Page:History of the Supreme court of the United States (IA historyofsupreme00myeriala).pdf/532



Recapitulating, we have seen that some years before Chief Justice Chase's death, the railroad power had begun a systematic campaign to put its avowed representatives upon the Supreme Court Bench. In the State courts the transformation had already been accomplished; there was hardly an inferior court which was not composed of railroad judges, or of men susceptible to railroad influences, With the Supreme Court of the United States, the process was a little slower, but none the less sure. The delay was unavoidable because the Justices, appointed for life, often outlived the period and the class section originally, represented by them. Survivals, or rather relics, of a bygone, outworn era, aged and usually infirm, they all could not be expected to respond readily to the demands of later economic interests. Some of them could hardly realize that the railroad corporations which they had seen come forward a few years before as supplicants for public aid were now the paramount capitalist power, arrogating the larger control of Government.

As fast as these hoary relics passed away, railroad attorneys were appointed to succeed them. And when, in 1874, Morrison I. Waite was chosen as Chase's successor as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, it was evident even to the most superficial observer that the new régime had become a dominant factor, and that the railroad corporations were the sovereign power.