Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford Read Free Book Online Page B

suggested that a winter in Florida might improve her condition. Flagler did not hesitate. Despite the pressures of a massive business and the growing antitrust fire directed at Standard Oil, Flagler accompanied his wife and their son and daughter on a train as far south as Jacksonville, where, as history would again note, a lack of adequate transportation and a dearth of decent accommodations halted the entourage.
    Mary responded well to the balmy climate, however, and the Flaglers would return to Jacksonville again, though she was hesitant to stay long once her workaholic husband had returned to the fray in New York City. In spite of the forays to Florida and the best of medical care, which Flagler’s wealth provided, Mary’s condition continued to deteriorate. By the winter of 1880 she had become so ill that doctors advised Flagler to cancel their planned return to Jacksonville. Mary’s condition continued to worsen, and in May of 1881, she died.
    Her death was a stunning blow to Flagler. The Flaglers’ twenty-six-year-old daughter, Jennie Louise, was married and living with her husband, but with his eleven-year-old son, Harry, still at home, Flagler resolved to do a better job at fatherhood. Despite the irony for a preacher’s son, Flagler bought a grand estate named Satan’s Toe in Mamaroneck, forty-two rooms on thirty-two acres of land overlooking Long Island Sound, and persuaded his half sister, Carrie, to come live there and help tend to his young Harry.
    To prepare properly for this new phase of his life, Flagler saw to the absolute renovation of Satan’s Toe, including the installation of fixtures he picked out himself, the building of a two-hundred-foot breakwater, and the construction of a sandy bathing beach along the shore. Satan’s Toe had been transformed into a resort destination that was the talk of New York society, and the fifty-two-year-old Flagler, for the first time in his life, was taking pleasure in something that did not have to do with work.
    Concurrent with these new interests had come a withering condemnation of Flagler’s business activities from the newspapers, the public, and governmental agencies alike. While a country torn asunder by the Civil War had been all too happy to see prosperity return to the nation during the 1870s, it was not long before a feeling of laissez-faire, if not outright gratitude, directed toward successful business interests was replaced by scrutiny of those same organizations.
    Competitors who had been steamrolled by Flagler and Rockefeller had for years complained bitterly about the high-handed tactics of the all-powerful Standard Oil, and several investment groups had been formed to build pipelines of their own that would compete with Flagler’s virtual lock on the rail transport of oil. When Flagler began to call in political favors to block the new competitive threats, public resentment reached a crescendo.
    In December of 1882, Flagler was called to testify before a Senate antitrust committee in New York, where he was badgered unmercifully by the Senate’s attorney, who insisted that Flagler stop hedging and answer his questions directly. As tensions mounted, an intransigent Flagler shouted at the man, “It suits me to go elsewhere for advice, particularly as I am not paying you for it.”
    “And I am not paying you to rob the community, I am trying to expose your robbery,” responded the attorney.
    The confrontation ended in deadlock, though Flagler had begun to see the writing on the wall. Entire national political parties—Greenback, Union Labor, Prohibition—were being based largely upon antitrust platforms, and a number of the larger industrial states were in the process of enacting monopoly-busting legislation.
    It was not so much that the value of Flagler’s holdings was threatened: by 1888 the value of Standard Oil shares had risen to more than $150 million, and even the eventual dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust was similar in financial