Thane became vice-president also of the American Steel Company. Its
capacity was greater than the need was for wire to make nails. For this
reason the N. A. M. Co. enlarged its scope and began to make steel wire
for all purposes, especially for that distinctively American product
called barbed wire which ran the first year into thousands of miles
of farm fencing. It was cheaper than the rude, picturesque rail fence
which it immediately superseded and at the same time appealed in an
unaccountable manner to the Yankee sense of humor.
Steel wire was indispensable to the steel age. There were bridges to
be cast in the air like cobwebs, chasms to be spanned, a thousand
giants to be snared in their sleep with threads of steel wire, single,
double, or twisted by hundreds into cables. Enough of them would make
a rope strong enough to halt the world in its flight if one end could
be made fast in space. There could never have been a steel age without
steel wire. But the steel age required first of all steel rails to
run on. John saw this clearly. Iron rails wore out too fast under
the increasing weight of trains; besides, the time had almost come
when they simply couldn’t be made in quantities sufficient to meet
the uncontrollable expansion of the railroad system. The importation
of steel rails over the high tariff wall was increasing. American
steel rails had been made experimentally, were still being made, but
they were variable and much distrusted. When they were good they were
excellent. They were just as likely to be very bad. They could not be
guaranteed, owing to the variableness of steel obtained in this country
by the Bessemer process.
This factor of variability was now eliminated by Thane’s celebrated
mixer. For the first time there was the certainty of being able to
produce American steel rails that would not only outwear iron as iron
outwears oak, that would not only not break, that would not only be
satisfactory when they were good, but rails that would be always the
same and always good. It was natural that the American Steel Company
should turn to rails. John knew the rail business upside down. He
believed in railroads. When other people were thinking railroad
building had been overdone he said it had not really begun. He imagined
the possibility that the locomotive would double in size.
It did. Then it doubled again. It could not have done so without steel
rails under its feet, and if it had not doubled and then doubled again
this now would be a German world. Democracy even then was shaping
its weapons for Armageddon through men who knew nothing about it.
They were free egoists, seeking profit, power, personal success,
everyone attending to his own greatness. Never before in the world had
the practise of individualism been so reckless, so purely dynamic,
so heedless of the Devil’s harvest. Yet it happened,--it precisely
happened,--that they forged the right weapons. It seems sometimes to
matter very little what men think. They very often do the right thing
for wrong reasons. It seems to matter even less why they work. All
that the great law of becoming requires is that men shall work. They
cannot go wrong really. They cannot make wrong things. The pattern is
foreordained.
Knowing what difficulties lay in the path of the steel rail,--knowing
them very well indeed, since many of them were of his own work,--John
executed a brilliant preliminary maneuver. The point of it was to
create his market beforehand. With that in view he persuaded the
officials of several large railroads to take ground floor shares in the
North American Steel Company. Its capitalization was increased for that
purpose. Thus not only was capital provided toward the building of a
great rail making addition to the plant but powerful railroad men now
had a participating interest in the success of the steel rail.
Meanwhile others also had discovered true steel formulas. As usual in
such cases many hands were pressing against the door. Once the latch
is lifted the door flies open for everyone. And then it appears that
all the time there were several ways to have done it. Thane’s way
was not the only way. He had been the one to see where the cause of
variableness lay. After that there could be several methods of casting
it out. So the American Steel Company had competition almost from
the start. However, as its rails were all bespoken by the railroads
whose officials were stockholders, and as in any case the demand for
rails was increasing very fast, there would have been prosperity for
everyone if Enoch Gib had not been mad.
No sooner had the American Steel Company begun to produce rails than
Enoch did with iron rails as he had done before with iron nails. He
began to sell the famous Damascus iron rail at a ruinous price. The
steel rail makers had to meet him. Then he lowered his price again, and
again, and still again, all the time increasing his output, until there
was no profit in rails for anybody.
John knew what it cost to make Damascus rails. Enoch was selling them
actually at a loss.
The fact that puissant railroad officials were stockholders in the
American Steel Company counted for less and less. Though they might
prefer steel rails for both personal and intrinsic reasons, still they
could not spend their railroad’s money for steel rails with the famous
Damascus rail selling at a price that made it a preposterous bargain.
There was a panic in Pittsburgh.
John’s emotions were those of Jonah riding the storm with an innocent
face and a sense of guilt at his heart. He made no doubt that Enoch had
set out deliberately to ruin the steel rail industry and would if need
be commit financial suicide to accomplish that end. Nobody else knew or
suspected the truth. John could not publish it.
