“No, I hadn’t,” said Montague.

“I know very few men in Wall Street who use their own money,” the Major added.  “Take the case of Wyman, for instance.  Wyman’s railroad keeps a cash surplus of twenty or thirty millions, and Wyman uses that in Wall Street.  And when he has made his profit, he takes it and salts it away in village improvement bonds all over the country.  Do you see?”

“I see,” said Montague.  “It’s a bad game for the small stockholder.”

“It’s a bad game for the small man of any sort,” said the Major.  “When I was young, I can remember, a man would save a little money and put it into an enterprise of some sort, and whatever the profits were, he would get his share of them.  But now, you see, the big men have got control, and they are greedier than they used to be.  There is nothing hurts them so much as to see the little fellow get any share of the profits, and they’ve all sorts of schemes for doing him out of it.  I could take a week off and tell you about them.  You are manufacturing soap, we will say.  You find there are too many soap manufacturers and too much soap, and so you propose to combine, and put your rivals out of business, and monopolise the soap market.  Your properties are already capitalised at twice what they cost you, because you are naturally hopeful, and that is what you expected they would earn; but now for this new combination you issue stock to the amount of three times this imagined value.  Then you fill the street with rumours of the wonders of your soap combination, and all the privileges and monopolies that you’ve got, and you unload your stock on the public, we’ll say at eighty.  You may have sold all your stock, but you’ve still got control of the corporation.  The public is helpless and unorganised, and your men are in.  Then the Street begins to hear disturbing rumours about the soap trust, and your board of directors meet and declare that it is impossible to pay any dividends.  There is great indignation among the stockholders, and an opposition is organised, but you set the clock an hour ahead, and elect your ticket before the other fellow comes around.  Or perhaps the troubles have already knocked the stock down sufficiently low to satisfy you, and you buy a majority of it back.  Then the public hears that a new interest has purchased the soap trust, and that a new and honest administration is to be elected; and once more there is hope for soap.  You buy a few more plants, and issue more stocks and bonds, and soap begins to boom, and you sell once more.  You can work that regularly every two or three years, for there is always a new crop of investors, and nobody but a few people in Wall Street can possibly keep track of what you are doing.”