Even as I was reading these fables of my millions, there lay on the desk before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs--a memorandum made by myself for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as I mastered it. On the face of the figures the balance against me was appalling. My chief asset, indeed my only asset that measured up toward my debts, was my Coal stocks, those bought and those contracted for; and, while their par value far exceeded my liabilities, they had to appear in my memorandum at their actual market value on that day. I looked at the calendar--seventeen days until the reorganization scheme would be announced, only seventeen days! Less than three business weeks, and I should be out of the storm and sailing safer and smoother seas than I had ever known. “To indulge in vague _hopes_ is bad,” thought I, “but not to indulge in _a_ hope, especially when one has only it between him and the pit.” And I proceeded to plan on the not unwarranted assumption that my Coal hope was a present reality. Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among the future's uncertainties was to put myself among the utterly ruined. Using as collateral the Coal stocks I had bought outright, I borrowed more money, and with it went still deeper into the Coal venture. Everything or nothing!--since the chances in my favor were a thousand, to practically none against me. Everything or nothing!--since only by staking everything could I possibly save anything at all. The morality of these and many of my other doings in those days will no doubt be condemned. By no one more severely than by myself--now that the necessities which then compelled me have passed. There is no subject on which men talk and think, more humbug than on that subject of morality. As a matter of fact, except in those personal relations that are governed by the affections, what is morality but the mandate of policy, and what is policy but the mandate of necessity? My criticism of Roebuck and the other “high financiers” is not upon their morality, but upon their policy, which is short-sighted and stupid and base. The moral difference between me and them is that, while I merely assert and maintain my right to live, they deny the right of any but themselves to live. I say I criticize them; but that does not mean that I sympathize with the public at large in its complainings against them. The public, its stupidity and cupidity, creates the conditions that breed and foster these men. A rotten cheese reviling the maggots it has bred!