“In England insurance is called assurance, but the name better applies to American directors, whom it assures a life of luxury. The policy holder believes insurance is a legacy, but his widow discovers it is a law suit. Life insurance is a bogie at which everybody not in a glass coffin throws a stone. It is old, tried and true: too old to notice you after you’re dead; true—to its officers; and tried—in the courts. It makes sick loans which have the effect of paralyzing the tongues of its officials or sending them to Europe in search of health.”
“Knowledge is no longer power,” denied Webster; “wealth has taken its place. Even both ends of Wall Street can be made to meet. At one end is the aspiring finger of Trinity Church, pointing to the sky, and at its foot is a cemetery. At the other end is the first station on the road to Brooklyn and—another cemetery!”
“Gold itself is pure,” observed Portia, LL.D.; “it becomes defiled only in passing through dirty fingers. Tainted money may be exchanged for gold that isn’t greasy at the mint and no questions asked. The filth from the bad man’s fingers doesn’t take away the value of the larcenous long green, or of the sullied silver.”
“In my time,” said Tweed, “we didn’t ask whether money was tainted before we took it. There’s time enough for an investigation after the trust treasure is spent, and suspicious specie never becomes penitential pesos until after money has ceased to talk. Riches are promised to the righteous man—which we all are until the newspapers find us out. Every millionaire secured his wealth honestly with two exceptions, neither of which are noted in the newspapers.”
“You know it is said,” observed Cæsar, “that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
“If that includes Cleopatra’s needle, there is still hope for the rich man,” put in Marc Antony.
“A note of protest won’t pay your debts, so what’s the use of all this outcry about opprobrious opulence?” asked Tweed. “Who can scent from afar the possibilities of graft quicker than the man who is counting up his censurable coin? Among the crowd in full cry after a fleeing burglar with his pockets full of soiled silver, none shouts ‘stop thief’ more lustily than the pal who did not get his share of the plunder. In the rustle of the competitor’s greenbacks which are tainted with the tears of women and the blood of men, no capitalist hears the cry of the widow and orphan more quickly than he who is seeking to shear the fleece of an innocent and confiding lot of lambs swallowed in the vortex of frenzied finance.”
“How about the tainted tricks of politics?” I asked. “I might have been a politician myself if I hadn’t been converted and so became a newspaper man instead.”
“Your position is now more hopeless than ever, for you not only know all the tricks of the politician, but those of the newspaper man as well,” retaliated Tweed.
“Money, the devil’s pass key, has securely locked more than one skeleton safely away in the family closet,” I continued. “After all, we can’t get along without the disreputable dough. If a rotting log nurture a bank of violets, it would be folly to despise the flowers because they sprang from a tainted source.”