[lbo-talk] "Skull, Bones and Electricity"

[Carl Remick]

On 9/19/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 18, 2007, at 11:00 PM, Carl Remick wrote:
>
> > If these are the nation's movers and
> > shakers, they've been very discreet about their moving/shaking.
>
> Yeah, they're mostly corporate/Wall Street/lawyer types. Discretion
> is what it's all about!

Yes, some things never change.  This is from the opening of the
immortal "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" (1853) by
Herman Melville.  The story's narrator, a Wall Street lawyer who
employed Bartleby, describes himself thus:

"I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a
profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence,
though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous,
even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever
suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who
never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but
in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among
rich men's bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me
consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a
personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in
pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do
not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not
unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name
which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular
sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I
was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion."

The online site where I found a text of Bartleby has a footnote that
(needlessly) describes the estimable John Jacob Astor in these terms:
"A poor German immigrant to the United States, Astor (1763-1848) was
immensely successful in fur trading and real estate, becoming the
richest man of his time. However, his name was synonymous with the
worst abuses of big business: monopoly, worker exploitation, and
political corruption."

Carl