They were of the new order of things in the New World.

The business of life was to them not a system of barter and exchange, a giving something of value to get something of value, with a margin of profit for each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was a cockpit where one man sought to get what another man had--and get it almost anyhow.
It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the man that carried the gun.
All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in greater or less degree till the present generation--all that was gone.
It was held in contempt.

It had prevailed when men were open robbers and filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what they wanted, making force their god.

It had triumphed over the violence and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century and the young years of a new century.

Then the day of the trickster came--and men laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give an illusive value for a thing of real value--the remorseless sleight of hand which the law could not reach.