Colonel Price was a great merchant, one of those men who have been the
energy, the spirit of the country since the War, now fast disappearing,
giving way to another type in this era of "finance" as distinguished from
"business." When the final review was ended, and he was free to journey
back to the little Connecticut village where three years before he had left
with his parents his young wife and their one child, he was a man just over
thirty, very poor, and weak from a digestive complaint that troubled him
all his life. But the spirit of the man was unbroken. Taking his little
family with him, he moved to St. Louis, and falling in there with a couple
of young men with like metal to himself, who happened also to possess some
capital, he started the wholesale hardware business of Parrott, Price, and
Co., which rapidly became the leading house in that branch of trade
throughout the new West. The capital belonged to the other men, but the
leadership from the start to Colonel Price. It was his genius as a trader,
a diviner of needs, as an organizer, that within twenty years created the
immense volume of business that rolled through the doors of their old
warehouse. During the early years the Colonel was the chief salesman and
spent his days "on the road" up and down the Mississippi Valley, sleeping
in rough country taverns, dining on soda biscuit and milk, driving many
miles over clayey, rutty roads,--dealing with men, making business.
Meanwhile the wife--her maiden name was Harmony Vickers--was doing her part
in that little brick house which the Colonel had taken Lane to see. There
she worked and saved, treating her husband's money like a sacred fund to be
treasured. When the colonel came home from his weekly trips, he helped in
the housework, and nursed the boy through the croup at night, saving his
wife where he could. It was long after success had begun to look their way
before Mrs. Price would consent to move into the wooden cottage on a quiet
cross street that the Colonel wanted to buy, or employ more than one
servant. But the younger children as they came on, first Vickers, then
Isabelle, insensibly changed the family habits,--also the growing wealth
and luxury of their friends, and the fast increasing income of the Colonel,
no longer to be disguised. Yet when they built that lofty brick house in
the older quarter of the city, she would have but two servants and used
sparingly the livery carriage that her husband insisted on providing for
her. The habit of fearsome spending never could wholly be eradicated. When
the Colonel had become one of the leading merchants of the city, she
consented grudgingly to the addition of one servant, also a coachman and a
single pair of horses, although she preferred the streetcars on the next
block as safer and less troublesome; and she began gradually to entertain
her neighbors, to satisfy the Colonel's hospitable instincts, in the style
in which they entertained her.
Mrs. Price had an enormous pride in the Colonel and in his reputation in
St. Louis, a pride that no duke's wife could exceed. It was the Colonel who
had started the movement for a Commercial Association and was its first
president. As his wife she had entertained under her roof a President of
the United States, not to mention a Russian prince and an English peer. It
was the Colonel, as she told her children, who had carried through the
agitation for a Water Commission; who urged the Park system; who saved the
Second National Bank from failure in the panic days of ninety-three. She
knew that he might have been governor, senator, possibly vice-president, if
it had not been for his modesty and his disinclination to dip into the
muddy pool of politics. As she drove into the city on her errands she was
proudly conscious that she was the wife of the best-known private citizen,
and as such recognized by every important resident and every quick-witted
clerk in the stores where she dealt. To be plain Mrs. Ezra Price was ample
reward for all the hardship and deprivation of those beginning years!
She was proud, too, of the fact that the money which she spent was honest
money. For the hardware merchant belonged to the class that made its
fortunes honestly, in the eye of the Law and of Society, also. Although
latterly his investments had carried him into real estate, railroads, and
banks, nevertheless it was as the seller of hardware that he wished to be
known. He was prouder of the Lion brand of tools than of all his stock
holdings. And though for many years a director in the Atlantic and Pacific
and other great corporations, he had always resolutely refused to be drawn
into the New York whirlpool; he was an American merchant and preferred to
remain such all his life rather than add a number of millions to his estate
"by playing faro in Wall Street."
The American merchant of this sort is fast disappearing, alas! As a class
it has never held that position in the East that it had in the West. In the
older states the manufacturer and the speculator have had precedence.
Fortunes built on slaves and rum and cotton have brought more honor than
those made in groceries and dry goods. Odd snobbery of trade! But in that
broad, middle ground of the country, its great dorsal column, the merchant
found his field, after the War, to develop and civilize. The character of
those pioneers in trade, men from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, was
such as to make them leaders. They were brave and unselfish, faithful, and
trusting of the future. With the plainest personal habits and tastes,
taking no tarnish from the luxury that rose about them, seeing things
larger than dollars on their horizon, they made the best aristocracy that
this country has seen. Their coat of arms bore the legend: Integrity and
Enterprise.
