arouse despicable qualities. The memorable difference between the two
classes was that the workers, as the sufferers, were keenly alive to
the abominations of the system, while the capitalists not only
insisted upon the right to benefit from its continuance, but harshly
sought to repress every attempt of the workers to agitate for its
modification or overthrow.


REPRESSION BY STARVATION.

These repressive tactics took on a variety of forms, some of which
are not ordinarily included in the definitions of repression.

The usual method was that of subsidizing press and pulpit in certain
subtle ways. By these means facts were concealed or distorted, a
prejudicial state of public opinion created, and plausible grounds
given for hostile interference by the State. But a far more powerful
engine of repression was the coercion exercised by employers in
forcing their workers to remain submissive on instant peril of losing
their jobs. While, at that time, manufacturers, jobbers and
shopkeepers throughout the country were rising in angry protest
against the accumulation of plundering power in the hands of such men
as Vanderbilt, Gould and Huntington, they were themselves exploiting
and bribing on a widespread scale. Their great pose was that of a
thorough commercial respectability; it was in this garb that they
piously went to legislatures and demanded investigations into the
rascally methods of the railroad magnates. The facts, said they,
should be made public, so as to base on them appropriate legislation
which would curtail the power of such autocrats. Contrasted with the
baseness and hypocrisy of the trading class, Vanderbilt's qualities