nd children was
harshly exploited; in nearly all of them the workers were in an
unorganized state, and therefore deprived of every vestige of
self-protection. Boys and girls of tenderest age were mercilessly ground
into dollars; their young life's blood dyed deep the fabrics which
brought Field riches. In this dehumanizing business Field was only doing
what the entire commercial aristocracy the world over was doing.

How extraordinarily profitable the business of Marshall Field & Co. was
(and is), may be seen in the fact that its shares (it became an
incorporated stock company) were worth $1,000 each. At his death
Marshall Field owned 3,400 of these shares, which the executors of his
estate valued at $3,400,000. That the exploitation of labor, the sale of
sweatshop and adulterated goods, and many other forms of oppression or
fraud were a consecutive and integral part of his business methods is
undeniable. But other factors, distinctly under the ban of the law,
afford an additional explanation of how he was able to undersell petty
competitors, situated even at a distance. What all of these factors were
is not a matter of public knowledge. At least one of them came to light
when, on December 4, 1907, D. R. Anthony, a representative in Congress
from Kansas, supplied evidence to Postmaster-General Meyer that the
house of Marshall Field & Co. had enjoyed, and still had, the privilege
of secret discriminatory express rates in the shipment of goods. This
charge, if sustained, was a clear violation of the law; but these
violations by the great propertied interests were common, and entailed,
at the worst, no other penalty than a nominal fine.

From such sources came the money with which he became a large
landowner. Also, from the sources enumerated, came the money with
which he and his associates debauched politics, and bribed common
councils and legislatures to present them with public franchises
for street and elevated railways, gas, telephone and electric light
projects--franchises intrinsically worth incalculable sums.[177] With
the money squeezed out of his legions of poverty-stricken employees and
out of his rent-racked tenants he became an industrial monarch. The
inventory of his estates filed in court by his executors revealed that
he owned stocks and bonds in about one hundred and fifty corporations.
This itemized list showed that he owned many millions of bonds and
stocks in railroads with the construction and operati