“That’s a pretty good start,” commented J. Rufus, considering the matter carefully as he eyed the stream of ascending bubbles in his hollow-stemmed glass. “No matter what business you’re in, if you have a package of clean, new, fresh dollars every week to handle, some of it is bound to settle to the bottom; but there mustn’t be too many to swallow the settlings.”
“Six of us on the inside,” mused the other. “Doc Turner, who sells real estate only to people who can’t pay for it; Ebenezer Squinch, a lawyer that makes a specialty of widows and orphans and damage claims; Tom Fester, who runs the nicest little chattel-mortgage company that ever collected a life income from a five-dollar bill; Andy Grout, who has been conducting a prosperous instalment business for ten years on the same old stock of furniture; and Jim Christmas, who came in from the farm ten years ago to become a barber, shaving nothing but notes.”
Young Wallingford sat lost in admiration.
“What a lovely bunch of citizens to train a growing young dollar; to teach it to jump through hoops and lay down and roll over,” he declared. “And I suppose you were in a similar line, Judge?” he ventured.
“Nothing like it,” denied the judge emphatically. “I was in a decent, respectable loan business. Collateral loans were my specialty.”
“I see,” said J. Rufus, chuckling. “All mankind were not your brothers, exactly, but your brothers’ children.”
“Making me the universal uncle, yes,” admitted Mr. Fox, then he suddenly puffed up with pride in his achievements. “And I do say,” he boasted, “that I could give any Jew cards and spades at the game and still beat him out on points. I reckon I invented big casino, little casino and the four aces in the pawn brokerage business. Let alone my gage of the least a man would take, I had it fixed so that they could slip into my place by the front door, from the drug-store on one side, from the junk-yard on the other, from the saloon across the alley in the rear, and down-stairs, from the hall leading to Doc Turner’s office.”
Lost in twinkling-eyed admiration of his own cleverness he lapsed into silence, but J. Rufus, eager for information, aroused him.
“But why did you blow the easy little new company?” he wanted to know. “I could understand it if you had been running a local building-loan company, for in that the only salaried officer is the secretary, who gets fifty cents a year, and the happy home-builders pile up double compound interest for the wise members who rent; but with a national company it’s different. A national building-loan company’s business is to collect money to juggle with, for the exclusive benefit of the officers.”
“You’re a bright young man,” said Mr. Fox admiringly. “But the business was such a cinch it began to get crowded, and so the lawmakers, who were mostly stock-holders in the three biggest companies, had a spasm of virtue, and passed such stringent laws for the protection of poor investors that no new company could do any business. We tried to buy a pull but it was no use; there wasn’t pull enough to go round; so I’m going to retire and enjoy myself. This country’s getting too corrupt to do business in,” and Mr. Fox relapsed into sorrowful silence over the degeneracy of the times.