U. S. Plutocracy

THE ROBBER BARONS--Matthew Josephson-- Harcourt, Brace ($3). The roots of any family tree, of any aristocracy, are planted in the dirt. But the humble or scandalous beginnings of an old family, a settled society, are well covered. Not so the great names of U. S. plutocracy, whose mightiest growths are a matter of two or three generations, their naked progress still quite perceptible to the curious eye. And one by one these financial giants have had their share of homage and vituperation. Author Josephson comes neither to bury nor praise them; as observer of U. S. history, he thinks the 40 years (1861-1901) that saw their rise is more their day than the politicians'. A less ambitious but much abler and more scholarly work than Who Rides America? (TIME, Feb. 26), The Robber Barons will take its place on many a carefully considered library shelf. Though Author Josephson has an ax to grind, its edge is no longer considered socially dangerous. And though, like a good Jew, he keeps his hat on in these sacred precincts, few will hear any bees buzzing within it. ". . . We have tried in so far as possible to write of them [the Robber Barons] without anger, to paint them as no more 'wicked' than they or their contemporaries actually were, though we are aware now of living in another moral climate and in the midst of a new generation. . . ." When the Civil War began "Jay Gould. Jim Fisk, J. P. Morgan, Philip Armour, Andrew Carnegie, James Hill and John Rockefeller were all in their early 20's; Collis Huntington and Leland Stanford were over 30; while Jay Cooke was not yet 40." Old enough to go to war, they were also too canny. They wanted to be rich before they died. They all got their wish. The interwoven strands of their careers make up a pattern so complicated that at times it resembles a crazy quilt, but Author Josephson's patient unraveling shows a general if sometimes unconscious concentric design, spiraling ever closer to monopolistic unity. Rough-&-ready "Commodore" Cornelius Vander Bilt, plebeian founder of a proudly aristocratic family, trusted nobody, kept all his accounts in his head. One of his business letters: Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I will not site you, for law takes too long. I "will ruin you. Sincerely yours, Cornelius Vanderbilt. On his deathbed he refused the bottle of champagne prescribed by the doctor, stingily demanded, ''Won't sody-water do instead?" Psalm-singing Daniel Drew, credited with inventing "watered stock" (cattle made artificially thirsty, then, to increase their weight, given all the water they could drink just before being sold), had other tricks up his sleeve. One of them: "Old Daniel pulled out his proverbial red bandanna handkerchief to mop his brow before sitting down with some fellow speculators. A slip of paper bearing a 'point,' or tip, fell to the floor; a bystander put his foot on it. As Drew left, apparently not noticing the incident, the others pounced upon the piece of paper, which proved to be an order. They bought Erie stock in large quantities, and were soon gulled." Mephistophelean Jay Gould, who was so hated that at times he had to have a bodyguard, "would pursue a deliberate policy of mismanagement 'as a matter of principle.' deriving his gains from the discrepancies between the real value of the affair and its supposed or transient value in the security markets." Andrew Carnegie, whose name was to become almost synonymous with libraries, once asked his friend, Publisher Frank Doubleday, how much he had made last month. When Doubleday replied that he never knew how he stood until the year's end, Carnegie said firmly, "I'd get out of it!" Greatest of U. S. industrialists, thinks Josephson, was John D. Rockefeller, who believes "the power to make money is a gift of God." As a young man he used to talk to himself at night about his schemes, of which the suave ruthlessness in crushing competition is still a byword in U. S. business. These plutocrats sometimes had to wait a generation--seldom more--before high society accepted them. "A Jay Gould, widely feared, might be excluded from a fashionable yacht club, but his son George was easily admitted. The profane and scornful old parvenu Cornelius Vander Bilt was unthinkable in a parlor: but his grandson William K. Vanderbilt would see all doors open to him in time," The Author. In 35 years, Matthew Josephson has done a variety of things. Brooklyn-born (1899), Columbia-educated, after a year as financial and literary editor of the Newark Ledger he joined the post-War literary exiles in Paris, wrote for transition, helped edit Broom. Two years on Wall Street as a customer's man turned his eyes from surrealiste poetry to Coolidge finance. Married, with two sons, Josephson lives at Gaylordsville, Conn, near his good friends Charles and Mary Beard (The Rise of American Civilization). In a workroom there made from an old corn crib he wrote The Robber Barons on a fellowship made possible by money from the Guggenheim family--plutocrats not included in his book. He is rather deaf, has a sloping forehead, a shy Slavic face; his mustache and hair parted in the middle give him the look of a Yiddish Robert Louis Stevenson. Other books: Gallimathias (poems), Zola & His Time, Portrait of the Artist as American, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Robber Barons is the March choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

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