IV

Aaron Breakspeare, grandson of the founder, and Enoch, son of

Christopher Gib, being of the same age, inheriting parallel estates

in a town realized from a joint impulse of their forbears, grew up

together. They were never friends. They were rivals, unable to conceal

or control their rivalry, the essence of which was antagonism. But

they were inseparable. They could not let each other alone. Enoch was

the stronger physically. In their earliest games and contests his

object was to make Aaron say, “I quit.” And Aaron would sooner die than

say it. In this strife Enoch had always the advantage of a definite,

aggressive purpose. He created the occasions. Instinctively he knew

that the way to save oneself in a trial of endurance is to keep one’s

mind not on one’s own discomfort but on the agony of one’s adversary.

Aaron’s power was of pride and spirit. He would never say quit, no

matter how much it hurt to go on, and when he was beaten he did not

complain. Once Enoch invented a way of locking their arms so as to

exert a mutual and very painful torsional leverage, perhaps enough to

break the bones. The game was that each should go as far as the other

could stand it. All the other had to do was to say enough. It was

fairly played. But the word was never uttered and Aaron went home with

a broken arm.

The imponderable values of life,--admiration, sympathy, sudden

friendships, understanding, liking and being liked,--belonged to Aaron

as by right. He was that kind of being toward whom the heart yearns for

no reason but its own. Men and women loved him without knowing why.

The people of New Damascus spoke of him with possessive affection and

worldly misgiving; he would do himself no good, they said. That means

whatever you make of it.

Enoch, pretending to be contemptuous, was secretly torn with envy.

People looked at him and said: “The spit image of his father.” He had

many of old Christopher’s facial expressions, especially one that

was unnatural and very disconcerting. Anger or any strong adverse

emotion caused the face to appear to be smiling. It wasn’t; nor was

the expression assumed as a mask. The effect was accidental, produced

by some peculiarity in the action of the retractor muscles. He was by

nature more saturnine than his father, or perhaps it was only that he

more indulged the impulse to cruelty. At fifteen he was already feared

by his elders for what he might say.

His character developed in a true line. The traits of his youth became

only more pronounced as he grew up. To take the pride out of Aaron

became almost a passion. He delighted to expose his frailties and

limitations. Aaron bought a fast horse. Enoch hating horses bought a

faster one and drove it to death. Aaron on a dare swam the river at

flood, which was thought a fine feat. Enoch swam it with his legs tied.

Aaron apparently did not mind. If he suspected the envious motive

in Enoch’s conduct he never spoke of it, but generously applauded

the other’s triumphs. Whatever else happened their intimacy remained

unbroken. This seemed to be no more of one’s seeking than the other’s.

Those of their own generation wondered, but the elders, hearing it

spoken of, said it was no more strange than the way General Woolwine

held with Christopher to the end of his days, though it more than half

ruined him.

They went to the same school at Philadelphia. Enoch worked just

hard enough to beat Aaron in everything except mathematics and

popularity, and spent a great deal of his leisure prowling about the

iron foundries. They fascinated him. There was iron in the blood of

his family. His grandfather and great-grandfather had been smiths in

England. And his father had laid upon him one injunction, which was

never to part with an acre of ore or coal land, for some day these

undeveloped possessions would make him rich. Then secretly he took up

the study of metallurgy.

Yet it was Aaron who proposed to Enoch that they should pool their

interests in ore and coal and found an iron industry at New Damascus.

This fatal thing happened sometime between midnight and dawn after a

disastrous twin celebration of their twenty-first birthday with a party

of friends at Fingerboard Inn.

Aaron’s mood was sentimental. He felt a great twinge for Enoch, because

of what occurred at the party. He himself was the one to blame. First

he had demanded of his friends, when he heard what they were doing,

that they should invite Enoch, too, as an equal guest; then with great

difficulty, he had persuaded Enoch to come. It was bound to be dismal.

Only one of Aaron’s reckless spontaneity could have imagined otherwise.

An archaic, mystical man rite survives in the panegyric supper. The

root is hero worship. The impulse is exacting, jealous and sacrificial.