For their fortunes were built not speculatively, but on the ancient
principles of trade, of barter between men, which is to divine needs and
satisfy them, and hence they are the only fortunes in our rich land that do
not represent, to some degree, human blood, the sacrifice of the many for
the few. They were not fattened on a protective tariff, nor dug in wild
speculation out of the earth, nor gambled into being over night on the
price of foodstuffs, nor stolen from government lands, nor made of water in
Wall Street. These merchants earned them, as the pedler earns the profit of
his pack, as the farmer reaps the harvest of his seed. They earned them by
labor and sagacity, and having them, they stood with heads erect, looking
over their world and knowing that such as it is they helped to build it.
The day of the great merchant has already gone. Already the names of these
honorable firms are mere symbols, cloaking corporate management, trading on
the old personalities. No one saw the inevitable drift clearer than Colonel
Price. In common with his class he cherished the desire of handing on the
structure that he had built to the next generation, with the same
sign-manual over the door,--to his son and his grandson. So he had resisted
the temptation to incorporate the business and "take his profits." There
was a son to sit in his seat. The sons of the other partners would not be
fit: Starbird's only son, after a dissipated youth, was nursing himself
somewhere on the Riviera; his daughter had married an Easterner, and beyond
the quarterly check which the daughter and son received from the business,
this family no longer had a share in it. As for Parrott there was a younger
son serving somewhere in the immense establishment, but he had already
proved his amiable incapacity for responsibility. The second generation, as
the Colonel was forced to admit, was a disappointment. Somehow these
merchants had failed to transmit the iron in their blood to their children.
The sons and sons-in-law either lacked ability and grit, or were frankly
degenerate,--withered limbs!
With the Colonel it had promised to be different; that first boy he had
left behind when he went to the War had grown up under his eye, was
saturated with the business idea. Young Ezra had preferred to leave the
military academy where he had been at school and enter the store at
eighteen. At twenty-six he had been made treasurer of the firm, only a few
months before his death.... The Colonel's thin figure bent perceptibly
after that autumn of ninety-seven. He erected a pseudo-Greek temple in
Fairview Cemetery, with the name Price cut in deep Roman letters above the
door, to hold the ashes of his son,--then devoted all his energies to
measures for sanitary reform in the city. He was a fighter, even of
death....
Vickers had cabled at once when the news reached him that he was sailing
for home. He and Isabelle had inherited their mother's nervous constitution
and had come later in the family fortunes. They had known only ease and
luxury, tempered as it was by their father's democratic simplicity and
their mother's plain tastes. Insensibly they had acquired the outlook of
the richer generation, the sense of freedom to do with themselves what they
pleased. Both had been sent East to school,--to what the Colonel had been
told were the best schools,--and Vickers had gone to a great university.
There for a time the boy had tried to compete in athletics, as the one
inevitable path of ambition for an American boy at college; but realizing
soon that he was too slightly built for this field, he had drifted into
desultory reading and sketching for the college comic paper. Then a social
talent and a gift for writing music gave him the composition of the score
for the annual musical play. This was a hit, and from that time he began to
think seriously of studying music. It was agreed in the family that after
his graduation he should go abroad "to see what he could do." Ezra had
already taken his place in the hardware business, and the younger son could
be spared for the ornamental side of life, all the more as he was delicate
in health and had not shown the slightest evidence of "practical ability."
So the summer that he took his degree, a creditable degree with honors in
music, the Prices sailed for Europe to undertake one of those elaborate
tasting tours of foreign lands that well-to-do American families still
essay. In the autumn it concluded by the Colonel's establishing the family
in Munich and returning to his affairs. Vickers had been in Europe most of
the time since, living leisurely, studying, writing "little things" that
Isabelle played over for the Colonel on the piano.
* * * * *
Now he had come home at the family call,--an odd figure it must be
confessed in St. Louis, with his little pointed beard, and thin mustache,
his fondness for flowing neckwear and velveteen waistcoats, his little
canes and varnished boots. And he stayed on; for the family seemed to need
him, in a general way, though it was not clear to him what good he could do
to them and there were tempting reasons for returning to Rome. In spite of
the sadness of the family situation the young man could not repress his
humorous sense of the futility of all hopes built upon himself.
