Setting the stage for the future of Capitalism.

April 2025

Disclaimer: These words are the author’s personal views and do not reflect the Labor Guild’s opinion.

I began this project by wanting to teach other workers what I wanted to know and never learned about the Labor Movement. Thus, my research began, an incredibly wonderful, enjoyable, fulfilling, journey of discovery and knowledge. However, I had to be very careful to stay on subject, because each of these subjects were tied to other historical worthy stories in and of themselves. I had to be careful not to chase down rabbit holes and not stray off of my main subject line. However, today I am going to make an exception, for these stories had an impact on our nation that still remains today, which resulted in scars
so deep, we still have not only recovered from but seems to be a wound that has never healed.

In 1834 a man traveling from Missouri to Illinois met and fell in love with a woman named Harriett and married her in 1836 at the Fort Snelling military post. They went on to have two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie. They were of African descent and lived as slaves in the slave free state of Illinois with their master Dr. John Emerson. Upon Emerson’s death, ownership of the property was relinquished to his wife and eventually her brother, John Sanford. On a trip to Missouri, Sanford was accused of, “placing his hands upon” him, his wife and his daughter, an allegation Sanford readily admitted to, knowing that he had a right to do whatever he wants with his property. The slave “Dred Scott” filed suit for his freedom where slavery was illegal in the states in which he and his family resided.
• The Supreme Court eventually held; that because slaves are “property”, no person of
African American ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States. Where the Constitution allowed slavery, the courts had no choice but to follow and states that were free would now accept slavery. The fervor around the issue incited
abolitionists and acted as one of the catalysts to the Civil War. (Case heard Feb 11-14 then re-argued Dec. 15-18, 1856; decided March 3, 1857).
• The reaction was swift, four years later Congress adopted the 14th Amendment declaring all people and citizens freedom and protection under the law. Particularly,
this last sentence:
• No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

So how can a case regarding slavery be used to protect railroads? As per the Amendment, no State can deprive a person of life, liberty, and property without due process. The key word here is “person”. They claimed that stockholders are people and cannot be denied due process. At first this legal strategy was not successful until the railroad packed the courts with railroad friendly justices and became the majority. Making corporations people under the law was a stretch and they knew it. The Courts were stuck on the word “person”. They tried a variation of it, such as, “personhood” but they really needed something stronger. Well, that stronger position never came and what followed was a bazaar set of circumstances.

As westward expansion of the railroads developed, local regulators began to tax them on their property and to regulate the rates they charged to move products.

After losing in the State Supreme Court under San Mateo v. Southern Pacific Railroad in its next case, quickly challenged, and cited the law used for slaves in getting justice in hostile states. The railroad had the case moved to the U.S. Supreme Court. Using the new law, that bias toward the railroads in the California Courts, made it impossible for them to get a fair trial. Especially for the stockholders, who in their eyes, were “persons” under the new law.

The trial, Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), was moved to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. and ruled in favor of the railroad. Holding that because the State included the fencing beside the tracks (counting it as part of the value of the property) was illegal and therefore could not collect taxes from the railroads in the first place.

The court never did discuss the legitimacy of corporations as people, however the court reporter, Bancroft Davis (former President of Newburgh N.Y. Railway) offered his assessment in the heading of the decision after hearing it from Chief Justice Waite in briefings that was never part of, nor ever intended to be, an issue in the case. He wrote on May 10, 1886: “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.” Sound familiar! Mitt Romney, when he ran for President against Barack Obama was still touting the words “corporations are people too”. As one of our faculty colleagues kiddingly stated. “I’ll believe corporations are people, when they execute one in Texas.”

I told you this story to show you the length that the big money interests will go to push through their agendas. These intentionally misrepresented words set in motion a formula for blocking regulation of corporations by perpetuating the narrative that corporations are people until about 1937. An analysis of this case was made, and documents were found which proved the case was wrongly interpreted and the precedent unfounded. It wasn’t until 1960 that it was fully disproved. Like I regularly say, Capitalism requires strong property rights law in order to enforce their interests. In this case they hid under the legal robes to present an illusion of legitimacy. They hoped the people would view the institution as sacred. However, over the years and even today we see some Supreme Court Justices accepting the gratitude of those they rule in favor of. They count on the fact that the institution stands in the highest regard to be honest. However, today they just make up and wordsmith their decisions to please their constituency. When Labor had their people in the majority those decisions favored Labor. Today they favor corporations.  

Another story I would like to share with you is the effects of Rutherford B. Hayes Presidency. All of you must be aware of the Bush-Gore contested Presidential election where the Florida Supreme Court ordered the counting of 61,000 ballots that the voting machines had missed. Bush appealed the decision to the Supreme Court (a Republican majority Supreme Court) held that counting all the ballots would cause irreparable harm and ordered the count be stopped. Awarding George W. Bush, the Presidency. I thought that this was the first time it happened but learned differently as I entered this work.

