Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/14

Rh plants, express and telegraph companies, etc., etc. It is an industrial Colossus.

Another case in point is that of the great New York, New Haven & Hartford system, controlled by the Morgan interests: Like the New York Central, this company built itself up from a lot of smaller ones, until, at last, it had secured a stranglehold on the entire railroad transportation system of New England. Then it proceeded to secure an almost complete monopoly of water traffic in its territory by absorbing the Fall River Line, Stonington Line, New Bedford Line, New Haven Line, Maine Steamship Company, Bridgeport Line, Hartford Line, Rock Island Line, and many so-called independent steamship companies. And, finally, it sought to do the same thing with the trolley lines. By means of flagrant legislative corruption it secured control of the entire electric transportation systems of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Thus, in transportation of all sorts, the New York, New Haven & Hartford was dictator for the several states in which it operated.

The titanic Pennsylvania Lines were similarly brought about by the assimilation of small roads and affiliated industries. It is now accredited with 21,389 miles of trackage, the ownership of 72 subsidiary railroad companies and heavy interests in 254 related industries. Normally it employs about 275,000 workers.

The tendency towards consolidation shown in the three big systems cited above manifests itself in all sections of the railroad industry. Already the whole business has resolved itself into a few financial groups. In 1916 the World Almanac (page 216) listed these groups as follows: