No two were more the darlings of the steel age than John and Thane.
They were for it and of it, lover and husband to it, remarkably
possessing between them the qualities it demanded of men. No part
of its mystery was unknown to them. They became miners and smelters
of ore, bringers of coal, burners of coke, drawers of wire, rollers
of rails, in a very large way. Their wealth in property increased
alarmingly. One thing begat another so fast and new opportunities so
unexpectedly appeared that their resources were chronically stretched
to the utmost and they were continually in need of more capital. John
was always buying something they couldn’t pay for,--an ore mountain
perhaps, a ship to transport the ore down the Great Lakes, a steel
plant somebody had blunderingly steered on the rocks. He was like a
man on a tight rope juggling more glass balls than he can hold all at
once. He has to keep them going in the air. He cannot stop. John never
thought of stopping. It wasn’t that he wished to be rich; it wasn’t
that he had a passion for power; he craved excitement. And there was
plenty of it.
The steel industry had frightful growing pains for which there was
no diagnosis. The trouble was it grew by violent starts and then had
fits of coma. The profits were so great when there was any profit at
all that the steel maker would pawn his hope of the everlasting to
build more mills; and perhaps before they were finished the profit
had vanished and his despair was as wild as his ecstasy. The time to
buy steel plants was when the sky was visible at Pittsburgh; the time
to sell them was when the smoke was so dense that the sun at midday
resembled a pickled beet. But at one time no one had the money to buy
anything with and at the other time nobody would sell.
These were conditions perfectly suited to the exercise of John’s
reckless speculative genius. In the sloughs of despond he bought more
property, as he had bought the Agnes plant, with his notes of hand
and promises to pay. He seemed never so serene as when treading the
edge of a financial precipice in a high wind with a swaying load on
his back. People watched him with awe. He would do it once too often,
they said, as each time he got back to safe ground again. Certainly
he was a dangerous man to walk with. In an industry controlled by
fatalists he was unique for daring. Yet back of his apparent passion
for the gambling chance were saving qualities. He had keen, brooding
vision and rare business sagacity. When he told a committee of United
States Senators that with a tariff protection of six-tenths of a cent
a pound he would make this country independent of the European steel
wire makers (this was at the beginning),--when he said that nobody
took him seriously. However, they gave him what he wanted. The price
of wire was then twelve cents a pound and this country was importing
from Europe three-quarters of all it used. A few years later the tables
were turned. This country was making more than half the steel wire
used in the whole world, selling it heavily even in England, and the
price was two cents a pound. So with all things of steel. So with steel
rails. When the American steel industry got started at last foreign
steel rails were being imported for American railways at $125 a ton.
Ultimately American steel rails sold for $18 a ton in this country,
in Europe, in Asia and Africa. The United States then had become an
exporting nation selling the products of its skill to the four ends of
the earth.
Business is warfare in time of peace. Hence its lure for combative
men. Its goal is conquest. Let alone it would perhaps wreck itself or
enslave the world. No matter. When it is ruthless, knowing no law but
its own necessity, then it is magnificent.
Attila, king of the Huns, vowing no grass to grow where his horse had
trod the enemy’s soil, is magnificent. We can see him in that light now
that he is far away in history and not pursuing us.
Business as it was in the last quarter of the nineteenth century also
is far away. Nothing like it can ever happen again. It was utterly
lawless, free in its own elemental might, lustful and glamorous. The
barbaric invasion that overturned Roman civilization was more obvious
as a spectacle but no more extraordinary, no more unexpected, and
perhaps as it shall turn out, no more significant, than America’s
economic invasion of the world in the steel age. One stupendous sequel
already present is the economic, financial and political supremacy of
the isolated American people in the affairs of this earth. What will
come of that nobody knows.
The Breakspeares conceived it, imagined it, planned it; the Thanes
tooled it. There was of course labor. But labor no more invents the
tools that are the means to economic conquest than soldiers invent
the weapons of war, and has generally less understanding of ends than
soldiers have of the strategy.
The men controlling the steel industry came to be grouped in three
main divisions. There was the original Pittsburgh group, under the
leadership of a round head named Carmichael; it had founded itself
in iron and then gone into steel. It was steady and powerful and had
gained some influential support in Wall Street. There was the western
group, always falling down and getting up again, very unstable, yet
dangerous as competitors.
And thirdly was the Breakspeare group, extremely unpredictable, whose
interests lay in every direction.
John naturally attracted men who loved risk and lived easily
with danger. Slaymaker learned the attitude, not thoroughly, but
sufficiently, and walked doggedly along. His goal was wealth for its
own sake. Although John’s high adventures often threatened to involve
all of them in colossal bankruptcy, yet this never quite happened, and
each time it didn’t happen Slaymaker took a part of his profit and
hid it away, never to be risked again. Jubal Awns, the lawyer, became
superstitious about John and followed him blindly. Besides these two,
who had been in from the start, there were three others who would be
called general partners. They not only were very large stockholders
and directors in John’s companies; they joined their capital with his
in new undertakings. One was Isaac Pick, a wordless man who conversed
in gestures and disbelieved everything including the fact of his own
existence. He had made a fortune in scrap iron and was brought into
the group by Slaymaker at a time when new capital was urgently needed.
