he motor-car?

(_A pause._)

You do not answer. Then I am to understand that you have a
motor-car which was made by somebody else's labor and for which
you gave no labor of your own. This I call theft. You call it
property. Yet it is theft.

{Starkweather}

(_Interrupting Dolores Ortega who was just about to speak._)

But surely you have intelligence to see the question in larger
ways than stolen motor-cars. I am a man of affairs. I don't steal
motor-cars.

{Knox}

(_Smiling._) Not concrete little motor-cars, no. You do things on a
large scale.

{Starkweather}

Steal?

{Knox}

(_Shrugging his shoulders._) If you will have it so.

{Starkweather}

I am like a certain gentleman from Missouri. You've got to show
me.

{Knox}

And I'm like the man from Texas. It's got to be put in my hand.

{Starkweather}

I shift my residence at once to Texas. Put it in my hand that I
steal on a large scale.

{Knox}

Very well. You are the great financier, merger, and magnate. Do
you mind a few statistics?

{Starkweather}

Go ahead.

{Knox}

You exercise a controlling interest in nine billion dollars'
worth of railways; in two billion dollars' worth of industrial
concerns; in one billion dollars' worth of life insurance groups;
in one billion dollars' worth of banking groups; in two billion
dollars' worth of trust companies. Mind you, I do not say you own
all this, but that you exercise a controlling interest. That
is all that is necessary. In short, you exercise a controlling
interest in such a proportion of the total investments of the
United States, as to set the pace for all the rest. Now to my
point. In the last few years seventy billions of dollars have
been artificially added to the capitalization of the nation's
industries. By that I mean water--pure, unadulterated water. You,
the merger, know what water means. I say seventy billions. It
doesn't matter if we call it forty billions or eighty billions;
the amount, whatever it is, is a huge one. And what does seventy
billions of water mean? It means, at five per cent, that three
billions and a half must be paid for things this year, and every
year, more than things are really worth. The people who labor
have to pay this. There is theft for you. There is high prices
for you. Who put in the water? Who gets the theft of the water?
Have I put it in your hand?

{Starkweather}

Are there no wages for stewardship?

{Knox}

Call it any name you plea