Boom and bust cycles. Inflation. Deflation. Usury. Theft. Extortion. Control. Financial Depravity. Human Enslavement. Famine. Recessions. Depressions. War. Chaos. Evil.
All of the above are results and symptoms of a predatory Fiat Currency and Fractional Reserve Banking System, and business as usual for the predator class behind it.
MEET THE WORLD MONEY POWER
“It’s a big club – and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club…” – George Carlin
Copyright December 2004 Charles Savoie
On November 24, 1980, the Associated Press quoted Leonard Bernstein, a globally prominent musical conductor, as saying in reference to the Kennedy assassination,
“We don’t dare confront the implications. I think we’re all agreed there was a conspiracy and we don’t want to know. It involves such a powerful high force in what we call the high places, if we do know, everything might fall apart.”
This is when I start to deliver what I’ve been hinting at for months as I have referred to the World Money Power or the Society.
I say start, because a series will be necessary to convey the complete picture. In order for a few people to exercise the colossal power they do, secrecy is crucial.
That’s why so few outside the Society ever heard of it, or if they saw references to it, the meaning would not register.
There is indeed a powerful high force in the high places! You must know about them because their existence governs your future to a disturbing extent.
They are the source of fiat money; the powers behind central banks; international financiers; warmongers; globalists; cartel monopolists; and the force suppressing precious metals.
JFK, whose father was a member, strayed from the plan! As Zad Rust commented in “Teddy Bare, The Last of the Kennedy Clan” (1971)—
“The Warren Commission had no other mission than to conceal the truth, and it was relentlessly helped in this mission by many official agencies and by some powerful organized Force of universal scope and character. This Force of Darkness has already brought the world very near to the point of no return on the road to total annihilation of the liberties of man and the independence of nations, and to the enthronement of the Antichrist.”
This is an organization with two branches, the London branch
founded in 1902, the New York branch in 1903.
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Eustace Mullins on the Secret Money Masters – Worlds Most Elusive Club
Download a wealth of (out of print) books for free here.
Including many books by Eustace Mullins!
“Eustace Mullins was the most dangerous man in the world” according to FBI director Hoover.
He found out too much that people in power would prefer to remain hidden so they could continue their dirty work unhindered.
Eustace Mullins describes the FBI’s persecution in his book “A Writ for Martyrs.”
The FBI-files are full of blacked out parts, showing the governments utter contempt for people’s right to know the crimes against humanity especially against those requesting the information it is guilty of & tries to escape prosecution – which is the act of cowards!
“Eustace Mullins was absolutely BRILLIANT in his research, writing and verbal presentations, and as honest a man and scholar as our country has ever produced.
In all the interviews I had the great honor of doing with Eustace, he never ceased to amaze me…and to teach all of us critically-important truths about our world and the evil, satanic group that is and has been dominating it for far too long. His knowledge and wisdom about the controllers was simply astonishing.” said Jeff Rense.
The author of such incendiary books as “Secrets of the Federal Reserve, “Murder by Injection, and “The Curse of Canaan, Mullins was harrassed by the FBI for almost a half century, and had one of his books burned in Germany in the 1950s.
These stories are recounted in one of his books, “A Writ for Martyrs.
A protege of the imprisoned patriotic poet Ezra Pound, Mullins compiled a well-researched raft of works that detailed the passage down through time of a hereditary group of banker killers who have essentially ruled the world from behind the scenes since ancient times.
“Eustace Mullins was the greatest political historian of the 20th century, and not just because he was not beholden to the power structure that deters candid reports about significant events, but because, guided by the greatest poet of the 20th century who was imprisoned for broadcasting for peace, his meticulous research eventually uncovered virtually every significant political secret of the last 400 years.
“It, is a pity so many people are afraid to believe what Mullins told them, because it was much more of the truth than has ever been seen in our schools or our media. ” (copied from http://rense.com/general89/mullins.htm )
The Zionist World Congress in 1884 HAD already planned three world wars.
The Zionists see themselves reigning the whole world after WW III from Jerusalem as the capital.
More of Eustace Mullins Research Work Here and Here
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“The Pilgrims Society, since this is the organization of intermarried wealth, dynastic wealth, royal riches—all of whom stand behind fiat money creation, and are the opponents of sound money. No moves against silver or gold money which come from any government have their origin in any other organization, for The Pilgrims stand secretly atop the world’s financial structure, and are planning to plunge the world into as many wars and financial upheavals as possible, to realize their goal of global government. Powerful as they are, I predict the effort will fall short.”
“We the American People should know who these monopolistic rich are, who are the sponsors of “globalization. Below, photo of Ronald Reagan with David Rockefeller—who admits in Who’s Who to involvement with the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Conferences and the Trilateral Commission, but remains SILENT as to his membership in The Pilgrims—“A Secret Society Gradually Absorbing The Wealth Of The World!” According to biographer Hoffman on David Rockefeller
“ONE PRESIDENT AFTER ANOTHER HAS DONE HIS BIDDING.”
“My fellow Americans—such men as these described above form The Pilgrim Society—the World Money Power! It behooves us to be aware of them. The quality of our lives, and the future of our children, depends upon it. A Congressional investigation must be forced, all their identities revealed, as well as their monopolistic drive for globalization.” – Charles Savoie
Copyright January 2005 Charles Savoie
“There is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
This was President Woodrow Wilson’s description of The Pilgrims! No other organization remotely approximates such a description. We continue now making the acquaintance of The Pilgrims, New York and London, the two-branch secret Society that dominates world finance through central banks, large commercial and investment banks and multi-governmental banks; and has manipulated silver and gold prices.
In the event you missed the introduction to the Society, I strongly urge you to read that first (December 2004, Archives).
I am told the article drew some negative comments.
I expected as much, since there is in all societies an element who cannot accept that anything takes places behind the scenes.
To those trusting folks I say, disprove what I said or hold your peace.
If you aren’t going to disprove it please don’t annoy the website operator.
Prove that any facts or references were invented and I’ll retract all I said.
The critic is defeated before he starts, the facts stand, I have seen them at great length and presented a fraction of them.
I assure you the organization of which I am critical of is not going to issue any refutation, since it would bring into wider view the details presented.
It can only function as long as no significant number of Americans know of its existence.
It could not survive intense public pressure for Congressional investigation.
Before we go any further allow me to present you with a quotation from Pilgrim Society member John Martin Cates Jr. who was based in London (Who’s Who, 1981, page 578)—
“I also believe strongly in international cooperation and the stark necessity of a one-world society without national borders.”
This item may be quickly verified at any larger library! His views are representative of the organization as a whole, as we shall see more of later; and remember, your President in the White House is always a member (but seldom a member of Skull & Bones!) International cooperation means, we are to cooperate with them (by force, as in Patriot Acts, which are really “British Redcoat Acts!”) Cates, also a member of the executive committee of the Wolf’s Head Society of Yale (as noted, Pilgrim Society members are the controlling management of the other globalist organizations), was a member of the Yale University council, 1968-1977; with the U.S. Maritime Commission and War Shipping Administration, 1942-1947; foreign affairs specialist, State Department, 1947-1953; legal advisor to American Embassy in Mexico City, 1955-1957; chief political officer, U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, 1957-1961; United States representative on the council of the Organization of American States, D.C., 1961-1963; with the U.S. mission to the U.N., 1963-1970; U.S. mission to Geneva, 1970-1971; director, Bolivian Society, beginning in 1971; director, Pan-American Society, starting in 1974; executive committee, Society of Colonial Wars (he would have been fighting with the Redcoats) and president, Center for Inter-American Relations, 1971-1975. The current plans for the “American Union,” getting rid of all national borders in this hemisphere, has been developed by the Center for Inter-American Relations, and was originally the brainchild of Pilgrim Society charter member, Andrew Carnegie. Pilgrim Society member David Rockefeller founded the Center for Inter-American Relations in 1965 and in 1985 it was “absorbed” into the Americas Society, of which he is honorary chairman. Mining magnate Charles F. Barber of The Pilgrims and investment banker Albert H. Gordon of The Pilgrims are directors, as is Steve Forbes, son of the late Pilgrim Society member Malcolm Forbes Sr. It has an advisory council of dozens of corrupted, highly placed men across the nations to the South. On September 4, 1962, California Congressman James B. Utt entered into the Congressional Record the following remark by former Senator William Benton—
“We are at the beginning of a long process of breaking down the walls of our national sovereignty.”
Benton was another member of the Pilgrim Society. Another member who expressed such sentiments was George Ball of Lehman Brothers who worked with members of The Pilgrims London as director in 1944-1945 of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in London (below)—
Ball was another Pilgrim Society member on the Bilderberg Steering Committee and was undersecretary of state, then U.S. representative to the U.N. in 1968 and became chairman of the Asia Society (to repeat—The Pilgrims are the dominant management of other organizations. The menace is compounded by the fact that most members refuse to so state in a listing such as Who’s Who, and many decline to be listed at all!) In “World Business—Promise and Problems,” 1970, Ball contributed an essay on pages 330-338 called “Cosmocorp—The Importance Of Being Stateless,” in which he referred to the various nations as the “archaic political structures of the world.” Ball also penned the introduction to “Global Corporations—The Emerging System of World Economic Power” (1972) by Pilgrim Society member Richard Eells, consultant to IBM, General Electric and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, overseer of Whitman College and president of the Foundation for the Study of Human Organization (they have their plans by which we will be “organized.”) Lehman Brothers is one of the galaxy of financial entities which is always represented in The Pilgrims; current representation includes John D. Macomber who became chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. (EXIMBANK) in 1989, after heading Celanese Corporation and serving as a director of R.J. Reynolds Industries (of the Pilgrim Society family by that name) and Chase Manhattan Bank. Macomber was also a director of the Center for Inter-American Relations, of which his fellow Pilgrim Society member John Cates was president! Macomber is currently a Textron director; vice chairman of The Atlantic Council (Pilgrim Society member Henry Catto is chairman); trustee, Smithsonian Institution; Carnegie Institution of Washington (after the charter Pilgrim Society member and Royalist agent of that name); Folger Library (after Pilgrim Society member John Clifford Folger of the Folger coffee fortune and the World Banking Corporation in the Bahamas) and chairs the Council for Excellence in Government. It may safely be supposed their idea of excellence in government is that under which we the People have no liberties, and The Pilgrims are the reconstituted Feudal Lords. Lehman Brothers is interlocked with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the colossal, but nearly invisible, Vanderbilt fortune of one of the founding families of The Pilgrim Society (details to follow).
I entertained a hope of a huge update to my accumulated information, because on November 16 I checked the Encyclopedia of Associations again, something I’ve done since 1973. Reading parts of The Pilgrims listing #19034 on page 2211 of the 2004 volumes, at the end of the short description was the phrase—“Publications: list of members, minutes of annual meeting.” I nearly flipped—never before had they mentioned a thing about a membership list. The implication conveyed was that you could request the information and it would be sent. However, it could also be stated with the unwritten insinuation that these are publications for the members.
I took the chance and sent a carefully worded message to the current address listed—122 East 58th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York 10022-1909 and I also had several other individuals make the inquiry. No details have been received by any of us. In case you’re wondering, yes, they stated a phone number, 212-753-7178 and a fax, 212-980-0769. If any of you call or fax them, it’s on your responsibility. I offer $1,000 to anyone who can procure a 2003, 2004 or 2005 list for the New York branch. The identity of the current membership urgently needs to become as widely known as possible in order that the British collaborating financiers and their motives may be spotlighted. It would also be useful to know which Senators and Congressmen are members, and Ambassadors. Some of you who reside near that zip code might want to pay a visit to the location. Just expect a locked door and a sign—maybe. Please do not violate any laws in attempting to get a list as no one else can take responsibility for any ill-advised action. Either they give out a list voluntarily, or by court order or Congressional subpoena.
In the event that some lists are forthcoming, the money would be paid only to the first to obtain a list. Furthermore, I very thoroughly know what to look for in validating and authenticating names as to expected family backgrounds, marriages, educations, public service records, business positions, tenures, museums, law firms, trusteeships and so forth. I know the expected percent of Generals, Ambassadors, Admirals and government officials, and clergymen. I can tell the difference between a member with delegated power, versus an inner-core member. So don’t anyone bother making up a list and try to get it past me. Only the real thing will convince. Do not take Mr. Morgan’s time on this matter, mail may be sent to P.O. Box 7, Hurst Texas 76053, from where it will be forwarded on to me many miles distant. There will be certain spectacular names in business absent who are members of an outer ring like the Council on Foreign Relations, yet some obscure names in places like Pennsylvania and elsewhere, would show up, indicative of large inherited wealth who isn’t management of corporations, but holds the whip-hand in control. There will also be a certain notice within the list concerning roughly two-dozen necrologies (members who passed away within the last 2 years; those deaths will be looked into). Maybe you want to offer them $500, to try and double your money? Ha! Remember these are the folks who create “money” and loan it to the world. Offering them $500 would be like offering a lifeguard a grain of sand off the beach. I have requested assistance from a Congressional source with whom I corresponded years ago. Obviously these Pilgrims wish their identities to remain largely unknown to the public. Since The Pilgrims exist to “gradually absorb the wealth of the world” and to “seize the wealth necessary,” let’s start with a view of Senator Nelson Aldrich, the Rockefeller relative and Pilgrim Society member who helped plan our central bank before and during 1913—
This Pilgrim Society member was grandfather to Pilgrim Society members David and Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, New York governor, 1959-1973 (below, David on left)—
Rockefeller’s predecessor as New York governor was William Averill Harriman (below), whose membership in Skull & Bones Society received publicity. He appeared in the 1969 list of The Pilgrims (no publicity for THAT!)—
A fair number of New York governors have been members of the Pilgrim Society; now Eliot Spitzer wants to run for that post in 2006. This isn’t a man who told American International Group to exit the silver shorting business, because if that were the case, he would have told the rest of them to also stop. He was recently concerned about a firm selling silver that was advertised as supposedly trapped under the rubble after the twin towers were taken down on September 11, 2001, but no problem with big banks selling silver they don’t have to depress the price. Spitzer’s eyes tell me he’s not our friend. He knows Who sits on those boards of directors. If he makes it to governor, he’ll never be Harriman’s equal, who held numerous top-level diplomatic posts and inherited control of 18,000 miles of railways! But let’s look at some things we can know about The Pilgrims, since they are the dominant group in this country, and in world finance. Congressman Thorkelson of Montana entered many remarks on The Pilgrims into the Congressional Record for August 20, 1940, frequently quoting from John J. Whiteford’s 1940 booklet, “Sir Uncle Sam, Knight of the British Empire,” such as—
“Who are these good fellows that are so deeply interested in British-American friendship and in “united democracy?” They are none other than the 900 of British-American aristocracy. They represent, as a body, the most powerful combination of men of wealth and influence on both sides of the Atlantic. The Pilgrims membership in America and Great Britain, have included and still include men in the highest positions in government, in diplomacy, in finance, in banking, in education, in the church, in publishing, in commerce, in industry, in shipping, and in practically all other important fields of national and international activities. The present membership in the American Pilgrims, and those who have passed away, represent the leadership of America in many important fields. We find among these a candidate for President of the United States, a Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Attorney General, Ambassadors, Solicitor General, Senators, and Congressmen; presidents of the largest banks and financial institutions; presidents and directors of the United States Steel Corporation, and many other large industrial corporations; of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co.; of the Radio Corporation of America; of insurance and shipping companies. Here are also to be found the members of the leading law firms serving these banks and industries, as well as the interpreters of international law; editors, publishers, and owners of America’s leading newspapers; experts in publicity; social and financial leaders and generally the group of men whose influence is capable of exerting great pressure on government and public opinion.”
These Pilgrims run the United States from behind the scenes with their Secret Society. It must be kept secret because Americans as a whole aren’t mature enough to understand their motives for devastating the middle class; weakening our national sovereignty; dismantling, under the guise of “War On Terror,” and “Homeland Security,” the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, paid for by the blood of patriots, spilled by redcoat troops led by British generals, ancestors of certain members of The Pilgrims of Great Britain today; and forming a World Superstate. It does little good to focus on the outer ring, visible to the public, called the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission or other fronts, when the public remains unaware of the “penetralia” (Latin, “innermost recesses”) of these, the forces of greed and unaccountable power. Continuing to quote Congressman Thorkelson in the Congressional Record (who was himself quoting John J. Whiteford)—
“At a dinner in New York, at the Biltmore Hotel, February 9, 1928, in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Pilgrims, Dr. Butler said in a speech—
“Among other things the Great War has proved conclusively that in a contest of those colossal proportions there were no neutrals. If the world should ever again become engulfed in another titanic struggle there would be and there could be no neutrals.”
“At this particular dinner, during which Dr. Butler expressed these sentiments so contrary to the real hopes and wishes of the American people, three telegrams were received and read to the celebrating American Pilgrims. One came from the King of England, one from the uncle of the King, and one came from the Prince of Wales, the future King, now the Duke of Windsor. The message from King George V was read by Sir Austin Chamberlain”—
“The King has pleasure in congratulating the Pilgrims of the United States on the occasion of their twenty fifth anniversary, and His Majesty takes this opportunity of conveying to them his good wishes for the future.”
“The future, according to The Pilgrims, does not include neutrality. The message from the King’s uncle, the Duke of Connaught, read—“
“The cause of promoting cordial friendship between our two great countries is one on which the future of the world in great measure depends. Ever since I have been president of the British Pilgrims I have realized to the full the success of the work carried on by the two societies with this common object in view.”
“Here again we have the same old story, whether it comes from an uncle of the King, from a British Ambassador, or from a platform lecturer—friendship—two great countries—common object. Democracy was not mentioned, nor the promotion of brotherhood among the nations. The message from the Prince of Wales read—“
“As a Pilgrim of 9 years standing, I am very glad to send my brother Pilgrims in New York my warmest congratulations on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the club’s inception in the United States. There have been many changes in the world during the past quarter of a century but the ties which unite The Pilgrims on each side of the Atlantic remain firm as ever.”
“The British Royal Family certainly showed an extraordinary interest in a group of American citizens dining in New York.”
My fellow silver and gold investors—here is the problem we face. The manipulation of silver and gold prices, and the divorce of precious metals from underpinning the financial system, has originated within this subversive Pilgrim Society! Even the Bank of England came into existence in 1694 by Royal charter! Below, Nicholas Murray Butler, then president of The Pilgrims New York—
In “The Glory and the Dream, a Narrative History of America, 1932-1972” by William Manchester (1973) we read on pages 67-68—
“Nicholas Murray Butler told his students that totalitarian regimes brought forth “men of far greater intelligence, far stronger character, and far more courage than the system of elections,” and if anyone represented the American establishment then it was Dr. Butler, with his 34 honorary degrees, and his thirty year tenure as president of Columbia University.”
Everyone generally realizes there are wealthy and powerful people around, but we are not to know that the most dangerous of these have united into an organization of which few outsiders have heard. Views which members have occasionally let slip illustrate their wish, as with Dr. Butler, that the rest of the world be subservient to them. Pilgrim Society member John W. Gardner in his 1961 book “Excellence” asked the question on the front cover—
“Can we be equal and excellent too?”
