He fully understood the value of money, and the possession of it was as sweet to him as to other men.

Only he would never soil his soul in acquiring it dishonourably.

He was convinced that society as at present organized was all wrong and that the feudalism of the middle ages had simply given place to a worse form of slavery--capitalistic driven labour--which had resulted in the actual iniquitous conditions, the enriching of the rich and the impoverishment of the poor.

He was familiar with the socialistic doctrines of the day and had taken a keen interest in this momentous question, this dream of a regenerated mankind.

He had read Karl Marx and other socialistic writers, and while his essentially practical mind could hardly approve all their programme for reorganizing the State, some of which seemed to him utopian, extravagant and even undesirable, he realised that the socialistic movement was growing rapidly all over the world and the day was not far distant when in America, as to-day in Germany and France, it would be a formidable factor to reckon with.
But until the socialistic millennium arrived and society was reorganized, money, he admitted, would remain the lever of the world, the great stimulus to effort.