Upton Sinclair

“ Surely one cannot give up the pleasure of going for a drive—”
“Oh, pshaw, Lucy!” said Montague. “You have too much sense to talk like that. If you want to drive, go ahead and drive. But when a lot of people get together and pay ten or twenty thousand dollars apiece for fancy coaches and horses, and then appoint a day and send out notice to the whole city, and dress themselves up in fancy costumes and go out and make a public parade of themselves, they have no right to talk about driving for pleasure.” ”

“ What I have seen here in the Metropolis has filled me with dismay, almost with terror. Every fibre of me cries out against it; and I mean to fight it—to fight it all my life. And so I do not care to make terms with it socially. When I have seen a man doing what I believe to be a dreadful wrong, I cannot go to his home, and shake his hand, and smile, and exchange the commonplaces of life with him.”
It was a long time before Miss Hegan replied. Her voice was trembling.
“Mr. Montague,” she said, “you must not think that I have not been troubled by these things. But what can one do? ”

“ The Major gave a start. “The Mississippi Steel Company!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Montague.
“Oh, my God!” cried the other.
“What is the matter?”
“Why in the world did you take a matter like that to Jim Hegan?” demanded Major Venable.
“I took it to him because I knew him,” said Montague.
“But one doesn't take things to people because one knows them,” said the Major. “One takes them to the right people. If Jim Hegan could have his way, he would wipe the Mississippi Steel Company off the map of the United States.” ”

“ Lucy gave a start, and gazed at him with horror in her eyes. “Allan!” she panted.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Do you mean to tell me that happened to me because Stanley Ryder is my friend?”
“Of course I do,” said he. “Waterman had heard the gossip, and he thought that if Ryder was a rich man, he was a ten-times-richer man.”
Montague could see the colour mount swiftly over Lucy's throat and face. She stood twisting her hands together nervously. “Oh, Allan!” she said. “That is monstrous!”
“It is not of my making. It is the way the world is. ”

“ Men were beside themselves with wonder at the generosity of Waterman in lending twenty-five millions at ten per cent. But it was not his own money—it was the money of the national banks which he was lending; and this was money which the national banks had got from the Government, and for which they paid the Government no interest at all. There was never any graft in the world so easy as the national bank graft, declared Bates. These smooth gentlemen got the people's money to build their institutions. ”

“ Then suddenly, like a thunderbolt, came tidings that a conference of the big bankers had decreed that the young Lochinvar should be forced out of his New York banks. There were rumours that other banks were involved, and that there were to be more conferences. Then a couple of days later came the news that all the banks of Cummings the Ice King were in trouble, and that he too had been forced from the field.
Montague had never seen anything like the excitement in Wall Street. Everyone he met had a new set of rumours, wilder than the last. ”

“ There had come a man, much older than herself, but with a glamour of romance about him; and the wonder of love had suddenly revealed itself to Lucy, and swept her away as no emotion had ever done before.
One day she disappeared, and Montague had never seen her again. He knew that she had gone to New Orleans to live, and he heard rumours that she was very unhappy, that her husband was a spendthrift and a rake. Scarcely a year after her marriage Montague heard the story of his death by an accident while driving. ”

“ It is such a public matter—”
“A public matter!” exclaimed Montague. “I should think so! To sit up on top of a coach for the crowds to stare at, and for thirty or forty newspaper reporters to take snap-shots of! And to have yourself blazoned as the fascinating young widow from Mississippi who was one of Stanley Ryder's party, and then to have all Society looking at the picture and winking and making remarks about it!”
“You take such a cynical view of everything,” protested Lucy. “How can people help it if the crowds will stare, and if the newspapers will take pictures? ”

“ Could there have been a more appalling illustration of the way in which the masters of the Metropolis were wont to hoodwink its blind and helpless population?
There was only one man to whom Montague could vent his feelings; only one man besides himself who knew the real truth. Montague got the habit, when he left his work, of stopping at the Express building, and listening for a few minutes to the grumbling of Bates.
Bates would have each day's news fresh from the inside; not only the things which would be printed on the morrow, but the things which would never be printed anywhere. ”

“ The national banks resorted to the expedient of paying with clearing-house certificates. The newspapers preached confidence and cheered the public—even the newsboys were silenced, so that their shrill cries might no longer increase the public excitement. Groups of mounted policemen swept up and down the streets, keeping the crowds upon the move.
And so at last came the fateful Thursday, the climax of the panic. A pall seemed to have fallen upon Wall Street. Men ran here and there, bareheaded and pale with fright. Upon the floor of the Stock Exchange men held their breath. ”

“ It was an experience for which the captains of finance were not entirely prepared; they had forgotten the public. It was like some great convulsion of nature, which made mockery of all the powers of men, and left the beholder dazed and terrified. In Wall Street men stood as if in a valley, and saw far up above them the starting of an avalanche; they stood fascinated with horror, and watched it gathering headway ”

“ The insiders have a new scheme—the best yet; it's like a Gatling gun against bows and arrows. They organise a syndicate, and get the franchises for nothing, and then sell them to the company for millions. They've even sold franchises they didn't own, and railroad lines that hadn't been built. You'll find some improvements charged for four or five times over, and the improvements haven't yet been made. First and last they have paid themselves about thirty million dollars. And, in the meantime, the poor stockholder wonders why he doesn't get his dividends! ”

