Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford

Author:Les Standiford
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781400051182
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2003-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

However, reports of Flagler’s demise were greatly exaggerated, as the saying goes. Even as the Journal account was being published, crews were back at work, rebuilding work camps and replacing roadbed and rails that had been washed out by the storm.

By October of 1907, 2,500 men were back on the job, and work camps had been established as far south as Knight’s Key, at MM 41, more than halfway to the final destination. As the process continued, one major change was implemented: as a result of the tragedy involving Quartersboat No. 4, there would be no more floating dormitories. All the camp buildings would be constructed to meet hurricane-resistant standards, and all would have secure foundations on dry land.

A reporter for the Chicago Daily News made a tour of the post-hurricane camps and offered a perspective that heartened Flagler and his managers: “I doubt if there could be found better conditions for the common laborer in any engineering work that exists along this extension,” wrote F. S. Spofford. “I spent two days in these camps, mingled with the men, ate their food, inspected their quarters, and I must say that on every hand were evidences of the greatest consideration for their welfare.” After a detailed rendering of the typical camp menu, Spofford concluded his dispatch with a reprise of the often-cited FEC assertion that the percentage of illness among workers had been much lower than that experienced by members of the U.S. Army.

In response to charges that men had been prevented from leaving the camps, or had been prevented from passing company gates on the pier into Miami until they had paid back their transportation debts, William Krome issued a statement that insisted, “All Resident Engineers . . . were clearly instructed that no difference how a man’s account stood in regards to his indebtedness to the Company, that if he wished to leave, no effort could be made to detain him, the only detention being that he was required to pay $1.50 return fare to Miami.”

Press reports of the day continued to bat back and forth the issue of Flagler as a modern-day slavemaster, however, and federal prosecutors were as resolute in moving their case against the FEC forward through the New York district courts as Flagler was in extending his railroad southward. When the case, based on an 1866 slavery law, finally went to trial in November of 1908, things went badly for the prosecution, its efforts undermined largely by the presentation of a series of distinctly unreliable witnesses. Inside of a week, Flagler’s lawyers petitioned for, and were awarded, a directed verdict of acquittal by the trial judge.

Flagler, though pleased, reiterated his suspicions that the entire matter had been part of a government conspiracy, engendered by various frustrations over the years in making antitrust charges stick against Standard Oil. (As early as 1878, lawsuits seeking to break the company’s stranglehold on the oil business were being filed, and Flagler, who had arranged most of the company’s contracts,

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