"Just think of me selling nails,"--he always referred to the hardware
business as "selling nails,"--he said to his mother when she spoke to him
of the Colonel's hope that he would try to take his brother's place. "All I
know about business is just enough to draw a check if the bank will keep
the account straight. Poor Colonel! That germ ought to have got me instead
of Junior!"
"You owe it to your father, Vick. You can't be more useless than Bob
Parrott, and your father would like to see you in the office--for a time
any way."
Vickers refrained from saying that there was an unmentioned difference
between him and Bob Parrott. Young Parrott had never shown the desire to do
anything, except play polo; while he might,--at least he had the passion
for other things. The family, he thought, took his music very lightly, as a
kind of elegant toy that should be put aside at the first call of real
duty. Perhaps he had given them reason by his slow preparation, his waiting
on the fulness of time and his own development to produce results for the
world to see. Isabelle alone voiced a protest against this absorption of
the young man into the family business.
"Why, he has his own life! It is too much of a sacrifice," she
remonstrated.
"Nothing that can give your father comfort is too much of a sacrifice,"
Mrs. Price replied sharply.
"It can't last long," Isabelle said to Vickers. "The Colonel will see,--he
is generous."
"He will see that I am no good fast enough!"
"He will understand what you are giving up, and he is too large hearted to
want other people to do what they are not fitted to do."
"I don't suppose that the family fortunes need my strong right arm
exactly?" the young man inquired.
"Of course not! It's the sentiment, don't you see?"
"Yes, of course, the sentiment for nails!" the young man accepted
whimsically. "Poor Junior did the sentiment as well as the business so
admirably, and I shall be such a hollow bluff at both, I fear."
Nevertheless, the next morning Vickers was at breakfast on time, and when
the Colonel's motor came around at eight-thirty, he followed his father
into the hall, put on an unobtrusive black hat, selected a sober pair of
gloves, and leaving his little cane behind him took the seat beside his
father. Their neighbor in the block was getting into his brougham at the
same moment.
"Alexander Harmon," the Colonel explained, "president of the Commercial
Trust Company."
They passed more of the Colonel's acquaintances on their way down the
avenue, emerging from their comfortable houses for the day's work. It was
the order of an industrial society, the young man realized, in a depressed
frame of mind. He also realized, sympathetically, that he was occupying his
brother's seat in the motor, and he was sorry for the old man at his side.
The Colonel looked at him as if he were debating whether he should ask his
son to stop at a barber shop and sacrifice his pointed beard,--but he
refrained.
Vickers had never seen the towering steel and terra-cotta building in which
the hardware business was now housed. It stood in a cloud of mist and smoke
close by the river in the warehouse district. As the car drew up before its
pillared entrance, the Colonel pointed with pride to the brass plaque
beside the door on which was engraved the architect's name.
"Corbin did it,--you know him? They say he's the best man in America. It
was his idea to sign it, the same as they do in Paris. Pretty good
building, eh?"
The young man threw back his head and cast a critical glance over the
twelve-story monster and again at the dwarfed classic entrance through
which was pouring just now a stream of young men.
"Yes, Corbin is a good man," he assented vaguely, looking through the smoke
drifts down the long crowded thoroughfare, on into a mass of telegraph
wires, masts, and smokestacks, and lines of bulky freight cars. Some huge
drays were backed against the Price building receiving bundles of iron rods
that fell clanging into their place. Wagons rattled past over the uneven
pavement, and below along the river locomotives whistled. Above all was the
bass overtone of the city, swelling louder each minute with the day's work.
A picture of a fair palace in the cavernous depths of a Sienna street came
over the young man with a vivid sense of pain. Under his breath he muttered
to himself, "Fierce!" Then he glanced with compunction at the gentle old
face by his side. How had he kept so perfectly sweet, so fine in the midst
of all this welter? The Colonel was like an old Venetian lord, shrewd with
the wisdom of men, gentle with more than a woman's mercy; but the current
that flowed by his palace was not that of the Grand Canal, the winds not
those of the Levant!
But mayhap there was a harmony in this shrill battlefield, if it could be
found....
