"Never do anything till you are ready to do it all over and clear
through."
In obedience to the spirit of these rules, Captain Will Hallam, as soon
as he had sent off his telegraphic messages, went out into his garden
and hoed a while. Then he called John, his English gardener, and gave
him some minute instructions respecting the care of certain plants. John
resented the impertinence of course, but he obeyed the instructions,
nevertheless. It was the fixed habit of men who worked for Captain Will
Hallam to obey his commands.
Presently the cashier presented himself, with check book in hand.
"Draw a check for five thousand dollars," commanded Captain Hallam,
"payable 'to the King of Holland or Bearer'. Mind, I say 'bearer,' _not_
'order.' Then draw another check for one hundred dollars, payable to
yourself."
Not another word was said. No explanation of the gift to the cashier was
offered or asked. The cashier understood. He drew the checks and his
employer signed them. The smaller one he handed to his subordinate. The
vastly larger one he thrust into his vest pocket, as he moved around a
corner of the piazza to set his little girls swinging in a new
contrivance which he had purchased for their use.
Presently he returned to his secretary and said:
"Telegraph Mr. Kingsbury to make out an application in proper form for a
military permit to ship five thousand bales of cotton to New York. Tell
him to have it ready for me at two o'clock at the main office."
Two hours later Captain Hallam found the application ready for him on
his office desk. After looking it over he signed and carefully folded it
after the fashion required for military documents, but as he did so he
slipped into it the check for five thousand dollars, payable to the
"King of Holland or Bearer."
No mention of the check was made in the document. If the proceeding
should be resented at headquarters, the enclosure could be excused on
the plea of accident.
Then the man of business bade his secretary envelop the package and send
it by messenger to military headquarters.
It came back promptly with this endorsement on it:
"Application denied. The proposed shipment is larger than this office
regards as proper _under existing circumstances_."
The last three words were heavily and suggestively underscored. Captain
Hallam thought he understood. He was in the habit of understanding
quickly. He called the cashier, handed him the check, first tearing it
into four pieces, and bade him cancel the stub and draw a new check for
ten thousand dollars, payable as before, to "the King of Holland _or
Bearer_."
Then he endorsed the application with the sentence:
"As conditions have somewhat changed since this application was
rejected, I venture to ask a reconsideration."
Half an hour later Captain Hallam was duly and officially notified that
his application for permission to ship five thousand bales of cotton was
granted.
The check--without endorsement--was cashed next day--the bank teller
would never say by whom. But in the meanwhile Captain Hallam had said
to his secretary:
"Telegraph the general freight agent at Chicago for freight cars, as
fast as he can let me have them. Say I have five thousand bales of
cotton awaiting shipment, with more to come as fast as I can get
permits."
Then Captain Hallam mounted his horse and rode away for a
"constitutional."
All this occurred a year or two before the time of Guilford Duncan's
arrival in Cairo; but it was peculiarly characteristic of Captain
Hallam's methods and the story of it is illustrative of his ideas.
VII
THE "SIZING UP" OF GUILFORD DUNCAN
Captain Will Hallam was quick to make up his mind with regard to a man.
He was exceedingly accurate in his human judgments, too, and his
confidence in them had been strengthened by experience in successfully
acting upon them. As he phrased it, he "knew how to size a man up," and,
as the employer of multitudes of men in all parts of the country and in
all sorts of capacities, he had daily need of the skill he had acquired
in that art. It was as much a part of his equipment for the conduct of
his vast and varied enterprises as was his money capital itself.
When young Duncan presented himself in the private office after his
night's vigil as a watchman, Captain Hallam asked him to sit. That was a
recognition of his social status as something better than his employment
of the night before might have suggested. Ordinarily a man employed as a
levee watchman would not have been told to come to the private office at
all. Nor would such a man have seen anybody higher than a junior clerk
in collecting his wages.
But Captain Hallam had been impressed by this newcomer, and he wanted to
talk with him.
He broke at once into a catechism.
"Why did you do that little fire-extinguishing act last night?"
He asked the question precisely as he might have done if he had resented
the saving of his wealth of cotton.
"Oh, it was simple enough. The fire meant damage, and I was there. So,
of course, I put it out."
"But why? The cotton wasn't yours, and you hadn't been hired to watch
it."
