Perhaps, in trying to wreck the business and so get hold of it, he had been carrying out a really noble purpose, in the unscrupulous way characteristic of the leaders of the world of commerce and finance.
To Whitney he said: "I haven't given any thought to these matters." With a good-natured laugh of raillery: "You have kept me too busy." Whitney smiled--an admission that yet did not commit him.

"When you've lived a while longer, Arthur," said he, "you'll not be so swift and harsh in your judgments of men who have to lay the far-sighted plans and have to deal with mankind as it is, not as it ought to be.

However, by that time the Ranger-Whitney Company will be wiped out.

It's a pity.

If only there were some way of getting the control definitely in your hands--where your father would have put it if he had lived.