Within those long double doors there was a vast open area of floor space,
dotted with iron beams, and divided economically into little plots by
screens, in each one of which was a desk with the name of its occupant on
an enamel sign.
"The city sales department," the Colonel explained as they crossed to the
bank of shooting elevators. The Colonel was obliged to stop and speak and
shake hands with many men, mostly in shirt sleeves, with hats on their
heads, smoking cigars or pipes. They all smiled when they caught sight of
the old man's face, and when he stopped to shake hands with some one, the
man's face shone with pride. It was plain enough that the "old man" was
popular with his employees. The mere handshake that he gave had something
instinctively human and kind in it. He had a little habit of kneading
gently the hand he held, of clinging to it a trifle longer than was needed.
Every one of the six or seven hundred men in the building knew that the
head of the business was at heart a plain man like themselves, who had
never forgotten the day he sold his first bill of goods, and respected all
his men each in his place as a man. They knew his "record" as a merchant
and were proud of it. They thought him a "big man." Were he to drop out,
they were convinced the business would run down, as if the main belt had
slipped from the great fly-wheel of the machine shop. All the other
"upstairs" men, as the firm members and managers of departments were
called, were nonentities beside "our Colonel," the "whole thing," "it," as
he was affectionately described.
So the progress to the elevators was slow, for the Colonel stopped to
introduce his son to every man whose desk they passed or whose eye he
caught.
"My boy, Vickers, Mr. Slason--Mr. Slason is our credit man, Vick--you'll
know him better soon.... Mr. Jameson, just a moment, please; I want you to
meet this young man!"
"If he's got any of your blood in him, Colonel, he's all right," a beefy,
red-faced man jerked out, chewing at an unlighted cigar and looking Vickers
hard in the face.
Even the porters had to be introduced. It was a democratic advance! But
finally they reached the "upstairs" quarters, where in one corner was the
Colonel's private den, partitioned off from the other offices by ground
glass,--a bare space with a little old black walnut desk, a private safe,
and a set of desk telephones. Here Vickers stood looking down at the
turmoil of traffic in the street below, while his father glanced over a
mass of telegrams and memoranda piled on his desk.
The roar of business that had begun to rumble through the streets at
daybreak and was now approaching its meridian stunned the young man's
nerves. Deadened by the sound of it all, he could not dissociate from the
volume that particular note, which would be his note, and live oblivious to
the rest.... So this was business! And what a feeble reed he was with which
to prop it! Visions of that other life came thronging to his mind,--the
human note of other cities he had learned to love, the placid hours of
contemplation, visions of things beautiful in a world of joy! Humorously he
thought of the hundreds of thousands of dollars this busy hive earned each
year. A minute fraction of its profits would satisfy him, make him richer
than all of it. And he suspected that the thrifty Colonel had much more
wealth stored away in that old-fashioned iron safe. What was the use of
throwing himself into this great machine? It would merely grind the soul
out of him and spit him forth.
To keep it going,--that was the reason for sacrificing his youth, his
desire. But why keep the thing going? Pride, sentiment? He did not know the
Colonel's feeling of fatherhood towards all the men who worked for him, his
conviction that in this enterprise which he had created, all these human
beings were able to live happier lives because of him, his leadership.
There was poetry in the old man, and imagination. But the young man, with
his eyes filled with those other--more brilliant--glories, saw only the
grime, heard only the dull roar of the wheels that turned out a meaningless
flood of gold, like an engine contrived to supply desires and reap its
percentage of profits.
"Father!" he cried involuntarily.
Hot words of protest were in his throat. Let some other young man be found
to run the machine; or let them make a corporation of it and sell it in the
market. Or close the doors, its work having been done. But give him his
life, and a few dollars!
"Eh, Vick? Hungry? We'll go over to the club for luncheon in just a
minute." And the old Colonel smiled affectionately at his son over his
glasses.
"Not now--not just yet," Vickers said to himself, with a quick rush of
comprehension.
But the "now" never seemed to come, the right moment for delivering the
blow, through all those months that followed, while the young man was
settling into his corner of the great establishment. When the mother or
Isabelle confessed their doubts to the Colonel, the old man would say:--
"It will do him no harm, a little of it. He'll know how to look after your
money, mother, when I am gone." And he added, "It's making a man of him,
you'll see!"
There was another matter, little suspected by the Colonel, that was rapidly
to make a man of his engaging young son.