All these events Montague followed day by day.  He was passing through Wall Street that Thursday afternoon, and he heard the crowds singing.  He turned away, bitter and sick at heart.  Could a more tragic piece of irony have been imagined than this—­that the man, who of all men had been responsible for this terrible calamity, should be heralded before the whole country as the one who averted it!  Could there have been a more appalling illustration of the way in which the masters of the Metropolis were wont to hoodwink its blind and helpless population?

There was only one man to whom Montague could vent his feelings; only one man besides himself who knew the real truth.  Montague got the habit, when he left his work, of stopping at the Express building, and listening for a few minutes to the grumbling of Bates.

Bates would have each day’s news fresh from the inside; not only the things which would be printed on the morrow, but the things which would never be printed anywhere.  And he and Montague would feed the fires of each other’s rage.  One day it would be one of the Express’s own editorials, in which it was pointed out that the intemperate speeches and reckless policies of the President were now bearing their natural fruit; another day it would be a letter from a prominent clergyman, naming Waterman as the President’s successor.

Men were beside themselves with wonder at the generosity of Waterman in lending twenty-five millions at ten per cent.  But it was not his own money—­it was the money of the national banks which he was lending; and this was money which the national banks had got from the Government, and for which they paid the Government no interest at all.  There was never any graft in the world so easy as the national bank graft, declared Bates.  These smooth gentlemen got the people’s money to build their institutions.  They got the Government to deposit money with them, and they paid the Government nothing, and charged the people interest for it.  They had the privilege of issuing a few hundred millions of bank-notes, and they charged interest for these and paid the Government nothing.  And then, to cap the climax, they used their profits to buy up the Government!  They filled the Treasury Department with their people, and when they got into trouble, the Sub-Treasury was emptied into their vaults.  And in the face of all this, the people agitated for postal savings banks, and couldn’t get them.  In other countries the people had banks where they could put their money with absolute certainty; for no one had ever known such a thing as a run upon a postal bank.

“Sometimes,” said Bates, “it seems almost as if our people were hypnotised.  You saw all this life insurance scandal, Mr. Montague; and there’s one simple and obvious remedy for all the evils—­if we had Government life insurance, it could never fail, and there’d be no surplus for Wall Street gamblers.  It sounds almost incredible—­ but do you know, I followed that agitation as I don’t believe any other man in this country followed it—­and from first to last I don’t believe that one single suggestion of that remedy was ever made in print!”