Other steel rail makers quit. They could not stand the loss. And
there it lay between Enoch and John. Enoch’s mind was governed by two
passions. One was his hatred of steel. The other was his hatred of
John, who symbolized _Aaron_. He had the advantage of a fixed daemonic
purpose. His strength was unknown. How long he might last even John
could not guess.
In the fight over nails John’s rule had been defensive. It had to be.
But here there was choice. His resources now were so much greater that
a policy of reprisals might be considered. If Enoch were determined to
find his own breaking point the sooner the end the better for everyone
else. The American Steel Company could slaughter rails, too, increasing
both its own loss and Enoch’s, and thus foreshorten the agony. But when
it came to the point of adopting an offensive course John wavered. He
could not bring himself to do it. Never had he hated Enoch. So far from
that, his feeling for him was one of unreasoning pity. The old man
probably would not survive bankruptcy. It would kill him. “Therefore,”
said John, “let him bring it about in his own time.”
And so it was that a lone and dreadful man, stalking day and night
through the New Damascus iron mill like a tormented apparition, goading
his men to the point of frenzy, using them up and casting them off, yet
holding them to it by force of contempt for fibre that snapped,--that
one man in a spirit of madness frustrated the steel age and made it to
limp on iron rails long after the true steel to shoe it with had been
available. In all the histories of iron and steel you read men’s blank
amazement at the fact that it took so many years for the steel rail,
once perfected, to supersede the iron rail. They cannot account for it.
At about this time a committee of New Damascus business men went forth
to investigate the subject of steel. Enoch caused this to be done. His
mood was one of exulting. Many had begun to believe that steel might
overthrow iron. He was resolved to put that heresy down. He chose the
right time. The committee going to and fro saw steel rail plants lying
idle; it found the steel people in despair, terrorized by Enoch. It
returned to New Damascus and saw with its own eyes on Enoch’s books
how the output of iron rails was increasing. Who would go behind such
evidence? The committee reported that steel would never supersede iron.
Except perhaps in some special uses, iron was forever paramount. It
adopted a resolution in praise of Enoch, who had made New Damascus the
iron town it was, and disbanded.
The sun of New Damascus was then at its zenith and the days of Enoch
were few to run. He lived them out consistently. No man saw him but
in his strength. His weakness was invisible like his nakedness. His
end was as that of the oak that once more flings back the storm,
then suddenly falls of its own weight. Never had his power seemed so
immeasurable as at its breaking point.
For all that John could or could not do, the American Steel Company
came itself to the brink. It could not forever go on making steel rails
at a loss. How far short of bankruptcy would it give up the struggle
and stop? The rocks were already in sight. Seeing them clearly, John
did not act. He stood still and waited as if fascinated. The longer he
waited the more desperate was the chance of saving the company. Its
credit was sinking. All of this he saw. “Then what am I waiting for?”
he would ask himself, and postpone the answer. Twice he had called the
directors together to lay before them a plan of salvage, which was to
abandon rail making and convert the plant to other uses; and each time
at the last minute he changed his mind.
One morning at breakfast he was electrified by a single black line in
his newspaper.
_“Damascus Mill Closes.”_
Beneath it was this dispatch:
“New Damascus, June 11.--The Damascus mill closed down last night
in all departments for the first time in its history. There is no
explanation. Enoch Gib is understood to be ill.”
John knew what this meant. The end had come. Having verified the news
by telegraph he went to Slaymaker and told him for the first time
enough of the history of New Damascus and its people to illuminate what
had been going on.
“Why do you tell me this now?” Slaymaker asked.
“Isn’t it a great relief?” said John. “The ghastly game that’s nearly
ruined us is at an end.”
“There’s some other reason,” Slaymaker insisted.
“You have lost a lot of money with me in American Steel,” John said.
“Now of course it will all come back. Still, you might be able to turn
this information to special advantage. There are two or three idle rail
mills that could be picked up for nothing.”
Slaymaker took time to reflect.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll help.”
John shook his head.
“It’s an apple I don’t like the taste of. If I were in your place I’d
know what to do. That’s why I have told you. But leave me out of it
entirely.”
“I can’t for the life of me see why you shouldn’t,” said Slaymaker.
“Neither can I,” said John. “There’s no reason. Say I’m superstitious
and let it drop.”
“There’s nothing the matter with the apple though?” asked Slaymaker.
“Not for you,” said John.
He left the banker on the edge of his chair. When he arrived at his own
office Thane was there waiting.
“We’ve got a telegram Enoch is dying. Thought maybe as you would go
along with us.”
“How does Mrs. Thane take it?”
“Cold and still,” said Thane. “But you can’t tell.”
“Does she want me to go?”
“She knows I’m asking you,” said Thane. “There’s just time. She’s at
the depot.”
John turned and went with him.