others, representing both urban and rural communities, were swayed by bribes. By one means or another the traders and landholders forced the various legislatures into doing what was wanted.
Omitting the records of other States, a few salient facts as to what took place in New York State will suffice to give a clear idea of some of the methods of the trading class in pressing forward their conquests, in hurling aside every impediment, whether public opinion or law, and in creating new laws which satisfied their extending plans for a ramification of profit-producing interests. If forethought, an unswerving aim and singleness of execution mean anything, then there was something sternly impressive in the way in which this rising capitalist class went forward to snatch what it sought, and what it believed to be indispensable to its plans. There was no hesitation, nor were there any scruples as to niceties of methods; the end in view was all that counted; so long as that was attained, the means used were considered paltry side-issues. And, indeed, herein lies the great distinction of action between the world-old propertied classes and the contending proletariat; for whereas the one have always campaigned irrespective of law and particularly by bribery, intimidation, repression and force, the working class has had to confine its movement strictly to the narrow range of laws which were expressly prepared against it and the slightest violation of which has called forth the summary vengeance of a society ruled actually, if not theoretically, by the very propertied classes which set at defiance all law.
THE BANKING FRAUDS BEGIN.
The chartered monopoly held by the traders who controlled the United States Bank was not accepted passively by others of the commercial class, who themselves wanted financial engines of the same character. The doctrine of State's rights served the purpose of these excluded capitalists as well as it did that of the slaveholders.