As
a matter of fact, except in those personal relations that are governed by
the affections, what is morality but the mandate of policy, and what is
policy but the mandate of necessity? My criticism of Roebuck and the other
"high financiers" is not upon their morality, but upon their policy, which
is short-sighted and stupid and base. The moral difference between me and
them is that, white I merely assert and maintain my right to live, they
deny the right of any but themselves to live. I say I criticize them;
but that does not mean that I sympathize with the public at large in its
complainings against them. The public, its stupidity and cupidity, creates
the conditions that breed and foster these men. A rotten cheese reviling
the maggots it has bred!
In those very hours when I was obeying the imperative law of
self-preservation, was clutching at every log that floated by me regardless
of whether it was my property or not so long as it would help me keep my
head above water--what was going on all round me? In every office of the
down town district--merchant, banker, broker, lawyer, man of commerce or
finance--was not every busy brain plotting, not self-preservation but
pillage and sack--plotting to increase the cost of living for the masses of
men by slipping a little tax here and a little tax there on to everything
by which men live? All along the line between the farm or mine or shop
and the market, at every one of the toll-gates for the collection of
_just_ charges, these big financiers, backed up by the big lawyers and
the rascally public officials, had an agent in charge to collect on each
passing article more than was honestly due.
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