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were blamed by the newspapers on the Democratic party, or on the
reformers who had wantonly assailed established institutions. These
dominant bankers had contrived to gain control of the savings of
thousands and thousands of fellow-citizens who had deposited them in
banks or paid them into insurance companies, and with the power thus
accumulated had sallied forth to capture railroads and industries. The
railroads were the strategic links. With these in hand, certain favoured
industrial concerns could be fed, and others starved into submission.

Adolf Scherer might be said to represent a transitional type. For he was
not only an iron-master who knew every detail of his business, who kept
it ahead of the times; he was also a strategist, wise in his generation,
making friends with the Railroad while there had yet been time, at length
securing rebates and favours. And when that Railroad (which had been
constructed through the enterprise and courage of such men as Nathaniel
Durrett) had passed under the control of the banker-personality to whom I
have referred, and had become part of a system, Adolf Scherer remained in
alliance, and continued to receive favours.... I can well remember the
time when the ultimate authority of our Railroad was transferred,
quietly, to Wall Street. Alexander Barbour, its president, had been a
great man, but after that he bowed, in certain matters, to a greater one.

I have digressed.... Mr. Scherer unfolded his scheme, talking about
"units" as calmly as though they were checkers on a board instead of
huge, fiery, reverberating mills where thousands and thousands of human
beings toiled day and night--beings with families, and hopes and fears,
whose destinies were to be dominated by the will of the man who sat
opposite me. But--did not he in his own person represent the triumph of
that American creed of opportunity? He, too, had been through the fire,
had sweated beside the blasts, had handled the ingots of steel. He was
one of the "fittest" who had survived, and looked it. Had he no memories
of the terrors of that struggle?... Adolf Scherer had grown to be a
giant. And yet without me, without my profession he was a helpless giant,
at the mercy of those alert and vindictive lawmakers who sought to
restrain and hamper him, to check his growth with their webs. How
stimulating the idea of his dependence! How exhilarating too, the thought
that that vision which had first possessed me as an undergra