should sit at my desk,
while I should be free.

I then suggested that the firm might divide with me the proceeds of any
business I should bring in. My offer was accepted; and the same
afternoon I went to the office of a young stockbroker I knew and stayed
there until three o'clock. The next day I did the same thing, and the
day after. I did not buy any stocks, but I made myself agreeable to the
group about the ticker and formed the acquaintance of an elderly German,
who was in the chewing-gum business and who amused himself playing the
market.

It was not long before he invited me to lunch with him and I took every
opportunity to impress him with my legal acumen. He had a lawyer of his
own already, but I soon saw that the impression I was making would have
the effect I desired; and presently, as I had confidently expected, he
gave me a small legal matter to attend to. Needless to say it was
accomplished with care, celerity and success. He gave me another. For
six months I dogged that old German's steps every day from one o'clock
in the afternoon until twelve at night. I walked, talked, drank beer
and played pinochle with him, sat in his library in the evenings, and
took him and his wife to the theater.

At the end of that period he discharged his former attorney and retained
me. The business was easily worth thirty-five hundred dollars a year,
and within a short time the Chicle Trust bought out his interests and I
became a director in it and one of its attorneys.

I had already severed my connection with the firm and had opened an
office of my own. Among the directors in the trust with whom I was
thrown were a couple of rich young men whose fathers had put them on the
board merely for purposes of representation. These I cultivated with the
same assiduity as I had used with the German. I spent my entire time
gunning for big game. I went after the elephants and let the sparrows
go. It was only a month or so before my acquaintance with these two
boys--for they were little else--had ripened into friendship. My wife
and I were invited to visit at their houses and I was placed in contact
with their fathers. From these I soon began to get business. I have kept
it--kept it to myself. I have no real partners to steal it away from me.

I am now the same kind of lawyer as the two men who composed the firm
for which I slaved at a hundred dollars a month. I find the work for my
employees to do. I am now an exploiter of labor.