Apparently to have an excellent world be must not be equal to The Pilgrim Society! Gardner, after serving as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, became a trustee of Stanford University (more on that power block later) and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and also founded a front called Common Cause (below)—
We will spend some time examining things which have been said by or about members of The Pilgrim Society, in order to continue gaining insight into the Society. Notice about Butler, he was associated with Columbia, not Yale. We have to get away from the erroneous view emanated by those who feel Skull & Bones Society is running the country, because it is not doing so, except in a partial sense. You see, Yale University, while of mighty importance, is hardly alone in that picture, and Harvard predates it. Rhodes Scholars have a network which appears from long investigations, to exceed that of Skull & Bones by a substantial margin, and those Rhodes Scholars, as we saw last month, and shall see more of here, are controlled by The Pilgrims. Notice how Butler’s views, as president of The Pilgrims New York, would fit in quite well with those of the British Royals and their telegrams to the Pilgrims of America, and their incurable desire to return the world to feudal serfdom. Butler was also president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which has funded the Bilderberg meetings (American Opinion, December 1975, page 56). Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1835, where the Duke of Fife is the largest landowner. The Duke of Fife, as we saw last month, funded Cecil Rhodes and was a member of The Pilgrims.
THINGS SAID ABOUT FAMILY GROUPS
Before concentrating on individual Pilgrim Society members, let’s first take a look at some things which have been written about some of the assorted families that are represented in the organization. This includes fortunes which may no longer exist under a family domain, but which have been merged into The Pilgrims invisible network of holdings and trusts. Indications, being the iceberg’s tip, include trusteeships of libraries, universities, and memorial foundations named after great tycoons of monopolistic wealth. Certain notable individual representatives of the dynastic families during especially the latter half of the 19th century will be looked at. Since The Pilgrims created the Federal Reserve System, and had ancestors who were represented in the first and second United States Banks—British affiliated central banks; we’ll begin in the early part of the 19th century, and progress up to approximately the founding of The Pilgrims, just after 1900 (1902 and 1903). At that point we’ll start to consider some specific members, and things which they said, or had said about them. By this process we’ll gain added insight into what we must already realize (if you read the opener in this series) constitutes the secret Presidium of the intermarried super rich. Till further notice, all quotations come from “History of the Great American Fortunes” (1907) by Gustavus Myers, a highly competent archivist who evidently was unaware that the big rich he criticized, confederated themselves into a secret alliance to “gradually absorb the wealth of the world,” as Cecil Rhodes expressed it!
“The grand climax of the galaxy of American fortunes during the period from 1800 to 1831—the greatest of all the fortunes up to the beginning of the third decade of that century—was that of Girard. He built up what was looked up to as the gigantic fortune of about ten millions of dollars and far over-topped every other strainer for money except Astor, who survived him seventeen years, and whose wealth increased during that time to double the amount Girard left.” (page 74)
“During the British occupation of Philadelphia he was charged by the revolutionists with extreme double-dealing and duplicity in pretending to be a patriot, and taking the oath of allegiance to the colonies, while secretly trading with the British. None of his biographers deny this. While merchant after merchant was bankrupted from disruption of trade, Girard was incessantly making money. By 1780 he was again in the shipping trade, his vessels plying between American ports and New Orleans and San Domingo; not the least of his profits came from slave trading. From this time on his profits were colossal. His ships circled the world many times and each voyage brought him a fortune.” (page 76)
“By 1810 we see him ordering the Barings of London to invest in shares of the Bank of the United States half a million dollars which they held for him. When the charter expired, he was the principal creditor of that bank; and he bought, at a great bargain, the bank and the cashier’s house for $120,000. On May 12, 1812, he opened the Girard Bank, with a capital of $1,200,000, which he increased the following year by $100,000 more. His wealth was now overshadowingly great, his power immense. He was a veritable dictator in the realms of finance; an assiduous, repellent little man, with his devil’s eye, who rode roughshod over every obstacle in his path. His every movement bred fear; his veriest word could bring ruin to anyone who dared cross his purposes. The War of 1812 brought disaster to many a merchant, but Girard harvested fortune. He was remorseless in exacting the last cent due him.” (page 77)
“The re-establishment and enlarged sway of this bank were greatly due to his efforts and influence; he became its largest stockholder and one of its directors. No business institution in the first three decades of the nineteenth century exercised such a sinister and overshadowing influence as this chartered monopoly. The full tale of its bribery of politicians and newspaper editors, in order to perpetuate its great privileges and keep a hold upon public opinion, has never been set forth. But sufficient facts were brought out when, after years of agitation, Congress was forced to investigate and found that not a few of its own members for years had been on the payrolls of the bank.” (page 78)
“In order to get its charter renewed from time to time and retain its extraordinary special privileges, the United States Bank systematically debauched politics and such of the press as was venal; and when a critical time came as it did in 1832-1834, when the mass of the people sided with President Jackson in his aim to overthrow the bank, it instructed the whole press at its command to raise the cry of “the fearful consequences of revolution, anarchy and despotism,” which assuredly would ensue if Jackson were re-elected. To give one instance of how for years it manipulated the press—the Courier and Enquirer was a powerful New York newspaper. Its owners, Webb and Noah, suddenly deserted Jackson and began to denounce him. The reason was, as revealed by Congressional investigation, that they had borrowed $50,000 from the United States Bank which lost no time in giving them the alternative of paying up or supporting the bank.” (page 78)
“Girard’s share in the United States Bank brought him millions of dollars. With its control of deposits of government funds and by the provisions of its charter, this bank swayed the whole money marts of the United States and could manipulate them at will. It could advance or depress prices as it chose. Many times Girard with his fellow directors was severely denounced for the arbitrary power he wielded.” (page 78)
After Girard’s passing, John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) became the wealthiest American, and Myers has such things to say about him and his heirs (at least 7 Pilgrim Society members since 1902, probably more, and lieutenants in the organization) as—
“The founder of one of the greatest fortunes in the world…a more formidable system for the foundation and amplification of lasting fortunes has not existed. The fortunes incubated have grown into mighty powers of great national, and some of considerable international importance. The foremost of all American fortunes derived from land is the Astor fortune. Its bulk, in 1908, was estimated by some authorities at about $300,000,000. This, it was generally believed, is an underestimate. As long ago as 1889, when the population of New York City was much less than now, Thomas Shearman, a keen student of land conditions, placed the collective wealth of the Astors at $250,000,000. The stupendous magnitude of this fortune may at once be seen in its relation to the masses of the people…the colossal fortune of the Astor family.” (pages 64, 90-91, 94)
“In that wild country where the Government had an insufficient force of troops, and where the agents of the company went heavily armed, it was distinctly recognized as a fact, that no possible competitor’s men, or individual trapper, dare intrude. To do it was to invite the severest reprisals, not stopping short of outright murder. The American Fur Company overawed and dominated everything; it defied the Government’s representatives and acknowledged no authority superior to itself and no law other than what its own interests demanded. The exploitation that ensued was one of the most cruel and appalling that has ever taken place in any country. In justice to Astor it should be pointed out that it was not his American Fur Company which introduced the system of debauching Indians with liquor. More than a century before his time, the Hudson Bay Company, chartered in 1670, operating in western Canada, had long pursued that system.” (page 96)
“If there was any one serious crime at that time it was supplying the Indians with liquor. The Government fully recognized the baneful effects of debauching the Indians, and enacted strict laws with drastic penalties. Astor’s company brazenly violated this law, as well as all other laws conflicting with its profit interests. It smuggled in prodigious quantities of whisky. The traders ancient trick of getting the Indians drunk then swindling them of their furs and land was carried on by Astor on an unprecedented scale. To say that Astor knew nothing of what his agents were doing is a palliation not worthy of consideration; he was a man who knew and attended to even the pettiest details of his business.” (page 97)
“The liquor was dispatched by his orders direct by ship to New Orleans and thence up the Mississippi to St. Louis and other frontier points. The horrible effects of this traffic and the consequent spoliation were set forth by a number of Government officers. Colonel Snelling, commanding the garrison at Detroit, sent an indignant protest to James Barbour, Secretary of War, under date of August 23, 1825. “He who has the most whisky, generally carries off the most furs,” wrote Colonel Snelling, and then continued—
“The neighborhood of the trading houses where whisky is sold, presents a disgusting scene of drunkenness, debauchery and misery; it is the fruitful source of all our difficulties, and of nearly all the murders committed in the Indian country. I have daily opportunities of seeing the road strewed with the bodies of men, women and children, in the last stages of brutal intoxication.”
“Colonel Snelling added that during that year there had been delivered by contract to an agent of the American Fur Company, at Mackinac, 3,300 gallons of whisky and 2,500 gallons of high wines. This later liquor was preferred by the agents, he pointed out, as it could be “increased at pleasure.” Colonel Snelling went on—“I will venture to add that an inquiry into the manner in which the Indian trade is conducted, especially by the North American Fur Company, is a matter of no small importance to the tranquility of the borders.” (page 97)
“Not only, however, were the Indians made drunk with the express purpose of befuddling and swindling them, but in the very commission of this act, an enormous profit was made on the sale of this whisky, prices to $50 a gallon.” (page 99)
“What a climax of trading methods, first to debauch the Indians systematically in order to swindle them, and then make a large revenue on the rum that enabled the company to do it! It was by these means that Astor became possessed of large tracts of land in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the West. But the methods thus far enumerated were but the precursors of others. When the Indians were made maudlin drunk and bargained with for their furs, were they paid in money? The American Fur Company had another trick in reserve. Astor employed the cunning expedient of exchanging merchandise for furs. Large quantities of goods, made by underpaid child labor in England and America, were regularly shipped by him to the West.” (page 100)
“Reporting from St. Louis, October 24, 1831, in a communication to the Secretary of War, Thomas Forsyth gave a description of this phase of the American Fur Company’s dealings—
“In the autumn of every year (when the hunting season began) the trader carefully avoids giving credit to the Indians on many costly articles such as silver works, scarlet cloth, fine bridles, woolens, blankets, unless it be to an Indian whom he knows will pay all his debts. Traders always prefer giving credit on gunpowder, flints, lead, knives, tomahawks, hoes, domestic cottons etc., which they do at the rate of 400 percent.” (page 100)
“Nor were these the final injustices and infamies heaped upon the untutored aborigines. It was not enough that they should be pillaged of their possessions; that the rights guaranteed them by the solemn treaties of government should be blown aside like so much waste paper by the armed force of the American Fur Company; that whole tribes should be demoralized with rum and then defrauded; that shoddy merchandise, for which no market could be found elsewhere, should be imposed on them at such incredibly high prices that they were bound to be beggared.” (pages 100-101)
“These methods were not enough. Never were human beings so frightfully exploited as these ignorant savages of the West. Through the long winters they roamed the forests and the prairies, and assiduously hunted for furs which eventually were to clothe and adorn the aristocracy of America, Europe and Asia. When in the spring they came in with their spoil, they were with masterly cunning, made intoxicated and then robbed. Not merely robbed in being charged ruinous prices for merchandise, but robbed additionally in the weight of their furs. Forsyth relates that for every dollar in merchandise Astor exchanged for furs, the company received $1.50 in fur values, by the trader’s low trick of short weighing.” (page 101)
“In law the Indian was supposed to have certain rights, but Astor’s company not only ignored, but flouted them. When the Indians complained, what happened? Did the Government protect them? The Government, and especially the courts, were quick and generous in affording the greatest protection and the widest latitude to Astor’s company. But when the Indians resented the robberies and injustices to which they were subjected beyond bearing, they were murdered. They were murdered wantonly and in cold blood; and then urgent alarmist representations would be sent to Washington that the Indians were in a rebellious state, whereupon troops would be hurried forth to put them down in slaughter. In turn, goaded by an intense spirit of revenge, the Indians would resort to primitive force and waylay, rob and murder the white agents and traders.” (page 101)
“From 1815 to 1831 more than 150 traders were robbed and killed by Indians. Many of these were Astor’s men. But how many Indians were killed has never been known, nor apparently was there any solicitude as to whether the number was great. (page 101)
“What did Astor pay his men for engaging in this degrading and dangerous business? Is it not a terrifying commentary on the lengths to which men are forced to go in quest of a livelihood, and the benumbing effects on their sensibilities, that Astor should find a host of men ready to seduce the Indians into drunkenness, cheat and rob them, and all this only to perhaps get robbed and murdered in return? For eleven months in the year Astor’s men toiled arduously through forest and plain, risking sickness, the dangers of the wilderness and sudden death. They did not rob because it benefited them; it was what they were paid to do; and it was likewise expected of them that they should look upon the imminent chances of death as part of their contract.” (pages 101-102)
“For all this what was their pay? It was the trifling sum of $130 for the eleven months. But this was not paid in money. The hirelings who gave up their labor, and often their health and lives, for Astor were themselves robbed, or their heirs if they had any. Payment was always made in merchandise, which was sold at exhorbitant prices. Everything they needed they had to buy at Astor’s stores; by the time they had bought a year’s supplies, they not only had nothing coming to them, but they were often actually in debt to Astor.” (page 102)
“But Astor—how did he fare? His profits from the fur trade of the West were truly stupendous for that period. He might plead to the Government that the company was in a decaying state of poverty. These pleas deceived no one. It was characteristic of his habitual deceit that he should petition the Government for a duty on foreign furs on the markets. At this very time Astor held a virtual monopoly of fur trading in the United States.” (page 102)
“At the identical time that John Jacob Astor was persistently complaining that the company was making no money, his own son and partner, William B. Astor, was writing from New York on November 25, 1831, to the Secretary of War, that the company had a capital of about $1,000,000 and that, “You may estimate our annual returns at half a million dollars.” Not less than $500,000 annual revenues on a capital of $1,000,000! These were inconceivably large returns for the time; Thomas J. Dougherty, Indian Agent at Camp Leavenworth, estimated that from 1815 to 1830 the fur trade on the Missouri and its waters yielded returns amounting to $3,330,000 with a clear profit of $1,650,000. This was unquestionably a considerable underestimate.” (page 102)
“It is hardly necessary to say that Astor, as the responsible head and beneficiary of the American Fur Company, was never prosecuted for the numerous violations of both penal and civil laws invariably committed by his direction and for his benefit. With the millions that rolled in, he was not only able to command the services of the foremost lawyers in warding off the penalties of law, but to have as his paid retainers some of the most noted and powerful politicians of the day. Senator Benton of Missouri, a leading light in the Democratic party, was not only his legal representative in the West and fought his cases for him, but as United States Senator introduced in Congress measures which Astor practically drafted and the purport of which was to benefit Astor and Astor alone. Thus was witnessed a notorious violator of the law, invoking the law to enrich himself still further.” (page 103) Note—Senator William Benton (1949-1953) who became chairman of Encyclopedia Britannica in 1967 (Paul Hoffman and Elmo Roper, Pilgrims, directors of E.B.), was also a trustee of University of Chicago and held many other positions, was listed in the 1969 roster of The Pilgrims, never divulged that detail in Who’s Who, and may be a descendant of the Senator Benton mentioned by Myers who worked with Astor, below (note what appears to be a triangular shaped emblem on his stomach)—
“Pillaging in the West the rightful and legal domain and the possessions of a dozen Indian tribes, he, in the East, was causing public money to be turned over to his private treasury and using it as personal capital in his shipping enterprises.” (page 104)
“When it came to laws which, in the remotest degree, could be used or manipulated to swell profits or to buttress property, Astor and his class were untiring and vociferous in demanding their strict enforcement. Successfully ignoring laws objectionable to them, they, at the same time, insisted upon the passage and exact construction and severe enforcement of laws which were adjusted to their interests. Law breakers, on the one hand, they were law makers on the other. They virtually had the extraordinary power of choosing what laws they should observe and what they should not.” (page 105)
“Astor was allowed to pillage and plunder, cheat, rob and (by proxy) slaughter in the West, while in the East, that same Government extended to him, as well as to other shippers, the free use of money which came from the taxation of the whole people—a taxation always weighted upon the shoulders of the worker. This favored class voluntarily cheated the Government of nearly half of the sums advanced. From the foundation of the Government up to 1837, there were nine distinct commercial crises which brought terrible hardships to the wage workers. During all those years the Government was busy in letting the shippers dig into public funds and in being extremely generous to them when they failed to pay up. From 1789 to 1823 the Government lost more than $250,000,000 in duties, all of which sum represented what the shippers owed and did not pay.” (pages 105-106)
“Astor profited richly from his monopolies. His monopoly of furs in the West was a basis for the creation of other monopolies. China was a voracious and highly profitable market for furs. In exchange for the cargoes of these that he sent there, his ships would be loaded with teas and silks. These products he sold at exorbitant prices in New York. His profits from a single voyage sometimes reached $70,000. During the War of 1812-1815 tea rose to double its usual price. Astor was invariably lucky in that his ships escaped capture. At one period he was the only merchant with a cargo of tea in the market. He exacted, and was allowed to exact, his own price.” (page 106) Note—Myers must have been unaware of Astor’s Chinese opium dealings that started in 1816 because he doesn’t mention it so, the British weren’t interested in capturing or sinking vessels operated by an American collaborator who had probably been in league with the British before the war started.
“Astor was setting about making himself the richest and largest landowner in the country. His were not the most extensive land possessions in point of extent but in regard to value. He aimed at being a great city, not a great rural, landlord. It was estimated that his trade in furs and associated commerce brought him a clear annual revenue of about two million dollars. This estimate was palpably inadequate. Not only did he reap enormous profits from the fur trade, but also from banking privileges in which he was a conspicuous factor.” (page 106) Myers must have been referring principally to the Bank of the United States!
“It was on one of his visits to London that he first became possessed of the idea of founding an extraordinarily rich landed family. He admired the great land estates of the British Nobility.” (page 106) Note—Astor obviously had Crown connections in Britain, and after the turn of the next century, the Astors would be intermarried with the Windsors—British Royal Family. In fact, most of the Astors moved to estates in England, and from 1977 through 1983 Lord Astor, a direct descendant of British collaborator John Jacob Astor, director of our second central bank—became president of The Pilgrims of Great Britain! The photo of Allington Castle in England, page 176 of the scarce 2002 book mentioned last month, shows the American flag flying over the castle. However, the British flag is flying atop our flag! We are under secretive and extremely powerful British financial influence, to the point of controlling our entire foreign policy and leading us into wars sought after by the British Crown and its allied financiers!
“Neither was there any essential difference between Astor’s methods and those of the manufacturing capitalists of the North who remorselessly robbed Charles Goodyear of the benefits of his discovery of vulcanized rubber and who drove him, after protracted litigation, into insolvency, and caused him to die loaded down with worries and debts, a broken-down man, at age 60. As for that pretentious body of gentry who professed to spread enlightenment and who set themselves high and solemnly on a pinnacle as dispensers of knowledge and molders of public opinion—the book, periodical and newspaper publishers—their methods were as fraudulent as any that Astor ever used. They mercilessly robbed and knew it, while making the most hypocritical professions of lofty motives.” (page 109)
“In the wilderness of the West, Astor, operating through his agents, could debauch, rob and slay Indians with impunity. As he was virtually the governing body there, he could act in the most high-handed and forcible ways. In the East, however, where law prevailed, he had to have methods which bore no open trace of the brutal and sanguinary. He had to become the insidious and devious schemer, acting through sharp lawyers instead of by an armed force. Hence in his Eastern operations he made deception a science and used every instrument of cunning at his command. The result was precisely the same as in the West, except that the consequences were not so overt, and the perpetration could not be so easily distinguished. In the West, death marched step by step with Astor’s accumulating fortune; so did it in the East, but it was not open and bloody as in the fur country. The mortality accompanying Astor’s progress in New York was more lingering and agonizing ensuing from want, destitution, disease and starvation.” (page 111)
Pages 111-113, summary—in 1809 Astor started maneuvers to seize 51,012 acres in Putnam County, New York, upon which 700 families were settled. He paid $100,000 to launch the scheme, and by 1827 the legislature gave in and awarded him $500,000 to buy out the claim he conjured. Page 113, Myers commented—
“Thus can a considerable part of the Astor fortune be traced to Adolphus Phillips, son of Frederick, the partner, protector, and chief spoil sharer of Captain Burgess, sea pirate, and whose estate, the Phillips manor, had been obtained by bribing Fletcher, the Royal governor. While Astor gradually appropriated vast tracts of land in Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa and other parts of the West, and levied his toll on one-third of Putnam County, it was in New York City that he concentrated the great bulk of his real estate speculations. To buy steadily on the scale that he did required a constant revenue. This revenue, as we have seen, came from his fur trading methods and activities and the profits and privileges of his shipping. But there were factors. One of these was the banking privilege—a privilege so ordained by law that it was the most powerful and insidious suction for sapping the wealth created by the toil of the producers, and for enriching its owners at a most appalling sacrifice to the working and agricultural classes.” Note—Myers later had more to say about Astor’s banking activities, but didn’t mention his directorship in the second Bank of the U.S., 1816-1836, beginning in the same year the British granted him an opium concession in China. Astor was also buying land with unbacked paper “notes” issued by the Bank of the U.S., until President Jackson stopped the fraud by requiring that any land bought, had to be paid for in gold or silver. That’s why the bankers and their British connection flooded the country with political cartoons falsely depicting Jackson as a tyrant!
