So the fabulous Damosel of the Dirty Face, rescued from the goat herds
who had found and reared her, was clothed in what she should wear,
christened in due manner, annointed in the name of order, and presented
to the American people. Or, that is to say, the steel industry was
bought from the barbars and sold to the public.
Auspicated by Bullguard and Company, manipulated by Sabath, advertised
by common wonder, the shares of the biggest trust in the world were
launched on the New York Stock Exchange. Popular imagination, prepared
in suspense, delivered itself headlong to the important task of buying
them. A craze to exchange money for steel shares swept the country.
That seemed to be only what people got up every morning to do. Such
manias, like panics inverted, have often occurred. They have a large
displacement in the literature of popular delusions. This one, although
of a true type and spontaneous, was fomented in an extraordinary manner
by Sabath, who for the first time in his life had all the power and
sanction of Wall Street behind him. The hand of the Ishmaelite that
everyone feared now strummed the official lyre and the tune it played
untied a million purse strings.
The steel people removed their hats and bowed.
“We were amateurs,” they admitted.
For weeks and weeks they sat behind piles of steel engraved
certificates, fresh from the printer, and signed their names until they
were weary of making pen strokes at ten thousand dollars each. Before
the ink of their signatures was dry the certificates were cast upon the
market to be converted into cash,--the market Sabath made. There seemed
no bottom or end to it. The capacity of that market was unlimited. The
public’s power to buy was greater than anybody knew.
When it was over, when Sabath’s sweet melody ceased, when the public
owned the steel industry and the barbars were out, then steel shares
began to fall. For several years they fell, disastrously, and the
public howled with rage. The trust went near the rocks.
All who had had any part in the making of it faced a storm of wild
opprobrium. There is much to be said in reproach. However, given the
problem as it was, how else could anyone have solved it? The trust got
by the rocks. The steel industry was stabilized. And ultimately the
shares were worth much more than the public originally paid for them.
This eventuality few of the great steel barbars lived to witness. A
little touched with madness anyhow, as heroic stature is, the Wall
Street harvest finished them. They were of a sudden Nabobs with nothing
on earth to do. Their wealth had been in mills and mines and ships, and
business was a very jealous mistress. Now it was in money and they were
free.
In the first place they didn’t know what to do with the money itself.
Some of them bought banks of their own to keep it in. Then what could
they spend it for? What could they invest it in? The only thing they
knew was steel and they were out of that. Some of them began to buy
railroads. They would say: “This looks like a pretty good railroad.
Let’s buy that.” And they would buy it offhand in the stock market.
Then Wall Street, controlling railroads without owning them, was struck
with a new terror. It wasn’t safe to leave control of a railroad lying
around loose. There was no telling what these men would do next with
their money. They had got control of several great banks and railroads
before anyone knew what they were doing.
But after they had invested their money in banks and railroads they
still had nothing really to do. They built themselves castles, in some
cases two or three each, and seldom if ever lived in them because they
were so lonesome. One transplanted a full grown forest and it died;
he did it again with like result, and a third time, and then he was
weary. He never went back to see. They got rid of their old wives and
bought new and more expensive ones. Even that made no perceptible hole
in their wealth. They tried horses and art and swamped everything they
touched. Gambling they forgot. One developed a peacock madness, never
wore the same garments more than an hour; his dressing room resembled a
clothing store, with hundreds of suits lying on long tables in pressed
piles. One had a phantasy for living out the myth of Pan and ceased to
be spoken of anywhere. One travelled ceaselessly and carried with him
a private orchestra that played him awake and attended his bath. He
died presently under the delusion that he had lost all his money and
all his friends, which was only half true.
They disappeared.
Blasted prodigies!
Children of the steel age, overwhelmed in its cinders.