Cudgeling the shoulders of malefactors of great wealth

From Making Money by Owen Johnson. Johnson is famous for The Lawrenceville Stories (actually a compendium of books) of my alma mater but he was an author of some repute at the beginning of the last century. His writing, while distinctly of the era, is still very accessible and enjoyable. The Lawrenceville Stories surfaced in my office and I dipped into it. Prompted by its appearance I went to see if Gutenberg had any of these. They do, including The Eternal Boy, The Varmint, and Skippy Bedelle.

I liked the description of President Theodore Roosevelt in the opening paragraph of Making Money

Toward the close of a pleasant September afternoon, in one of the years when the big stick of President Roosevelt was cudgeling the shoulders of malefactors of great wealth, the feverish home-bound masses which poured into upper Fifth Avenue with the awakening of the electric night were greeted by the strangest of all spectacles which can astound a metropolitan crowd harassed by the din of sounds, the fret and fury of the daily struggle which is the tyranny of New York. A very young man, of clean-cut limbs and boyish countenance, absolutely unhurried amidst the press, without a trace of preoccupation, worry, or painful mental concentration, was swinging easily up the Avenue as though he were striding among green fields, head up, shoulders squared like a grenadier, without a care in the world, so visibly delighted at the novelty of gay crowds, of towering buildings decked in electric garlands, of theatric shop-windows, that more than one perceiving this open enthusiasm smiled with a tolerant amusement.