centralized oversight

[alice wellintown]

http://biblioklept.org/tag/short-story/page/2/


On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 8:54 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.