THE STORY OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 



of 20,000 bushels of grain between two 

 branches of the same concern was made in 

 half a second with a stroke of a pencil and 

 meant $200 of commissions. It is plain the 

 door was wide open for abuses and in they 

 came, a plenteous throng. Nothing else could 

 have been expected. 



Another great bulwark of the system, as 

 finally it came to be, was the force of tradition 

 and habit. Time seems to sanctify some of 

 the rottenest of business expedients, and 

 sanctification breeds new ones from the origi- 

 nals. "Of course, it isn't exactly on the 

 square," grain-dealers have said to me when 

 discussing some practice in their way of trade, 

 "but that is what everybody does and always 

 has done, and you couldn't change it." Even 

 more than that, under the evil witchcraft 

 of profits, men came, as usual, to confuse 

 privilege with right and to contend in the 

 manner of offended virtue against any attempt 

 to change the system that gave them their 

 perquisites, however immoral that system 

 might be shown to be. These things are 

 familiar enough to every person that with 

 any attention has read history. They were 

 not different in the case of the grain business. 

 Profits there, as in other fields of gainful 

 enterprise, produced their own moral stand- 

 ards; and it only remains to remind our- 

 selves that the hardihood and fierceness with 



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