hat the California & Altamont
Trust Company has an intrinsically sound institution, but that just
then it was in a precarious condition due to Klinkner's speculations
with its money. He knew, also, that in a few months the Trust Company
would be more firmly on its feet than ever, thanks to those same
speculations, and that if he were to strike he must strike immediately.
"It's just that much money in pocket and a whole lot more," he was
reported to have said in connection with his heavy losses. "It's just
so much insurance against the future. Henceforth, men who go in with
me on deals will think twice before they try to double-cross me, and
then some."

The reason for his savageness was that he despised the men with whom he
played. He had a conviction that not one in a hundred of them was
intrinsically square; and as for the square ones, he prophesied that,
playing in a crooked game, they were sure to lose and in the long run
go broke. His New York experience had opened his eyes. He tore the
veils of illusion from the business game, and saw its nakedness. He
generalized upon industry and society somewhat as follows:--

Society, as organized, was a vast bunco game. There were many
hereditary inefficients--men and women who were not weak enough to be
confined in feeble-minded homes, but who were not strong enough to be
ought else than hewers of wood and drawers of water.

Then there were the fools who took the organized bunco game seriously,
honoring and respecting it. They were easy game for the others, who
saw clearly and knew the bunco game for what it was.

Work, legitimate work, was the source of all wealth. That was to say,
whether it was a sack of potatoes, a grand piano, or a seven-passenger
touring car, it came into being only by the performance of work. Where
the bunco came in was in the distribution of these things after labor
had created them. He failed to see the horny-handed sons of toil
enjoying grand pianos or riding in automobiles. How this came about
was explained by the bunco. By tens of thousands and hundreds of
thousands men sat up nights and schemed how they could get between the
workers and the things the workers produced. These schemers were the
business men. When they got between the worker and his product, they
took a whack out of it for themselves The size of the whack was
determined by no rule of equity; but by their own strength and
swinishness. It was always a case of "al