s captains of industry bankers, life-insurance
directors. They felt that it was theirs to do with as they pleased.

And they felt that their superiority in rank and in brains entitled them
to whatever remuneration they could assign to themselves without rousing
the wrath of a public too envious to admit the just claims of the "upper
classes." They convinced themselves that without them crops would cease
to grow, sellers and buyers would be unable to find their way to market,
barbarism would spread its rank and choking weeds over the whole garden of
civilization. And, so brainless is the parrot public, they have succeeded
in creating a very widespread conviction that their own high opinion of
their services is not too high, and that some dire calamity would come if
they were swept from between producer and consumer! True, thieves are found
only where there is property; but who but a chucklebrain would think the
thieves made the property?

Roebuck was the keystone of the arch that sustained the structure of
chicane. To dislodge him was the direct way to collapse it. I was about to
set to work when Langdon, feeling that he ought to have a large supply of
cash in the troublous times I was creating, increased the capital stock
of his already enormously overcapitalized Textile Trust and offered the
new issue to the public. As the Textile Trust was even better bulwarked,
politically, than the Power Trust, it was easily able to declare tempting
dividends out of its lootings. So the new stock could not be attacked in
the one way that would make the public instantly shun it--I could not
truthfully charge that it would not pay the promised dividends. Yet attack
I must--for that issue was, in effect, a bold challenge of my charges
against "The Seven." From all parts of the country inquiries poured in upon
me: "What do you think of the new Textile issue? Shall we invest? Is the
Textile Company sound?"

I had no choice. I must turn aside from Roebuck; I must first show that,
while Textile was, in a sense, sound just at that time, it had been
unsound, and would be unsound again as soon as Langdon had gathered in
a sufficient number of lambs to make a battue worth the while of a man
dealing in nothing less than seven figures. I proceeded to do so.

The market yielded slowly. Under my first day's attack Textile preferred
fell six points, Textile common three. While I was in the midst of
dictating my letter for the second day's attack,