Gould and Fisk bribed the New York Legislature for $500,000 to make their stock issue legal. This left them masters of the situation. Then, freed from the threat of jail, they turned on their partner, Drew, and bankrupted him. Some time afterward Fisk was shot, and finally Gould was ousted by an English syndicate that, copying Gould's methods, spent $750,000 in bribery to do the job. Eventually the road fell into the grip of the great railroad octopus, Morgan & Co., and there it still remains. For these jungle fights, which raged everywhere, of course the workers had to pay the bill.
When the workers demand a few cents more per hour in wages the railroad companies always raise a howl about the dire things that will happen to the widow and orphan stockholders. But in their own brutal struggles for financial mastery they show no mercy to these elements. The robbery of the widow Colton was a case in point: Colonel Colton, her husband, was one of the four men who engineered the notorious Central Pacific land-grabbing, stock-jobbing steals for many years. It might have been thought that when he died his three partners in guilt would have shown his widow some consideration. But the principles of humanity never trouble railroad magnates. True to their kind, and like a pack of wolves rending one of their number that has fallen, the three remaining partners stole almost the last cent Mrs. Colton had. To do this they had to bribe her confidential adviser, her lawyer and a judge. But such matters are only details in the day's work of railroad owners.
A Sea of Watered Stock
A favorite thieving device is the watering of railroad company stocks. Every worker should know how this chicanery is operated. Let us explain it briefly: Suppose, for instance, a certain railroad is capitalized at $100,000,000. To water its stock the controlling capitalists, on the pre-
