894

Reviews of Books

History of the Great ArnericaitFortunes. By GUSTAVUS MYERS.

Volume I., Part i. Conditions int Settlemtlientatid Colonlial
Timtes;Part ii. Th1eGreatLand Fortutnes. VoltimeII. Great
FortunesfromiRailroads. (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and
Compalny. I910.
Pp. 296; 368.)
TIIESE volumes,by the authorof a valuable historyof Tammany
Hall and of otherworksbearingon themunicipalhistoryof New York,
thoughnominallya historyof the great fortunesamassed in the
are in realitya socialistictract,
century,
UnitedStatesin thenineteenth
thetitleof whichwouldbetterread " The Crimesof the Rich"; it is a
expressedin excellentliterary
vast tiradeagainstrich men,uniformly
but at the same timegossipy,abusive,
styleand generallyinteresting,
one-sided,and discursive,and for purposesof sound scholarshipthe
intoone-third
its presentbulk. The
wholemighteasilybe compressed
to historicalknowledge,however,despite
author'sactual contributions
of
his prejudices,are considerable.On the subjectof the accumulation
a
more
has
to
completed,
what
be,
when
promises
produced
wealth,he
or less usefulstudyof a century'sdevelopment.Beginningin volume
of the large colonialestatesin Virginia,
I. witha briefconsideration
New York, and New England, and especiallyof the corruptland
grantsof GovernorFletcherof New York,he passes to the rise of the
tradingclass and thento the shippingindustry.Of the greatcaptains
in this latterclass, StephenGirardis taken as a type. By luck,by
" roughshod
" methods,by " briberyand intimidation
", this " solitary
Croesus" becamethe " Dictatorof Finance" in the earlyyearsof the
republic. The storyis toldin detail. But withevengreaterminuteness
the authorrelatesthe inceptionof the Astorfortuneand of the great
cityestatesin general. This is thebestpartof the volume. By virtue
in the MiddleWest,the AmericanFur
of a monopolyof the fur-trade
Company,throughdebaucllingthe Indiansand outrageousviolationsof
the law, broughtAstor enormousprofits. He enteredthe shipping
valuablewater-front
he gainedfromcityofficials
trade; by corruption,
rights in New York; he entered banking and in the panic of I837 continued prosperous by buying up and foreclosing the mortgages of the
helpless masses. Law was now the most valuable asset of the capitalist class; "with the millions made by a career of crime the original
Astors btiy land; they get more land by fraud; the law throws its
shield about the propertyso obtained." In the same spirit,though with
less detail, the Goelet, Rhinelander, Schermerhorn, Longworth, and
Field fortuniesare examined.
Volume II., which on the whole is decidedly inferiorto the preceding volume, is devoted to the great railroad fortunes,notably those of
the Vanderbilt and Gould families. There is, at the outset, a revieN.
the sale of public lands in the United States, which cannot be rated
anythingbut a hodgepodge of all the corruption and scandal on the
subject that the author could find; the reader, who would appreciate a

Flomn. Norwegian Inimig-ralion

895

well-consideredsurvey of the nation's land laws or at least a reference

to theiAr
beneficentresults, findsonly the superficial,rambling,and unconvincing work of the muck-raker,set forth in the language of a
socialist. The historyof Cornelius Vanderbilt is then approached with
the text, "ninety millions in fifteenyears"; the achievement of this
man is reckoned the amazing feature of his generation. BuLt" far below him,in point of possessions, stretchedthe 50,000,000 individuals who
were wage laborers,
made up the nation's population. Nearly IO,OOO,OOO
and of the Io,ooo,OOOfully 500,000 were child laborers. . . . How immeasurably puny they all seemed beside Vanderbilt." The growth of
the Vanderbilt transportationsystem is gradually unfolded, every exciting crisis in the story portrayed,the shrewdness, the brutality,the
rascality, and the criminal success of the strong man at the headthree pages of rant to one of history. The various railroad consolidations engineered by Vanderbilt are described with no appreciation of
the economic advantages thereby secured and with no estimate of the
contemporaryconsolidation movement in general. The army contract
frauds are treated with some detail.
The chapters on Jay Gould include the looting of the Erie, the
famous gold conspiracy of I869, and the Credit Mobilier frauds on the
UniioniPacific Railroad; meagre references are here made to the conditions in the labor world in the seventies and early eighties.
To the serious student of American history the most valuable part
of the two volumes is the notes, which contain references to many
officialdocuments. The text, although containing much information,is
so interlarded with rant as to be disappointing. A volume, the tenor
of which is to create social unrest by inculcating hatred of the rich,
thoughreadable on every page, cannot rank high as serious history.
EMERSON

DAVID FITE.

A Histo1y! of Nor-wegiamImnmigrationto the United States, from

thzeEarliest Beginningdozcmto the Year I848. By GEORGE T.
FLOM, Ph.D., Professorof Scandinavian Languages and Literatures and Acting Professor of English Philology, State Universityof Iowa. (Iowa City, Iowa: I909. PP. 407.)
numberof new books dealing in serious and
IN the significant
foreignelementsin Americanlife,
scholarlyfashionwith different
this volumeby ProfessorFlom will fillan honorableplace. Its aim is
fromNorwayto this country
to presentthe progressof immigration
duringthe firstperiod of Norwegiansettlementwhich ended about
chaptersof the book are based upon the
I848. Six of the forty-two
authors excellentarticleson the Scandinavianspublishedin the Iowa
Journial
of HistoryanldPoliticsin I905, but it cannotbe said thatthe
patientresearch
sympathetic,
*bookeven withits evidenceof prolonged,
is six timesas valuableas the articles. The author'sfatherand grandto Wisconsinin I844, and his filial
fatherwere amongthe immigrants