“At that time (1805) the configuration of Manhattan Island was such that it was marked by ponds, streams and marshes, while the marginal lines of the Hudson River and the East River extended much further inland than now. When an individual got what was called a water grant, it meant land under shallow water, where he had the right to build bulk-heads and wharves and to fill in and make solid ground. Out of these water grants was created property now worth hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars. These water front grants extended for thirty miles around New York city.” (page 115 & 117)
“Astor was remarkably secretive and dissembling, and never revealed his plans to anyone. What were the intrinsic circumstances of the means by which he bought land, now worth hundreds of millions of dollars? For once, we get a gleam of the truth, in the “popular writer’s” account when he says—
“John Jacob Astor’s record is constantly crossed by embarrassed families, prodigal sons, mortgages and foreclosure sales. Many of the victims of his foresight were those highest in church and state. He thus acquired for $75,000 one-half of Governor George Clinton’s splendid Greenwich country place (in the old Greenwich village on the west side of Manhattan island). After the Governor’s death, he kept persistently at the heirs, lent them money and acquired additional slices of the family property. Nearly two-thirds of the Clinton farm is now held by Astor’s descendants, and is covered by scores of business buildings, from which is derived an annual income estimated at $500,000.” (page 119)
“With his incessant inflow of surplus wealth, Astor was in position where on the instant he could take advantage of the difficulties of less rich men and take over to himself their property. A large amount of Astor’s money was invested in mortgages. In times of periodic financial and industrial distress, the mortgagors were driven to extremities and could no longer keep up their payments. These were the times that Astor waited for, and it was in such times that he stepped in and possessed himself, at comparatively small expense, of large additional tracts of land.” (page 120)
“It was in this way that he became the owner of what was then the Cosine farm, extending on Broadway from Fifty-Third to Fifty-Seventh streets and westward to the Hudson River. This property, which he got for $23,000 by foreclosing a mortgage, is now in the very heart of the city, filled with many business, and every variety of residential buildings, and is rated as worth $10,000,000. By the same means he acquired ownership of the Eden farm in the same vicinity, coursing along Broadway north from Forty-Second Street and over to the Hudson River. This farm lay under pledges for debt and attachments for loans. Suddenly Astor turned up with interest in an outstanding mortgage, and for a total payment of $25,000 obtained a sweep of property now covered densely with huge hotels, theatres, office buildings, stores, and long vistas of residences and tenements—a property worth at the very least $30,000,000.” (page 120)
“It is necessary to digress from the narrative of Astor’s land transactions and advert to his banking activities, for it was by reason of these that he was enabled so successfully to pursue his career of wealth gathering. The circumstances as to the origin of certain powerful banks in which he and other landholders and traders were large stockholders, the methods and powers of those banks, and their effect upon the great body of the people, are component parts of the analytic account of his operations. Not a single one of Astor’s biographers has mentioned his banking connections. They were closely intertwined with his trade, on the one hand, and with his land acquisitions, on the other.” (pages 120-121)
“The most innocent of their great privileges was that of playing fast and loose with the money confidingly entrusted to their care by a swarm of depositors who either worked for it, or often stole it; bankers, like pawnbrokers, ask no questions. The most remarkable of their vested powers was that of manufacturing money. The industrial manufacturer could not make goods unless he had the plant, the raw material and the labor. But the banker, somewhat like the fabled alchemists, could transmute airy nothing into bank note money, and then by law, force its acceptance. The lone trader or landholder unsupported by a partnership with law could not fabricate money. But let trader and landholder band in a company, incorporate, then persuade, wheedle, or bribe a certain entity called a legislature to grant them a certain bit of paper styled a charter, and lo! They were instantly transformed into money manufacturers.” (page 123)
“The simple mandate of law was sufficient authorization for them to prey upon the whole world outside their charmed circle. With this scrap of paper they could go forth on the highways of commerce and over the farms and drag in, by the devious, absorbent processes of the banking system, a great part of the wealth created by the actual producers. As it was with taxation, so was it with the burdens of this system; they fell largely upon the worker. When the businessman and the landowner were compelled to pay exorbitant rates of interest they had to meet the demands. What these classes really did was to throw the whole of these extra impositions upon the working class in the form of increased prices and augmented rents.” (page 123)
“But how were these State or Government authorizations, called charters, to be obtained? Did not the Federal Constitution prohibit states from giving the right to banks to issue money? Were not private money factories specifically barred by that clause of the Constitution which declared that no State “shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold or silver a tender in payment of debts?” Here again the power of class domination of Government came into compelling effect. The onward sweep of the trading class was not to be balked by such a trifling obstacle as a Constitutional provision. The trading class demanded State created banks with power of issuing money; and as the courts have invariably responded to the interests and decrees of the dominant class, a decision was quickly forthcoming in this case to the effect that “bills of credit” were not meant to cover banknotes. This was a new and surprising construction; but judicial decision and precedent made it virtually law. The legislatures were approachable; members who were put there by the rich families needed only the word as to how they should vote.” (pages 123-124)
“By this process those in control of the banks had, with no expenditure, possessed themselves of a considerable part of the resources of the country and had made the worker yield up three times as much of the produce of his labor as he had to give before the system was started. The large amount of paper money, without any basis of value whatever, was put out at a heavy rate of interest. When the merchant paid his interest, he charged it up as extra cost on his wares; and when the worker came to buy these wares which he or some fellow worker had made, he was charged a high price which included three things all thrown upon him—rent, interest and profit. The banks directly sucked in a large portion of these three factors. So thoroughly did the banks control legislation that they were not content with the power of issuing spurious paper money; they demanded, and got through, an act exempting bank stock from taxation. Thus year after year this system went on, beggaring great numbers of people, enriching the owners of the banks and virtually giving them a life and death power over the worker, the farmer, and the struggling small business man alike. “The great profits of the banks,” reported a New York Senate Committee on banks and insurance in 1834, “arise from their issues. It is this privilege which enables them, in fact, to coin money, to substitute their evidences of debt for a metallic currency and to loan more than their actual capitals.” (pages 130-131) Note—see what happens when gold and silver are substituted by unbacked paper—added prosperity for those who issue the paper, hardship for the rest of society.
“We arrive at the panic of 1837, the time when Astor, profiting from misfortune on every side, vastly increased his wealth. No sooner had the panic of 1837 commenced, than the banks refused to pay out any money, other than their worthless notes. For thirty-three years they had not only enjoyed immense privileges, but they had used the powers of Government to insure themselves a monopoly of the business of manufacturing money. In 1804 the legislature of New York state passed an extraordinary law called the restraining act. This prohibited, under severe penalties, all associations and individuals not only from issuing notes, but from “receiving deposits or transacting any other business which incorporated banks may do or transact.” Thus the law not only legitimized the manufacture of worthless money, but guaranteed a few banks a monopoly of that manufacture. Another restraining act was passed in 1818. The banks were invested with the sovereign privilege of depreciating the currency at their discretion, and were authorized to levy an annual tax upon the country, equivalent to the interest on $200,000,000 of deposits.” (page 133)
“On top of these acts the legislature passed various acts compelling the public authorities in New York City to deposit public money with the Manhattan Company. This company, expressly chartered to supply pure water to the city of New York, utterly failed to do so; at one stage the city tried to have its charter revoked on the ground of failure to carry out its chartered function, but the courts decided in the company’s favor. At the outbreak of the panic of 1837, the New York banks held more than $5,500,000 of public money. When called upon to pay only about a million of that sum, they refused. But far worse was the experience of the general public. When they frantically besieged the banks for their money, the bank officials filled the banks with heavily armed guards and plug-uglies with orders to fire on the crowd in case a rush was attempted.” (page 133) note—the Manhattan Company became the Bank of Manhattan, which merged into Chase Manhattan Bank.
“In every State conditions were the same. In May 1837, no fewer than eight hundred banks in the United States suspended payment, refusing a single dollar to the Government whose deposits of $30,000,000 they held, and to the people in general who held $120,000,000 of their notes. No specie whatever was in circulation. The country was deluged with small notes, colloquially termed shinplasters. Of every form and every denomination from the alleged value of five cents to five dollars, they were issued by every business or corporation for the purpose of paying them off as wages to their employees. The worker was forced to take them for his labor or starve. The shinplasters were so badly printed that it was not hard to counterfeit them. The counterfeiting of them quickly became a regular business; immense quantities of the stuff were issued. The worker never knew whether the bills paid him for his work were genuine or counterfeit, although essentially there was not any difference in basic value between the two.” (page 134) note—what we have today, the Federal Reserve note, is another “shinplaster,” just less chaotic, since they all issue from one source; and we have no circulating specie (gold and silver coins; imagine how these paper money creators must fear recent goings-on in Mexico!)
“Now the storm broke. Everywhere was impoverishment, ruination and beggary. Every bank official in New York City was subject to arrest for the most serious frauds and other crimes, but the authorities took no action. So complete was the dominance of the banks over Government that they hurriedly got the legislature to pass an act practically authorizing a suspension of specie payments. The consequences were appalling. “Thousands of manufacturing, mercantile, and other useful establishments in the United States,” reported a New York Senate committee, “have been paralyzed by the existing crisis. In all our great cities numerous individuals have suddenly been reduced, with their families, to beggary.” (page 134)
“Although undeniably great frauds had been committed by the banking class, not a single one of that class went to jail. After the panic of 1837 Astor’s wealth multiplied to an enormous extent. Once having fastened his hold upon the land, Astor never sold it.” (pages 137-139)
“If a newspaper dared advocate any issue not approved by vested interests, it at once felt the resentment of that class in the withdrawal of advertisements and of those privileges which banks could use or abuse with such ruinous effect. Both of the political parties were under the domination of wealth; not, to be sure, openly so, but insidiously.” (page 144)
“Astor becomes America’s richest man. It can at once be seen in what transcendent degree Astor’s wealth towered far above that of every other rich man in the United States. Statistics issued in 1844 of manufactures in the United States showed a total gross amount of $307,196,844 invested. Astor’s wealth, then, was one-fifteenth of the whole amount invested throughout the territory of the United States.” (pages 145-147)
“The important point which here obtrudes itself is that in every case, without an exception, the wealth amassed by fraud was used in turn to put through more frauds, and that the net accumulation of these successive frauds is seen in the great private fortunes of today.” (page 154) note—that is exactly the point of reviewing some details of the Astor, and other fortunes we will look briefly at; for those fortunes all came together in league with the British Crown and their bankers, the Rothschilds, Warburgs, Kleinworts and others, in the founding of The Pilgrims! This is a secret group of monopolists intent on world monopoly; hence, statements such as those of Mr. Cates of The Pilgrims that we need to get rid of all national borders!
“William B. Astor was the owner in 1875, of more than seven hundred buildings, not to mention the many unimproved tracts of land he held. In 1853 William Astor married one of the Schermerhorn family. The Schermerhorns were powerful New York City landholders; and if not quite on the same pinnacle in point of wealth as the Astors, were at any rate very rich. The immensely valuable areas of land then held by the Schermerhorns were obtained by precisely the same means that the Astors, Rhinelanders and other conspicuous land families. The settled policy, from the start, of the rich men and women, was to marry within their class. The result was obviously to increase and centralize still greater wealth in the ownership of a few families. In estimating, therefore, the collective wealth of the Astors, as in fact of all the great fortunes, the measure should not be merely the possessions of one family, but should embrace the combined wealth of interrelated rich families. From fraud and force the Astor fortune came. This Law, this extraordinary code of print which governs us, has been and is nothing more or less, it is evident, than so many statutes to guarantee the retention of the proceeds of fraud and theft, if the piracy were committed in a sufficiently large and impressive way.” (pages 163-164) note—the intermarriage phenomenon is central to The Pilgrims wealth network. One member may represent several dozen members of an extended family group which, in turn, is intermarried with other groups who have representation in the Society. Myers believed that large-scale piracies were protected; in reality, that would only be true in the case of members, or relations of members. No wonder many members of The Pilgrims have been senior partners of Wall Street, Washington and London law firms, and have our Supreme Court Justices over to address them in London (without public knowledge!)
“In 1875 William Astor builds a railroad in Florida; and as a gift of appreciation, so it is told, the Florida legislature presents him with 80,000 acres of land. It is wholly probably, if the underlying circumstances were known, that it would be found that an influence more material than a simple burst of gratitude prompted this gift. Where did the money come from with which this railroad was built? And what was the source of other immense funds which were invested in railroads, banks, industrial enterprises, in buying more land and in mortgages—in many forms of ownership? The millions in rents which flowed into the Astor’s treasury every year came literally from the sweat, labor, misery and murder of a host of men, women and children who were never chronicled, and who went to their death in eternal obscurity.” (page 165)
“The direct sacrifice of human life, however, was merely one substratum of the Astor fortune. It is very likely, if the truth were fully known, that the stupendous sums in total that the Astors cheated in taxation, would have been more than enough to have constructed a whole group of railroads, or to have bought up whole sections of outlying parts of the city, or to have built dozens of palaces. Incessantly they derived immense rentals from their constantly expanding estate, and just as persistently they perjured themselves, and defrauded the city, state and nation of taxes. It was not often that the facts were disclosed; obviously the city or state officials, with whom the rich acted in collusion, tried their best to conceal them.” (page 166) note—this speaks of great concealment of wealth, and desire on the part of Pilgrim Society family groups to have their wealth concealed from public knowledge.
“William Waldorf Astor gave up his American citizenship in 1899, and became a British subject. He bought the Cliveden Estate at Bucks, England, the old seat of the Duke of Westminster, the richest landlord in England. Thenceforth Astor scorned his native land, and never even took the trouble to look at property which yielded him so great a revenue. This absentee landlord for whom, it was estimated, an immense number of men, women and children directly toiled paying him rent, surrounded himself in England with lofty feudal exclusiveness. He became a molder of public opinion; he owned a newspaper and a magazine in London. He attained his ambition of holding a title on December 31, 1915, King George V created him a Viscount.” (page 169) In 1977-1983 Lord Astor, of this family of British collaborators of more than two centuries standing, was president of The Pilgrims London.
“They plundered right and left. The fortune held by the Astors, so the facts showed, represented a succession of piracies and exploitation. Very curious, therefore, it was to note that Astors of a later time avowed themselves most solicitous reformers and were members of pretentious, self-constituted committees composed of the “best citizens,” the object of which was to purge New York City of corruption. The very men who cheated cities, states and nation out of enormous sums in taxation; who bribed, through their retainers, legislatures, common councils and executive and administrative officials; who corruptly put judges on the bench; who made Government simply an auxiliary to their designs; who exacted heavy tribute from the people in a thousand ways; who forced their employees to work for precarious wages and who bitterly fought every movement for the betterment of the working classes—these were the men who made up these so-called “reform” committees.” (page 171)
“No one but the Astors themselves knows what are their holdings in bonds and stocks of every description.” (page 173)
“When Astor was debauching and swindling Indian tribes, he succeeded by exerting his power at Washington, in causing Government agents standing in his way to be dismissed from office.” (page 263)
So we conclude the review of Myers remarks on the Astors. Page 184 finds him commenting—
“How great the wealth of this family was may be judged from the fact that one of the Rhinelanders—William—left an estate valued at $50,000,000 in 1907.” Note—Philip Rhinelander turned up as a member of The Pilgrims (Congressional Record, August 20, 1940)
Moving to page 190 he starts in on Chicago tycoon Marshall Field (not being aware of his Pilgrim Society membership)—
“In close similarity to the start of the Astors and many other founders of great land fortunes, commerce was the original means by which Marshall Field obtained the money which he invested in land. Consecutively came a ramification of other revenue-producing properties. Once in motion, the process worked in the same interconnected way as it did in the amassing of contemporary large fortunes. It may be literally compared to hundreds of golden streams flowing from as many sources to one central point. From land, business, railroads, street railways, public utility and industrial corporations—from these and many other channels, prodigious profits kept, and still keep, pouring in ceaselessly. In turn, these formed ever newer and widening distributing radii of investments.”
Page 191 has Myers mentioning how prime land in downtown Chicago was worth up to $5,000,000 an acre in 1894; land which Marshall Field bought years earlier “for a few hundred dollars.” How many acres he owned we do not know from Myers. Page 193 Myers mentioned that Field benefited from “the labor of millions of human beings.” From pages 195-196—
“Field was one of the biggest dry goods manufacturers in the world. He owned, a writer set forth, scores of enormous factories in England, Ireland and Scotland. “The provinces of France,” this eulogist went on, “are dotted with his mills. The clatter of the Marshall Field looms is heard in Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria and Russia. Nor is the Orient neglected by this master. Plodding Chinese and the skilled Japs are numbered by the thousands on the payroll of the Chicago merchant and manufacturer. On the other side of the equator are vast woolen mills in Australia, and the chain extends to South America, with factories in Brazil and in other of our neighboring republics.” In all these factories the labor of children was harshly exploited; in all of them the workers were 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. How extraordinarily profitable this business of Marshall Field & Company was may be seen in the fact that its shares were worth $1,000 each.” Note—here we see the principles of The Pilgrim Society—to “absorb the wealth of the world;” to “seize wealth;” to be “Here And Everywhere” in investments, holdings and influence, while claiming to be in the business of “promoting the sentiment of brotherhood among the nations.” Marshall Field (below, 1835-1906) was only one member!
“From sources described came the money with which Field became a large landowner. Also, he became an industrial monarch. He owned stocks and bonds in about one hundred and fifty corporations, and he was a director of many. He owned many millions of bonds and stocks in railroads. The history of many of them reeked with thefts of public and private money; corruption of common councils, of legislatures, Congress and of administrative officials; land grabbing, fraud, illegal transactions, violence and oppression not only of their immediate workers, but of the entire population. He owned Baltimore & Ohio stock; Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe; Chicago & Northwestern, and tens of millions more of the stock or bonds of fifteen other railroads. He also owned an immense assortment of the stocks of a large number of trusts. The affairs of these trusts have been shown in court, at some time or other, as overflowing with fraud, the most glaring oppressions, and violations of law.” (page 196) Typical Pilgrim Society money manipulator!
