Repeat ad infinitum, for the law is for the laughter of the strong,
and the public is an eager ass. To keep up the fiction of "respectability,"
the inside ring divides into two parties for its campaigns--one party to
break down, the other to build up. One takes the profits from destruction
and departs, perhaps to construct elsewhere; the other takes the profits
from construction and departs, perhaps to destroy elsewhere. As their
collusion is merely tacit, no conscience need twitch. I must add that, at
the time of which I am writing, I did not realize the existence of this
conspiracy. I knew, of course, that many lawless and savage things were
done, that there were rascals among the high financiers, and that almost
all financiers now and then did things that were more or less rascally; but
I did not know, did not suspect, that high finance was through and through
brigandage, and that the high financier, by long and unmolested practice of
brigandage, had come to look on it as legitimate, lawful business, and on
laws forbidding or hampering it as outrageous, socialistic, anarchistic,
"attacks upon the social order!"
I was sufficiently infected with the spirit of the financier, I frankly
confess, to look on the public as a sort of cow to milk and send out to
grass that it might get itself ready to be driven in and milked again.
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