It was a time in American history bounded by thenadministrations of Grant and Harding, from the great silvernconspiracy described by Henry Adams to the Teapot DomenScandal chronicled by Upton Sinclair. Mark Twain (withnCharles Dudley Warner) caught the tone in The Gilded Age:nspeculation, decephons, and a reckless willingness to sacrificeneverything for the chance to make millions. Col.nSellers, a sanguine plunger modeled on one of Twain’snrelatives, is the prototype of the get-rich-quick American.n(Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Cramden was a more recentnblue-collar avatar.) In one memorable scene. Sellers waxesneloquent over his “enormous” speculahon. Despite a cheerynfire in the stove, the room gets progressively colder. Thenmystery is solved when the stove door is accidentally kickednopen to reveal a lighted candle. Sellers hastens to point outnall the ill effects and inconveniences of an actual fire:n”What you want is the appearance of heat, not the heatnitself—that’s the idea.”nUntil his bankruptcy. Twain enjoyed railing against thendeceptive appearances of the speculators, including thenStandard Oil Trust. But after he was bailed out by one of thenchief architects of the trust, Henry Huttleston Rogers—notherwise known as “Hell Hound” Rogers—Twain becamena sort of friend (and court jester) to Rogers and AndrewnCarnegie, of whose philanthropy he observed, “He hasnbought fame and paid cash for it.” He did, however, haventhe decency to keep his benefactors away from his family.nOwen Wister never had to moderate his opinion of thennew. Plutocracy. His novel Lady Baltimore is a superbndefense of the older America, or what was left of it innCharleston, against the immorality and bad manners ofn”the yellow rich.” His good friend President TheodorenRoosevelt was annoyed by Wister’s blanket condemnationnof Northeastern society, but Teddy believed there wasnnothing wrong with America that a little regulation couldn’tncure. And here is the rub: The evils done by certainnindustrialists and financiers were enough to insure the risenof adversarial labor unions and progressive big government,nbut it was not the ruthless dialectic of free enterprise whichnbrought the yellow rich to power—far from it. It was,nrather, their cozy relationship with government officials.nAfter the Civil War and the rise to power of the men whonhad done well in it, free enterprise was not an importantnissue for Wall Street (although it was and is for Main Streetnbusinessmen). Like Christianity—the proverbial good ideanthat’s rarely tried—a free-market economic system has hadnto take the blame for many evils for which it is onlynminimally responsible. Perhaps “capitalism” would nevernhave fulfilled all of the expectations it aroused in the 19thncentury, but this much seems unfair: An unhealthy collusionnbetween dishonest financiers and corrupt officials hasnbeen the excuse for tying up businessmen in general in anmare’s nest of agencies, regulations, and overpaid snoops.nThe one important writer who best appreciated thenpeculiar qualities of the American business class was “thengentleman from Indiana,” Booth Tarkington. In his mostnsuccessful novels, Tarkington attempted to portray an agrariannsociety coming to grips with its commercial destiny.nThe softer ideals of old gentility were forced to give way to ango-ahead Babbittry that was not without virtues. Both AlicenAdams and the protagonists of The Magnificent Ambersonsnand The Turmoil learn to appreciate the merits of selfreliance,nbut it is in The Plutocrat that Tarkington went thenfurthest in contrasting pretentious Yankee aesthetics withnthe solid reliability of a Midwestern industrialist. Withoutnbeing blind to the boorishness of the henpecked captains ofnindustry, Tarkington managed to convey some sense of theirnheroic struggles. (They weren’t always boorish either, as thenauthor realized. In a minor novel, The Young Mrs. Greeley,nthe heroine is astonished by the capitalist’s polish andndevotion to the arts.)nTarkington’s public-spirited plutocrats were not WallnStreet tycoons. Their business was not offering bribes tongovernment officials. Even today, we are more likely to findnsuch men in smaller (often family-held) corporations.nWhile corporate raids, takeovers, and mergers attract thenheadlines, their main effect seems to be to reward thenmanagers {not the investors) on both sides. J. P. Morgannwould feel right at home in the 1980’s.nMorgan would also know how to take advantage of all thenenvironmental and consumer protection regulations thatnseem inevitably to favor corporate empires with vast legalnand accounting departments. There are others who cannwrite far more intelligentiy and persuasively on how governmentnregulation seems to favor monopoly (and only accidentallynprotects consumers). I can, however, tell the tale ofnmy own small venture as an entrepreneur in “the seafoodnbusiness.”nIt was summer, and I was faced with the prospect ofnanother session of beating first-year Latin into the unyieldingnheads of upperclassmen desperate to fulfill their languagenrequirement. When a friend who owed me a favornoffered a partnership in commercial crabbing, I jumped atnthe chance: all those hours of light work on the water, nonstudents, no registrar, no exam cheaters to report. The bestnpart was that I would be working with an experienced hand.nBobby had owned his own shrimp boat and had worked innthe creek all his life. (The down-side was his M.A. innEnglish and his, worse, literary aspirations.)nWith littie or no help from me, Bobby redid an oldnflat-bottomed boat and got us a deal first on a set of 50 traps,nthen another almost 50 (if memory serves). All I had to donwas the paperwork. First, as insurance, I had to license andntitle a boat a relative had made for me. (We never did usenthe litde 14-footer, but it might have come in handy.) Thennwe had to titie and license the “new” boat, the motor, andnthe trailer. You could either send the half-ton of paper tonthe state capitol or drive an hour to the nearest city.nUnwisely, I tried the postal route, which meant weeks ofndelay as forms crossed in the mail and collided with requestsnfor more information. There was also the matter of commercialnfishermen’s licenses.nEventually, somehow, the forms got completed, numbersnwere put on the boat, and we were bona fide commercialncrabbers. There’s not much to the business. You buy anload of bait fish, stick a big handful into a receptacle in anwire trap, and throw the trap into the water. The next day,nyou find the trap by its buoy marker (a Chlorox jug)nattached with a rope, pull up the now much heavier cage,ndump the blue crabs into the boat, rebait the trap, and dropnit back in the water. Repeat that maneuver 50 or a hundredntimes and you’re in business.nnnJANUARY 1987 / 9n