Hitherto his ambition had been to build up a modest business practice in
some Eastern city, and, like other aspiring young lawyers, he had been
filling out the perspective of the picture with the look ahead to a
possible time when some great corporation should need his services in
permanence. He was of the new generation, and he knew that the lawyer of
the courts was slowly but surely giving place to the lawyer of business.
Without attempting to carry the modern business situation bodily over
into the domain of pure ethics, he was still young enough and
enthusiastic enough to lay down the general principle that a great
corporation, being itself a creation of the law, must necessarily be
law-abiding, and, if not entirely ethical in its dealings with the
public, at least equitably just. Therefore his ideal in his own
profession was the man who could successfully safeguard large interests,
promote the beneficent outreachings of corporate capital, and be the
adviser of the man or men to whom the greater America owes its place at
the head of the civilized nations.
Oddly enough, though Gantry's attitude had been uncompromisingly
partisan, Blount had failed to recognize in the railroad official a
skilful pleader for the special interests--the interests of the few
against those of the many. Hence he was preparing to go to the new field
with a rather strong prepossession in favor of the defendant
corporation.
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