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[...] Shelgrim presents himself as a bundle of social forces, the embodiment of impersonal currents—and he is, but not of the currents he claims. Because it wasn’t demand for wheat that built the speculative railroad lines. Supply and demand determine commodity prices—though not nearly so directly …

“Believe this, young man,” exclaimed Shelgrim, laying a thick powerful forefinger on the table to emphasise his words, “try to believe this—to begin with—THAT RAILROADS BUILD THEMSELVES. Where there is a demand sooner or later there will be a supply. Mr. Derrick, does he grow his wheat? The Wheat…

The difference between the Central Pacific cabal and all the other fly-by-night railroad concerns that collapsed in the panic was not that the Sacramento shopkeepers were financially scrupulous. They were at least as overleveraged as their peers; their books were obvious bullshit; and they had take…

What interests me is not so much the personal qualities of the men and women in this history but how capitalism has made use of them. To think about life this way is not to surrender to predetermination; only by understanding how we’re made use of can we start to distinguish our selves from our sit…

The point of this story isn’t that Amadeo Giannini was a bad man because he profited from stolen land. If we’re weighing hearts, his doesn’t seem to have been so bad unless you were a complacent banker, a forgivable antagonistic tendency if ever there was one. The point isn’t even that Johann Sutte…