Fortunes built on exploitation of railroad workers
Last year Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore received
more than $300 million in research grants from the U.S.
government--more than any other medical center in the
country.
Profits stolen from railroad workers built both the
hospital and its associated university. They're named after
one of the owners of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, who
left them $7 million when he died in 1873.
Johns Hopkins was the son of a slave master. While his
Quaker father freed the slaves on his plantation, none were
given any land.
Hopkins's fortune was a fantastic pile of loot in the
1870's. It was the result of railroaders being paid less than
two dollars a day.
Workers who went on strike against these conditions were
shot down like dogs. Eleven were killed in Baltimore on July
20, 1877. Another 40 were wounded.
John W. Garrett--a banker who became president of the
Baltimore & Ohio--was responsible for this bloodshed. A
county in Western Maryland is named after this criminal. His
daughter Mary jump-started Johns Hopkins Medical School with
some of the family's filthy money.
This accumulated treasure of Johns Hopkins Hospital and
university is now worth billions. The Baltimore & Ohio is
just one of several railroad companies merged to form
CSX.
Another was the Chesapeake & Ohio, owned by Collis P.
Huntington--as in Hunt ington, W.Va., and Huntington Beach,
Calif., both named after this financier.
Along with Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Leland
Stanford, Huntington was a member of the "Big Four." These
crooks started the Central Pacific Railroad with $195,000, of
which only $50,000 was their own money.
The rest of the $25 million required to build a railroad
across the Sierra Nevada mountains was bestowed by a
thoroughly bribed U.S. Congress. This was the "free
enterprise" way of linking up with the Union Pacific and
completing the first transcontinental railroad.
The Central Pacific was a fountainhead of the congealed
labor called capital. With his portion of the loot Charles
Crocker started the Crocker Bank. Stanford University is
named after Leland Stanford's son.
The Central Pacific became part of the Southern Pacific.
The SP's tracks stretched from Portland, Ore., to New
Orleans.
The Union Pacific has recently gobbled up the SP. Drew
Lewis--who as Reagan's transportation secretary busted the
PATCO strike of air traffic controllers in 1981--is the UP
chair. Currently Lewis is trying to crush a Teamsters'
organizing drive at Overnite trucking, also owned by UP.
To construct the Central Pacific thousands of Chinese
workers were paid a dollar per day to blast apart the rock
with black powder. Many were blown to bits.
The building of the Chesapeake & Ohio is immortalized
by the true story of John Henry, the "steel driving man" who
was worked to death. It took the labor of tens of thousands
of African Americans like John Henry to build Southern
railroads.
The Huntington fortune--which includes the Huntington
Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino,
Calif.--is fertilized with the blood of Black and Chinese
workers.
--S.M.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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