Gradually the force of this anti-trust feeling, baffled by the complexity of the subject and seeking all the more for that reason a personal victim, began to focus upon Galt. You could see it taking place. The Galt Railroad System, formerly treated with respect and wonder, now was represented to be an octopus, oppressive, arrogant, holding power of life and death over helpless communities. And all the time there were men at Washington who whispered into the official ear: “Of course a lot of this outcry is senseless. There are good trusts and bad trusts. Most of them have the economic welfare of the country at heart and are willing to submit to any reasonable regulation. The public is undiscriminating. Its mind becomes fixed on what is bad. It happens to be fixed on this Galt Railroad Trust. Well, as to that, we must say there is reason for the public’s prejudice. You would find very few even in Wall Street to defend his methods. The danger is that unless the evils justly complained of are torn away by those who understand how to do it our entire structure will be destroyed in a fit of popular passion.” Galt was warned of what was going on at Washington; but he was so contemptuous of politics and so sure of his own way that he sneered. Who knew what the law was? It had never been construed. The legality of his acts had been attended to by the most eminent counsel, including a former Attorney General of the United States. What could happen to him that wasn’t just as likely to happen to everybody else? He had only done what everyone was doing, only better, more of it, and perhaps to greater profit. If he was vulnerable, then so were all the others who had combined lesser into greater things, and they would have to find a way out together. No wealth would be destroyed. And so he reasoned himself into a state of indifference. He greatly underestimated the force of public opinion. He knew nothing about it, for it had never touched him really. Mass psychology in Wall Street he understood perfectly. Social and political phenomena he did not comprehend at all. One day Great Midwestern stock turned suddenly very weak, falling from 220 to 210 in half an hour. He watched it, annoyed and frowning, and sent for Mordecai, who could not explain it. That afternoon news came that the minority stockholders of the Orient & Pacific had brought a suit in equity against the Great Midwestern, alleging that Galt, by arbitrary exercise of the power of a majority stockholder, had reduced the Orient & Pacific to a state of utter subservience, had thereby destroyed its independent and competitive value, and had mulcted it heavily for the benefit of the Great Midwestern’s treasury. This, they represented, was a grievous injury to them as minority stockholders and also contrary to public interest.