Government money to the sum of four or
five hundred thousand dollars.[58]

"John Jacob Astor," says Barrett in a view of admiration, "at one period
of his life had several vessels operating in this way. They would go to
the Pacific and carry furs from thence to Canton. These would be sold at
large profits. Then the cargoes of tea would pay enormous duties which
Astor did not have to pay to the United States for a year and a half.
His tea cargoes would be sold for good four and six months paper, or
perhaps cash; so that for eighteen or twenty years John Jacob Astor had
what was actually a free-of-interest loan from the Government of over
_five millions_ of dollars."[59]

"One house," continues Barrett, "was Thomas H. Smith & Sons. This firm
went enormously into the Canton trade, and, although possessing
originally but a few thousand dollars, Smith imported to such an extent
that when he failed he owed the United States three millions and not a
cent has ever been paid." Was Smith imprisoned for debt? Not at all.

It is such revelations as these that indicate how it was possible for
the shippers to pile up great fortunes at a time when "a house that
could raise $260,000 in specie had an uncommon capital." They showed how
the same functions of government which were used as an engine of such
oppressive power against the poor, were perverted into highly efficient
auxiliary of trading class aims and ambitions. By multifarious subtle
workings, these class laws inevitably had a double effect. They poured
wealth into the coffers of the merchant-class and simultaneously tended
to drive the masses into poverty. The gigantic profits taken in by
merchants had to be borne by the worker, perhaps not superficially, but
in reality so. They came from his slender wages, from the tea and cotton
and woolen goods that he used, the sugar and the coffee and so on. In
this indirect way the shippers absorbed a great part of the products of
his labor; what they did not expropriate the landlord did. Then when the
laborer fell in debt to the middleman tradesman to jail he went.[60]

UNITE AGAINST THE WORKER.

The worker denounced these discriminations as barbarous and unjust. But
he could do nothing. The propertied class, with its keen understanding
of what was best for its interests, acted and voted, and usually
dragooned the masses of enfranchised into voting, for men and measures
entirely favorable to its designs. Sometimes these interests