free of taxation, below Seventy-ninth street, or on the taxed portion
above it. Behind that fraudulent subterfuge the city officials have
never been inclined to go, nor have they made any effort. As a
consequence the only revenue that the city has since received from
that line has been a meager few thousand dollars a year.

At the very time that he was watering stock, sliding through
legislatures corrupt grants of perpetual franchises, and swindling
cities and States out of huge sums in taxes, [Footnote: Not alone he.
In a tabulated report made public on February 1, 1872, the New York
Council of Political Reform charged that in the single item of
surface railways, New York City for a long period had been swindled
annually out of at least a million dollars. This was an
underestimate. All other sections of the capitalist class swindled
likewise in taxes.] Vanderbilt was forcing the drivers and conductors
on the Fourth avenue surface line to work an average of fifteen hours
out of twenty-four, and reducing their daily wages from $2.25 to $2.

Vanderbilt made the pretense that it was necessary to economize; and,
as was the invariable rule of the capitalists, the entire burden of
the economizing process was thrown upon the already overloaded
workers. This subtraction of twenty-five cents a day entailed upon
the drivers and conductors and their families many severe
deprivations; working for such low wages every cent obviously counted
in the management of household affairs. But the methods of the
capitalist class in deliberately pyramiding its profits upon the
sufferings of the working class were evidenced in this case (as they
had been, and since have been, in countless other instances) by the
announcement in the Wall Street reports that this reduction in wages
was followed by an instant rise in the price of the stock of the