Its chosen object, according to the rules, must submit to be clothed in

the colors of perfection, set upon a pedestal and gorged with praise

until he is purple. As the hero’s embarrassment rises his makers

become more solemn and egregious, until suddenly with rough hands they

drag their colossal effigy down and embrace it and everything, itself

included, dissolves in maudlin ecstasy.

Obviously two human objects cannot be equally inflated in this manner

at once. The impulse cannot divide itself. If it tried, no matter with

what pains of tact, the effort would fall.

Having invited Enoch, whom they all disliked, Aaron’s friends felt

acquitted toward him, and then, knowing how he hated to see Aaron

preferred, they carried praise of Aaron to a point grotesque. As the

wine flowed they became heedless and took delight in Enoch’s chagrin.

No toast was drunk to him; his name was not mentioned. It was cruel but

not premeditated. He ought not to have come. Aaron was ashamed to look

at him.

Enoch, from having been at first merely bored, turned hot with anger,

thinking the situation had been purposely created to humiliate him.

He did not suspect Aaron of conscious part in that design; he blamed

him, however, for having lent himself to it unwittingly. Hitherto

convivialities had depressed and disgusted him. Now in the bitterness

of his heart he made a judgment concerning them, that they were utterly

beneath him; and made also a resolution which endured to the end of his

life. That was to accept once for all the fact of people’s dislike and

turn it against them.

Was he not stronger than any of these who presumed to belittle him? One

by one he passed them through a test. There was not one he could not

break in any trial of mind or body. Perhaps it was for that reason they

disliked him. No matter why. He did not return the feeling in kind.

They were not important enough to call forth from him either dislike

or hatred. They merited only his indifference. That put them in their

right place. He would be indifferent to them so long as they stood out

of his way. If they came in his path he would break them indifferently.

His mind became cold and glittering. He no longer cared whether anyone

liked him or not. But they should never be indifferent toward him.

He would attend to that. They should fear him. That was it. He would

rather be feared than liked.

With these self-saving thoughts he had become absent and oblivious

when suddenly on both sides he was nudged to rise, join hands, and sing

to the hero. He rose, but instead of joining hands he rapped heavily

on the table for attention. There was much surprise at this. Everyone

stared at him in silence.

“Gentlemen,” he said, with the astonishing effect of a cold, sober

voice, “I call your attention to an unfortunate omission. I propose

that we shall drink to Aaron Breakspeare’s ancestors,--to the man but

for whom there would be no New Damascus nor any one of us here present,

and to the woman without whose assistance even that great pioneer

would be now entirely forgotten. We shall drink, I say, to Aaron

Breakspeare’s distinguished ancestors,--to Adam and Eve, if you please.”

There was a sound of embarrassed laughter. It immediately broke down.

Gib was holding up his glass. His expression was sneering. He had paid

them off, going just far enough to do so cleanly, yet not so far as to

give actionable offence. For a long awkward moment they could not think

either how to turn it back on him or redeem their own conduct from the

ludicrous light in which he had placed it. Then Gearheart, who was

taking law, he who afterward became a great jurist in the state, lifted

his glass and spoke in a calm, judicial manner.

“Mr. Gib is right,” he said. “We regret the omission. Let us drink to

Adam and Eve.”

So they did and that ended the party. Nobody disliked Gib less;

everyone respected him more.

Aaron, who by this time was feeling very miserable, made a point of

walking off with him. He wished to speak of what had happened. Yet what

could he say that would not recognize the fact of Enoch’s humiliation?

There was no way to speak tactfully of it. Still he could not let it

alone.

“I’m sorry,” he said, blurting it out.

“For what?” Enoch inquired dryly.

“I’m afraid you had a wretched time. I’m to blame for getting you into

it.”

“Not at all,” said Enoch. “To the contrary, I’m indebted to you for the

most profitable evening of my life.”

He meant this. Those emotions of anger and mortification from which he

had suffered so bitterly seemed now remote and insignificant. They had

been swallowed up in a sense of deliverance. He had delivered himself

from the torment of being disliked. The fact was unchanged, but he no

longer cared. Therefore it had lost its right to oppress him. From this

sudden birth of indifference he derived a feeling of solitary power.

