inconvenient laws might be passed, or harrassing legal actions begun;
and while revocation or amendment of these laws could be put through
subsequently when the popular excitement had died away, and the suits
could be in some way defeated, the exposures had an inflaming effect
upon a population as yet ill-used to great one-man power of wealth.
But if the middle class insisted upon action against the railroad
magnates, there was no policy more suitable to these magnates than
that of being investigated by legislative committees. They were not
averse to their opponents amusing themselves, and finding a vent for
their wrath, in volumes of talk which began nowhere and ended
nowhere. In reply to charges, the magnates could put in their
skillful defense, and inject such a maze of argument, pettifoggery
and technicalities into the proceedings, that before long the public,
tired of the puzzle, was bound to throw up its hands in sheer
bewilderment, unable to get any concrete idea of what it was all
about.


FRAUD BECOMES RESPECTABLE WEALTH

So the great investigation of 1879 passed by without the least
deterrent effect upon the constantly-spreading power and wealth of
such men as Vanderbilt and Gould. Every new development revealed that
the hard-dying middle class was being gradually, yet surely, ground
out. But the investigation of 1879 had one significant unanticipated
result.

What William H. Vanderbilt now did is well worth noting. As the owner
of four hundred thousand shares of New York Central stock he had been
rabidly denounced by the middle class as a plutocrat dangerous to the