“He had stock of the Corn Products Company (the Glucose Trust); Biscuit Trust; American Tin Can Company (Tin Can Trust); and large amounts of stock in other trusts. As an example of the methods of trusts in which Field owned stock, we shall refer to several of the mass of facts contained in a Government investigation of the Harvester trust. The International Harvester Company had been organized in 1902 by the consolidation of five principal manufacturers of harvesting machines. It dominated the industry “by monopolistic combination, unfair competitive methods and superior command of capital.” The United States Steel Corporation—the Steel trust—of which Field was a director is dealt with elsewhere in this book. All of his stocks and bonds Field owned outright. A very considerable part of these were securities of Chicago surface and elevated railway, gas, electric light and telephone companies in the securing of the franchises of some of which corruption had been notorious.” (pages 196-197)
Pages 199-201 has Myers detailing Field’s involvement with the Pullman Company of which he was a director (railroad car manufacturer)—
“The “model town,” as was the case with imitative towns, proved to be a cunning device with two barbs. It militated to hold workers to their jobs in a state of quasi-serfdom, and it gave the company additional avenues of exploiting its workers beyond the usual limits. It was one of the forerunners of an incoming feudalistic sway, without the advantages to the wage worker under medieval feudalism. The cost of gas to the Pullman Company was thirty-three cents a thousand feet, every worker living in the town of Pullman had to pay at the rate of $2.25 a thousand feet. If he desired to retain his job he could not avoid payment; the company owned the exclusive supply of gas and was the exclusive landlord. The company had him in a clamp from which he could not escape. The workers were housed in ugly little pens. For each of these $18 rent a month was charged. The city of Chicago, the officials of which were but the manikins or hirelings of the industrial magnates, generously supplied the Pullman Company with water at 4 cents a thousand gallons. For this same water the company charged its employees ten cents a thousand gallons. By this plan the company obtained its water supply for nothing.”
“For having shutters on the houses the workers were taxed fifty cents a month. These are some specimens of the company’s many devious instrumentalities for enchaining and plundering its thousands of employees. In the panic year of 1893 the Pullman Company reduced wages one fourth, yet the cost of rent, water, gas—of all fundamental necessities—remained the same. This reduction, in a large number of cases, was equivalent to forcing these workers to yield up their labors for nothing. Numerous witnesses testified before the special commission appointed later by President Cleveland, that at times their bi-weekly checks ran variously from four cents to one dollar. The company could not produce evidence to disprove this. The sums represented the company’s indebtedness to them for their labor, after the company deducted rent and other charges. Such manifold robberies aroused the bitterest resentment among the company’s employees, since especially it was a matter of authentic knowledge, disclosed by the company’s own reports, that the Pullman factories were making enormous profits. At this time, the Pullman workers were $70,000 in arrears to the company for rent alone.”
“Finally plucking up courage—for it required a high degree of moral bravery to subject themselves and their families to the further want inevitably ensuing from a strike—the workers of the Pullman Company demanded a restoration of the old scale of wages. An arrogant refusal led to the declaration of a strike on May 11, 1894. This strike, and the greater strike following, were termed by Carroll Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, as “probably the most expensive and far reaching labor controversy of this generation.” The American Railway Union, composed of the various grades of workers on a large number of railroads, declared a general strike under the leadership of Eugene Debs.”
“The strike would perhaps have been successful had it not been that the entire powers of the National Government, and those of the States affected, were used roughshod to crush this uprising. The whole newspaper press, with rare exceptions, spread the most glaring falsehoods about the strike and its management. Debs was venomously assailed in vituperation that has little equal. To put the strikers in the attitude of sowing violence, the railroad corporations deliberately instigated the burning of their own cars (they were worn-out freight cars), and everywhere had thugs and roughs as its emissaries to preach and provoke violence. The object was threefold—to throw the onus upon the strikers of being a lawless body; to give the newspapers an opportunity of inveighing with terrific effect against the strikers, and to call upon the Government for armed troops to shoot down, overawe, or in other ways thwart the strikers.”
“Government was, in reality, directed by the railroad and other corporations. United States judges, at the behest of the railroad companies (which had caused them to be appointed to the bench), issued extraordinary, unprecedented injunctions against the strikers. These injunctions even prevented the strikers from persuading fellow employees to quit work. Utterly without any basis in law were these injunctions. But the injunctions were enforced. Debs and his comrades were convicted of contempt of court and, without jury trial, imprisoned at a critical juncture of the strike. What was their offense? Nothing more than seeking to induce other workers to take up the cause of their striking fellow workers. The judges constituted themselves as prosecuting attorney, judge and jury. Never had such high-handed judicial usurpation been witnessed. As a concluding stroke, President Cleveland ordered a detachment of the army to Chicago. That the company’s profits were great at the identical time the workers were curtailed to a starvation basis, there can be no doubt.” Note—President Cleveland sided with the New York bankers against silver as money, not surprising since the silver manipulation originates from within the Pilgrim Society, and does not enter into that organization from any other source. Page 208, Myers points out that Pullman Company porters and conductors were allowed only four (4) hours sleep per night, and were severely penalized if caught sleeping on duty! Such is The Pilgrims concept of “promoting brotherhood!” The Fields intermarried with the Vanderbilts and with the Phippses (Pilgrim Society, Carnegie Steel fortune.)
MYERS ON THE VANDERBILTS
“Even the huge Astor fortune, so long far outranking all competitors, lost its exceptional distinction and ceased being the sole, unrivalled standard of immense wealth. Nearly a century of fraud was behind the Astor fortune. The greater part of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s wealth was massed together in his last fifteen years. This was the amazing, unparalleled feature to his generation. Within fifteen brief years he possessed himself of more than $90,000,000. His wealth came rushing in at the rate of $6,000,000 a year. Such an accomplishment may not impress the people of these years, familiar as they are with the ease with which John D. Rockefeller swept in fabulous annual revenues. With his vaster annual income Rockefeller could look back and smile with superior disdain at the commotion caused by the contemplation of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s $6,000,000.” (page 273)
“Each period to itself, however. Cornelius Vanderbilt was the golden luminary of his time, a magnate of such combined, far-reaching wealth and power as the United States had never known. Wealth was the real power. None knew or boasted of this more than old Vanderbilt when, with advancing age, he became more arrogant and less inclined to smooth down the storms he provoked by his contemptuous flings at the public. When threatened by competitors, or occasionally by public officials, with the invocation of the law, he habitually sneered at them and vaunted his defiance. In terse sentences, interspersed with profanity, he proclaimed the fact that money was law; that it could buy either laws or immunity from the law.” (page 274)
“Since wealth meant power, both economic and political, it is not difficult to estimate Vanderbilt’s supreme place in his day. Far below him, in point of possessions, stretched the 50,000,000 individuals who made up the nation’s population. Nearly 10,000,000 were wage laborers, , and of the 10,000,000 fully 500,000 were child laborers. The usual weekly pay ran from $12 to $20 a week. More than 7,500,000 plowed and harvested the farms of the country; comparatively few of them could claim a decent living, and a large proportion were in debt. How immeasurably puny they all seemed beside Vanderbilt! He beheld a multitude of many millions struggling fiercely for the dollar that meant livelihood; those bits of metal or paper which commanded the necessities of life; the antidote of grim poverty and the guarantees of good living; which dictated the services, honorable or often dishonorable, of men, women and children. Now by these tokens, he had securely 105,000,000 of these bits of metal or wealth in some form equivalent to them. Millions of people had none of these dollars; the hundreds of thousands had a few; the thousands had hundreds of thousands; they few had millions. He had more than any. He was the founder of a dynasty of wealth.” (page 274) Vanderbilt (below)—
“From $105,000,000 bequeathed at his death, the Vanderbilt fortune has grown until at its climax it reached hundreds of millions of dollars. In 1889 Shearman placed the wealth of Cornelius and William K. Vanderbilt, grandsons of the first Cornelius, at $100,000,000 each. Adding the fortunes of the various other members of the Vanderbilt family, the Vanderbilts then possessed about $300,000,000. The incidental mention of such a mass of money conveys no adequate conception of the power of this family. Under the Vanderbilts direct domination in 1877 were 21,000 miles of railroad lines, the ownership of which was embodied in $600,000,000 in stocks and $700,000,000 in bonds. One member alone, William K. Vanderbilt, was a director of seventy-three transportation and industrial corporations. In the vicissitudes of industry there have been some striking changes in thirty years. But although not holding the singularly distinctive position in wealth the Vanderbilts once did, yet they, as a family, are still masters of abundant riches.” (page 275)
“A reported submitted in February 1931 to the House of Representatives by its Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce listed the Vanderbilts as one of fifteen major groups which controlled 210,000 miles, or nearly 85 per cent of the railway mileage in America. The report showed the Vanderbilt family was the largest holder of railway stocks, having 589,000 shares of common and preferred stocks in five important railways. But inasmuch as this report dealt wholly with voting power control, it did not include the amounts in bonds also owned. Four members of the Vanderbilt family, in 1936, held a total of 76 directorships in railroad corporations. The present Vanderbilt power in other fields was also shown by the fact that one of the Vanderbilts was a director of powerful New York City banks—the Chase National and the Central Hanover Bank & Trust Company; another Vanderbilt was a director of the First National Bank of the same city, and of the Pullman Company; a third was on the directorship of the Western Union Telegraph Company. All four Vanderbilts were directors of an assortment of other corporations. Manifestly the Vanderbilts as a family have held on to their securities.” (page 275)
On page 306 Myers described the outcome of a struggle between Vanderbilt and the Astors for control of the New York Central Railroad—
“Rather than lose all, they preferred to choose him as their captain; his was the sort of ability which they could not overcome and to which they must attach themselves. On November 12, 1867, they surrendered unreservedly. Vanderbilt now installed his own subservient board of directors, and proceeded to put through a fresh program of plunder beside which all his previous schemes were comparatively insignificant.”
Page 312 has Myers describing the outcome of Vanderbilt bribing the New York state legislature in 1868-1869—
“By this coup Vanderbilt doubled his previous wealth. Scarcely had the mercantile interests recovered from their utter bewilderment of being routed than Vanderbilt, flushed with triumph, swept more railroads into his inventory of possessions. His process of acquisition was now working with almost automatic ease. First, as we have narrated, he extorted millions of dollars in blackmail. With these millions he manipulated into his control, one railroad after another, amid an onslaught of bribery and glaring violations of laws. Each new million he seized was an additional resource by which he could bribe and manipulate—progressively his power advanced; and it became ridiculously easier to get possession of more and more property. His very name became a terror to those of lesser capital, and the mere threat of pitting his enormous wealth against competitors whom he sought to destroy was generally a sufficient warrant for their surrender. After his consummation of the $44,000,000 theft in 1869 there was little withstanding of him. This sum, immense, and in fact of almost inconceivable power in that day, was enough of itself, independent of Vanderbilt’s other wealth, to force through almost any plan involving seizing competing property.”
“His chief instrument during all those years was a general utility lawyer, Chauncey M. Depew, whose specialty was to impress the public by grandiloquent exhibitions of mellifluent spread-eagle oratory, while bringing the “proper arguments” to bear upon legislators and other public officials. Every one who could in any way be used, or whose influence required subsidizing was, in the phrase of the day, “taken care of.” Great sums of money were distributed outright in bribes in the legislatures by lobbyists in Vanderbilt’s pay. Supplementing this, an even more insidious system of bribery was carried on. Free passes for railroad travel were lavishly distributed; no politician was ever refused; newspaper and magazine editors, writers and reporters were always supplied with free transportation for the asking, thus insuring to a great measure their good will, and putting them under obligations not to criticize or expose plundering schemes or individuals. It was mainly by means of the free pass system that Depew, acting for the Vanderbilts, secured not only a general immunity from newspaper criticism, but continued to have himself and them portrayed in luridly favorable lights. Depending upon the newspapers for its sources of information, the public was constantly deceived and blinded, either by the suppression of certain news, or by its being tampered with and grossly colored.” (page 323)
Chauncey M. Depew was a founding member of The Pilgrims in London on July 24, 1902. Another Vanderbilt attorney who also worked for the Rockefellers, Lindsay Russell, was another founder. According to the 1897-1942 Who Was Who, page 316, Depew was chairman of the New York Central Railroad; director, Western Union Telegraph Company; West Shore Railroad; Canada Southern Railway; C. & N.W. Railway Company; C., Saint Paul, M. & O. Railway Company; C., C., C. & Saint Louis Railway Company; “and numerous other railway, banking and other corporations.” Depew was a delegate to every Republican National Convention from 1888-1924 and was a United States Senator, 1899-1905 and 1905-1911.
“This Depew continued as the representative of the Vanderbilt family for nearly half a century. At one time he was boomed for the nomination for President of the United States, and in 1905 when the Vanderbilt family decided to have a direct representative in the United States Senate, they ordered the New York State legislature, which they practically owned, to elect him to that body. Depew had long been an advisory party to the financial mauradings carried on by the Equitable Life Assurance Society. It shows anew how the magnates were able to use intermediaries to do their underground work for them, and to put those intermediaries into the highest official positions in the country. This fact alone was responsible for their elevation to such bodies as the United States Senate, the President’s Cabinet and the courts.” (pages 323-324)
“After having bribed legislatures to legalize his enormous issue of watered stock, what was Vanderbilt’s next move? The usual fraudulent one of securing exemption from taxation. He and other railroad owners sneaked through law after law by which their issues of stock were made non-taxable. Vanderbilt loomed up the richest magnate in the United States. What mattered to him that his fortune was begot in blackmail and extortion, bribery and theft? (page 324)
“In the years following his father’s death, William H. Vanderbilt found no difficulty in adding more extended railroad lines to his properties, and in increasing his wealth at tens of millions of dollars at a leap. The impact of his vast fortune was well-nigh resistless. Commanding both financial and political power, his money and resources were used with destructive effect against every competitor standing in his way. If he could not coerce the owners of a railroad to sell to him at his price, he at once brought into action the wrecking tactics his father so successfully used.” (page 340)
Pages 341-342, Myers revealed Vanderbilt’s financial agent was J.P. Morgan, and some of Vanderbilt’s business associates were John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, Darius Mills (father of a Treasury Secretary) and William C. Whitney (Standard Oil). Both Rockefellers and Whitney were members of The Pilgrims, as was Vanderbilt’s son, and Mills was probably another member. As chronicled in many accounts, it was the Vanderbilt rebates to Standard Oil which helped the Rockefellers wipe out their competition in the oil business (except for the Mellon controlled Gulf Oil which came later and strong enough to hold its own along with the likes of Royal Dutch Petroleum and British Petroleum).
“Since his father’s death William H. Vanderbilt added fully $100,000,000 to his wealth, all within a short period. It had taken Commodore Vanderbilt more than thirty years to establish the fortune of $105,000,000 he left. With greater population and greater resources to prey upon, William H. Vanderbilt almost doubled the amount in seven years. In January 1883 he confided that he was worth $194,000,000. “I am the richest man in the world.” (page 344) William H. Vanderbilt (below)—
Pages 345-346 Myers describes William H. Vanderbilt’s passing on December 8, 1885—
“The passing away of the greatest of men could not have received a tithe of the excitement caused by Vanderbilt’s death. The newspaper offices hotly issued page after page of description, not without sufficient reason. For he, although untitled and vested with no official power, was in actuality an autocrat; dictatorship by money bags was an established fact; and while the man died, his corporate wealth, the real director and center of government functions, survived unimpaired. He had abundantly proved his autocracy. Law after law had he violated; like his father he had intimidated, had brought about the passage of laws he wanted, ignored such as were unsuited to his interests, and decreed his own rules and codes. Progressively bolder had the money kings become in coming out into the open in the directing of Government. Long had they prudently skulked behind forms, devices and shams; they operated secretly through tools in office, while virtuously disclaiming any insidious connection with politics.”
“But no observer took this pretence seriously. James Bryce, fresh from England, delving into the complexities and incongruities of American politics at this time, wrote that “these railway kings are among the greatest men in America. They have more power to make their will prevail than anyone in political life except the President or the Speaker who after all, hold theirs for only four years and two years, while the railroad monarch holds his for life.” He further related how when a railroad magnate traveled, his journey was like a royal progress; Governors of States and Territories bowed before him; Legislatures received him in solemn session. “You cannot turn in any direction in American politics,” wrote Richard T. Ely later, “without discovering the railway power. It is the power behind the throne. Its power ramifies in every direction, its roots reaching editorial sanctums, schools and churches which it supports, as well as courts and Legislatures.” (note—Viscount Bryce was a charter member of The Pilgrims and was acquainted with the Vanderbilts, and he became ambassador to America).
“Vanderbilt’s death, as that of one of the real monarchs of the day, was an event of transcendent importance, and was treated so. The vocabulary was ransacked to find adjectives glowing enough to describe his enterprise, foresight, sagacity and integrity. Much elaborated upon was the fiction that he had increased his fortune by honest, legitimate means, a fiction still disseminated by those mercenary writers whose trade is to spread orthodox belief in existing conditions. The underlying facts of his career and methods were purposely suppressed, and a nauseating sort of panegyric substituted. The extent of his possessions and the size of his fortune aroused wonderment, but no effort was made to contrast the immense wealth bequeathed by one man with the dire poverty on every hand, nor to connect those two conditions. At the very time his wealth was inventoried at $200,000,000, not less than a million wage earners were out of employment, while the millions at work received the scantiest wages. Three million people had been completely pauperized.”
“Once in a rare while, some perceptive and unshackled public official might pierce the sophistries of the day and reveal the cause of this widespread poverty, as Ira Steward did in the fourth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor in 1873. “It is the enormous profits,” he pointedly wrote, “made directly upon the labor of the wage classes, and indirectly through the results of their labor that first keeps them poor, and second, furnishes the capital that is finally loaned back to them at high rates of interest.”
Page 347 Myers continued on the Vanderbilts—
“We have seen how the Vanderbilts seized hold of tens of millions of dollars of bonds. Year after year William H. Vanderbilt had sworn that his personal property did not exceed $500,000. On more than this amount he would not pay. When at his death his will revealed to the public the proportions of his estate, the New York City Commissioners of Assessments and Taxes made an apparent effort to collect some of the millions of dollars out of which he had cheated the city. It was now that Depew, in the retainership of the Vanderbilt generations, came forward with this threat—“He informed us,” testified Michael Coleman, president of the commission, “that if we attempted to press too hard he would take proceedings by which the securities would be placed beyond our reach so that we could not tax them.”
“By the beginning of 1893 the Vanderbilt system embraced at least 12,000 miles of railways, with a capitalized value of several hundred million dollars, and a total gross earning power of more than $60,000,000 a year. “All of the best railroad territory,” wrote John Moody in his sketch, “The Romance of the Railways,” “outside of New England, Pennsylvania and New Jersey was penetrated by the Vanderbilt lines, and no other railroad system in the country, with the single notable exception of the Pennsylvania Railroad, covered anything like the same amount of rich and settled territory, or reached so many cities of importance, New York, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Omaha—these were a few of the great marts which were embraced in the Vanderbilt preserves.” So impregnably rich and powerful were the Vanderbilts, so profitable their railroads, and their command of resources, financial institutions and legislation so great, that the panic of 1893 instead of impairing their fortunes gave them extraordinary opportunities of getting hold of the properties of weaker railroads.” (pages 360-361)
Pages 363-364 Myers related the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad attempt to get control of “hundreds of millions of dollars” in profits from coal deposits, and how the Vanderbilt/Morgan interests crushed it and took over the resources. We read—
“The Morgan/Vanderbilt interests caused the publication of terrifying reports that grave legislation hostile to the coal combination was imminent. The price of Reading stock on the exchange immediately declined. As the railroad had borrowed immense sums of money both to finance its coal combination and to build extensive terminals and other equipment, large payments to creditors were due from time to time. To pay these creditors the railroad had to borrow more; but when the credit of the railroad was assailed, it found that its sources of borrowing were suddenly shut off. The group of Philadelphia capitalists had already borrowed large sums of money, giving Reading shares as collateral. When the market price of the stock kept going down they were called upon to pay back their loans. Unable to do so, their fifty thousand shares of pledged stock were sold. This sale still more depressed the price of Reading stock.”