His mind was disenthralled. His whole outlook upon life was altered.

For the first time he did not wonder whether Aaron really liked him

or not, or how much, since it did not matter in the least. And also

for the first time he did not dislike Aaron. His indifference included

everyone, and it was sweet.

Aaron misunderstood the nature of Enoch’s placidity. He thought it a

kind of sublime generosity and felt deep remorse. He would not have

believed it was in him to take a hurt to his pride so magnanimously.

He was wrenched with a sudden desire to offer some sign or token of

durable amity. So it was that as in one the well of friendship dried up

in the other it overflowed.

They walked for some time in silence. On the first eminence east of

the town their ways parted. There Christopher Gib had built the dark

iron-stone house which was still Enoch’s home. The Woolwine mansion

where Aaron lived was higher up. Enoch would have turned his way,

leaving it as usual for Aaron to say goodnight; Aaron detained him by

the arm.

They stood for several minutes with their faces averted, gazing

alternately at the stars that were God’s, at the mountains that were

theirs, and at the town beneath them, showing in silhouette against

the moon-lacquered river, a dream of their forebears realized. It was

a beautiful night. Their thoughts ran together. Both were stirred by a

vague sense of freedom, knowledge and responsibility. Each had that day

come into the possession of his estate. It was Enoch who spoke.

“What will you do with yours?” he asked.

Until this moment Aaron had never once thought what he should do with

it. But at the sound of Enoch’s voice asking the question so bluntly a

complete idea crystallized in his mind. It had clarity and perspective,

like a vision, and sudden as it was he felt very familiar with it.

“Look, Enoch,” he said. “There is the New Damascus we grew up with.

How still it lies in the moonlight! How permanent it looks! Yet when

we were born it was not here. Before we die it will have disappeared.

In its place will be a city that shall walk out of those mountains,--a

city of furnaces, full of roaring and the clangor of metal, flaming and

smoking to heaven. Your father and my grandfather imagined it. They

could not themselves bring it to pass. It was not for their time. They

left it for us to do. We have a destiny here. Let’s take it together.

Let’s form a partnership and found an iron industry.”

“That’s what I am intending to do,” said Enoch. “Not the partnership.

I was not thinking of that. But the iron business,--I’ve had that in

mind all the time. I’ve made a study of it.” After a pause he added:

“I didn’t know your thoughts turned that way. You never spoke of it

before.”

“You never mentioned it, either,” said Aaron. “You would prefer to go

alone?”

“The idea of a partnership is new to me,” said Enoch.

“But wouldn’t it be advantageous to develop our ore and coal holdings

jointly? They lie together.”

“Yes,” said Enoch, “I can see that.”

“Is it only the newness of the idea that bothers you?”

“I would not have entertained the thought as my own,” he said. “Since

it comes from you I do not reject it. I merely do not wish to be

responsible for it. You are not a man for business. Your father was

not. Your grandfather distinctly was not. You would do better in

law or politics. Still, as you say, there’s an obvious advantage in

bringing all the properties together. We’ll talk about it to-morrow if

you like. It’s on your initiative, remember.”

“Let’s agree on the main point now and leave the details,” said Aaron.

“I’ll take my chances with business.”

He held out his hand. Enoch took it slowly. They looked at each other

steadily in the moonlight.

“Is it agreed?”

“Yes,” said Enoch.

Then they said goodnight.

V

Enoch’s misgivings notwithstanding, the partnership of Gib &

Breakspeare was very successful. This was owing partly to the ripeness

of the opportunity and perhaps even more to the sagacity with which

Enoch allotted to Aaron the tasks that were suited to his temperament.

They put in equal amounts of capital and pooled their ore and coal

lands on a royalty basis. Enoch was the dominant partner by right of

knowledge and force of doggedness. He had studied the business. He took

the manufacturing end and spent the whole of his time in New Damascus.

Aaron took the selling end and made all the outside contacts.