Well, that is not the first time a Presidential election has been contested. In the Presidential election of 1876 between the Democrat, New York Governor Samuel Tilden and Ohio Republican, Congressman Rutherford B. Hayes, hit a stalemate. After Samuel J. Tilden won the presidency on a popular vote, he did not have the electoral votes required by the Constitution,185. He was 184. Yes, one vote shy of becoming President. With 165 electoral votes and 19 electoral votes of three states (Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina) and one elector from Oregon (originally awarded to Tilden) were still in doubt. When a decision could not be reached, a committee of 5 people from each side of Congress and 5 members of the Supreme Court were convened to resolve the dispute. This committee was called the Electoral Compromise of 1877 and was comprised of 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats. These members voted down party lines and gave the vote to Hayes. However, the committee realized that Congress would most likely not pass the recommendation simply by party.

Thus began the backroom deals and politicking. So much so that no notes were taken, and no formal disposition of the events were taken. However, this is what we do know. This opened the door for all kinds of deals, one of which was that a President Hayes would not colonize the South in exchange for their votes. You see, after the Civil War, Southern politicians did not want the South to be occupied, and they were very concerned over the occupation of the South by the Yankees. Convinced that a President Hayes would keep his promise to pull the Federal troops out of the South convinced enough of the members to give the majority to Hayes with the electoral vote of 185 to 184 to Samuel Tilden.

Remember Thomas Scott, the father of the “Holding Company”, we talked about in previous writings? Well, he envisioned a railroad line that would crisscross the whole of the United States. He needed the cash to implement it and with his invention of the Holding Company gave him the means to do it along with others in the industry.

Scott made good use of the Holding Company by purchasing small independent railroads in the South. When the locals found out what he was up to, the State was called in to control him. However, where the Corporation was chartered in Pennsylvania the individual states had no jurisdiction over them. (That’s what I meant when I said the Holding Company was corporations on steroids.) When the local population found out that the Yankee money was financing the project, they began to get vocal. Scott paid for editorials that were complimentary to the railroad. If that didn’t work, he financed a new local printer that would write kindly about them. This was common throughout the South and West and not to be naïve was happening in the North as well when the track was laid to the West. In fact, by 1895 the railroad had laid over 70,000 miles of track west of the Mississippi.

The labor was performed by former slaves and prisoners as well. The railroad would pretty much empty the prisons as the railroads moved West. It was known that Scott would hold lavish dinners for local politicians and former Confederate officers as well as Ku Klux Klan leaders to buy in to his vision. This kind of behavior and these kinds of tactics are what ushered into the South,” Jim Crow” and emboldened the ideology. Remember, Federal troops were being called back from the South and with no occupation force in place to enforce emancipation left a vacuum to which the people in charge before the War were still in charge. That left the black people in not much better condition than they were before. Except for the fact that now they were not property.

“Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local laws that legalized racial segregation. Named after a Black minstrel show character, the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence, and death.” https://www.history.com/…/jim-crow-laws. As the quotation shows, it did set us back a hundred years. I will contend it has set us back even longer, in fact it is still an issue, a growing issue today.

Here is a great example of history repeating itself. Today we have lobbyists convincing the legislatures and judgeships to show relief to their paying constituency. Former corporate executives are even in the regulatory agencies that oversee these industries such as fossil fuel, food, drug industries, financial and banking along with the media as well. Back in 1896 it is a well-known fact that J.D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan’s money paid for the Presidency of McKinley. As other forms of media entered the environment, rules were set up so that monopolies could not exist in that arena. Print, radio, and television media had rules that were watched so that no one had complete control of the media markets.

Well, many of those rules were broken during the 1990’s with repeal of the” FAIRNESS DOCTRINE in 1987”. Which allowed the proliferation of conservative attack tactics to control the airwave dialogue. A majority Republican Congress and Speaker Newt Gingrich, broke down those barriers, allowing a guy like Rupert Murdock and others similarly interested to make media a worldwide oligopoly. If you think I am wrong, just check out Rupert Murdock and what he owns on the internet.

My point here is that not much has changed. A few people own the entire industry of what we hear, think, and buy. Think of it this way: Did you ever hear a song on the radio that you just don’t like, but the D. J.’s on every station, play the same song so often that, even though you don’t like it, you begin humming the tune and eventually singing it. That is how the media has changed our thinking about what is real and what is not. What is the truth and what is not. You see the messaging we have been inundated with since the 1990’s has been a barrage of right-wing daily indoctrination of alternative thinking. Be aware that the
“liberal media” is only as liberal as their conservative owners allow them to be.

The constant haranguing of who is telling the truth and who is lying is tearing this country apart. I believe it is done to keep the population distracted and fight among ourselves while the real players pass the laws they want.

Remember, there is nothing wrong with Capitalism that a strong dose of regulation can’t cure.