centralized oversight

[alice wellintown]

Howard Zinn's graphic novel is cool. But I prefer fiction to sermon. I
read Jonathan Edwards too; both are quite important to American
history and to the history of ideas in America. But I prefer, as
Melville. Typee says what Zinn says better. And Zinn  could never
write Bartleby the Scrivener. And that short story says all we need to
know about Americam capitalism.

Here is Irving:

By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to
haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's
treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being
generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favours; but
there were others about which, though of less importance, he was
inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his
means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that
Tom should employ it in the black traffick; that is to say, that he
should fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused; he
was bad enough in all conscience; but the devil himself could not
tempt him to turn slave dealer.

Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but
proposed instead that he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely
anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar
people.

To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.

"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black man.

"I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.

"You shall lend money at two per cent. a month."

"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.

"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy-"

"I'll drive him to the d--l," cried Tom Walker, eagerly.

"You are the usurer for my money!" said the black legs, with delight.
"When will you want the rhino?"

"This very night."

"Done!" said the devil.

"Done!" said Tom Walker. -So they shook hands, and struck a bargain.

A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting
house in Boston. His reputation for a ready moneyed man, who would
lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Every
body remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was
particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had
been deluged with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been
established; there had been a rage for speculating; the people had run
mad with schemes for new settlements; for building cities in the
wilderness; land jobbers went about with maps of grants, and
townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which every
body was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever
which breaks out every now and then in the country, had raged to an
alarming degree, and every body was dreaming of making sudden fortunes
from nothing. As usual the fever had subsided; the dream had gone off,
and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients were left in doleful
plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of
"hard times."

At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a
usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy
and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land
jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in
short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and
desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a
"friend in need;" that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good
security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the
hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them at length, dry
as a sponge from his door.

In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty
man, and exalted his cocked hat upon change. He built himself, as
usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of
it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a
carriage in the fullness of his vain glory, though he nearly starved
the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and
screeched on the axle trees, you would have thought you heard the
souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.