	The founding fathers used the utility of political office as a basis for power.  After the Civil War that power shifted hands to the corporate elite, launching the Gilded Age.  The politicians still had a place of power but their power was secondary to the captains of industry.  The men who created and amassed great fortunes in steel, oil, the railroads, and banking where; Andrew Carnegie of Carnegie Steel, John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould who made their fortunes in America's first big business the railroads. 1 Although far from the richest, the man with the most power was J. P. Morgan.  Morgan's motivation was power, the power to control companies, men, and countries. 2
	The politicians proved that they could pass laws to build upon America's foundation of democracy; individual rights.  The desire and capacity to prosecute these laws proved to be problematic.  The needs and desires of the corporations had to be first considered and consulted.
	The struggle of power between the corporate elite and the politicians of the period led to the passing of laws that led to a greater number of potential voters.  This growth in numbers of citizens with the legal right to vote should have led to the increase of democracy in America, but the inability to follow through with enforcing the laws in turn made America less democratic between 1865 and 1924.
	Between the years 1865 and 1924 congress drafted and ratified six new amendments to the United States Constitution that would increase eventually give all adult citizens the right to vote.  The first three dealt with African-American rights; the Thirteenth (1865) abolished slavery, the Fourteenth (1868) Made African-Americans citizens and for the first time gave African-Americans legal rights, and the Fifteenth (1870) gave African-American men the right to vote.  The Sixteenth (1913), gave congress the right to collect income taxes, and the Seventeenth (1913), changed the selection of United States senators from the state to the people.  The proposed purpose of these two laws was to close the gap between the rich and the poorer class and to give more power to the people.  The final amendment was the Nineteenth (1920) ended the women's suffrage movement by giving women the right to vote.  These combined amendments would have made America a much more democratic country if they had worked as proposed. 
	In order to be admitted back into the union the former Confederate states were required to accept the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments.  The 1876 presidential election ended in a dispute and virtue tie between Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio.  Congress had to decide who won and the Constitution had provided no guidance for this situation.3  The selected electoral commission met with the two political party leaders and representatives of the special interest, the corporate elite, and worked out what is known as the "Compromise of 1877". 4 The compromise was that Ruther B. Hayes would be President, in exchange, among other things; he would immediately withdraw the federal troops from the southern states.  The withdrawal of the federal troops from the southern states opened the door for the southern Democrats to regain their political power which they used to suppress the African-American vote and rights through the middle of the twentieth century.
	The next step in the decrease of democracy came from the Supreme Court.  During the Civil War military considerations had a tendency to override judicial concerns of constitutional rights.  After the war the Court began to follow a laissez-faire course. The Court used the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the corporation.  Determining that legislation designed to regulate corporations deprived them of "due process".  The Court, narrowing the scope of the interstate commerce clause, treated federal legislation similarly.  The majority of the justices considered the business of America was business and their purpose was to keep it that way. 5 Now a living breathing entity the corporation, with its corporate elite leaders, led and financed by J. P. Morgan, would take power for the remainder of the nineteenth century.  
	America's first big business was the railroads. 6 Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt were two of the most well known, or in the cases of Gould notorious, railroad entrepreneurs. In the case of Gould, he admitted that he knew little about railroads, he made his fortune through speculation.  Buying stock of the railroad corporation, taking control, and then sold-out to competitors at a higher price.  The railroads that fell victim to Gould often went bankrupt but he amassed a great fortune.  Despite the questionable tactics of Gould, the railroads flourished, boasting the most miles of track in the world.
