The Weston Democrat

HOW TILDEN MADE HIS FORTUNE.

The process was this: Half-a-dozen smart men projected a railroad. They make themselves directors and solicited subscriptions to stock. Towns, counties and the State bought this created stock, and issued their bonds for it. The Directors then made a favorable contract with themselves for building the road. They paid themselves with the cash subscribed and the first mortgage bonds at a large discount. They built so much of the road as would use up the cash and bonds: the road, of course, defaulted on the interest, and the directors and contractors, as first-mortgage bondholders, foreclosed. They then owned the road at the cost of something less than nothing, or thereabouts. To do all this and keep on the shady side of justice, it was necessary to be advised by a keen man of the law—not an able or high-minded man, but a sharp, crooked and unscrupulous man. Dealing with rogues, such a lawyer would extort exorbitant fees; and hence when his principals were making their millions, he would make millions for himself.

It was in transactions of this nature that Samuel J. Tilden is said to have accumulated a fortune estimated at five millions of dollars. In a professional career of twice the length of Mr. Tilden's, fully occupied with the most important cases before the highest tribunals, the late Reverdy Johnson may have accumulated the tenth part of that sum. No lawyer in the honorable exercise of his not lucrative profession could have amassed such enormous wealth. The money was made, not as a railroad lawyer, but as a railroad wrecker.