Another was Col. Wingreene, an exceedingly profane man, one of the
railroad officials whom John had induced to take original stock in
the American Steel Company when it began to make rails. Wingreene had
bought out the other railroad people and now devoted himself entirely
to the steel business. A third was Justinian Creed, a Cleveland banker,
very obese, who believed in the better way and twice a year was in a
grovelling panic about his sins, never thinking, however, to divest
himself of the fruits thereof. Thane was a partner, too, only his work
was in other material. There were many others loosely affiliated,
but these five,--Slaymaker, Awns, Pick, Wingreene and Creed,--were
John’s own, whom he led, and who came to be known generically as the
Breakspeare Crowd.
When the game was hot they worked at high pressure, wholly sustained
one would have thought by strong waters; when it was won they let down
with a bang. They were men of strong habits, strong wills, strong
feelings and strong humor. One of their odd passions was for getting
one another’s goat. In their practical jokes they were serious, grim
and imaginative, with an amazing power of deception. Never was a time
when some absurd hoax was not brewing; and if one knew of nothing in
pickle for another he began to be uneasy about himself. His defence was
to prepare something of his own against the field. They were always
on guard and regarded one another askance, with a kind of owlish
suspicion. One would have thought, seeing them together, that they were
too distrustful of themselves to look away or turn to spit. So they
were. But this was personal, part of a game, and had nothing to do with
business really.
Their code of conduct was intricate. If the word passed they could
trust one another implicitly. Yet they avoided the word so far as
possible, preferring in all normal circumstances unlimited freedom of
personal action, each fellow for himself. In an emergency they came
close together, stood back to back, and presented a solid ring to the
world. In all situations John led them. Often he moved them against
their judgment. Sometimes he was wrong. Generally he was right. When
they acted severally against his judgment, on their own, they were
always wrong. His character was perhaps no stronger than theirs; his
judgment intrinsically was no better. But he had above all of them a
faculty of intuition, and he could change his mind. Creed used to say:
“John, he looks where he isn’t going and goes where he isn’t looking.
His eyes are crossed inside.”
He said it cynically, and it was distorted by John’s enemies, who took
it to mean that he could not be trusted by his own crowd. That was not
so. He never broke the code. Creed, as it turned out, was the only man
who needed watching within the rules.
Fortuity was the stuff they worked in; hazard was what they played
with. They were always betting. No game of chance or skill but they
had to add stakes to make it interesting. As they grew richer and more
easily bored it was increasingly difficult to find a pastime in which
the stakes were high enough. John turned the leisure of their minds to
horse racing. They would appear in a body on the race track and scare
the bookmakers with the size of their wagers. John was their oracle.
They never believed him; they only followed him. When he had involved
them in enormous loss they were obliged to go on; there was no other
hope of getting out but by his star of luck. And it was by no means
infallible. Once at Saratoga they had a frightful week. Twice they had
telegraphed home for money. Their losses had gone into six figures.
Slaymaker met Awns, Wingreene, Pick and Creed on the hotel veranda
after breakfast. He was exceedingly sore.
“As long as I live and have my senses I’ll never bet on another horse
John picks,” he said. “He dreams these things. He never had a real tip
in his life.”
They were all of one mind. They were through. Just then John’s voice
reached them from the doorway, saying: “We’ll get it all back today.”
They groaned and turned their backs.
“No, now listen?” he said. “You always get cold feet at the wrong
time. This is our chance. It’s air tight. It’s so secret I can’t even
tell you what horse it is. Give me your money and I’ll bet it with
mine.”
He sat down and went on with it until Slaymaker said: “I’m an imbecile.
If anybody knew what an imbecile I am there would be a run on my bank.
This is positively the last time.”
They all gave him their money. It was the third race. No more could
he tell them. The horses went to the post and still they did not know
which one carried their money.
“It’s on,” said John. “It’s down all right. Don’t worry about that.”
“Lord, no,” said Slaymaker. “That’s not what we are worried about.”
John watched the horses. The others watched him.
A horse named Leadbeater took the lead at the start, held all the way
and won by four lengths. John fell back with a blank expression.
“That the horse?” asked Slaymaker.
“Yes,” said John. “That’s it.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
“I didn’t bet on it,” said John.
“You didn’t--what!”
“That was the horse,” John explained. “Only after we came out here I
got what I thought was a better tip and bet all the money on.... Now,
wait!”
They would not wait. They rose with one impulse and left him alone in
Saratoga. That night on the train they began to get telegrams from him.
Would they authorize him to lay five thousand apiece for them on a
horse that was bound to win the next day at odds of 100 to 1? They tore
up the telegrams. More kept coming, overtaking them en route all that
night and until noon the next day. They would not even reply. But that
horse did win and John by himself broke half the bookmakers at Saratoga.
It was the end of their racing sport for that season. The crowd was
too disgusted to touch it again and John did not care for it alone.
Slaymaker said it was forever; so did all the rest. Yet the next season
they did it all over again.