Bankruptcy -- Fiction; Gold mines and mining -- Alaska -- Fiction; Oakland (Calif.) -- Fiction; Western stories; Women pioneers -- Fiction
Thus, all unread in philosophy, Daylight preempted for himself the
position and vocation of a twentieth-century superman. He found, with
rare and mythical exceptions, that there was no noblesse oblige among
the business and financial supermen. As a clever traveler had
announced in an after-dinner speech at the Alta-Pacific, "There was
honor amongst thieves, and this was what distinguished thieves from
honest men." That was it. It hit the nail on the head. These modern
supermen were a lot of sordid banditti who had the successful
effrontery to preach a code of right and wrong to their victims which
they themselves did not practise. With them, a man's word was good
just as long as he was compelled to keep it. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL was
only applicable to the honest worker. They, the supermen, were above
such commandments. They certainly stole and were honored by their
fellows according to the magnitude of their stealings.
The more Daylight played the game, the clearer the situation grew.
Despite the fact that every robber was keen to rob every other robber,
the band was well organized. It practically controlled the political
machinery of society, from the ward politician up to the Senate of the
United States. It passed laws that gave it privilege to rob. It
enforced these laws by means of the police, the marshals, the militia
and regular army, and the courts. And it was a snap. A superman's
chiefest danger was his fellow-superman. The great stupid mass of the
people did not count. They were constituted of such inferior clay that
the veriest chicanery fooled them. The superman manipulated the
strings, and when robbery of the workers became too slow or monotonous,
they turned loose and robbed one another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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