The Struggle For Self Government PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...men done with it? The old aristocracy, we have seen, drove the people to revolt. The old manufacturers sought a high protective tariff, and they got it. The railroads sought rights, privileges, and property, and they got them in the way they preferred, by bribery, not by a fair contract with the State. This is what Rhode Island's older business rulers did with political power. Now for the " trolley crowd "; what have they done with it? They financed it. They organized it into a company which they are selling to outside capitalists. "They" are Marsden J. Perry, William G. Roelker, and the Hon. Nelson W. Aldrich. Perry is the business man. He began life a poor boy, had some sort of connection with a theatrical show, till, entering the chattel mortgage business, he made himself a banker, promoter, and finally Rhode Island's first captain of finance. He is really an able man, dangerous, but only because he is spoiled by power. Roelker is the lawyer. Counsel to corporations, he was after money, and when they all got that he retired to play at Newport. Aldrich is the politician of the group. He also began life humbly, as a clerk and bookkeeper, first in a market, then in a wholesale grocery business, and in this he worked up to a partnership. Thus he was a business man originally--he is yet, for that matter--but business men in Rhode Island do not neglect politics, and Aldrich became alderman, legislator, Speaker of the House, Congressman, and, finally, Senator. Having served it step by step, this leader of the United States Senate may truly be said to be a product, as he is now the supreme head, of the Rhode Island System. There were others concerned with these three men, but they, representing the business, the law, and...