The Root of Evil

by Jr. Thomas Dixon

Under his vigorous administration of this important and powerful office the enforcement of justice ceased to be a joke and became a living faith.

His work had stirred the State to a nobler and cleaner civic life. During the past year he had become one of the foremost figures in American Democracy—the best loved and the most hated and feared man in public life in New York.

He remained alike indifferent to the cheers of his friends or the threats of his enemies. He was the most powerful man who had ever held such an office because he had no ambition beyond the highest service he could render the people. He asked no favours—he sought no preferment.

To the men who secured his nomination and election he was an insolvable mystery. He said he wanted nothing. They had taken that as a wise saying of a very shrewd man. When he accepted the nomination, they smiled knowingly. But when they demanded that he use his high office to punish enemies and reward friends—and he politely refused—they served notice on him of political death unless he yielded within a given number of hours.

His answer was a laugh as he opened the door and pointed the way by which the astonished delegation might find a safe and swift way of exit. They passed out in speechless astonishment, and sent their big chief to browbeat and bully the young upstart into submission. The incredible swiftness with which he returned left the question open as to how he got out of the District Attorney's office. He claimed to have bowed himself politely out the door—but, from the condition of his clothes and the rumpled state of his hair, his comrades cherished the secret but sure conviction that he was kicked down the stairs. Be that as it may, from that day Stuart was left to his own devices by the professional politicians, who were loud in their accusations of treachery and ingratitude. His political education was given up as hopeless.

Yet in spite of their gloomy predictions of his speedy ruin, he had steadily grown in power and influence.

The work on which he had just entered was an investigation before an unusually intelligent Grand Jury of the criminal acts of a group of the most daring and powerful financiers of the world. These men controlled through their position as trustees of the treasuries of great corporations more millions than the combined treasuries of the governments of the Republic—State and National. The act was not only daring, it was extremely dangerous. Under certain conditions it might produce a panic—so daring and dangerous was the move that its first announcement was received as a joke by the press. The idea of a young upstart questioning the honesty and position of the men who controlled the treasuries of the great insurance and trust companies was ridiculous. When he realized the magnitude of the task he had undertaken, he at once put his house in order for the supreme effort. It was necessary that he give up every outside interest that might distract his attention from the greater task.

The one matter of grave importance to which he was giving his time outside his office was his position as advisory counsel to Dr. Woodman in his suit for damages against the Chemical Trust, which had been dragging its course through the courts for years. To his amazement he had just received an offer from Bivens's attorneys to compromise this suit for a hundred thousand dollars. He would of course advise the doctor to accept it immediately. He had never believed he could win a penny.

What could be Bivens's motive in making such an offer? It was impossible that the shrewd little president of the American Chemical Company had anything to fear personally from this attack. His fortune was vast and beyond question. His wealth had grown in the past nine years like magic. Everything his smooth little hand touched had turned to gold. Wherever an industry could pay a dividend, his ferret eyes found it. The process was always the same. He brought together its rival houses, capitalized the new combine for ten times its actual value and bound the burden of this enormous fictitious value as an interest-bearing debt on the backs of the consumers of the goods. The people and their children and their children's children would have to pay it.

His fortune now could not be less than forty millions and the issue of such a suit as the one Woodman had brought and on which he had spent so much of his time and money was to Bivens a mere bagatelle.