Page:Other People's Money - Louis Brandeis.djvu/14

 :make a dramatic story of human interest with a moral—or two—including the evils of private monopoly. Events cannot be long deferred, and possibly you may want to prepare for their coming.
 * "Anticipating the future a little, I suggest the following as an epitaph or obituary notice:
 * "Mellen was a masterful man, resourceful, courageous, broad of view. He fired the imagination of New England; but, being oblique of vision, merely distorted its judgment and silenced its conscience. For a while he trampled with impunity on laws human and divine; but, as he was obsessed with the delusioon that two and two make five, he fell, at last, a victim to the relentless rules of humble arithmetic.
 * "'Remember, O Stranger, Arithmetic is the first of the sciences and the mother of safety.'"

The exposure of the bad financial management of the New Haven railroad, more than any other one thing, led to the exposure and comprehension of the wasteful methods of big business all over the country and that exposure of the New Haven was the almost single-handed work of Mr. Brandeis. He is a person who fights against any odds while it is necessary to fight and stops fighting as soon as the fight is won. For a long time very respectable and honest leaders of finance said that his charges against the New Haven were unsound and inexcusable. He kept ahead. A year before the actual crash came, however, he ceased worrying, for he knew the work had been carried far enough