Except as above mentioned, I was not brought in contact with big business, save in the effort to impeach a certain judge.  This judge had been used as an instrument in their business by certain of the men connected with the elevated railways and other great corporations at that time.  We got hold of his correspondence with one of these men, and it showed a shocking willingness to use the judicial office in any way that one of the kings of finance of that day desired.  He had actually held court in one of that financier’s rooms.  One expression in one of the judge’s letters to this financier I shall always remember:  “I am willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretion to serve your vast interests.”  The curious thing was that I was by no means certain that the judge himself was corrupt.  He may have been; but I am inclined to think that, aside from his being a man of coarse moral fiber, the trouble lay chiefly in the fact that he had a genuine—­if I had not so often seen it, I would say a wholly inexplicable—­reverence for the possessor of a great fortune as such.  He sincerely believed that business was the end of existence, and that judge and legislator alike should do whatever was necessary to favor it; and the bigger the business the more he desired to favor it.  Big business of the kind that is allied with politics thoroughly appreciated the usefulness of such a judge, and every effort was strained to protect him.  We fought hard—­by “we” I mean some thirty or forty legislators, both Republicans and Democrats—­but the “black horse cavalry,” and the timid good men, and the dull conservative men, were all against us; and the vote in the Legislature was heavily against impeachment.  The minority of the committee that investigated him, with Chapin at its head, recommended impeachment; the argument for impeachment before the committee was made by Francis Lynde Stetson.

It was my first experience of the kind.  Various men whom I had known well socially and had been taught to look up to, prominent business men and lawyers, acted in a way which not only astounded me, but which I was quite unable to reconcile with the theories I had formed as to their high standing—­I was little more than a year out of college at the time.  Generally, as has been always the case since, they were careful to avoid any direct conversation with me on a concrete case of what we now call “privilege” in business and in politics, that is, of the alliance between business and politics which represents improper favors rendered to some men in return for improper conduct on the part of others being ignored or permitted.