s of theoretically extending to them the
shield of its especial protection. If Government allowed a people whom
it pleased to signify as its wards to be debauched, plundered and slain,
what kind of treatment could be expected for the working class as to
which there was not even the fiction of Government concern, not to
mention wardship?

LAW BREAKERS AND LAW MAKERS.

But when it came to laws which, in the remotest degree, could be used or
manipulated to swell profits or to buttress property, Astor and his
class were untiring and vociferous in demanding their strict
enforcement. Successfully ignoring or circumventing laws objectionable
to them, they, at the same time, insisted upon the passage and exact
construction and severe enforcement of laws which were adjusted to their
interests. Law breakers, on the one hand, they were law makers on the
other. They caused to be put in statute, and intensified by judicial
precedent, the most rigorous laws in favor of property rights. They
virtually had the extraordinary power of choosing what laws they should
observe and what they should not. This choice was invariably at the
expense of the working class. Law, that much-sanctified product, was
really law only when applied to the propertyless. It confronted the poor
at every step, was executed with summary promptitude and filled the
prisons with them. Poverty had no choice in saying what laws it should
obey and what it should not. It, perforce, had to obey or go to prison;
either one or the other, for the laws were expressly drafted to bear
heavily upon it.

It is illustrative, in the highest degree, of the character of
Government ruled by commercial interests, that Astor was allowed to
pillage and plunder, cheat, rob and (by proxy) slaughter in the West,
while, in the East, that same Government extended to him, as well as to
other shippers, the free use of money which came from the taxation of
the whole people--a taxation always weighted upon the shoulders of the
worker. In turn, this favored class, either consciously or
unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, cheated the Government of
nearly half of the sums advanced. From the foundation of the Government
up to 1837, there were nine distinct commercial crises which brought
about terrible hardships to the wage workers. Did the Government step in
and assist them? At no time. But during all those years the Government
was busy in letting the shippers dig into the public fund