A Little Journey in the World Part 15

It was a letter that could not be answered like the other one; for it raised questions and prospects, and the thousand doubts that make one hesitate in any definite step; and, besides, she pleased herself to think that she did not know her own mind. He had not asked if he might come; he had said he was coming, and really there was no answer to that.

Therefore she put it out of her mind-another curious mental process we have in dealing with a matter that is all the time the substratum of our existence. And she was actually serious; if she was reflective, she was conscious of being judicially reflective.

But in this period of calm and reflection it was impossible that a woman of Margaret's habits and temperament should not attempt to settle in her mind what that life was yonder of which she had a little taste; what was the career that Henderson had marked out for himself; what were his principles; what were the methods and reasons of his evident success.

Endeavoring in her clear mind to separate the person, about whose personality she was so fondly foolish, from his schemes, which she so dimly comprehended, and applying to his somewhat hazy occupations her simple moral test, were the schemes quite legitimate? Perhaps she did not go so far as this; but what she read in the newspapers of moneymaking in these days made her secretly uneasy, and she found herself wishing that he were definitely practicing some profession, or engaged in some one solid occupation.

In the little parliament at our house, where everything, first and last, was overhauled and brought to judgment, without, it must be confessed, any visible effect on anything, one evening a common "incident" of the day started the conversation. It was an admiring account in a newspaper of a brilliant operation by which three or four men had suddenly become millionaires.

"I don't see," said my wife, "any mention in this account of the thousands who have been reduced to poverty by this operation."

"No," said Morgan; "that is not interesting."

"But it would be very interesting to me," Mrs. Fletcher remarked. "Is there any protection, Mr. Morgan, for people who have invested their little property?"

"Yes; the law."

"But suppose your money is all invested, say in a railway, and something goes wrong, where are you to get the money to pay for the law that will give you rest.i.tution? Is there anything in the State, or public opinion, or anywhere, that will protect your interests against clever swindling?"

"Not that I know of," Morgan admitted. "You take your chance when you let your money go out of your stocking. You see there are so many people who want it. You can put it in the ground."

"But if I own the ground I put it in, the voters who have no ground will tax it till there is nothing left for me."

"That is equality."

"But it isn't equality, for somebody gets very rich in railways or lands, while we lose our little all. Don't you think there ought to be a public official whose duty it is to enforce the law gratis which I cannot afford to enforce when I am wronged?"

"The difficulty is to discover whether you are wronged or only unfortunate. It needs a lawyer to find that out. And very likely if you are wronged, the wrongdoer has so cleverly gone round the law that it needs legislation to set you straight, and that needs a lobbyist, whom the lawyer must hire, or he must turn lobbyist himself. Now, a lawyer costs money, and a lobbyist is one of the most expensive of modern luxuries; but when you have a lawyer and lobbyist in one, you will find it economical to let him take your claim and all that can be made out of it, and not bother you any more about it. But there is no doubt about the law, as I said. You can get just as much law as you can pay for. It is like any other commodity."

"You mean to say," I asked, "that the lawyer takes what the operator leaves?"

"Not exactly. There is a great deal of unreasonable prejudice against lawyers. They must live. There is no n.o.bler occupation than the application of the principle of justice in human affairs. The trouble is that public opinion sustains the operator in his smartness, and estimates the lawyer according to his adroitness. If we only evoked the aid of a lawyer in a just cause, the lawyers would have less to do.

"Usually and naturally the best talent goes with the biggest fees."

"It seems to me," said my wife, musing along, in her way, on parallel lines, "that there ought to be a limit to the amount of property one man can get into his absolute possession, to say nothing of the methods by which he gets it."

"That never yet could be set," Morgan replied. "It is impossible for any number of men to agree on it. I don't see any line between absolute freedom of acquisition, trusting to circ.u.mstances, misfortune, and death to knock things to pieces, and absolute slavery, which is communism."

"Do you believe, Mr. Morgan, that any vast fortune was ever honestly come by?"

"That is another question. Honesty is such a flexible word. If you mean a process the law cannot touch, yes. If you mean moral consideration for others, I doubt. But property acc.u.mulates by itself almost. Many a man who has got a start by an operation he would not like to have investigated, and which he tries to forget, goes on to be very rich, and has a daily feeling of being more and more honorable and respectable, using only means which all the world calls fair and shrewd."

"Mr. Morgan," suddenly asked Margaret, who had been all the time an uneasy listener to the turn the talk had taken, "what is railroad wrecking?"

"Oh, it is very simple, at least in some of its forms. The 'wreckers,'

as they are called, fasten upon some railway that is prosperous, pays dividends, pays a liberal interest on its bonds, and has a surplus. They contrive to buy, no matter of what cost, a controlling interest in it, either in its stock or its management. Then they absorb its surplus; they let it run down so that it pays no dividends, and by-and-by cannot even pay its interest; then they squeeze the bondholders, who may be glad to accept anything that is offered out of the wreck, and perhaps then they throw the property into the hands of a receiver, or consolidate it with some other road at a value enormously greater than the cost to them in stealing it. Having in one way or another sucked it dry, they look round for another road."

"And all the people who first invested lose their money, or the most of it?"

"Naturally, the little fish get swallowed."

"It is infamous," said Margaret--"infamous! And men go to work to do this, to get other people's property, in cool blood?"

"I don't know how cool, but it is in the way of business."

"What is the difference between that and getting possession of a bank and robbing it?" she asked, hot with indignation.

"Oh, one is an operation, and the other is embezzlement."

"It is a shame. How can people permit it? Suppose, Mrs. Fletcher, a wrecker should steal your money that way?"

"I was thinking of that."

I never saw Margaret more disturbed--out of all proportion, I thought, to the cause; for we had talked a hundred times about such things.

"Do you think all men who are what you call operating around are like that?" she asked.

"Oh, no," I said. "Probably most men who are engaged in what is generally called speculation are doing what seems to them a perfectly legitimate business. It is a common way of making a fortune."

"You see, Margaret," Morgan explained, "when people in trade buy anything, they expect to sell it for more than they gave for it."

"It seems to me," Margaret replied, more calmly, "that a great deal of what you men call business is just trying to get other people's money, and doesn't help anybody or produce anything."

"Oh, that is keeping up the circulation, preventing stagnation."

"And that is the use of brokers in grain and stocks?"

"Partly. They are commonly the agents that others use to keep themselves from stagnation."

"I cannot see any good in it," Margaret persisted. "No one seems to have the things he buys or sells. I don't understand it."

"That is because you are a woman, if you will pardon me for saying it.

Men don't need to have things in hand; business is done on faith and credit, and when a transaction is over, they settle up and pay the difference, without the trouble of transporting things back and forth."

"I know you are chaffing me, Mr. Morgan. But I should call that betting."

"Oh, there is a risk in everything you do. But you see it is really paying for a difference of knowledge or opinion."

"Would you buy stocks that way?"

"What way?"

"Why, agreeing to pay for your difference of opinion, as you call it, not really having any stock at all."

"I never did. But I have bought stocks and sold them pretty soon, if I could make anything by the sale. All merchants act on that principle."

"Well," said Margaret, dimly seeing the sophistry of this, "I don't understand business morality."

"n.o.body does, Margaret. Most men go by the law. The Golden Rule seems to be suspended by a more than two-thirds vote."