You might get up a call signed by
all the novelists, artists, ministers, lawyers, and doctors in the state,
and it would not have a tithe of the effect, with the people at large,
that a call signed by a few leading merchants, bank presidents, railroad
men, and trust officers would have. What is the reason? It seems strange
that I should be asking you to defend yourself against yourself."
"Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all," the banker replied, with his
caressing bonhomie. "Though I will confess, to begin with, that I do not
expect to answer your question to your entire satisfaction. I can only do
my best--on the instalment plan."
He turned to the Altrurian, and then went on: "As I said the other night,
this is a business man's country. We are a purely commercial people; money
is absolutely to the fore; and business, which is the means of getting the
most money, is the American ideal. If you like, you may call it the
American fetish; I don't mind calling it so myself. The fact that business
is our ideal, or our fetish, will account for the popular faith in
business men, who form its priesthood, its hierarchy.
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