“A note of protest won’t pay your debts, so what’s the use of all this outcry about opprobrious opulence?” asked Tweed. “Who can scent from afar the possibilities of graft quicker than the man who is counting up his censurable coin? Among the crowd in full cry after a fleeing burglar with his pockets full of soiled silver, none shouts ‘stop thief’ more lustily than the pal who did not get his share of the plunder. In the rustle of the competitor’s greenbacks which are tainted with the tears of women and the blood of men, no capitalist hears the cry of the widow and orphan more quickly than he who is seeking to shear the fleece of an innocent and confiding lot of lambs swallowed in the vortex of frenzied finance.” “How about the tainted tricks of politics?” I asked. “I might have been a politician myself if I hadn’t been converted and so became a newspaper man instead.” “Your position is now more hopeless than ever, for you not only know all the tricks of the politician, but those of the newspaper man as well,” retaliated Tweed. “Money, the devil’s pass key, has securely locked more than one skeleton safely away in the family closet,” I continued. “After all, we can’t get along without the disreputable dough. If a rotting log nurture a bank of violets, it would be folly to despise the flowers because they sprang from a tainted source.” “It would be well if the twentieth century had a Lycurgus,” commented Plutarch. “For the purpose of sapping the foundation of avarice, he called in all the nefarious nuggets and decreed that iron should be used as current coin. If modern millionaires had to drive a yoke of oxen to carry home each $88 in dividends, the iron would enter their souls far more readily than into their pocketbooks.” “The profits of plunder ought to be checked.” “So they are. A check is drawn for each man who has his price, to stop him from branding his neighbor a thief. Never analyze the gold given as a gift. Does it matter which cow gave the skimmed milk if we get the cream? If our pocketbook is made corpulent enough to choke our scruples, shall we inquire if our benefactor has cobwebs on his conscience? A man’s criminality ought not to be based on the size of his bank account.” “Greed and graft have always been blood money relations,” I said. “In the dawn of history Adam owned the whole world except one little tree and he wouldn’t be happy till he got that.” “But I never became a millionaire,” muttered the first man, disconsolately. “You would have been a multi-billionaire if you had held onto all your real estate. But perhaps, like Ann Drew Karnagee, you thought it a sin to die rich after living in the tainted atmosphere of affluence.” “Then there was Cæsar. He ran up a supper bill of twenty-five million in four months. My authority? Never mind; it’s all down somewhere.”