The Major paused for a while, and sat with a happy smile on his countenance.  “You see,” he said, “there are floods and floods of wealth, pouring into Wall Street from all over the country.  It comes to me like a vision.  The crops are growing, the mines and the mills and the factories are working, and here is all the money.  People don’t like to take it and hide it up their chimneys—­few people have chimneys nowadays.  They want to invest it; and so you prepare investments for them.  Take the street railroads here in New York, for instance.  What could be a safer investment than the street railroads of the Metropolis?  An absolute monopoly, and traffic growing so fast that construction can’t keep up with it.  Profits are sure.  So people buy street railway stocks and bonds.  In this case it’s the politicians who organise the construction companies; that’s their share, in return for the franchises.  The insiders have a new scheme—­the best yet; it’s like a Gatling gun against bows and arrows.  They organise a syndicate, and get the franchises for nothing, and then sell them to the company for millions.  They’ve even sold franchises they didn’t own, and railroad lines that hadn’t been built.  You’ll find some improvements charged for four or five times over, and the improvements haven’t yet been made.  First and last they have paid themselves about thirty million dollars.  And, in the meantime, the poor stockholder wonders why he doesn’t get his dividends!”

“That’s the investment market,” the Major continued after a pause; “but of course the biggest reservoirs of wealth are the insurance companies and the banks.  It’s there the real fortunes are made; you’ll find you lose the greater part of your profits, unless you’ve got your own banks to take your bonds.  I heard an amusing story the other day of a man who was manufacturing electrical supplies.  He prides himself on being an honest business man, and having nothing to do with Wall Street.  His company wanted to extend its business, and it issued a couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bonds, and went to the Fidelity Insurance Company and offered them at ninety.  ‘We aren’t buying any bonds just at present,’ said they, ‘but suppose you try the National Trust Company.’  So the man went there, and they offered him eighty for the bonds.  That was the best he could do, and in the end he had to take it.  And then the trust company turns the bonds over to the insurance company at par.  I could name you half a dozen trust companies in New York that are simply syndicates of insurance people for the working of that little game.”

The Major paused.  “You see it?” he asked.

“Yes, I see,” Montague replied.

“Is there a trust company by any chance back of this railroad you are talking of?”

“There is,” said Montague; and the Major shrugged his shoulders.