"No," answered Thorwald, "not as men looked at it then. There was a great
deal of downright knavery in business, but there was another class who
satisfied their consciences by being as honest as they could. The
thoughtful ones knew the system was wrong but felt themselves utterly
unable to replace it by a better one, and feeling no responsibility for
it, they were satisfied to smother their sensibilities and drift along.
They had their living to make, and, though they were not making it in an
ideal way, they did not know that any other kind of work would be more
satisfactory to their uneasy consciences."
"Excuse me, Thorwald," I said; "I am dull. What was there wrong in their
manner of doing business?"
"Can you see nothing wrong," he answered, "in a system where one man's
fortune was built on the ruins of another's, or perhaps a score of others,
or where a business was started and increased solely by drawing from
another one already established?"
"Why," said I, "that is competition, which they no doubt thought better
than monopoly.
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