“This group of Philadelphia capitalists were no match for the much more powerful and wily Vanderbilt-Morgan forces. They were compelled under resistless pressure to throw over their Reading stock at a great loss to themselves. Most of it was promptly bought up by J.P. Morgan and Company and the Vanderbilts, who them leisurely arranged a division of the spoils between themselves. This transaction (strict interpreters of the law would have styled it a conspiracy) opened way for a number of extremely important changes. The Vanderbilts and the Morgan interests apportioned between them much of the ownership of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad with its vast ownership of coal deposits and its coal carrying traffic.”
“The Vanderbilt and Morgan interests at once increased the price of coal, adding $1.35 a ton. In 1900 they appeared in the open with a new and gigantic plan of consolidation by which they were able to control almost absolutely the production and prices. A still heavier increase of price was put on the 40,000,000 tons of anthracite, and the price was successively raised until consumers were taxed seven times the cost of production and transportation. The population was completely at the mercy of a few magnates; each year, as winter drew on, the Coal Trust increased its price. In the needs and suffering of millions of people it found a ready means of laying on fresher and heavier tribute. By the mandate of the Coal Trust, housekeepers were taxed $70,000,000 in extra impositions a year, in addition to the $40,000,000 annually extorted by the exorbitant prices of previous years. At a stroke the magnates were able to confiscate by successive grabs the labor of the people of the United States at will. Neither was there any redress; for those same magnates controlled all of the ramifications of Government.” (page 366)
“The sway of the Vanderbilts extended not only over the anthracite, but over a great extent of the bituminous coal fields in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio and other states. By their control of the New York Central Railroad, they owned various ostensibly independent bituminous coal mining companies. The Clearfield Corporation, the Pennsylvania Coal and Coke Company, and the West Branch Coal Company were some of these. By their great holdings in other railroads traversing the coal regions, the Vanderbilts controlled about one-half of the bituminous coal supply in the Eastern, and most of the middle-Western states.” (page 367)
“It is not possible to present here even in condensed form the outline, much less the full narrative, of the labyrinth of tricks, conspiracies and frauds which the railroad magnates resorted to in throttling the small capitalists, and in guaranteeing themselves a monopoly. A great array of facts are to be found in the reports of the exhaustive investigations made by the United States Industrial Commission in 1901-1902, and the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1907. Thousands of times was the law glaringly violated, yet the magnates were at all times safe from prosecution. Periodically the Government would make a pretense of subjecting them to an inquiry, but in no serious sense were they interfered with. These investigations all showed that the railroads first crushed out the small operators by a conspiracy of rates, blockades and reprisals, and then by a juggling process of stocks and bonds, bought in the mines with the expenditure of scarcely any actual money. Having done this they formed a monopoly and raised prices which, in law, was a criminal conspiracy.” (page 368)
“No one knows the exact profits of the Vanderbilts and other railroad owners from their control of the anthracite and bituminous coal mines. The railroad magnates cloud their trail by operating through subsidiary companies. That their extortions reached hundreds of millions of dollars every year was a patent enough fact. Some of the accompaniments of this process of extortion have been referred to—the confiscation, on the one hand, of the labor of the whole consuming population by taxing them more and more of the products of their labor by repeated increases in the price of coal, and, on the other, the confiscation of the labor of the several hundred thousand miners who were compelled to work for the most precarious wages and in conditions worse than chattel slavery.” (note—using the figure of $200 million, times a factor of 60 for monetary depreciation to today, probably realistic or understated, yields $12 billion—per year—for a span of several years!)
“But not alone was labor confiscated. Life was also immolated. The yearly sacrifice of life in the coal mines of the United States has been great. The report for 1908 of the United States Geological Survey showed that 3,125 coal miners were killed by accidents and 5,316 injured. The number of fatalities was 1.033 more than 1906. “These figures,” the report explained, “do not represent the full extent of the disasters, as reports were not received from certain states having no mine inspectors. The figures for the years 1915 to 1933 a total of 29,766 employees were killed, and a very large number injured. From 1869 to 1932 there were thirty two great disasters in American coal mines causing the deaths of thousands. Much of the responsibility could be laid to coal mine owners who violently opposed the passage of laws drafted to afford greater safeguard for life. Human life was contemptibly cheap; so long as there was a surplus of labor it was held to be commercial folly to go to the unnecessary expense of protecting an article of merchandise which could be had so cheaply.” (pages 368-369)
“The juggling of railroads and the seizure of coal mines were by no means the only accomplishments of the Vanderbilt family in the years under consideration. Colorless as was the third generation, it yet proved itself a worthy successor of Commodore Vanderbilt. The lessons he taught of how to appropriate wealth were duly followed by his descendants, and all the ancestral methods were closely adhered to by the third generation. Whatever might be its pretensions to profound respectability, there was no difference between its methods and those of the Commodore. What had once been regarded as outright theft and piracy were now cloaked under high-sounding phrases as “corporate extension” and “high finance” and other catchwords calculated to lull public suspicion and resentment. A refinement of phraseology set in; and it served its purpose. While executing the transactions already described, the Vanderbilts of the third generation put through many others, which were converted into further heaps of wealth.” (page 370)
“Why tempt exhaustion by lingering upon a multitude of other operations which went to increase the wealth and possessions of the Vanderbilt family? One after another—often several simultaneously—they were put through, sometimes surreptitiously, again with overt effrontery. Legislative measures in New York and many other States were drafted with such skill that sly provisions allowing the greatest frauds were concealed in the enactments; and the first knowledge that the plundered public frequently had of them was after they had already been accomplished. These frauds comprised corrupt laws that gave, in circumstances of notorious scandal, tracts of land in the Adirondack Mountains to railroad companies included in the Vanderbilt system. They embraced laws and still more laws exempting this or that stock or property from taxation, and laws making presents of valuable franchises and allowing further consolidations. Laws were enacted in New York State the effects of which were to destroy the Erie Canal (which has cost the people of New York State $100,000,000) as a competitor of the New York Central Railroad. All of these and many other measures will be skimmed over by a simple reference, and attention focused on a particularly large and notable transaction by which William K. Vanderbilt added about $50,000,000 to his fortune at one superb swoop.” (pages 373-374)
“The Vanderbilt ownership of various railroad systems has been of an intricate, roundabout nature. A group of railroads, the majority of the stock of which was actually owned by the Vanderbilt family, were nominally put under the ownership of different, and apparently distinct, railroad companies. This devious arrangement was intended to conceal the real ownership, and to have a plausible claim in counteracting the charge that many railroads were concentrated in one ownership, and were combined in monopoly in restraint of trade. The plan ran thus—the Vanderbilts owned the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. In turn this railroad, as a corporation, owned the greater part of the $50,000,000 stock of the Lake Shore Railroad. The Lake Shore, in turn, owned the chief share of control of other railroads, and thus on.” (page 374)
“In 1897 William K. Vanderbilt began clandestinely campaigning to combine the New York Central and the Lake Shore under one centralized management. This plan was in strict harmony with the trend of the times, and it had the advantage of promising to save large sums in managing expenses. But this retrenchment was not the main incentive. A dazzling opportunity was presented of checking in an immense amount of loot. The grandson again followed his eminent grandfather’s teachings—his plan was a repetition of what the Commodore had done in his consolidations. During the summer and fall of 1897 the market gymnastics of Lake Shore stock were cleverly manipulated. By the declaration of a seven percent dividend the price of the stock was run up from 115 to about 200. The object of this manipulation was to have justification for issuing $100,000,000 in three and one-half percent New York Central bonds to buy $50,000,000 of Lake Shore capital stock. By his personal manipulation, William K. Vanderbilt at the same time ballooned the price of New York Central stock.” (page 374)
“The purpose was kept a secret until shortly before the plan was consummated on February 4, 1898. On that day William K. Vanderbilt and his subservient directors of the New York Central voted to buy the Lake Shore stock. With due formalities they adjourned, and moving over to another table, declared themselves in meeting as directors of the Lake Shore Railroad, and voted to accept the offer. Presently however, an annoying defect was discovered. It turned out that the Stock Corporation law of New York State prohibited the bonded indebtedness of any corporation being more than the value of the capital stock. This discovery was not disconcerting; the obstacle could be easily overcome with some well distributed generosity. A bill was quickly drawn up to remedy the situation, and hurried to the Legislature then in session at Albany. The Assembly balked and ostentatiously refused to pass it. But after the lapse of a short time the Assembly saw a great new light, and rushed it through on March 3, on which same day it passed the Senate. It was at this precise time that a certain noted lobbyist at Albany somehow showed up, it was alleged, with a fund of $500,000, and members of the Assembly and Senate suddenly revealed evidences of being unusually flush with money. To a great extent this railroad had been built with public funds raised by enforced taxation.” (pages 374-375)
“In 1899, the Legislature of Massachusetts effaced the last vestige of State ownership by giving the Vanderbilts a perpetual lease of this richly profitable railroad, the Boston and Albany, for a scant payment a year. During the debate over this act Representative Dean charged in the Legislature that “it is common rumor in the State House that members are receiving $300 apiece for their votes.” The acquisition of this railroad enabled the New York Central to make direct connection with Boston and with much of the New England coast, and added about four hundred miles to the Vanderbilt system. To pay interest and dividends on the hundreds of millions of dollars of inflated bonds and stock which three generations of Vanderbilts issued, and to maintain and enhance their value, it was necessary to keep on increasingly extorting revenues. Time after time freight rates were raised, as was more than sufficiently proved in various official investigations, despite denials. Conjunctively with this process, another method of extortion was the ceaseless one of beating down the wages of the workers to the very lowest point. The Vanderbilts and other magnates were manufacturing law at will, and boldly appropriating, under sanction of law, colossal possessions in real property.” (pages 375-376)
“The grievances and protests of the workers aroused no response save the ever-active one of coercion and violent reprisals. The treasury of the Nation, States and cities, raised by compulsory taxation falling heavily upon the workers, was at all times at the complete disposal of the propertied interests, who emptied it as fast as it was filled. The jobless were left to starve; to them no helping arm was outstretched, and if they complained, no quarter given. They used the State political machinery to plunder the masses, and then, at the slightest tendency on the part of the workers to resist these crushing injustices, called on the State to hurry out its armed forces to repress this dangerous discontent. Hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds were given outright to the capitalists, but not a cent appropriated to provide work for the unemployed. In the panic of 1893, when millions were out of work, the machinery of government, National, State and municipal, proffered not the least aid, but sought to suppress and prohibit meetings by flinging the leaders into jail. Basing his conclusions upon the (Aldrich) United States Senate Report of 1893—a report highly favorable to capitalist interests, and not unexpectedly so, since Senator Aldrich was the recognized Senatorial mouthpiece of the great vested interests—Spahr found that the highest daily wage for all earners was $2.04.” (page 376) (note—this was the same Senator Aldrich illustrated above who was a founder of the Federal Reserve System, the currency and credit monopoly to which the Vanderbilts and other Pilgrim Society members are beneficiaries of to this very moment!)
“More than three-quarters of all railroad employees in the United States received less than two dollars a day. Large numbers of railroad employees were forced to work fourteen hours a day. Appalling numbers were maimed or killed in the course of duty. Injured or slain largely because the railroad corporations refused to expend money in the introduction of improved automatic coupling devices, these workers or their heirs were next confronted by what? The unjust and oppressive provisions of worthless employers liability laws drafted by corporation attorneys in such a form that the worker or his family generally had no claim. The very judges deciding these suits were, as a rule, put on the bench by the railroad corporations. These deadly conditions prevailed on the Vanderbilt railroads more than on any others.” (page 377)
“In August 1892, the switchmen employed by various railroad lines converging at Buffalo struck for shorter hours and more pay. The strike spread, and was meeting with tactical success; the strikers easily persuaded men who had been hired to fill their jobs to quit. What did the Vanderbilts and their allies now do? They fell back upon the old ruse of invoking armed force to suppress what they proclaimed to be violence. They who had bought law and had violated the law incessantly now represented that their property interests were endangered by “mob violence,” and prated of the need of soldiers to “restore law and order.” It was a serviceable pretext, and was immediately acted upon. The Governor of New York State obediently ordered out the entire State militia, a force of 8,000 and dispatched it to Buffalo. The strikers were now confronted with bayonets and machine guns. The soldiery summarily stopped the strikers from picketing, that is to say, from attempting to persuade strikebreakers to refrain from taking their places. If the Vanderbilts could not afford to pay their workers a few cents more in wages a day, they could afford to pay millions of dollars for matrimonial alliances with foreign titles. The announcement was made in 1895 that a marriage had been arranged between Consuelo, a young daughter of William K. Vanderbilt, and the Duke of Marlborough.” (pages 377-378) (note—the Duke of Marlborough, residing in a mansion with 200 servants, was probably a member of The Pilgrims London and their son was Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill!) Below, south aspect of Biltmore, the most famous Vanderbilt mansion, completed in 1895 with 250 rooms—
That’s enough commentary from Myers about the Vanderbilts and Astors. So much has been said of the Rockefellers I felt it necessary to show that there are other strong power blocs within The Pilgrims. Over the years various Vanderbilt agents have been directors of J.P. Morgan & Company and other major financial entities, and served on large corporation boards. The Vanderbilts also intermarried with the Cecils who, according to Eustace Mullins in “Secrets of the Federal Reserve” (1983) page 80 where he was speaking of their holdings in the huge National Westminster Bank—
“The Cecils have been one of England’s three ruling families since the Middle Ages.”
Mullins had a grand opportunity to mention The Pilgrims, because his bibliography shows some of the same source material I found, but failed to do so. Two Cecils appeared in the circa-1969 list for The Pilgrims London. Donald C. Platten, a highly likely member of The Pilgrims, became chairman of Chemical Bank New York in 1973, which later merged into Chase Manhattan Bank. His daughter, Alison, married Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr. another near-certain member. Henry Clay Alexander, a Pilgrim Society member installed by the family as a trustee of Vanderbilt University, was president of J.P. Morgan & Company in the late 40’s to 1950’s, and was a director of General Motors, Johns-Manville Corporation and others. The Vanderbilts appear to be strongly represented in the biggest banks, therefore beneficiaries of the Federal Reserve System!
There are numerous indications sufficient to raise suspicion that the current Vanderbilt wealth exceeds the aggregate total of the two reputed wealthiest Americans, Bill Gates (Order of the British Empire) and Warren Buffett, both also extremely likely members of The Pilgrims. First of all, the wealth of the Vanderbilts by the time the Federal Reserve System was founded, must have been over $50 billion in current dollars, and the Vanderbilts, along with other kingpin Pilgrim Society members, went short stocks by fall 1929 and vastly increased their wealth during the Depression, buying megamillions of shares in numerous industries for pennies on the dollar, so that their current worth could easily exceed $200 billion concealed in hundreds of trusts, placing them somewhere behind the Rockefellers, Mellons, Windsors and Rothschilds, among the wealthiest in the world and perhaps on a rough par with the Astors and Du Ponts.
Since The Pilgrims exist to “gradually absorb the wealth of the world,” you would expect the wealthiest in the world to be among their management. And so on their letterhead dated December 18, 1973, I found William Armistead Moale Burden listed as a vice president of The Pilgrims. This Burden was the great great grandson of the original Commodore Vanderbilt! Burden had interests in National Aviation Corporation; Brown Brothers, Harriman & Company (Vanderbilts had joint railroad ventures with the Harrimans and an intermarriage); William A.M. Burden & Company, investments; and was a director of Aerospace Corporation; Allied Chemical Corporation; American Metal Climax (AMAX); Columbia Broadcasting System; Lockheed Aircraft Corporation; Union Oil & Gas Corporation; Cerro de Pasco Corporation (mining interests) and Manufacturers Hanover Trust. We therefore see the Vanderbilts definitely associated with the directorship of four of the five largest banks in the United States since the mid-1930’s! These banks are interlocked with the Federal Reserve System and Silver Users Association companies, and have covertly campaigned against the silver price since 1878 when they boycotted the new Morgan silver dollars!
Burden was a member of National Aeronautics & Space Council, 1958-1959; Ambassador to Belgium, 1959-1961; member U.S. Citizens Commission for NATO, 1961-1962; trustee Columbia University; Foreign Service Educational Foundation; French Institute in the U.S.; regent, Smithsonian Institution and director of the Council on Foreign Relations (as noted, its management is always composed of Pilgrim Society members!) Burden was decorated by Brazil; Germany; Peru; France; Italy and Belgium, in which countries, we may reasonably assume, the Vanderbilts have holdings. Reflecting his partnership with the British Crown in reuniting America and Britain, he was also a director of the Atlantic Council, which goal it seeks! The Vanderbilts intermarried with the Whitneys, partners in Standard Oil with the Rockefellers, and we note as of late 1973 John Hay Whitney was a vice president of The Pilgrims. Virginia Fair, daughter of Senator James Fair of California, a principal beneficiary of the Ophir Silver Mine, part of the Comstock Lode, married into the Vanderbilts.
Baxter Jackson, a Vanderbilt University graduate who became a trustee, turned up in the 1969 list of The Pilgrims, and was another Chemical Bank director and of American Chain & Cable Company; Home Life Insurance; French-American Banking Corporation; General Reinsurance Corporation; North Star Reinsurance; and Warner Lambert Pharmaceutical. Alexander Heard, also in the 1969 list, became chancellor of Vanderbilt University in 1963 and was placed on the board of Time Incorporated. William Beaumont Putney III, in the 1969 list, was a partner in a Vanderbilt associated law firm, and a director of Genesee & Wyoming Railroad and of the Japanese giant Yamaichi Securities, interesting in view of the fact that a Vanderbilt lawyer, Lindsay Russell, a Pilgrim Society founder, also founded the Japan Society in 1907, forerunner of the Trilateral Commission. This Pilgrim Society, which says of itself that it wishes to “promote brotherhood among the nations,” was founded by the most satanically vicious groups of lawbreakers to ever exist in the financial world (Myers on page 401 mentioned how Vanderbilt made millions selling and leasing ships to the Federal government for troop transport, which were “decayed or otherwise unseaworthy.”) The American Economic Association, whose members have spoken against silver as money or monetary backing, is located at Vanderbilt University! The Vanderbilts with their intermarriages figure prominently in the World Money Power!
