These fortunes were made in the South by men who
loved their section of the country more than they did wealth, and why
should they not be employed to benefit that part of the country which
their makers and owners loved? I remember vividly how perplexed he was
when, at the beginning, the Wilsons would show him that the investments
were returning unusually large profits.
"'It is not right, Beulah,' he said to me one morning after receiving a
letter from Baltimore to the effect that Seaboard stock and bonds had
advanced until his investment showed over fifty per cent, profit, 'it is
not right for us to make this money. No man in America should make over
legal rates of interest and a fair profit on an investment, that is, an
investment of capital pure and simple, particularly in a transportation
company, where every dollar of profit comes from the people who patronise
the lines. I have worked it out on every side, and it is not right; it
would not be legal if the people, who make the laws for their own
betterment, understood their affairs as they should.'
"He was always writing to the Wilsons to conduct the affairs of the
Seaboard so that there would be remaining each year only profits enough
to keep the road up and the wharves in good condition and to pay the
annual interest and a fair dividend.
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