he stupid cover
their stupidity with "dignity." Let the swindler hide his schemings under
"dignity." I am a man of the people, not afraid to be seen as the human
being that I am. I laugh when I feel like it. I have no sense of jar
when people call me "Matt." I have a good time, and I shall stay young
as long as I stay alive. Wealth hasn't made me a solemn ass, fenced in
and unapproachable. The custom of receiving obedience and flattery and
admiration has not made me a turkey-cock. Life is a joke; and when the
joke's on me, I laugh as heartily as when it's on the other fellow.

It is half-past three o'clock on a May afternoon; a dismal, dreary rain
is being whirled through the streets by as nasty a wind as ever blew out
of the east. You are in the private office of that "king of kings," Henry
J. Roebuck, philanthropist, eminent churchman, leading citizen and--in
business--as corrupt a creature as ever used the domino of respectability.
That office is on the twelfth floor of the Power Trust Building--and the
Power Trust is Roebuck, and Roebuck is the Power Trust. He is seated at his
desk and, thinking I do not see him, is looking at me with an expression of
benevolent and melancholy pity--the look with which he always regarded any
one whom the Roebuck God Almighty had commanded Roebuck to destroy. He and
his God were in constant communication; his God never did anything except
for his benefit, he never did anything except on the direct counsel or
command of his God. Just now his God is commanding him to destroy me, his
confidential agent in shaping many a vast industrial enterprise and in
inducing the public to buy by the million its bonds and stocks.

I invited the angry frown of the Roebuck God by saying: "And I bought in
the Manasquale mines on my own account."

"On your own account!" said Roebuck. Then he hastily effaced his
involuntary air of the engineer startled by sight of an unexpected red
light.

"Yes," replied I, as calm as if I were not realizing the tremendous
significance of what I had announced. "I look to you to let me participate
on equal terms."

That is, I had decided that the time had come for me to take my place
among the kings of finance. I had decided to promote myself from agent to
principal, from prime minister to king--I must, myself, promote myself,
for in this world all promotion that is solid comes from within. And in
furtherance of my object I had bought this group of mines, control of wh