That farmer about whose work I spoke will take his two hundred and fifty dollars to the bank for deposit; and in the line before the window will be a young spendthrift idler with a month’s income from his father’s estate, and a politician with a bribe for a street railway franchise; and to the banker all these deposits will stand upon equal terms, they will all be equally “good,” and will claim and get interest at the same rate. The farmer will have to content himself with a lower rate, because of the competition of the others; and next week, when the activities of some speculator in Wall Street bring about a failure of the bank, he will get not a bit more out of the wreck than the other two. And then he will go back and toil for another year, to raise a similar crop—and what will he find then? Why this: the forty-six millions of the Standard Oil gang will have survived all mischances, and having by their enormous mass attracted profits, will have become fifty millions, or even sixty; and the thirty millions of Magee and Quay will have become thirty-five. All the untold millions of the capital of the country will have increased similarly; and the investment field will have become more crowded yet, and the prizes fewer yet, and the chances more hazardous yet; and the cost of living will be a little higher yet; and the interest rate a little lower yet, and wages a little lower yet; and the whole of human society will be toiling a little harder yet to pay the profits upon that heaped-up mass of wealth. More men will be taking to drink, and more women will be taking to brothels—more to suicide, madness, vagabondage and crime. The race for profits will be a little more fierce, social ostentation will be a little more vulgar, political corruption will be a little more shameless, strikes and riots will be a little more common, the socialists will be a little more active—and you, Mr. Lincoln Steffens, will be a little more saddened at the sight of your country’s downward career.