	The success of the railroads opened America to further industrial success.  The two most notable and successful captains of industry were Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.  Carnegie Steel at its peak produced 10,000 tons of steel per week and by 1900 was earning $40 million a year.7 Standard Oil founded and owned by John D. Rockefeller, ultimately succeeded in controlling nine-tenths of the oil-refining business.8 There were known connections of these men with the politicians of the day.    In 1902, Woodrow Wilson was elected president of Princeton University, a position he acquired with the help of his friend Andrew Carnegie. 8 G. Edward Griffin in The Creature from Jekyll Island states: "In 1911, the St. Louis Dispatch published a cartoon by a Bolshevik named Robert Minor.  It portrays Karl Marx, with a book entitled Socialism under his arm, standing amid a cheering crowd on Wall Street.  Gathered around and greeting him with enthusiastic handshakes are characters in silk hats identified as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, John D. Ryan of National City Bank, Morgan partner George W. Perkins, and Teddy Roosevelt."9
	The king of the corporate hill during the period was J.P. Morgan.  In 1869 he took control of the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad from Jay Gould.10 In 1898 he entered the steel industry and by 1901 he formed the U. S. Steel Corporation which acquired Carnegie Steel for $480 million11, making U. S. Steel the first billion-dollar corporation in the world.12 It is upon his business model that economist and social scientists based the theory known as "Social Darwinism".  Morgan's influence was also strong on the American economy from another level.  Twice in a 12 year period he was asked to bail out the American economy.  As a result of the 1893 economic depression the United States Treasury's gold reserves fell dangerously low.  President Grover Cleveland accepted a plan from Morgan in which a group of bankers, headed and controlled by Morgan, would purchase the gold abroad and supply the needed gold to the Treasury.13 In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt found the country in an economic crisis.  Once again, Morgan, using his funds, came to the rescue.14  
	With the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in 1914, Europe was at war.  As the war wore on England and France went heavily into debt.  Eventually their respective banks could no longer meet their borrowing needs.  They then turned to American banks for further loans.  The loans totaling, a staggering for the time, $12 million, came from Morgan controlled banks.  Morgan was made the U. S. purchase agent for the war materials needed by England and France.  He received a commission on the money borrowed and on the supplies purchased.  In addition, many of the companies receiving contracts were either owned outright by Morgan or one of his holding companies.15 Just after the war in 1919 John Moody wrote:  "Not only did England and France pay for their supplies with money furnished by Wall Street, but they made their purchases through the same medium... Inevitably the house of Morgan was selected for this important task.  Thus the war had given Wall Street an entirely new role.  Hitherto it has been exclusively the headquarters of finance; now it became the greatest industrial mart the world had ever known.  In addition to selling stocks and bonds, financing railroads, and performing the other tasks of a great banking center, Wall Street began to deal in shells, cannon, submarines, blankets, clothing, shoes, canned meats, wheat, and the thousands of other articles needed for the prosecution of a great war"16    
	The next question was "Should America enter the war?"  Great debate went on throughout the country.  With much more to lose financially than almost any other person was Morgan.  We get an idea of how Morgan planned to protect his investments from the speech of Representative Callaway from Texas on February 9, 1917.  From the floor of congress he said:  "In March, 1915, the J. P. Morgan interests, the, steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press...An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchaser"17
	The politicians fought back with a series of antitrust suits.  The Sherman Act of 1890 proved too weak.  Theodore Roosevelt then went after Northern Securities, owned by Morgan, in 1902.  The newspapers called Roosevelt "Teddy the Trustbuster"18.  From that point the Supreme Court began to uphold the Sherman Act of 1890 eventually demanding the dissolution of Northern Securities in 1904.  Woodrow Wilson with the help of Arsene Pujo, Democratic senator from Louisiana, who headed a committee to investigate the "money trust", took on banking.  As part of the investigation it was uncovered that J. P. Morgan and Company and its affiliates held 341 directorships in 112 corporations, controlling assets of more than $22 billion.19 Wilson was able to get passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.  The purpose was to establish a national banking system which would help make currency more elastic and give the government more control over banking.  Interestingly Wilson appointed banker Paul Warburg as the first chief of the Federal Reserve Board.  What makes this interesting is that Paul Warburg was a member of a group of bankers and politicians who met in 1910 to discuss and plan the formation of a national banking system.  Griffin in The Creature from Jekyll Island lists the attendees of this meeting: 
 1. Nelson W. Aldrich, Republican "whip" in the Senate, Chairman of the National Monetary Commission, business associate of J. P. Morgan, father-in-law to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
2. Abraham Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury.
3. Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, representing William Rockefeller.
4. Henry P. Davison, senior partner of the J. P. Morgan Company.
5. Charles D. Norton, president of J. P. Morgan's First National Bank of New York.
6. Benjamin Strong, head of J. P. Morgan's Bankers Trust Company.
7. Paul M Warburg, a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company. 
This meeting took place at the private resort of J. P. Morgan.20 Most telling are the words of Paul Warburg's biographer, Harold Kellock:  "Paul M. Warburg is probably the mildest-mannered man that ever personally conducted a revolution.  It was a bloodless revolution; he did not attempt to rouse the populace to arms.  He stepped forth armed simply with an idea.  And he conquered.  That's the amazing thing.  A shy, sensitive man, he imposed his idea on a nation of a hundreds million people." 21
	In 1913 congress ratified the Thirteenth Amendment.  The amendment gives congress the right to collect taxes on incomes.  The purpose was to close the gap between the rich and poor.  Although thirty-three previous proposed income-tax amendments had been presented to Congress and then defeated due to the lobbying efforts by corporate and special interests 21, the Thirteenth Amendment over the next 90 years, up to the present, transferred the financial burden of running the government of the United States from corporate tariffs to the incomes of the working class.
	Also in 1913, Congress ratified the Seventeenth Amendment.  This amendment change how senators will be selected.  Prior to the amendment, senators were chosen by the respective state legislatures.  This amendment put the selection of senators into the hands of the people.   Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island who was called "the senator from Standard Oil" was one of the reasons this amendment was proposed and passed was also one of the architects of the Federal Reserve Bank and the grandfather of future Vice- President of the United States Nelson Rockefeller.
	In all of the attempts to broaden American democracy the purpose seemed to be to put more power into the hands of the people, the results however gave increasing power to politicians and even more to corporate and special interests.  America became less democratic between 1865 and 1924. 

	