It was easy to open the mines. That kind of work was already well

understood in Pennsylvania.

Building a blast furnace was much more of an undertaking. It was in

fact a daring adventure. Older and wiser heads had left it to the

foolhardiness of youth.

Hitherto iron had been produced in this country, as elsewhere in

the world, by primitive methods. Ore was wastefully smelted in rude

charcoal furnaces unimproved in design since the Middle Ages. The

process was of great antiquity. It was uniform in India at the time of

Alexander’s invasion. Its origin even then was lost in myth. Tubal

Cain, “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron,” was master

of it in the city of his distinguished ancestor, Cain, which was in the

land of Nod.

Between the old iron master of the Himalayas, 1,500 years before

Christ, with his little clay oven resembling an overturned pot, urging

the fire with a bellows clasped in his arms--(a bellows made from the

skin of a goat stripped from the animal without ripping the belly part,

then tied at the leg holes, fitted with a wooden nozzle at the neck

and stopped with an air valve in the tail orifice)--the difference

between him and the iron master if the early 19th century was only that

the latter had learned to build his forge of rude masonry and to make

nature blow his fire.

The prize in both cases was a nugget of glowing iron, the most useful

non-digestible substance yet discovered by man. It is tenacious,

ductile, easily tempered, malleable at red heat, marriageable at white

heat and possesses one miraculous quality. It is magnetic. It calls

electricity out of the void, snares it, delivers it helpless into the

hands of man. Without this blackhearted substance, fallen from the sun,

natively pure only in form of a meteorite, lightning could not have

been captured and enslaved on earth.

The glowing nugget on the forge hearth, called the loup or bloom,

is in a crystalline condition. It is removed and further refined by

hammering, drawing and rolling at red heat. It may be hammered by hand

on an anvil, or beaten under a trip-hammer, or rolled between rollers.

The effect of this treatment is to elongate the crystals into tough

fibres.

A blast furnace differs from a forge not in principle so much as in

audacity, method and degree. The forge pricks nature and extracts iron

one molten drop at a time. The blast furnace cuts a gash in her side

and extracts iron in a blazing stream.

There were blast furnaces before those of Gib and Breakspeare, in

England, Germany and France, but they were few and still in the stage

of wonder. They were very costly to build, many failed for unknown

reasons, and the conservative old iron masters stuck to the forge.

Nowhere had a blast furnace been worked with anthracite or stone coal.

All that had so far succeeded used wood, charcoal, bituminous coal and

coke. The fuel at New Damascus was anthracite.

So it was in all respects a rash experiment and in one respect unique.

The partners were sure of the theory. The thing was scientifically

feasible. Yet in practice it might fail for want of handiness with a

strange process or because of some malicious chemical enemy lurking in

the elements to be acted upon. And failures in iron experiments are

ruinous. Nothing ever can be saved and the capital outlay will have

been enormous.

The skill to build such a blast furnace as they required was not only

dear and hard to find: when found it was pessimistic and disbelieving

and disclaimed all responsibility for the outcome because it was

something that had never been done before. Expert iron workers to man

the process were of the same grey mindedness about it.

These iron workers had to be imported from England under guarantees

and inveiglements. Nearly all the new iron working methods of that

time originated in England and were as jealously guarded as military

secrets. The rise of American industry against European competition

was greatly hampered by lack of industrial knowledge. Europe would

not part with it, or share it, since to possess it exclusively gave

her manufacturers a world-wide advantage. So it had to be obtained

surreptitiously. Much of it was smuggled out in the heads of English,

Scotch and Welsh artisans who could be bribed to evade the embargo upon

the emigration of skilled workmen and try their luck in the United

States.

While Enoch worked indefatigably at New Damascus, tapping the mountains

and preparing the mule roads by which to drain away their coal and

ore and limestone, Aaron was abroad impressing the skill that should

convert those raw materials into iron.

Two years from the time they started, one evening, the first miniature

volcano went into action.

