rules the machine, and we supply the money and don't get the benefit.
It's as if I let my wife or one of my employes run my property."

"Much like that," I answered. "Now, why shouldn't you finance the
machine directly and do away with Dunkirk, who takes as his own wages
about half what you give him? He takes it and wastes it in stock
speculations,--gambling with your hard-earned wealth, gambling it away
cheerfully, because he feels that you people will always give him more."

"What do you propose?" he asked; and I could see that his acute business
mind was ready to pounce upon my scheme and search it hopefully if
mercilessly.

"A secret, absolutely secret, combine of a dozen of the big corporations
of my state,--those that make the bulk of the political business,--the
combine to be under the management of some man whom they trust and whose
interests are business, not political."

"He would have enormous power," said Roebuck.

I knew that he would point first and straight at that phase of my
scheme, no matter how subtly I might disguise it. So I had pushed it
into his face and had all but pointed at it myself so that I might
explain it away. "Power?" said I. "How do you make that out? Any member
of the combine that is dissatisfied can withdraw at any time and go
back to the old way of doing business. Besides, the manager won't dare
appear in it at all,--he'll have to hide himself from the people and
from the politicians, behind some popular figure-head. There's another
advantage that mustn't be overlooked. Dunkirk and these other demagogues
who bleed you are inflaming public sentiment more and more against you
big corporations,--that's their way of frightening you into yielding to
their demands. Under the new plan their demagoguery would cease. Don't
you think it's high time for the leaders of commerce and industry to
combine intelligently against demagoguery? Don't you think they have
cringed before it, and have financed and fostered it too long?"

This argument, which I had reserved for the last, had all the effect I
anticipated. He sat rubbing his broad, bald forehead, twisting his white
whiskers and muttering to himself. Presently he asked, "When are you and
Lottie Ramsay going to be married?"

"In the fall," said I. "In about three months."

"Well, we'll talk this over again--after you are married and settled.
If you had the substantial interests to give you the steadiness and
ballast, I think you'd be the