Page:The iron heel.djvu/68

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48
THE IRON HEEL

alone give him twenty thousand dollars a year for? Because he's worth twenty thousand dollars a year to them, that's what for. I'm not worth that much. If I was, I wouldn't be on the outside, starving and taking cases like Jackson's. What do you think I'd have got if I'd won Jackson's case?"

"You'd have robbed him, most probably,"[1] I answered.

"Of course I would," he cried angrily. "I've got to live, haven't I?"[1]

"He has a wife and children," I chided.

"So have I a wife and children," he retorted. "And there's not a soul in this world except myself that cares whether they starve or not."

His face suddenly softened, and he opened his watch and showed me a small photograph of a woman and two little girls pasted inside the case.

"There they are. Look at them. We've had a hard time, a hard time. I had hoped to send them away to the country if I'd won Jackson's case. They're not healthy here, but I can't afford to send them away."


    influential and most highly remunerated members of the Bar in every centre of wealth, make it their special task to work out bold and ingenious schemes by which their wealthy clients, individual or corporate, can evade the laws which were made to regulate, in the interests of the public, the uses of great wealth."

  1. 1.0 1.1 A typical illustration of the internecine strife that permeated all society. Men preyed upon one another, like ravening wolves. The big wolves ate the little wolves, and in the social pack Jackson was one of the least of the little wolves.