MYERS ON OTHER DYNASTIES
“His career from 1867 onward stood out in the fullest prominence; a multitude of official reports and investigations and court records contribute a translucent record. He became invested with a sinister distinction as the most cold-blooded corruptionist, spoliator, and financial pirate of his time; and so thoroughly did he earn this reputation that to the end of his days it confronted him at every step, and survived to become the standing reproach and terror of his descendants. For nearly a half century the name of Jay Gould was an object of hatred, the signification of every foul and base crime by which greed triumphs.” (page 397)
“At the very dawn of his career in 1857 as a railroad owner, Gould had the opportunity of securing valuable instruction in the ways by which railroad projects and land grants were bribed through Congress. He was then only twenty one years old, ready to learn, but of course, without experience in dealing with legislative bodies. But the older capitalists, veterans at bribing, who for years had been corrupting Congress and Legislatures, supplied him with the necessary information. Not voluntarily did they do it; their greatest ally was concealment. It was essentially during the Civil War that Gould received his completest tuition in the great art of seizing property and privileges by bribing legislative bodies. While many sections of the capitalist class were swindling hundreds of millions of dollars from a hard-pressed country, and reaping fortunes by exploiting the lives of the very defenders of their interests, other sections, equally mouthy with patriotism, were sneaking through Congress and the Legislatures act after act, further legalizing stupendous thefts.” (page 405)
“Some of these acts, demanded by the banking interests, made the people of the United States pay an almost unbelievable usurious interest for loans. These banking statutes were so worded that nominally the interest did not appear high; in reality however, by various devices, the bankers, both national and international, were often able to extort from twenty to fifty, and often one hundred percent in interest, and this on money which had at some time been squeezed out of exploited peoples in the United States or elsewhere. By these laws the bankers were allowed to get an annual payment from the Government of six percent interest in gold on the Government bonds they bought. They could then deposit those same bonds with the Government, and issue their own bank notes against ninety percent of the bonds deposited. They drew interest from the Government on the deposited bonds, and at the same time charged borrowers an exorbitant rate of interest for the use of the bank notes, which passed as currency.” (page 405)
“It was by this system of double interest that they were able to sweep into their coffers hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars, not a dollar of which did they earn, and all of which were sweated out of the adversities of the people of the United States. From 1863 to 1878 alone the Government paid out to national banks as interest on bonds the enormous sum of $252,837,556.77. On the other hand, the banks were entirely relieved from paying taxes; they secured the passage of a law exempting Government bonds from taxation. Armies were being slaughtered and legions of homes desolated, but it was a rich and safe time for the bankers; a very common occurrence was it for banks to declare dividends of one hundred percent.” (page 405)
“It was also during the stress of this Civil War period, when the working and professional population of the nation was fighting on the battlefield, or being heavily taxed to support their brothers in arms, that the capitalists who later turned up as owners of various Pacific railroad lines were bribing through Congress acts giving them the most comprehensive perpetual privileges and great grants of money and land. Gould saw how all the other wealth seekers were getting their fortunes; and the methods that he now plunged into use were but in keeping with theirs, a little bolder and more brutally frank, perhaps.” (page 405)
“The first medium by which Jay Gould transferred many millions of dollars to his ownership was by his looting and wrecking of the Erie Railroad. If physical appearance were to be accepted as a gauge of capacity, none would suspect that Gould contained the elements of one of the boldest and ablest financial marauders that the system had produced.” (page 407)
“It was largely by means of his corrupt alliance with the Tweed “ring” that Gould was able to put through his gigantic frauds from 1868 through 1872. The funds that he thus used in widespread corruption came obviously from the proceeds of his great thefts; and he might have added, with equal truth, that with this stolen money he was able to employ some of the most eminent lawyers of the day, and purchase judges.” (page 415)
“Gould’s Erie Railroad operations were only one of his looting transactions during those busy years. At the same time, he was using these stolen millions to corner the gold supply. In this “Black Friday” conspiracy (so it was styled) he fraudulently reaped another eleven million dollars to the accompaniment of a financial panic, with a long train of failures, suicides and much disturbance and distress.” (page 421)
“After the opening of the Civil War, gold was exceedingly scarce, and commanded a high premium. The supply of this metal, which to a considerable degree regulated the world’s relative values of wages and commodities, was monopolized by the powerful banking interests. In 1869 but fifteen million dollars of gold was in actual circulation in the United States. Gould’s plan was to get control of the outstanding fifteen millions of dollars of gold, and fix his own price upon them. Not only from what was regarded as legitimate commerce would he exact tribute, but he would squeeze to the bone the gold speculators—for at that time gold was extensively speculated in to an intensive degree.” (page 423)
“By September 1869, Gould and his partners not only held all of the available gold in circulation, but they held contracts by which they could call upon bankers, manufacturers, merchants, brokers and speculators for about seventy millions of dollars more of the metal. To the banking, manufacturing and importing interests gold, as the standard, was urgently required for various kinds of interfluent business transactions; to pay international debts, interest on bonds, customs dues or to move crops. They were forced to borrow it at Gould’s own price. The price was added to the cost of operation, manufacture and sale, to be eventually assessed upon the consumer. Gould publicly announced that he would show no mercy to anyone. He had a list, for example, of two hundred New York merchants who owed him gold; he proposed to print their names in the newspapers, demanding settlement at once.” (page 425)
“The tension, excitement and pressure in business circles were such that President Grant decided to release some of the Government’s gold, even though the reserve should be diminished. In some mysterious way a hint of this reached Gould. The day before “Black Friday” he resolved to betray his partners, and secretly sell gold before the price abruptly dropped. To do this with success it was necessary to keep on buying, so that the price would be run up still higher. Such methods were prohibited by the code of the Stock Exchange which prescribed certain rules of the game, for while the members of the Exchange allowed themselves the fullest latitude and the most unchecked deception in the fleecing of outside elements, yet among themselves they decreed a set of rules forbidding any sort of double-dealing in trading with one another. It was like a group of professional card sharps deterring themselves by no scruples in cheating the unwary, but who insisted that among their own kind fairness should be scrupulously observed.” (page 425)
“While Gould was secretly disposing of his gold holdings, he was goading on his confederates and his crowd of fifty or more brokers to buy still more. The next day, “Black Friday,” September 24, 1869, was one of tremendous excitement and gloomy apprehension among the money changers. Even the exchanges of foreign countries reflected the perturbation. Gould gave orders to buy all gold in Fisk’s name; Fisk’s brokers ran the premium up to 151 and then to 161. Fearing that the price of gold might mount to 200, manufacturers and other business concerns throughout the country frantically directed their agents to buy gold at any price. All this time Gould, through certain brokers, was secretly selling; and while he was doing so, Fisk and Belden by his orders continued to buy.” (page 426)
“The Stock Exchange, according to the descriptions of many eye-witnesses, was an extraordinary sight that day. Never had it presented so thoroughly a riotous, bedlamic aspect as on this day, Black Friday; never had greed and fear born of greed displayed themselves in such frightful forms. Here could be seen many of the money masters shrieking and roaring, rushing about with whitened faces, indescribably contorted, and again bellowing forth this order of that curse with savage energy and wildest gesture. The puny speculators had long since uttered their doleful squeak and plunged down into the limbo of ruin, completely engulfed. The little fountain in the “Gold Room” serenely spouted and bubbled as usual, its cadence lost in the awful uproar; over to it rushed man after man splashing its cooling water on his throbbing head.” (pages 426-427)
“What, may we ask, were these men snarling, cursing and fighting over? Why, quite palpably over the division of wealth that masses of working men, women and children were laboriously producing, too often amid sorrow and death. While elsewhere pinioned labor was humbly doing the world’s real work, here in this “Gold Room,” greed contested furiously with greed, cunning with cunning their share of the spoils. Baffled greed and cunning outmatched and duplicity doubled against itself could be seen in the men who rushed from the Gold Room frenzied—some literally crazed—when the price of gold advanced to 162. Suddenly, early in the afternoon, came reports that the United States Treasury was selling gold; they proved to be true. Within fifteen minutes the whole fabric of the gold manipulation had gone to pieces. It was narrated that a mob bent on lynching, searched for Gould, but that he and Fisk had sneaked away through a back door and gone uptown.” (page 427)
“The general belief was that Gould was irretrievably ruined. That he was secretly selling gold at an exorbitant price was not known; even his own intimates, except perhaps Fisk and Belden, were ignorant of it. All that was known was that he had made contracts for the purchase of enormous quantities of fictitious gold at excessive premiums. As a matter of fact, his underhand sales brought him eleven million dollars profit. But if his contracts for purchase were enforced, not only would these profits be wiped out, but also his entire fortune.” (page 427)
“Ever agile and resourceful, Gould quickly extricated himself from this difficulty. He fell back upon the corrupt judiciary. Upon various flimsy pretexts, he in a single day, procured twelve sweeping injunctions and court orders. These prohibited the Stock Exchange and the Gold Board from enforcing any rules of settlement, and enjoined Gould’s brokers from settling any contracts. The result was that judicial collusion allowed Gould to pocket his entire profits, while relieving him from any necessity of paying up his far greater losses. Fisk’s share of the eleven millions was almost nothing; Gould retained the entire sum. Gould’s confederates and agents were ruined, financially and morally; scores of failures, dozens of suicides, the despoilment of a whole people, were the results of Gould’s handiwork. From his Erie Railroad freebooting, the gold conspiracy and other maraudings, Gould now had about thirty million dollars. Perhaps the sum was much more. Gould had the cardinal faculty of holding on to the full proceeds of his piracies.” (page 428)
“With his millions of booty, Jay Gould now had much more than sufficient capital to compete with many of the richest magnates, he fully made up for by his pulverizing methods. His acute eye previously lit upon the Union Pacific Railroad as offering a surpassingly prolific field for a new series of thefts. The looting of this railroad and allied railroads which he, Russell Sage and other members of the clique proceeded to accomplish, added to their wealth, it was estimated, $60,000,000 or more, the major share of which Gould appropriated.” (page 445)
“Where others saw cessation of plunder, he spied the richest possibilities for a new onslaught. What if $50,000,000 had been taken? Gould knew that it had other resources of very great value; for, in addition to the $27,000,000 Government bonds the Union Pacific Railroad received, it also had an asset of 12,000,000 acres of land presented by Congress. Millions of acres more could be fraudulently seized, as the sequel proved. Gould also was aware—for he kept himself well informed—that twenty years previously, Government geologists reported that extensive coal deposits lay in Wyoming and other parts of the West. These deposits would become of incalculable value; and while they were not included in the railroad grants, some had already been stolen, and it would be easy to get hold of many more by fraud. And that he was not in error in this calculation was shown by the fact that the Union Pacific Railroad and other allied railroads under his control, and under that of his successors, later seized hold of many of these coal deposits by violence and fraud. Gould also knew that every year immigration was pouring into the West; that in time its population, agriculture and industries would form a rich field for exploitation. This futurity could be capitalized in advance. Moreover, he had in mind other plans by which tens of millions could be plundered under law.” (page 446)
“Fisk had been murdered, but Gould now leagued himself with much abler confederates, the principal of whom was Russell Sage. It is well worth pausing here to give some glimpses of Sage’s career, for he left an immense fortune, estimated at considerably more than $100,000,000.” (page 446) Jay Gould, 1836-1892, below—
Edwin Gould was a charter member of The Pilgrims New York in 1903. This was Jay Gould’s son, born on February 25, 1866, and a member of the Jekyll Island, Georgia Club (of Federal Reserve fame). Edwin was chairman of the St. Louis & Southwestern Railroad which owned the Arkansas & Texas Railway; director, Paragould & Southeastern Railway, Bowling Green Trust Company and others, and consolidated competition into the Diamond Match Company in 1899. Samuel B. Gould turned up in The Pilgrims 1969 and another from the 1969 list, Stephen F. Bayne Jr., married Lucie Culver Gould in 1934. The Russell Sage Foundation is one of many socially radical tax-exempt foundations on whose trustee boards are always to be found Pilgrim Society members (when they can be identified!) Samuel Gould was a director of National Commercial Bank & Trust; American Council on Education; chairman of the Institute of Man and Science; chairman, Research Foundation of the State University of New York; trustee, John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fund; Salk Institute; Educational Records Bureau; Kettering Foundation, and many other positions. Myers continued—
“To form any adequate conception of Gould’s thefts in his manipulation and management of the Union Pacific consolidation, a mere money computation falls flat. The resources expropriated by Gould could not be expressed in exact money terms. For example, the enormous coal deposits expropriated—who could say what their exact money value was? The Interstate Commerce Commission announced that practically the entire coal supply of Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming was owned and monopolized by the Gould railway system, principally by the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, which was one of a number of Western railroad lines Gould held onto and bequeathed to his children.” (page 484)
“How was the ownership of these extensive coal fields obtained? Here we do not encounter any intricacies of stock and bond finance; they were seized with just enough formalities to give some color of complying with the law. Behind these thin formalities lay a long path of “fraud, perjury and violence,” stated the Interstate Commerce Commission’s report of 1908. In commonplace official diction the story of the seizure of these deposits was there told; how for forty years or more the Gould and other railroad corporations employed dummy “occupiers” to file fictitious entries on public coal lands, then have the claims transferred. An inexpensive method it was, ridiculously to get much for little; the dummy “occupiers” were paid $50 each to do their fraudulent work. If a coal or an oil deposit could not be obtained by fraud, then—if the numerous testimony taken by the Interstate Commerce Commission was correct—force was used to oust such individual occupants as had lawfully acquired the land.” (page 485)
“The Interstate Commerce Commission reported that the Gould and Harriman lines in a large region beyond the Mississippi “absolutely dominate the mining, transportation and selling of coal along their lines.” Uncounted paragraphs of affidavits, all in the official volumes, sustained the charges of fraud, perjury and violence. Let it not be supposed that Gould’s mind was so preoccupied with his Union Pacific piracies that he was oblivious to opportunities elsewhere. This undersized man, with his effeminate personality was an irrepressible conqueror, seizing and pillaging not merely wherever he went, but in many different places and in different fields simultaneously. In his own chosen method of warfare, his mind was an extraordinarily versatile one, wonderfully gifted at computation, with the ability to keep track of a vast variety of involved transactions at the same time. With the law end of them he did not have to concern himself; he could always hire a corps of the most dexterous attorneys, none of whom scrupled to take as payment a fraction of the booty. Lawyers, some of whom became judges in the highest courts in the country, and other lawyers who had been judges and resigned to draw large retainers from the very corporations in whose favor they handed down decisions, pleaded and plotted for Gould.” (pages 485-486)
Myers wasn’t specific here as to Gould’s other ventures. According to the Texas State Library Archives Commission, “He controlled over 10,000 miles of railroads. He gained control over the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Associated Press, and several major newspapers.”
“The Texas Pacific was one of the four main lines that Gould and Sage obtained control of by their well known methods. Another of their lines was the Wabash, composed of sixty-eight railroads in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Iowa. Within five years of the time they gained control of the Wabash, Gould and Sage obtained a great series of privileges from various States, looted the railroad of millions of dollars, then had it thrown into bankruptcy. So nauseatingly fraudulent were their methods that Judge Gresham, of the United States Circuit Court—one of the few judges of independent character—removed receivers whom Gould and Sage caused to be appointed, and accompanied this act with a caustic denunciation; all of which had no effect upon Gould’s ownership; he retained control and it descended to his family.” (page 487)
“Each new haul gave Gould and Sage a still greater supply of resources with which to manipulate other railroads and public utility systems into their control. The Missouri Pacific, with its chain of railroads for the building of which the State of Missouri advanced $25,000,000, was next added to the list. It suited the plans of Gould and Sage not to drive this railroad into bankruptcy as they had others. By diverting freight traffic at the expense of their other railroads, they so increased its earnings that its stock commanded a high value; the selling of the stock at the apex price yielded them large sums. Then they would depreciate the value of the stock and buy it back.” (page 487)
“Others bitterly fought the various fraudulent moves that Gould and Sage brought into play. The outcome of the ensuing legal contest could be forecasted. Gould seldom went into court without owning his judge. The judicial tool this time was Westbrook of the New York Supreme Court; when Gould started out in his career of theft, Westbrook had been his first lawyer. Now as judge, Westbrook issued orders and injunctions backing up Gould’s and Sage’s fraudulent acts. His subservience was so notorious that he once held court in Gould’s private office in the Western Union Telegraph Company and issued an injunction. After becoming absolute masters of the elevated railway systems in New York City Gould and Sage no longer had any use for Cyrus Field. At the first opportunity the stock market was rigged to divest Field, and he was thrown out to linger and die a ruined man. “ (page 490)
“Every dollar of his fortune had been extracted by deceit, bribery, fraud and theft, yet here he was, one of the dominating magnates of the country, owner of a ramification of properties, the dictator of the fate of tens of thousands of workingmen. Behind him, as an impregnable fortification, stood the Law, guaranteeing him the possession of that which he seized by theft. When he reduced the pay of the workers on his lines, he did it with bold aggressiveness, daring them to challenge his power. At forty-five years of age Gould possessed more than a hundred million dollars (1881).”
Such are the ancestors of members of The Pilgrim Society, which claims to “promote brotherhood.” All these men were out “seizing wealth<” the central tenet of the Society. The world knows the Robber Barons and financiers existed in the nineteenth century. What is not known is that they confederated into a secret assembly to shore up themselves against the rest of the world. Competition exists on the inside, yet the main idea is to smash the middle class and non-allied rich. This they have been doing for just over a century with frightening success. We need to review the history of a few other magnates who became members, or whose fortunes appear to have passed into the control of the Society.
CROCKER, HUNTINGTON & STANFORD
Myers relates the account of the “Pacific Quartet” including the smallest of the four, Mark Hopkins. Page 517—
“During the range of years when the Vanderbilts, Gould, Sage and various other railroad magnates were hurling themselves upwards into the realms of masterful wealth, four other noted capitalists whose careers were interjoined, were doing likewise in the far West. This group was composed of Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins. It was an unusual brotherhood in that, for a long time, they hung together with a tenacious fidelity not often found among railroad capitalists. It was so rare a phenomenon that mention of it deserves a place of precedence. This group was distinguished by a method of intelligent cooperation. To this fact was due their rapid success in obtaining great wealth without the necessity of dragging through intermediate stages. They were among the first of the magnates to prove the superiority of the principle of systematic organization—a lesson which the Standard Oil group took up a little later, amplified, improved, and developed into a superfine system. The Pacific quartet recognized the value of specialization. Huntington was entrusted with the supervision of financial affairs; Stanford of the plans for the manipulation of law and politics; Crocker was placed in charge of construction work; and Hopkins was the commandant of office details.”
