Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/227

Rh Like the robber knights they claim the right to exact contributions from the merchants and artisans. But, more fortunate than the robber knights, they run no risk of being hung high and dry, if a stronger than they comes upon them in their high-handed course of purse-slashing.

We sometimes console ourselves with the reflection that speculators in times of panic are sure to lose at one stroke all that they have been accumulating in the years of unchecked robbery. But this is a pleasing delusion with which the pastor's lambs try to comfort themselves, who like to see punishment follow crime as the finis. Even if a panic does force a speculator to disgorge his ill-gotten gains, it can not alter the fact that for many years perhaps, he has been living in the lap of luxury, at the expense of the laboring members of the community. He may lose his property at such a time, but no power on earth can deprive him of the champagne which has been flowing in streams for him, nor of the truffles he has eaten, the piles of gold he has gambled away on the green cloth, nor of the hours he has spent in all kinds of pleasures only possible to the rich. Besides, a panic is only disastrous to single, isolated speculators, not to speculation in general. On the contrary panics are the great harvest of speculation, the opportunities for the slaughter of the entire saving and producing classes in a nation or in a continent, en masse. Then the few great capitals, the enormous fortunes, open their jaws and swallow not only the whole property of the investment-seeking public, but also that of the small robber capitalists, whom they usually good-naturedly allow to play around them, looking on like the lion at the mouse's gambols. Great depreciations of values are usually brought about and utilized by the financial giants. They then buy up everything that has value and a future, to sell it again when the