This Law, this extraordinary code of print which
governs us, has been and is nothing more or less, it is evident, than so
many statutes to guarantee the retention of the proceeds of fraud and
theft, if the piracy were committed in a sufficiently large and
impressive way. The indisputable proof is that every single fortune
which has been obtained by fraud, is still privately held and is greater
than ever; the Law zealously and jealously guards it. So has the Law
practically worked; and if the thing is to be judged by its practical
results, then the Law has been an instigator of every form of crime, and
a bulwark of that which it instigated. Seeing that this is so, it is
not so hard to understand that puzzling problem of why so large a
portion of the community has resolved itself into a committee of the
whole, and while nominally and solemnly professing the accustomed and
expected respect for Law, deprecates it, as it is constituted, and often
makes no concealment of contempt.

LAW THE STRONGEST ASSET.

In penetrating into the origin and growth of the great fortunes, this
vital fact is constantly forced upon the investigator: that Law has been
the most valuable asset possessed by the capitalist class. Without it,
this class would have been as helpless as a babe. What would the
medieval baron have been without armed force? But note how sinuously
conditions have changed. The capitalist class, far shrewder than the
feudalistic rulers, dispenses with personally equipped armed force. It
becomes superfluous. All that is necessary to do is to make the laws,
and so guide things that the officials who enforce the laws are
responsive to the interests of the propertied classes. Back of the laws
are police forces and sheriffs and militia all kept at the expense of
city, county and State--at public expense. Clearly, then, having control
of the laws and of the officials, the propertied classes have the full
benefit of armed forces the expense of which, however, they do not have
to defray. It has unfolded itself as a vast improvement over the crude
feudal system.

In complete control of the laws, the great propertied classes have been
able either to profit by the enforcement, or by the violation, of them.
This is nowhere more strikingly shown than in the growth of the Astor
fortune, although all of the other great fortunes reveal the same, or
nearly identical, factors. With the millions made by a career of crime
the original Astors