“They had the opportunity of bringing forth great railroad systems out of what had been a void. At a bound they sprang from an obscure position to that of great capitalists; the transformation from petty dealers in merchandise or law to multimillionaires was a quick, sudden one. Within a few years they took their place among the industrial dictators of the United States; owners of great railroad and steamship lines and of many other forms of property, and of an immense domain of land—not less than 30,000,000 acres in all.” (page 518)
“The operations of the quartet were simple enough. Once they had obtained the requisite loans and gifts, they threw aside all pretenses, and openly and vigorously set out to defraud all within reach, not only the Federal Government, but also States, counties, cities and investors. They organized a construction company, called the Credit and Finance Company. Then they made a contract with themselves to build the Central Pacific. With the aid of the loans given by Sacramento and Placer County, they built enough road to draw $848,000 from the government as the subsidy of the first section. By repeating the process they had the entire road constructed, with scarcely the expenditure of a single dollar of their own. The next step was to load it down with a capitalization of $139,000,000 which was the beginning of still more stock inflation.” (pages 521-522)
“What was the total of their frauds? The report of the Pacific Railroad Commission gave no adequate idea of the immensely valuable rights and possessions of all kinds they secured by bribery and fraud. But it does give a comprehensive account of their money and stock plunderings. “In the accounts of the Central Pacific Railroad Company,” the report of the Commission of 1887 states, “the diversion of earnings for improper purposes amounted to many millions, through contracts made by Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins and Crocker with themselves.” According to this report, the cost of building 1,171 miles of road was $27,217,000, but they charged three times that sum. Here was a looting of more than fifty millions in one grand haul. In addition to cash pocketed, they issued to themselves $33,722,000 in bonds and $49,005,000 in stock. But these sums were only part of the total.” (page 522) Charles Crocker, below—
“Crocker died in 1888 and left a fortune estimated at $40,000,000. Stanford’s wealth was so great that he, like the Astors, Vanderbilts, Goulds and other magnates, was forced to the necessity of investing the surplus. Part of his many millions was put into San Francisco street railways. He became a great landed proprietor. He owned the immense Vina vineyard, comprising 100,000 acres of land; the Palo Alto ranch, with its extensive breeding establishment and its great vineyards, and he owned much other real estate in San Francisco and elsewhere. Up to 1885 Stanford had been a financier, praised by some as a great railroad builder, by others as a colossal looter. Now he became a full-fledged philanthropist by giving property worth many millions for the establishment of Stanford University.” (page 527) Leland Stanford (below)—
“As a United States Senator, Stanford’s salary was $5,000 a year; he spent $75,000 every session; it was a pastime of this man to throw twenty dollar gold pieces to the newsboys. His chief business in Washington was to prevent the Government from taking genuine action compelling him and his band to disgorge; to stifle all hostile proceedings, and to get through laws giving more franchises, land, waterway rights and special privileges, and to secure license for extortions. On the whole, he succeeded. This ponderous magnate, weighing two hundred and thirty-four pounds, was the political wire-puller of the quartet, while Huntington was the crafty financier, full of sharp tricks and devious contrivances. When Stanford died in 1893, his estate was appraised as worth about $18,000,000, but its size was considerably greater. He had given large sums for Stanford University, and in his will he provided more millions. In all, Mr. And Mrs. Stanford presented fully $30,000,000 for the establishment, expansion, and perpetuation of the institution named after their son.” (page 528)
“The fortune plucked by Huntington was greater than that of any of the others of the quartet. At his death in 1900, it was estimated at $80,000,000. It embraced interests in a vast number of railroad, steamship and other corporations—interests which he had bought with his share of the Pacific railroads loot, or engineered into his control. A favorite boast of his was that he could travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific in his own cars and over his own rails, and that he could also sail in his own steamships from Brazil to New York, from thence to Colon, from Panama to San Francisco, and from there to Yokohama and Hong Kong. His power was gigantic; he controlled the economic life of millions of workers, and dictated the government of a half-dozen States. His plunder was intact. In 1894 he was quoted as saying in answer to a report—“I never made any exhibition of $44,000,000 of bonds, although I could have displayed twice as much in amount.” (page 528) Huntington, below—
The fortunes gathered by these men apparently weren’t continued in family lines down to the present. However, their wealth was evidently aggregated into The Pilgrims Society’s treasury, as Charles Crocker’s son in law was Charles Beatty Alexander, who married Harriet Crocker on April 26, 1887. Alexander was the grandson of the founder of Princeton Theological Seminary. But this Pilgrim Society member, for many years a trustee of Princeton University, who married into the$40,000,000 Crocker fortune (in 1888 dollars) wasn’t a clergyman. Alexander was a director of the International Banking Corporation; Mercantile Trust Company; Equitable Trust Company; Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S.; Tri-State Land Company; and Windsor Trust (British Royal Family—patrons of The Pilgrims!) In later years another Pilgrim Society member, William H. Morton of American Express, turned up as a director of Crocker Bank, later merged into the Pilgrim Society run Midland Bank (London).
arious Pilgrim Society members over the years have been trustees of the Huntington Library, including Myron C. Taylor, on The Pilgrims executive committee in the 1940’s. Vincent Astor (below), grandson of the one time wealthiest man in the United States, member of The Pilgrims and director of Chase National Bank, married Helen Huntington on April 30, 1914 and was a member of the Jekyll Island, Georgia Club of Federal Reserve fame! Astor was also a director of American Express; Illinois Central Railroad; United States Trust Company of New York; Western Union Telegraph; City & Suburban Homes; Cuban-Dominican Sugar Company and other corporations and advisor to Bankers Trust Company.
Assorted Pilgrim Society members have served as Stanford University trustees, including former Secretary of State (1993-1997) Warren Christopher (below) of Chevron-Texaco; Lockheed; Southern California Edison and First Interstate Bancorporation.
In keeping with The Pilgrims world government aspirations, Christopher spoke on January 23, 2002 at the University of California at Los Angeles International Institute, whose slogan is “Educating Global Citizens.”
MYERS ON EDWARD HARRIMAN
“But what became of the control of the railroad and steamship lines which Collis P. Huntington and his colleagues dominated? The Southern Pacific Railroad was a huge prize, and Harriman well knew its worth. Apart from its transportation value, the company owned colossal timber resources which had come into its possession by grants of public domain. In fact, its holdings and those of its subsidiaries of more than 105,000,000,000 feet of standing timber was the largest single holding in the United States. The company’s immense timber areas stretched virtually all the way from Portland, Oregon to Sacramento in a vast extent of grants owned by the Oregon & California Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad, both subsidiaries of the Southern Pacific. In this entire strip of territory, 60 miles wide and 683 miles long, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company was the dominating owner of both timber and land. About 71 billion feet of Southern Pacific timber was in Oregon, and 35 billion feet in California.” (pages 529-530)
“A year after Collis P. Huntington’s death, the Union Pacific Railroad Company, under Harriman’s overlordship, busied itself with the first move to get control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Dominancy over this line was only part of Harriman’s ambitious projects which included the gathering under his personal direction of all the railroads crossing the continent, or as many of them as possible. This accomplished, he would then be able to remove competition, and accordingly by the raising of rates, greatly augment revenues. Law forbade such a plan, but he went ahead in cool defiance of statutes. As for the needed money he obtained this by the aid of printing presses. He caused to be issued by the Union Pacific Railroad Company $100,000,000 of bonds, convertible into stock. It was with the proceeds of these bonds that control of the Southern Pacific as well as a majority of the Northern Pacific Railway stock was purchased.” (page 530) Edward H. Harriman of The Pilgrims (below)—
“The Union Pacific acquired 750,000 shares of Southern Pacific stock. A later purchase of 150,000 more shares brought the total to 900,000 shares, or the ownership of Union Pacific Railroad to more than 45 percent of Southern Pacific Railroad stock. Still later, when the Southern Pacific issued preferred stock, the Union Pacific subscribed for 180,000 shares. By 1907 the Union Pacific owned 1,080,000 of the 2,374,180 Southern Pacific shares outstanding. With this feat accomplished, the Southern Pacific Railroad ceased to be a competitor for transcontinental traffic. Competition was further suppressed when the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific steamship companies were consolidated.” (page 530)
“At his command, Harriman had the necessary money resources. In addition to the backing of bankers, he found the Equitable Life Assurance of New York, with its more than $400,000,000 of policy holders assets, a serviceable agency. He had become a director of that company in May 1901. Harriman made James Hazen Hyde, whose inherited stock holdings gave him control of the Equitable, a director of the Union Pacific Railroad. More than $10,000,000 of Union Pacific bonds were sold to the Equitable, and there were other dealings. Year after year Harriman extended his control over railroads until he dominated seventeen systems. The effects of his Pacific railroad operations, according to the report of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1907, was to “unify and amalgamate the management” of the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific railroad companies, and “to eliminate competition between them in transcontinental business and in business to and from Oriental ports.” (pages 530-531)
James Hazen Hyde was a charter member of The Pilgrims. Harriman’s railroad operations employed at least 80,000 men and according to Myers (page 534) the Harrimans—
“…seem to have emerged fairly well from a calamitous depression which stripped so many persons of every possession.”
That was the idea of the manipulation, so The Pilgrim Society could “absorb” and “seize” wealth. Harriman’s son Averill, a second-generation Pilgrim Society member, assumed the chairmanship of the Union Pacific in 1932. Harriman became ambassador to Russia in 1943 then to Great Britain in 1946. Looking at the 1980 Who’s Who, page 1025 we find that Pilgrim Society member James H. Evans was chairman of the Union Pacific Corporation; director, Citicorp; AT & T; Bristol-Myers; governor, Foreign Policy Association (similar to Council on Foreign Relations); and trustee, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and University of Chicago. The Harrimans interlocked with the much larger Rockefeller fortune. Brown Brothers, Harriman & Company, an investment bank long located at 59 Wall Street (now 140 Broadway, with 3,000 employees), has always had various Pilgrim Society members as partners, including William F. Ray, related to the Sturgis and Whitney families and advisor to the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and many other positions; and Robert Roosa, one time director of Texaco, Prudential Insurance and Rockefeller Foundation trustee. It was Roosa who, as undersecretary of the Treasury, assisted Pilgrim Society member Douglas Dillon, Treasury secretary, in getting rid of silver coins! A current partner in Brown Brothers, Harriman is Robert G. Gould, probably descended from the original Jay Gould.
MYERS ON J.P. MORGAN
“The praises, abundant enough, bestowed upon other magnates, paled beside those heaped upon Morgan. Without question, he was held aloft as the most extraordinary financier of all. His feats in this regard were recounted as though they bordered upon the miraculous. In all the mass of reiterated, embellished accounts turned out about Morgan’s career, there was no particle of truth save one undisputed fact. Undeniably he was one of the towering, aggressive money monarchs of the United States. What did he not own or control? Scan the conglomeration of properties dominated exclusively by him, or jointly with others. What a bewildering list! The mind is taxed at inventorying them, and forbears enumeration. Banking institutions and railroads, industrial plants and mines, land, public utility systems and shares, steamships, publishing houses and newspapers—all his, or partially so. Morgan is supereminently one of “the men whom God in His infinite wisdom has confided the property interests of the country.” His father, Junius S. Morgan, was a millionaire. Ascending by successive steps from the positions of farm boy, dry goods clerk, bank clerk and commercial man, Junius S. Morgan became a partner of George Peabody in the banking business.” (pages 535-537)
“When the Civil War came on, George Peabody & Company were appointed the financial representatives in England of the United States Government. Synchronously with this appointment their wealth suddenly began to pile up; where hitherto they amassed riches by stages, they now added many millions within a very few years. How did they contrive to do it? Biographical narratives averred that it was done by legitimate banking methods, although what were those methods was not explained. But if we are to believe the comments and criticisms appearing in American newspapers of the time, their methods were not only very far from being legitimate, but were within the pale of the most active treason. The Constitution of the United States defines treason as consisting in citizens levying war upon the nation, or in giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The methods of George Peabody & Company were of such a character as to be not only treasonable, but double treason, in that, while in the very act of giving insidious aid to the enemy, George Peabody & Company were the financial plenipotentiaries of the United States Government, and were being well paid to advance its interests.” (page 537)
“An article published in the Springfield Republican in October 1866 asserted, “All who know anything of the subject know very well that Peabody and his partners in London gave us no faith and no help in our struggle for national existence. They participated to the full in the common English distrust of our cause and our success, and talked and acted for the South rather than for the nation.” The writer of this article went on to say that George Peabody & Company swelled the feeling of doubt abroad, and speculated on it. “No individuals,” he continued, “contributed so much to flooding our money markets with the evidences of our debt in Europe, and breaking down their prices and weakening financial confidence in our nation than George Peabody & Company, and none made more money by the operation, accusing Peabody and Junius S. Morgan of using their positions as United States financial representatives to undermine the very cause that they were paid to represent, and profiting heavily from their treachery.” (pages 537-538)
It is well known in informed circles that J.P. Morgan & Company has had long standing connections to the British government; British Royal family; and the English Rothschilds. But to say that these have been, or remain, the only influences, is inaccurate. J.P. Morgan & Company represents, now as JPMorganChase, many of the wealthiest dynasties and corporations. But the beginnings, as George Peabody & Company, later succeeded by Morgan, the intermediary being Drexel, Morgan & Company, hence the name change, show the interest of the British nobility and moneylenders in splitting the American nation into two separate countries. Whereas with the South, the Civil War was about states rights to secede from the Union, the British have never given up attempts to control America. If it could not be retaken by force, divide it into two separate countries, each weaker than the two apart. The Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, D.C., always run by Pilgrim Society members, exists to bring America back into the British Empire, though this will not be stated so openly. Myers continued on Morgan—
“Great is Mr. Morgan’s power, greater in some respects even than that of President or kings,” wrote a seasoned observer, which fact, patent to even the casual onlooker, easily passed uncontradicted.” (page 553)
Myers mentioned (page 558) the silver demonetization of February 1873, which wrecked the American middle class and enriched the likes of Morgan. Page 559—
“Morgan began to be conspicuous in very large transactions. One of these was the floating of the $260,000,000 U.S. Government bond issue of 1877. This bond issue was regarded, and not without full reason, as one of the very worst cases that had ever been known of the people being betrayed over to a few bankers. The selling of the bonds was apportioned among these banking houses—August Belmont and the Rothschilds; J. and W. Seligman Brothers; and Drexel, Morgan & Company. This syndicate at once sold the bonds at an advance above the price they paid to the Government. The profits of the syndicate reached into the tens of millions of dollars. Their function consisted in nothing more or less than speculative middlemen for a Government which could have disposed of the bonds without intermediaries. Moreover, the participating bankers were able to get the bonds for themselves at bargain prices, and then through associated national banks, carry on the familiar practice of exacting double interest—one interest from the Government, and another for the use of the currency issued on the basis of those same bonds.” (pages 559-560)
“It was not long before Morgan came to the front as one of the foremost railroad magnates in the United States. His aggressiveness of character and action, his truculent boldness in smashing down obstacles, his contempt for artificial restraints of law, his disregard of public opinion, and his knowledge of how to apply power where it would produce the best results—all these qualities were the very ones needed at that precise time. What could not the banking power accomplish when it actively concentrated its might of money upon a given object? Neither capitalist foes nor any government could withstand it. The extremes to which it could go in successfully executing its plans and in dissipating all obstacles by its terrorism, was typically shown in a noted bond deal, in 1895, whereby the United States Government was held up by a syndicate of bankers headed by Morgan, and forced to give over a virtual gift of many millions of dollars for the privilege of having a nominal and transient claim on a supply of gold which those same bankers had drained from the United States Treasury only a short time previously.” (pages 563, 573-574)
“Of Morgan’s methods in seizing, in conjunction with William H. Vanderbilt, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad from McLeod, in 1893, we have already given a description. In that account it was shown how, when McLeod pressingly needed funds both to finance his railroad’s coal combination and to pay for improvements, he found that the leading banking institutions had impaired, and then cut off, his credit. Morgan and Vanderbilt were then able to assault and beat down the price of Reading stock, buy large quantities of it at a very low figure, and gain control of the system. Its great value lay in its ownership of anthracite coal mines, of vast unmined deposits, and in its coal carrying traffic. To his other manifold powers Morgan now added that of coal magnate.” (page 575)
“Morgan became possessed of great railroad systems. The total extent of these railroads was 19,073 miles. Compared to the difficult details of Morgan’s reorganizations, the tale of his United States bond transaction of 1895 is simple. As gold was the international trade standard of value, the United States Government followed the policy of holding a certain amount as a Treasury reserve. When by reason of some cause or other, this reserve was depleted the Government was compelled to issue bonds to replenish it. The powerful junta of leading national and international bankers deliberately forced the United States Government to put out these bond issues. This they did by draining the Treasury of its gold, and then by going through the empty form of selling back that gold in return for bonds. The Treasury notes, comprising much of the currency of the United States Government, were redeemable in coin. This provision was construed as calling for payment in gold.” (pages 577-578)
“The bankers would take over to the sub-Treasury in New York City great stacks of Treasury notes and exchange them for gold. This gold they would then hoard in their vaults. The Government authorities were fully aware of this proceeding, and knew quite well that the ulterior purpose was to force a bond issue. After the banking clique obtained the bonds, it could do two things—sell large amounts of them, at enhanced premiums, to smaller banks, savings banks, insurance companies, estates and investors, and it could use such portion of the issue that is kept as a basis for issuing new currency. The large bankers, such as Morgan, had their chain of auxiliary national banks, by means of which bond issues could be converted into currency, and the time honored extortion of getting double interest could be managed.” (page 578)
“In 1894 the Government had been drawn into handing over two bond issues of $50,000,000 each to these bankers. Their profits, it is estimated, reached tens of millions. With the advent of the year 1895 the United States Treasury was again emptied of gold. Where had the gold, which the Government had purchased only a short time previously at usurious rates, gone? The reports of the large banks gave the answer. By the end of January 1895, twenty-six banks in New York City had in their vaults a hoard of $65,000,000 in gold. Presently the amount totaled $129,000,000. The Government shrieked in helplessness; President Cleveland was reported as saying privately that “the banks have got the country by the throat.” (page 578)
“At the appropriate moment a syndicate of bankers appeared in the open and magnanimously offered to supply gold to the Government in exchange for bonds. This syndicate was composed of J.P. Morgan & Company, August Belmont & Company, representing the Rothschilds; James Speyer, the National City Bank and four other extremely powerful national banks. In the negotiations with President Cleveland for the bond issue, Morgan’s emissary and clever man of law was Francis Lynde Stetson, who had been regular counsel for Morgan since 1887. After Cleveland had been defeated in his candidacy in 1888 for a second term as President of the United States, he resumed the practice of law, and formed a partnership with Stetson. Cleveland was reelected President in 1892; thereafter Stetson was a frequent and confidential caller at the White House. Cleveland was virtually charged in 1895 with openly selling out the people of the United States to the Morgan syndicate, represented by Stetson.” (page 579)
James Speyer was a charter member of The Pilgrims, as was President Grover Cleveland. Speyer was a director of the Bank of Manhattan Trust Company, associated with the Warburgs (Pilgrims) of Federal Reserve fame, which later merged with Chase National Bank. Eugene Stetson turned up in the 1969 list of The Pilgrims. He was with Brown Brothers, Harriman; then Chemical Bank, then Stetson & Company. Myers continues (page 579)—
“The situation, then, was this—the syndicate had squeezed the United States Treasury of its gold; it had then compelled a bond issue, and declared that it alone could supply the required gold. This was a transparent falsehood.”
Myers continued about Morgan, resuming in the year 1898 (pages 582-583)
“The Sugar Trust, in particular, carried on continuously a colossal system of frauds upon the Government in the weighing of imported sugar. These frauds extended over a long series of years, and it was estimated, when the facts became public in 1909, that the amount of which the Government had been thus defrauded reached tens of millions of dollars. In addition to these monumental swindles, the Sugar Trust continued so absolutely secure in its monopoly that it was easily able to crush all competitors, dictate tariff schedules, and extort, in the course of trade, an annual profit placed by some authorities at $55,000,000 a year, or a total of $660,000,000 in profits in the period from its organization to 1909. Factories, railroads, gas and electric plants, street railway lines, telephone systems and mines were converted from a state of individual or corporate ownership into trust form, owned by great single corporations with stupendous amounts of capital, and with dictatorship over vast masses of workingmen. In this revolutionary work of organizing trusts, J. Pierpont Morgan was the foremost generalissimo.”
“By the end of the year 1902 J. Pierpont Morgan, reckoning by appearances, seemed to outrank every other American magnate; scarcely a day passed that the newspapers did not report some new achievement of his, or obsequiously render tribute to his ever-expanding power. In the public appraisement he bulked as a supervitally preponderant man, a figure standing out with an immense and peculiar distinction, eclipsing the most obtrusive political functionaries. Contrasted with him, ostensible political rulers were innocuous ephemeral personages. For a time they might vociferously command attention, but their encumbency was dependent upon the will of the magnates, and they were pushed up or pulled down as suited the policy and purposes of the great propertied interests. A long array of “eminent statesmen” had shuffled into solemn view, and for a while had been the cynosure of the nation, and then, like exploded rockets, disappeared into obscurity. Brief and borrowed as was their power, theirs was not the portion of oblivion; conventional history, which accepts the apparent as the real, documents and perpetuates their names, ignorant of the fact that they were only the servitors of particular impelling forces and interests. Behind the nominal political masters stood the real masters—the great magnates.” (page 592)
“Morgan, piously dispensing charity, officiating at religious meetings, and posing as the incarnation of princely benevolence, allowed no such impractical considerations as pity or sentiment to make life even a moiety more tolerable in the roaring hells from which were then derived an average of $145,000,000 net profits a year.” (page 618)
“All previous panegyrics lavished upon Morgan became stale and inadequate compared to the apotheosis of him during the panic of 1907. What climax of earthly splendor did Morgan reach? He became the “Savior of the Nation.” Shortly after the panic of 1907 set in, an article (and it was one of many such productions) entitled “Morgan the Magnificent” was published in Pearson’s Magazine, February 1908. The article begins with this lurid introduction—“There were scenes in the saving of Wall Street by John Pierpont Morgan that can never be written; things said and done that cannot and should not even be remembered, even in those days of excitement, horror and confusion; heroism, crimes, blunders, treacheries and martyrdoms that spanned the whole capacity of man for glory or shame; for, until the continent came, half crying, half cursing out of the trembling madness that threatened to bring down the banking system of the country into ruins and smash the credit of the nation, men were in a bewilderment of fear beyond words to express, as in the presence of some impending and irresistible convulsion of nature the boldest and keenest become craven and stupid. Morgan was suddenly aroused by the peril of the financial situation to a demonstration of courage, strength and personal masterfulness that brought order and confidence out of chaos and despair.” (pages 619-620)
Page 621 and 628 has Myers referring to Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin. complaining in the U.S. Senate—
“According to him, a crowd of conspirators, headed by the Standard Oil Company and Morgan deliberately brought on the panic. He fulminated against them and denounced them as arch criminals. Amid his accusations, Senator LaFollette embodied certain historic facts of real historic value—facts confirmed by the records of what actually took place, and familiar to all close observers of events during the panic. The panic of 1907, like previous panics, supplied the opportunity to the great magnates to crush out lesser magnates and seize their property. The panic of 1907 smashed lesser fortunes right and left, but Morgan emerged with far greater possessions.”
