“Do you believe, Mr. Morgan, that any vast fortune was ever honestly come by?”

“That is another question.  Honesty is such a flexible word.  If you mean a process the law cannot touch, yes.  If you mean moral consideration for others, I doubt.  But property accumulates by itself almost.  Many a man who has got a start by an operation he would not like to have investigated, and which he tries to forget, goes on to be very rich, and has a daily feeling of being more and more honorable and respectable, using only means which all the world calls fair and shrewd.”

“Mr. Morgan,” suddenly asked Margaret, who had been all the time an uneasy listener to the turn the talk had taken, “what is railroad wrecking?”

“Oh, it is very simple, at least in some of its forms.  The ‘wreckers,’ as they are called, fasten upon some railway that is prosperous, pays dividends, pays a liberal interest on its bonds, and has a surplus.  They contrive to buy, no matter of what cost, a controlling interest in it, either in its stock or its management.  Then they absorb its surplus; they let it run down so that it pays no dividends, and by-and-by cannot even pay its interest; then they squeeze the bondholders, who may be glad to accept anything that is offered out of the wreck, and perhaps then they throw the property into the hands of a receiver, or consolidate it with some other road at a value enormously greater than the cost to them in stealing it.  Having in one way or another sucked it dry, they look round for another road.”

“And all the people who first invested lose their money, or the most of it?”

“Naturally, the little fish get swallowed.”

“It is infamous,” said Margaret—­“infamous!  And men go to work to do this, to get other people’s property, in cool blood?”

“I don’t know how cool, but it is in the way of business.”

“What is the difference between that and getting possession of a bank and robbing it?” she asked, hot with indignation.

“Oh, one is an operation, and the other is embezzlement.”

“It is a shame.  How can people permit it?  Suppose, Mrs. Fletcher, a wrecker should steal your money that way?”

“I was thinking of that.”

I never saw Margaret more disturbed—­out of all proportion, I thought, to the cause; for we had talked a hundred times about such things.

“Do you think all men who are what you call operating around are like that?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” I said.  “Probably most men who are engaged in what is generally called speculation are doing what seems to them a perfectly legitimate business.  It is a common way of making a fortune.”

“You see, Margaret,” Morgan explained, “when people in trade buy anything, they expect to sell it for more than they gave for it.”

“It seems to me,” Margaret replied, more calmly, “that a great deal of what you men call business is just trying to get other people’s money, and doesn’t help anybody or produce anything.”