself in between the owners (stockholders) and
managers, as in the case of Gould and Fisk. And this promoter
was coming more and more to be a banker. This is what happened
when Morgan sold Vanderbilt's stock, leaving him a minority.