It, too, must go
to the people, if its millionaire owner can find no more relations to
share with and begins to suspect his "friends" of having had a hand in
bringing about the upheaval. And if the "plain" people never expect to
enjoy the material results of the inventive wit of man as they are
focused within its luxurious interior, they at least have some reason
for being satisfied when they know that the profits will stay where they
were made and help those who made them. This reference to hotels brings
to mind a corroborative fact that proves the charge we make when we say
that all these colossal fortunes are nothing more than the accumulations
of able rascality of some form or other: bilking, cornering, lobbying,
watering stock, or charging all the traffic will bear.
The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was built by a speculator and floater
of mining shares, and cost millions that he cashed in, after cleaning
out the simple minded laborer and servant girl, whom he deluded, with
all the art known to his tribe, into believing that there was still more
for their rainy day if they would only invest the little they already
had.
The law makes a felon of the rascal with the bogus gold brick, but that
clumsy worker in the field of robbery does not get the returns which the
scienced work of his brother professional brings in; therefore, when
outraged law gives this petty malefactor the knock-out blow, the satisfied
spectators, chattering about the majesty of something, depart and the
curtain is rung down on another exhibition of what the American people are
said to like - namely, humbug.
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