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The Iron Heel by Jack London
page 150 of 321 (46%)
combination of all the railroads. These five groups so
amalgamated, along with their financial and political
allies, were (1) James J. Hill with his control of the
Northwest; (2) the Pennsylvania railway group, Schiff
financial manager, with big banking firms of Philadelphia
and New York; (3) Harriman, with Frick for counsel and Odell
as political lieutenant, controlling the central
continental, Southwestern and Southern Pacific Coast lines
of transportation; (4) the Gould family railway interests;
and (5) Moore, Reid, and Leeds, known as the "Rock Island
crowd." These strong oligarchs arose out of the conflict of
competition and travelled the inevitable road toward
combination.

"Let me point out the power of but one of them, the railroad group. It
employs forty thousand lawyers to defeat the people in the courts. It
issues countless thousands of free passes to judges, bankers, editors,
ministers, university men, members of state legislatures, and of
Congress. It maintains luxurious lobbies* at every state capital, and
at the national capital; and in all the cities and towns of the land
it employs an immense army of pettifoggers and small politicians whose
business is to attend primaries, pack conventions, get on juries, bribe
judges, and in every way to work for its interests.**

* Lobby--a peculiar institution for bribing, bulldozing, and
corrupting the legislators who were supposed to represent
the people's interests.

** A decade before this speech of Everhard's, the New York
Board of Trade issued a report from which the following is
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