That precisely is what a blast furnace is. The hollow, cylindrical

furnace is the mountain cone, charged from the top with fuel, iron

ore and limestone flux. The mass is fired at the bottom. The gases go

off at the top in flame and smoke, an upside-down cataract of lost

affinities, giddy, voluptuous, hungry and free. An odd circumstance has

released them from the cold inert embrace in which they have lain for

ages of years. Cinders and gross matter flow away below as lava. The

iron, seeking itself, falls like rain into the hearth at the bottom and

runs out on the sand, forming there a molten lake. Around the edges

of this lake, taking off from it, is a series of moulded depressions.

The lake drains into these depressions. They suck it dry. Ironworkers

call the lake the sow. The forms that appear in the depressions, having

devoured the sow completely, are called the pigs. The product is pig

iron,--a lump of rough metal the size of a man’s thigh.

After the fire is lighted at the bottom there is nothing to do for

several hours but wait. In this interval the partners went to supper

at Enoch’s house. They ate in silence. Aaron made several ineffectual

attempts at conversation. Their thoughts were far apart. One was

thinking of details, of faults to be remedied, of errors in the next

instance to be avoided; the other dwelt upon the achievement as a

dramatic whole. Enoch was anxious to get back.

At a point from which the blast furnace was visible as a complete

spectacle Aaron stopped and seized him by the arm.

“Take a look at it, man. There’s plenty of time for that.”

A blast furnace even then was what a blast furnace is,--the most

audacious affront man has yet put upon nature. He decoys the elemental

forces and gives them handy nicknames. Though he cannot tame them, he

may control them through knowledge of their weaknesses. He learns their

immutable habits. From the Omnipotent Craftsman he steals the true

process. In the scale of his own strength he reproduces in a furnace

the conditions under which the earth was made, and extracts from the

uproar a lump of iron.

By the very majesty of the effects he conjures up he is himself

absurdly diminished, to the point of becoming incredible. As you

look at him he is neither impressive nor august. Perhaps if one had

witnessed the creation the appalling effects in the same way would

have seemed much more wonderful than the Creator. In His old clothes,

anxious, preoccupied, intent upon results, He probably had been very

disappointing to the eye.

From where he stood, detaining Enoch against his mood, Aaron could see

the workers moving about the furnace hearth,--tiny, impish figures,

grotesquely insignificant, scornfully manipulating the elemental

intensities. The surrounding slopes were lined with people, their faces

reflecting a dull, lurid glow; and there was an ominous, swooning

vibration in the air.

“Admit it, Enoch,” he said, “You get a thrill from that.”

“I want to get back,” said Enoch.

They remained at the furnace the whole of that night and handled the

first cold pig iron.

“It’s good,” said Enoch.

It was a fine quality of pig iron. The demand for it was immediate and

profitable. Furnaces were added one or two at a time until there were

eight. Pig iron was for some time the sole product. The mill to draw

and roll the iron came later.

In five years the population of New Damascus trebled. The mines, the

blast furnaces and later the drawing mill,--the first in this country

to pass iron through rollers,--employed thousands of workers. Their

wants made business. The town was rebuilt. That made more business.

Enoch on his own venture built houses for the iron workers and opened a

large company store.

There was a third reason why the partnership, to everyone’s surprise,

was successful as a relationship between two antagonistic natures.

Aaron had all the popularity still. The social life of New Damascus

centered upon him. The Woolwine mansion where he lived in bachelor

eminence was full of entertainment and gaiety. His hospitality was

memorable. Guests came from afar, from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New

York, to attend his parties.

Enoch continued to live morosely in the old iron-stone house below. The

contrast was notable, even painful, but if Enoch minded at all there

were compensations. Within the partnership and outside of it his power

increased. There was never any doubt as to which of them exercised

ultimate authority in matters of business. When it came to borrowing

capital, as they did to build the mill, it was Enoch’s word that

persuaded the lenders. He made a sound they understood,--a crunching,

horizontal sound that was not in Aaron at all. The instinct that

preferred Aaron in friendship and the instinct that preferred Enoch in

business could exist, and did, in the same people. Enoch was preferred

where his vanity was. People feared and trusted him. That kept the

scales even.