"
Why should not the men of many aliases, the heroes of brawl and
murder, of theft and speculation, freely mix with the more polished
money sharks swarming in the Eastern seas of financial piracy?
"Arcades ambo!" Bonanza bullion rings truer than the paper millions
of shoddy and petroleum. The alert, bright free-lances of the
West are generally more interesting than the "shoddy" magnates or
"contract" princes of the war. They are, at least, robust adventurers;
the others are only money-ennobled Eastern mushrooms.
The Western parvenu is the more picturesque. The cunning railroad
princes have, at least, built SOMETHING. It is a nobler work than
the paper constructions of Wall Street operators. It may be jeered,
that these men "builded better than they knew." Hardin feels that
on one point they never can be ridiculed, even by Eastern magnate,
English promoter, or French financier. They can safely affirm they
grasped all they could. They left no humble sheaf unreaped in the
clean-cut fields of their work. They took all in sight.
Hardin recognizes the clean work of the Western money grabbers,
as well and truly done. The railroad gang, bonanza barons, and
banking clique, sweep the threshing floor.
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