“ I propose to fight. Until you have purchased my stock and the stock of my friends, I shall remain a director in the railroad, and also a candidate for the position of president. I shall make a contest at the next directors' meeting, and if I fail in my purpose there, I shall carry the fight before the public. I flatter myself that my reputation will count for something in my old home; you will not be able to carry matters with quite the same high hand in Mississippi as you are accustomed to in New York. ”

“ You start a trust company, and you get out imposing advertisements, and promise high rates of interest, and the public comes in. Then you hypothecate your stock in company number one, and you have your dummy directors lend you more money, and you buy another trust company. They call that pyramiding—you have heard the term, no doubt, with regard to stocks; it is a fascinating game to play with banks, because the more of them you get, the more prominent you become in the newspapers, and the more the public trusts you. ”

“ Jim Hegan never talked about his affairs. In all the time that Montague spent with him during his two days at Newport, he gave just one hint for the other to go upon. “Money?” he remarked, that evening. “I don't care about money. Money is just chips to me.”
Life was a game, and the chips were dollars! What he had played for was power! And suddenly Montague seemed to see the career of this man, unrolled before him like a panorama. He had begun life as an office-boy; and above him were all the heights of business and finance ”

“ What in the world do you suppose he wants more for?”
“I don't suppose it is the money,” said he. “It's the power. And when you have so much money, you have to work hard to keep other people from taking it away from you.”
“He certainly looks as if he ought to be able to protect himself,” said the girl. “His face is so grim and forbidding. You would hardly think he could smile, to look at him.”
“He is very pleasant, when you know him,” said Montague.
“He remembered you, and asked about you,” said she. “Wasn't it he who was going to buy Lucy Dupree's stock?” ”

“ Will you vote for Haskins as president?”
“My God, Montague!” protested the other. “What a thing to ask of me! You know perfectly well that I have no power in the road. All the stock I own, Price gave me, and what can I do? Why, my whole career would be ruined if I were to oppose him.”
“In other words,” said Montague, “you are a dummy. You are willing to sell your name and your character for a block of stock. You take a position of trust, and you betray it.” ”

“ And in the face of all this, the people agitated for postal savings banks, and couldn't get them. In other countries the people had banks where they could put their money with absolute certainty; for no one had ever known such a thing as a run upon a postal bank.
“Sometimes,” said Bates, “it seems almost as if our people were hypnotised. You saw all this life insurance scandal, Mr. Montague; and there's one simple and obvious remedy for all the evils—if we had Government life insurance, it could never fail, and there'd be no surplus for Wall Street gamblers. ”

“ Then you fill the street with rumours of the wonders of your soap combination, and all the privileges and monopolies that you've got, and you unload your stock on the public, we'll say at eighty. You may have sold all your stock, but you've still got control of the corporation. The public is helpless and unorganised, and your men are in. Then the Street begins to hear disturbing rumours about the soap trust, and your board of directors meet and declare that it is impossible to pay any dividends. ”

“ But I know him better than you, I believe.”
“You don't, Allan, you can't!” she protested. “I tell you he is a good man! He is a man nobody understands—”
Montague shrugged his shoulders. “It is possible,” he said. “I have heard that before. Many men are better than the things they do in this world; at any rate, they like to persuade themselves that they are. But you have no right to wreck your life out of pity for Ryder. He has made his own reputation, and if he had any real care for you, he would not ask you to sacrifice yourself to it.”
“He did not ask me to,” said Lucy. ”

“ He said, 'You have no money. You cannot keep up the pace in New York. What you own is worth nothing.' Do you suppose, Allan, that he can know anything about my affairs?”
Montague was staring at her in consternation. “Lucy!” he exclaimed.
“What is it?” she cried.
“Nothing,” he said; and he added to himself, “No, it is absurd. It could not be.” The idea that it could have been Dan Waterman who had set the detectives to follow him seemed too grotesque for consideration. “It was nothing but a chance shot,” he said to Lucy, “but you must be careful. He is a dangerous man.” ”

“ If he wants a thing, he buys it, and that is his attitude toward women. He is used to being treated as a master; women seek him, and vie for his favour. If you had been able to hold it, you might have had a million-dollar palace on Riverside Drive, or a cottage with a million-dollar pier at Newport. You might have had carte blanche at all the shops, and all the yachting trips and private trains that you wanted. That is all that other women want, and he could not understand what more you could want.” Montague paused.
“Is that the way he spends his money?” Lucy asked. ”

“ I thought the Gotham Trust Company was one of the largest institutions in the country. What are those huge figures that you see in their advertisements,—seventy millions—eighty millions—what is it?”
“Something like that,” said Montague.
“And is not that true?” she asked.
“Yes, I guess that's true,” he said. “I don't know anything about Ryder's affairs, you know—I simply hear the gossip. Everyone says he is playing a bold game. You take my advice, and keep your money somewhere else. You have to be doubly careful because you have enemies.”
“Enemies?” asked Lucy, in perplexity. ”

“ I doubt if two hundred million dollars' worth of honest dollars was ever put into the Steel Trust properties, and they capitalised it at a billion, and now they've raised it to a billion and a half! The men who pulled it off made hundreds of millions, and the poor public that bought the common stock saw it go down to six! They gave old Harrison a four-hundred-million-dollar mortgage on the property, and he sits back and grins, and wonders why a man can't die poor! ”