In my innocence I suggested that I would telephone to the trust company to send over the guards. The official at the vault hesitated, and then said: “If I were you I would go to the trust company and get them, so as to be sure that no one is listening in, and that the men who come are really the men sent by the company.”[Pg 126] So I went to the company, got the men, and with my wife and sister in front, one guard carrying the bags beside me and the second following with his hand on his revolver in his pocket, the procession formed to carry my worldly goods a few hundred feet past the U. S. Subtreasury and the office of J. P. Morgan and Company! To elaborate on this feature of modern American life would seem to be needless. Yet a curious feature about it is that American business men themselves do not seem to realize what an appalling situation has developed when the state has completely broken down in its function of protecting its citizens and making the streets of the largest city in the country safe to walk in. When I mentioned this topic of armored cars in an article in The Atlantic Monthly, among the usual crop of letters from indignant citizens came one from a technical expert of one of the leading American corporations with an office in the very heart of the Wall Street district. He said that I was seeing ghosts; that he had had his office in Wall Street for fifteen years and neither he nor any of his friends had ever seen an armored car! I do not question his honesty, but there was a business man with a scientifically trained mind who indignantly denied my statement because he had never seen what it seems incredible he could help seeing. Every time I have been in Wall Street since, I have never failed to see from one to five of these cars. On receiving his letter I called up the several companies which provide armored-car service and was informed by them that, between them, they operated one hundred and fifty armored cars in the metropolitan district alone. Just think what that means. A hundred and fifty armored cars (and the number has[Pg 127] increased since) to handle the ordinary daily business of New York City when not one is required in all Europe. There are three most astounding points to be noted. One is the appalling prevalence of criminals; second, the equally appalling breakdown in the performance of its primary function by government; and third, the blindness of the American business man to what is happening under his nose and his utter satisfaction and complacency with respect to it.