He is
not responsible, for he is not a trustee for the public. If he be
restrained by legislation, that legislation is in his eye an oppression
and an outrage, to be annulled or eluded by any means which will not
lead to the penitentiary. He knows nothing and cares less, for the
relation which highways always have held, and always must hold, to every
civilized population, and if he be asked to inform himself on such
subjects he resents the suggestion as an insult. He is too specialized
to comprehend a social relation, even a fundamental one like this,
beyond the narrow circle of his private interests. He might, had he so
chosen, have evolved a system of governmental railway regulation, and
have administered the system personally, or by his own agents, but he
could never be brought to see the advantage to himself of rational
concession to obtain a resultant of forces. He resisted all restraint,
especially national restraint, believing that his one weapon
--money--would be more effective in obtaining what he wanted in
state legislatures than in Congress. Thus, of necessity, he precipitates
a conflict, instead of establishing an adjustment. He is, therefore, in
essence, a revolutionist without being aware of it. The same specialized
thinking appears in his reasoning touching actual government. New York
City will serve as an illustration.

New York has for two generations been noted for a civic corruption which
has been, theoretically, abominable to all good citizens, and which the
capitalistic class has denounced as abominable to itself. I suspect this
to be an imaginative conception of the situation. Tammany Hall is, I
take it, the administrative bureau through which capital purchases its
privileges. An incorruptible government would offend capital, because,
under such a government, capital would have to obey the law, and
privilege would cease. Occasionally, Tammany grows rapacious and exacts
too much for its services. Then a reform movement is undertaken, and
finally a new management is imposed on Tammany; but when Tammany has
consented to a satisfactory scale of prices, the reform ends. To change
the system would imply a shift in the seat of power. In fine, money is
the weapon of the capitalist as the sword was the weapon of the
mediaeval soldier; only, as the capitalist is more highly specialized
than the soldier ever was, he is more helpless when his single weapon
fails him. From the days of William the Conqueror to