CHAPTER XXIII.THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD.
The Co-opolitan Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1910 to Chicago. Two years before that the last spike had been driven at Seattle, on Puget Sound, and trains had since been running regularly on that portion of the road. The construction of the road through Washington, Wyoming and South Dakota was not interrupted by any obstacles or opposition. Indeed, the people of those states offered every inducement for us to pass through their country.
When we reached the Black Hills in South Dakota we found the route from Silver City to Rapid City down the narrow valley of Rapid Creek occupied by a partially completed railroad which the projector had been compelled to abandon for lack of funds. This we purchased for a small sum. With that exception the right of way through Washington, Wyoming and South Dakota cost us practically nothing. Moreover, the farmers in Eastern South Dakota aided us with their labor, accepting the produce and merchandise which we brought with us from Idaho for pay. The labor orders, also, were in demand along that part of our road, and we established the department stores in the states where these orders were soon received back for wares.
The state of Washington was at the time our road reached Seattle largely under the control of the Washington Co-operative Association, and that Association, being like the Co-opolitan, a creature of the National Brotherhood of the Co-operative Commonwealth, deemed its interests identical with ours and aided us materially in pushing our enterprise in that direction.
In Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois the several legislatureshad denied to all, except domestic corporations, the right to exercise the power of eminent domain. This law had been passed at recent sessions of their legislatures at the instance of certain railroad companies to exclude our line. The people of these several states had been much incensed when the laws mentioned were enacted. Had the initiative and referendum been in force there as in Idaho this would not have been a serious impediment. We could then have gone among the indignant citizens and procured a petition signed by twenty per cent of the voters of the state asking that the obnoxious laws be submitted to the popular vote.
Such was the feeling against the corrupt corporations at the time that people would have hastened to sign such a petition. But they had no initiative and referendum law, and so were at the mercy of the corruptionists.
The plain reason why the competing railroads desired to exclude our line, and why the farmers desired to have it enter these states, was the understanding that we would reduce all rates, both passenger and freight, to the great advantage of the farmers.
In fact, we designed to make a reduction in these respects which would mean ruin for all competing lines.
We were able to do this.
In the first place the road had cost us nothing but labor, except what we paid in cash to purchase the Rapid Valley Road and the right of way over the lands of certain hostile farmers. Even this cash represented our labor and was valuable only as it would purchase other labor or its products.
Then the competitive roads had been enormously expensive to build. The projectors were compelled, when they proposed their enterprises, to bribe a large number of so-called capitalists to advance money which had doubtless been intrusted to them by laborers for investment. Such capitalists, having little they could call their own, must needs obtain it.
So these railroad builders and their financiers placedside by side with the genuine million won from labor a false and pretended million which had its inception in and owed its existence to fraud. Then the true and false were made to pass together, with extended hands demanding of the toiler a portion of his product as their lawful dues. The one was just, the other a fiction and a sham.
False stock, which never had any basis in labor; false bonds, which had no mission except to defraud labor of its product; false pretenses, which made it possible for knaves to live by their wits, were the excuses which capitalists put forth for those extortionate rates by which the people were impoverished.
Our railroad represented no such presumptuous and dastardly pretensions. We came as labor should come to labor, asking no more and no less than labor’s honest dues.
No stock, no bonds, no fraudulent construction companies came with us. We did not deal in dollars nor peddle securities.
We had naught but labor to expend, and pretended nothing more. But we had all that labor makes and thousands of willing hands.
When we built our road we offered it for use as the creature of labor and not the creature of capital.
To build it and equip it we began at the very foundation. The ore we mined, and smelted it in our own furnaces. We fashioned our own plough and with it turned the furrow. We made the harrow and followed it afield. We planted the grain and when it ripened in the golden sun we harvested it with blades our own hands wrought. We delved again, and from the mines we brought the ore, and in the blazing furnaces we moulded the steel automata which, at our bidding, amid the Shoshone’s roar, reduced our wheat to flour, or wove the wool of our own flocks to cloth.
Then we made rails of steel, and of the pulp of straw made paper ties, and threw up grades, or hewed our way through rock-ribbed hills. And so our road was built to Minnesota’s line and we proposed to build it through that state and onward to Chicago.
It can be seen that our own road could, when completed, be operated far cheaper than any of the competitive class. We had our coal in Idaho at first cost; our iron at first cost; our steel rails, ties and all necessary equipments at first cost. No brokers or speculators intervened.
Our railroad force wore clothing which we made, and no retailer exacted from our employe a profit. We fed him with our own home-grown and home-made flour, sugar, beef and supplies. How could the competitors compete with that?
We did not delay long at Minnesota’s boundary. The Brotherhood in that state soon organized a company under the laws of the state and its stock was nearly all conveyed to our Association, except just enough to enable us to have nominal officers in the state as the law required. The same course was pursued in Wisconsin and Illinois and our road was completed in due time.
Similar consequences followed the completion of this road that followed the establishment of our department store and hotel at Boise City.
The business of nearly all the roads to the coast came to the Co-opolitan. The other roads could not compete with us.
We reduced our rates to one cent a mile. The other roads followed suit, supposing it possible for them to force us to terms.
The Legislative Council thereupon placed the fare at one dollar for the through trip from any point along the line to Seattle and one cent per mile for any distance less than one hundred miles. This was continued for two years without any change and the travel on the road was enormous and profitable at that price.
Freight rates were also reduced. The result of this road as to the manufactures of Idaho was to give them a “boom.”
Our woolen goods were especially salable. We had over four million sheep in Idaho and our woolen mills were consuming all the wool yield and that of Washington, Oregon and Montana. These goods were of superior quality andwe were able to sell them cheaper than English manufacturers could without a tariff.
Two years before our road was completed to Chicago, after the last spike was driven at Seattle, we began the construction in that city of three large buildings costing one million dollars each.
These were of the most magnificent character and were equal to anything which in the competitive system would have compelled us to spend four or five million each. The reason was that we furnished the stone, slate, marble, lime and all building material from Idaho and performed all the work with our own Co-opolitan labor. We also transported men and material on our railroad.
One of these buildings was a co-operative store, another a co-operative hotel and a third a Palace of Amusements. This supplied Seattle with all needed in the way of clothing, food, hotel entertainment or accommodation and amusement or recreation, and constituted that combination by which we had successfully defeated all industrial or competitive opposition in Idaho.
The Washington Co-operative Association had arranged with us that we should be allowed Seattle as our seaport town, and we proceeded to establish a steamship line with China and Japan and arranged for other lines to countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean. This we had no difficulty in doing, as we had gold and silver in large quantities, taken from our mines or won from competitors, with which to deal with the barbarous people who use them.
As for Seattle, it had long been inclined to co-operation. Its business men and citizens had been for years struggling against every conceivable disadvantage and were completely at the mercy of trusts and combinations of the most unconscionable character. They had been approaching closer and closer to bankruptcy day by day until our “Three Brothers,” as they called the hotel, department store and amusement hall, received them into their fraternal arms.
Since Seattle became a co-operative city it has grown to be the great Pacific seaport of the co-operative world. Itswidened avenues, its magnificent parks, its comfortable cottages, its great wharves and piers, its forest of masts, its magnificent Industrial Army, its schools and institutions of learning all bespeak a prosperity which is the pride of her citizens. And this pride is all the more excusable because the Seattle of to-day is the property of all her citizens and not the property of a few.