the enforced tribute that renders possible the "capitalizing of the earning power" and all the other pleasant devices of the high finance.

What do you think of it?

Unless we are to take the position that the public exists solely to be the dumb, blind, patient servitor, to furnish these dividends and to keep still about them, how can we suppose that stock-watering is none of the public's concern?

Yet the whole disastrous business has the warrant of long custom and of our established and most strange tolerance, that is very true. Does any one imagine that there is anything new about these ways of Getting It? They have been followed absolutely by two entire generations of fortune-makers. Twenty-five years ago a certain famous pamphlet essayed to show that up to that time there had been wrongfully taken from the resources of the New York Central something like $30,000,000. Those that profited by these operations in the high finance of that day were the men in control of the property; those that suffered were the stockholders at large and the public. A concise view of similar exploitation in another enterprise may be obtained from Mr. Charles Francis Adams's "A Chapter of Erie." Or the curious

may well be referred to the celebrated case of the bridge at Albany, which long drew from the stock. holders of the road (and from the public) a great annual tribute for the benefit of one family; or to the familiar story of the private car lines, which are only another phase of the same general system; or to the story of the National City Bank and the Custom House site; or to one thousand other stories, if you care to look them up, all illustrating the one principle of unfair advantage and of burdens piled upon the shoulders of those least able to bear burdens.

So now we traverse again the beautiful avenue by the park, and observe the gleaming palaces, the rapid automobiles, the happy people. But they have a different look. Clearly that statement of gained knowledge that shot across our path in the beginning of our journeying from Attorney Street to Fifth Avenue was quite correct. We see now that the first man did not gain his palace by supplying any demand, nor the second by providing any mart, nor the third by producing any commodity, nor the fourth by transporting any goods or people. These palaces represent no service to society, no reward for any one thing bettered, no creation, no development, but only the

means to seize and to retain the resources of the country. Very beautiful are the palaces, grand the glory of the avenue. Reflecting upon the shopgirl standing in the street-car and the part she plays in this magnificence, are we quite sure that these splendors are worth the price?

CHAPTER XX

COPARTNERS IN GUILT

SHALL we say that at the bottom of all these achievements is some flaw in the character of the men that do them, something that sets them apart as monstrous or abnormal?

How absurd that will seem if we do but consider of it impartially! These men are not different from other men; they are not sinners above all the other dwellers in this, our country. What nonsense it would be to choose them from the rest for vicarious sacrifice! Given the opportunities and the power a very large number of us would under the system we have created and after the standard we have set up do exactly what they have done.

If I leave a handful of silver dollars on my doorstep with the sign "Take One" and come back to find them gone I shall be but a figure of mirth if I go about denouncing the persons that have accepted my invitation.

Suppose now in the privacy of our consciences we have a little frank talk with ourselves. What kind of a man is it that, for the last generation at least, we most have honored? The successful man. And what to our minds has invariably and solely constituted success? Piles of dollars. And how have we regulated the fervor of our applause for these men? By the size of their dollar piles. And have we ever stopped to bother very much about the means by which the piles were gathered? Not once that I can remember.

Well-what would you expect?

Let me tell you of two men I happen to know about, and probably they will remind you of a hundred similar men that have crossed your own observation. One by gambling in the necessities of life had accumulated a vast fortune. Sometimes for millions of people he made bread dear and sometimes he made meat dear. He entered into illegal arrangements with railroads. He made illegal combinations with other men in his way of business. Once his firm was discovered to have issued fraudulent warehouse receipts and a scapegoat was put forward to take the heavy blame that there was too much reason to think belonged elsewhere. But the man made money, he made much money,