Louis XI used to be called “the human spider” by reason of his industry, but we modern office men are far more like human spiders than he, as we sit in the center of our webs of invisible wires.  We wait and wait, and our lines run out across the length and breadth of the land—­sometimes getting tangled, to be sure, so that it is frequently difficult to decide just which spider owns the web; but we sit patiently doing nothing save devising the throwing out of other lines.

We weave, but we do not build; we manipulate, buy, sell and lend, quarrel over the proceeds, and cover the world with our nets, while the ants and the bees of mankind labor, construct and manufacture, and struggle to harness the forces of Nature.  We plan and others execute.  We dicker, arrange, consult, cajole, bribe, pull our wires and extort; but we do it all in one place—­the center of our webs and the webs are woven in our caves.

I figure that I spend about six hours each day in my office; that I sleep nearly nine hours; that I am in transit on surface cars and in subways at least one hour and a half more; that I occupy another hour and a half in bathing, shaving and dressing, and an hour lunching at midday.  This leaves a margin of five hours a day for all other activities.

Could even a small portion of this time be spent consecutively in reading in the evening, I could keep pace with current thought and literature much better than I do; or if I spent it with my son and daughters I should know considerably more about them than I do now, which is practically nothing.  But the fact is that every evening from the first of November to the first of May the motor comes to the door at five minutes to eight and my wife and I are whirled up or down town to a dinner party—­that is, save on those occasions when eighteen or twenty people are whirled to us.

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This short recital of my daily activities is sufficient to demonstrate that I lead an exceedingly narrow and limited existence.  I do not know any poor men, and even the charities in which I am nominally interested are managed by little groups of rich ones.  The truth is, I learned thirty years ago that if one wants to make money one must go where money is and cultivate the people who have it.  I have no petty legal business—­there is nothing in it.  If I cannot have millionaires for clients I do not want any.  The old idea that the young country lawyer could shove a pair of socks into his carpetbag, come to the great city, hang out his shingle and build up a practice has long since been completely exploded.  The best he can do now is to find a clerkship at twelve hundred dollars a year.

Big business gravitates to the big offices; and when the big firms look round for junior partners they do not choose the struggling though brilliant young attorney from the country, no matter how large his general practice may have become; but they go after the youth whose father is a director in forty corporations or the president of a trust.