The panics of 1893 and 1907 were used as excuses for the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. LaFollette asserted in his Senate speech that fewer than one hundred men were dominantly in control of American corporations. It is highly probable that all the men he had in mind were members of The Pilgrims! Myers noted Morgan’s control of the Steel Trust, bought from Andrew Carnegie by a Morgan led syndicate (page 630)
“From the time of its organization the United States Steel Corporation distributed many billions of dollars in profits. Even after payment of Federal income and excess profit taxes, the United States Steel Corporation had in 1917, a net income of $244,738,908 remaining from its total revenue of $478,000,000. Less than two percent held half the stock while the final control of the Steel Trust rested in J.P. Morgan & Company.”
Historian John Morton Blum called J.P. Morgan (below) “almost lord of creation,” while failing to note his membership in the super rich Pilgrim Society!
Morgan died in 1913. His son became a member of The Pilgrims, as did his grandson, Henry Sturgis Morgan (born 1900), who was a director of General Electric; Morgan Stanley & Company; Connecticut General Insurance; and Aetna Insurance. Ferdinand Lundberg in “America’s 60 Families,” 1937, pages 36-37 said—
“The Morgan firm and its affiliated commercial banks act on behalf of such tremendous accumulations as those of the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Drexels, Wideners, Berwinds, Phippses, Hills, Dukes, Ryans, McCormicks, Bakers, Du Ponts, Fishers, Fields, Jamses and others. The total extent of Morgan power in American industry and finance defies statistical measurement.”
Just one of those other family groups, of which there are several dozen in the Morgan group, was seen in the person of John T. Dorrance Jr. of The Pilgrims 1969 leaked list, who more recently was said to be worth upwards of $550 million exclusive of his relatives, representing the Campbell Soup fortune. The Morgan Trust company used to advertise in Fortune Magazine in the 1970’s that they were “providing financial services to 96 of the world’s 100 largest corporations—and a great deal many smaller ones, too.”
Since we’ve been examining the backgrounds of nineteenth century financiers and industrialists who founded The Pilgrim Society, or whose children became members, or had fortunes that passed into the control of members, we need to look at a few more examples. Next month we will evaluate information on some prominent members, with emphasis after the start of the 20th century onward. Another extremely important member was Andrew Carnegie, founder of the Carnegie Steel empire, which was renamed United States Steel after the buyout arranged by J.P. Morgan. At first a takeover was attempted, but a buyout became necessary. Myers said (pages 599—
“Had Morgan been dealing with the United States Government he would have felt no great concerns at threats he knew he could safely ignore; but in contesting with Carnegie, he was opposed by a magnate of whose power he had reason to be grimly apprehensive. How could Carnegie be placated or dissuaded from carrying out his ominous plans? One heroic way there was—to buy him out and organize a trust. No time was lost in unessentials. The magnates went straight to the point. Morgan inquired of Carnegie for what sum he would sell. Carnegie replied, “three hundred millions.” A silence ensued; the magnates looked craftily at each other. Whether Morgan was aware that only a short time previously Carnegie had agreed to sell out to Frick for $100,000,000 is not known. On his part, Carnegie believed he had Morgan in a corner, which conviction was clearly worth a raise of $200,000,000. Perhaps Carnegie, in the style of the excellent business man, asked an exorbitant price so as to compromise on a sum larger than he really expected. Morgan’s next words must have surprised him. “Take it in mortgage?” asked Morgan brusquely. “Provided it covers the whole proposed combination,” Carnegie replied. The trade was then and there arranged.”
“Carnegie was pleased with himself. Two great objects he had accomplished; he had obtained an immense purchase price, far beyond his expectations, and he was now able to carry out a yearning that he had long indulged himself of divesting himself of active business cares, and of playing the exclusive role of the retired and philanthropic captain of industry. He felt quite positive that he had outwitted even the great J. Pierpont Morgan. But as time passed, he found good grounds to have doubts of his astuteness. Subsequently, after Morgan demonstrated how vast sums could be taken in with facility in the stock issues of the Steel Trust, Carnegie began to look back and perceive that he, not Morgan, was the outdone one—not a pleasant feeling for a man who had been self-satisfied that he was as sharp as that of any of the other magnates. While Carnegie was ostentatiously dispensing millions for public libraries, he was secretly fuming over the fact that he had not held up Morgan for a hundred million dollars more.” (page 599)
“This story was current in Wall Street—Many months later Carnegie and Morgan were on the same Atlantic liner bound for recreation in foreign fields. Coming down to their morning coffee, there was a few minutes for reminiscence between them. “Do you know, Mr. Morgan,” said Carnegie, “I have been thinking it over, and I find I made a mistake. I should have asked you for another hundred million for those Carnegie properties.” Responded Morgan in his unfeeling truthfulness, “If you had, I should have paid it.” And Carnegie, so the story goes, was so soured in his soul that he could take no more toast and marmalade.” (page 600)
“Splendid mansions, as capacious and ornamental as palaces, arose upon the tense labor, the suffering and the mortality of those masses of workers. Carnegie pompously spreading his philanthropy, drew his income from the very life blood of those workers and their families and children.” (page 618)
The reason Carnegie funded so many public libraries was so that propaganda could be spread across America that Great Britain is our “ally,” and that we should “stick with her.” That is my synopsis, not an actual quote. Carnegie was from Scotland, and was a loyal Crown sympathizer. In 1893 he wrote a book, “Triumphant Democracy.” Representative Thorkelson of Montana quoted from this in a speech concerning The Pilgrim Society and two of its subsidiaries, the Rhodes Scholars and the English Speaking Union, in the United States House of Representatives on August 19, 1940—
“In 1893 Carnegie wrote his book Triumphant Democracy, the last chapter of which is “The Reunion of Britain and America.” The 1931 edition of this book is devoid of this last chapter. The following is a quotation from the original book—“An Anglo-American reunion brings free entry here of all British productions as a matter of course. The richest market in the world is opened to Britain free of all duty by the stroke of the pen. No tax revenue. In the event of reunion, American manufacturers would supply the interior of the country, but the great population skirting the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific coast would receive their manufactured articles from Great Britain. Time may dispel many pleasing illusions and destroy many noble dreams, but it shall never shake my belief that the wound caused by the wholly unlooked for and undesired separation of the mother from her child is not to bleed forever. Let men say what they will, therefore, I say, that as surely as the sun in the heavens once shone upon Britain and America united, so surely it is one morning to rise, shine upon, and greet again the reunited state, the British-American Union.”
Carnegie left by way on perpetual influence for the British Empire, the Carnegie Institution of Washington; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and the worst of the lot, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which funds the expenses of Bilderberg meetings. Members of The Pilgrims—without exception, always run all Carnegie instrumentalities. Carnegie Corporation currently has a trustee associated with the Duke family (Pilgrims) and another associated with the English Rothschilds (Pilgrims). In 1914 Carnegie took over the Church Peace Union with a “gift” of $2 million, which organization was the controlling influence in the Federal Council of Churches, the purpose of the religious interest was and is to propagandize Americans against retaining their national sovereignty. Another Carnegie “benefaction” was the American Historical Association meeting in London in 1918, whose mission became to rewrite American history so as to make it acceptable to England. On August 19, 1940, Congressman Thorkelson of Montana had this to say on Capitol Hill about Lord Northcliffe, the Pilgrim Society member who headed the British War Mission to the U.S. in 1917 and collaborator of Pilgrim Society member Andrew Carnegie—
“When Lord Northcliffe completed his propaganda organization in this country during the recent World War, and was returning home it was announced that he was leaving behind him $150,000,000 and 10,000 trained agents to carry on the work. His own London Times in the issue of July 4, 1919, rendered account of the “efficient propaganda” which he had inaugurated here and was being carried out by those trained in the arts of creating public good will and of swaying public opinion toward a definite purpose. Among the methods stated by the London Times, to be then in operation or in prospect in this country were—“
“Efficiently organize propaganda to mobilize the press, the church, the stage, and the cinema, to press into active service the whole educational system, the universities, public high schools and primary schools. Histories and textbooks on literature should be revised. New books should be added, particularly in the primary school. Hundreds of exchange university scholarships should be provided. Local societies should be formed in every center to foster British-American good will, in close cooperation with an administrative committee.”
Thorkelson continued his remarks on the Carnegie/Northcliffe plans—
“This same Fourth of July issue of the London Times contained a signed article by Owen Wister, American born, in which he said—“A movement to correct the schoolbooks of the United States has been started and it will go on.” 1919 witnessed the rewriting of American history to please England. Protests were made by the Sons of the American Revolution and other patriotic societies.”
According to Joseph Wall in “Andrew Carnegie” (1970), Carnegie bought his way out of being drafted into the Union Army, and an Irish immigrant named John Lindew took his place. A very patriotic move for someone who was strongly in favor of the war! Carnegie lobbied against America modernizing its aging naval fleet in the 1880’s, while maneuvering to obtain the contracts to do so. Carnegie provided the funds for the Central American Court of Justice; the Pan-American Union in D.C. (for “the union of all the republics of this hemisphere”); and the Peace Palace at The Hague, Netherlands, housing the Permanent Arbitration or World Court. Carnegie Steel employees were forbidden from organizing in 1892. Two Pilgrim Society members were business lieutenants of Pilgrim Society member Andrew Carnegie—Alva Clymer Dinkey (born 1866) who controlled the American Iron & Steel Institute; and Charles M. Schwab (born 1862) who went on to become president of United States Steel after Morgan bought out Carnegie in 1901, then later chaired Bethlehem Steel and was a director of Metropolitan Life and chaired the American Iron & Steel Institute.
American Opinion magazine, December 1975, pages 47-56 and 107-110 has an article on Carnegie called “Conspiratorial Legacy of the Dred Scot” which documents how the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace helped push the United States into World War I and assisted in the formation of The League to Enforce the Peace after WWI. This League was another financier scheme to seize control of enough military power to run Planet Earth. Who besides Andrew Carnegie—Pilgrim Society member—was involved with this League? Answer—Theodore Marburg, of The Pilgrims and Hamilton Holt, of The Pilgrims. In 1899-1901 Marburg was vice president of the Vanderbilt run American Economic Association, at Vanderbilt University, an anti-silver gang of economists, and the most influential economist organization in the United States to this very moment. Marburg was U.S. Minister to Belgium, 1912-1914 and trustee of Johns Hopkins University. Hamilton Holt was a trustee of the Carnegie controlled Church Peace Union. Holt was a founder of the Italy-America Society and the Netherlands-America Foundation (Carnegie was acquainted with the Royal Dutch house of Orange-Nassau, interlocked with his patrons, the British Crown). Holt also founded the League of Nations Nonpartisan Association and the Friends of Poland. Holt had decorations from Japan, Greece, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden and Serbia.
DuPonts, Mellons, Rockefellers & Rothschilds
As we close this second installment in the series on The Pilgrim Society, by far the most powerful organization to ever exist, we will consider some fairly brief items on these four families, for they are larger in the galaxy of wealth than any of the others discussed above—and all figure strongly in The Pilgrim Society. No precise figures are possible, certainly, as to which of any of these groups actually possess the most wealth, and there is a possibility that the Astors or Vanderbilts might exceed the Du Pont wealth, but this is unknowable. It certainly appears that the Mellons, Rockefellers and Rothschilds are the wealthiest families in the world; however the Windsors (British Crown) might possibly exceed any of these since it drained immeasurable riches from India and China for centuries—however, that too is unknowable. There are significant other dynasties of wealth in The Pilgrims—Kleinworts, Reynoldses, Cullmans, Harknesses (possibly nearly on a par with the Vanderbilts), Whitneys and Pratts (Standard Oil) and the McCormicks, and others. Joseph F. Cullman 3rd of The Pilgrims (born 1912) and the Philip Morris fortune, was a director of Ford Motor Company, IBM, Bankers Trust Company and others (below)—
This article merely highlights the most prominent of these dynastic paper money mob families.
Myers said of the Du Ponts (page 709)—
“A competent description of the origin and expansion of the Du Pont fortune would entail chapter after chapter.”
The Du Ponts did business with Thomas Jefferson, providing gunpowder to the United States. Later they became powers in the second Bank of the United States. They are best known as E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company, explosives and chemical manufacturers, nicknamed the “merchants of death.” In the United States Senate and House of Representatives the Du Ponts and their representatives have opposed the use of silver in the monetary system; and as industrial user members of the Silver Users Association, have played their role in holding down silver prices. Andrew Brimmer, a Du Pont director and ex-Federal Reserve Board member, was a Commodity Exchange governor when in January 1980 rules were enforced which destroyed the Hunt brothers and crushed the silver price. Ferdinand Lundberg in “The Rich And The Super Rich” (1968) noted that members of the Du Pont family were ranked as numbers 7, 8, 12 and 13 in a list of the biggest rich inheritors in the United States (pages 137-139). Number 12, Lammot Du Pont Copeland (born 1905), was a member of The Pilgrims (below) and director of Wilmington Trust Company and Christiana Securities, was father in law to James Biddle, who married his daughter Louisa. James Biddle is a direct descendant of Nicholas Biddle, head of the British affiliated (Rothschild-Windsor) second Bank of the United States—forerunner of the Federal Reserve System! I have called The Pilgrims the “World Money Power” and it fits them better than any other organization!
The Du Ponts were long the controlling shareholders in not only the giant Du Pont chemical corporation, but also in General Motors, and had interests in Chemical Bank (merged into Chase Manhattan Bank), in Hercules Incorporated, another multibillion dollar chemical concern, and also in Citigroup. Lundberg also authored “The Coming World Transformation” (1963) another book on how the big rich have long been active in what we would today called “globalization.” Lundberg, in connection with the Du Pont reputation as “Merchants of Death,” observed on page 155—
“Without Du Pont the Allies could hardly have fought what has been appropriately called the most unnecessary big war in history.”
In “Pilgrim Partners—Forty Years of British-American Fellowship” (1942) by Sir Harry Brittain (mentioned last month, an extremely scarce book), we read on pages 109-110—
“The dinner took place at Sherry’s on October 1st, beneath the intertwined flags of Britain and America, and in the presence of 400 men who were prominent in the banking, commercial and political life of the United States. At this gathering I sat next to General Du Pont—of powder fame, who was, I was told, the largest subscriber to the loan. Other neighbors were Sir Edmund Walker, of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, who came down from Toronto especially for the gathering.”
The loan referred to was war related and managed by the Anglo-French Loan Commission, managed by Lord Reading of The Pilgrims of Great Britain. It’s so lucrative to foment a big war, make enormous profits supplying it, then use it as an excuse to eliminate all national sovereignties in a world body (the League of Nations) and later the United Nations, of which assorted Pilgrim Society members were founding delegates in San Francisco in 1945.
U.S. News & World Report, October 11, 1965, estimated the holdings of groups such as the Du Ponts, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts at $250 billion—in dollars measured 40 years ago! Lists we read of big rich today are mostly a fraud, because they show new rich leading the lists, when the essential fact is, the old rich are bigger than ever. And as they wish their Society, The Pilgrims, to remain unknown, so too do they desire their true wealth to be concealed in the false shadow of much newer fortunes alleged to be greater.
Lundberg called the Mellons (page 143) “astronomically rich.” Another Mellon biographer, William Hoffman in “Paul Mellon—Portrait of an Oil Baron” (1974) said (pages 134 and 189)—
“Billions, zillions—did not seem unusual to Paul Mellon. Paul controls thousands of companies.”
On page 186 Hoffman spoke of “to grasp what is almost ungraspable—that is, the vastness of Mellon holdings…”
On pages 52 and 55 Hoffman quoted Congressman Wright Patman on the Mellons—
“Mr. Mellon has violated more laws, caused more suffering and illegally acquired more property to satisfy his personal greed than any other person on earth. The fortune I have mentioned is equal to two-thirds of all the gold in the entire world.”
We will consider more on the Mellons next month. But this is a good intro to them! A Mellon in-law, David K.E. Bruce, who was Ambassador to England, France and Germany, married Ailsa Mellon, daughter of Pilgrim Society member Andrew Mellon and brother of Pilgrim Society member Paul Mellon—was a vice-president of The Pilgrims New York, as of the evasive 1973 letter I received from their citadel of silence. David K.E. Bruce, heir to a banking and agricultural fortune based in Maryland (below)
As for the Rothschilds, legendary in European and world finance, we read of their “endless assets” (page 121 “The Rothschilds” by Frederic Morton, 1962). On page 57 we take note—
“Of money the brothers now had unimaginable amounts. The total wealth encompassed by the clan during most of the nineteenth century has been estimated at well over 6,000 million dollars. No one else, from the Fuggers to the Rockefellers, has come even close to that hair-raising figure.”
The Fuggers were a German royal dynastic clan who had, among other holdings, silver mines in Spain. There are those who reckon the Mellons as the wealthiest family in the world. The Rothschilds have their believers; then there are the Rockefellers. Of the Rockefellers, Emanuel Josephson said in “Rockefeller Internationalist” (1952) page 20—
“The wealth of the Rockefellers is incalculable. Favored by law, their fortune grows while others are wiped out. It is doubtful if there exists enough money in the world to make their wealth liquid.”
It is important for the precious metals investor to have a working understanding of The Pilgrims Society, since this is the organization of intermarried wealth, dynastic wealth, royal riches—all of whom stand behind fiat money creation, and are the opponents of sound money. No moves against silver or gold money which come from any government have their origin in any other organization, for The Pilgrims stand secretly atop the world’s financial structure, and are planning to plunge the world into as many wars and financial upheavals as possible, to realize their goal of global government. Powerful as they are, I predict the effort will fall short. We the American People should know who these monopolistic rich are, who are the sponsors of “globalization. Below, photo of Ronald Reagan with David Rockefeller—who admits in Who’s Who to involvement with the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Conferences and the Trilateral Commission, but remains SILENT as to his membership in The Pilgrims—“A Secret Society Gradually Absorbing The Wealth Of The World!”
According to biographer Hoffman on David Rockefeller—
“ONE PRESIDENT AFTER ANOTHER HAS DONE HIS BIDDING.”
My fellow Americans—such men as these described above form The Pilgrim Society—the World Money Power! It behooves us to be aware of them. The quality of our lives, and the future of our children, depends upon it. A Congressional investigation must be forced, all their identities revealed, as well as their monopolistic drive for globalization.
Out Of The Brambles 