"No, of course not. But when a gentle----I mean when any decent man
sees property afire he doesn't ask whose it is before putting out the
blaze."
"You're a Virginian, I should say, from your voice--late of the rebel
army. What's your rank?"
"None now. I've put the war completely behind me. I'm beginning life
anew."
"Good! I wish everybody, north and south, would do the same. But fools
won't, and men are mostly fools, you know. When did you get to Cairo?"
"About five minutes before you saw me putting out the fire. I came down
the river on the big tow boat."
"Where's your baggage?"
"On my back. I have no other clothes. I'll buy some when I earn some
money."
"Where have you been since the surrender?"
"Making my way West."
"How?"
"On foot to Wheeling. Then on the tow boat."
"What fare did they make you pay?"
"None. I worked my way as a stoker--fireman they call it out here."
"No wages? Just passage and grub?"
"That was all."
"What have you got on your wheel house?"
"I fear I don't understand."
"Oh, that's river slang. You know every side-wheel steamer has a
statement of her destination painted on her wheel house. I meant to ask
what are your plans?"
"To find work and do it."
"What kind of work?"
"Any kind that's honest."
"You are educated, I suppose?"
"Yes, in a way. I'm an A. M. and a graduate in law."
"Know anything about business?"
"No, but I shall learn."
"If you can, you mean?"
"Oh, I can. A capable man can learn anything if he really wants to."
"I don't know about that. But I'll gamble on the proposition that you
can."
"Thank you."
"No thanks are needed. I wasn't complimenting. I was just expressing an
opinion."
Scribbling a memorandum on a scrap of paper, Captain Hallam handed it to
Duncan, saying:
"Give that to the cashier as you go out, and get your wages. Then you'd
better get your breakfast. I recommend you, while you're poor, to eat at
the little booths along the levee, where they sell very good sandwiches
and coffee cheap. After breakfast, if you choose to come back here I'll
try to find something for you to do. Oh, I forgot. You were up all
night, so you'll want to sleep."
There was an interrogative note in the last sentence. Captain Hallam was
"sizing up" his man, and he closely scrutinized Duncan's face as the
answer came.
"Oh, I'm used to night duty. I'm ready for a day's work if you can give
me one. As for breakfast, I've had it."
"Then you had money?"
"A very little; but I didn't spend any of it. I sawed and split a load
of wood for the keeper of a booth, and he gave me some bread and ham and
coffee for my work."
"Oh, that's the way you managed it. Very well. Come back here in two
hours anyhow."
After the young man had passed out, Captain Hallam said to one of his
partner brothers:
"That fellow is a good sort. He has sand in his gizzard. When he comes
back set him at work at something or other--several things in succession
in fact--and find out what he can do."
Such was Guilford Duncan's mustering into the new service of work.
VIII
ON DUTY
During the next four or five days Guilford Duncan was kept busy with
various small employments, some of them out of doors and some of them in
the office. During this time Captain Hallam did not again engage him in
conversation, but Duncan knew that the man of business was closely
observing his work. He was not slow to discover that he was giving
satisfaction. He saw that with each day the work assigned him was of a
kind that required a higher intelligence than that of the day before.
Every evening the cashier paid him his day's wages, thus reminding him
that he was not a salaried employee of the house, but a man working for
wages from day to day.
Out of his first wages he had purchased a change of very cheap
underwear, a towel, and a cake of soap. Every morning about daylight he
went to a secluded spot on the levee, for a scrub and a swim. Then he
washed out his towel and placed it with his other small belongings, in a
storage place he had discovered in a great lumber pile.
One morning when he entered the office Captain Hallam gave him several
business letters to answer from memoranda scribbled upon them by clerks
or others. He gave him also a memorandum in his own handwriting, saying:
"Cut that down if you can and make a telegram of it. I'll be back in
half an hour or so. Have it ready for me."
The case was this: A huge steamboat lay at the levee, loaded almost to
the water's edge with grain which Captain Hallam was more than anxious
to hurry to New Orleans to meet a sudden temporary and very marked
advance in that market. That morning the boat had been "tied up"--as the
phrase went--that is to say, she had been legally attached for debt, at
the suit of a firm in St. Louis. Until the attachment should be removed
the boat must lie at Cairo, in charge of a sheriff's officer. Captain
Hallam wished to secure her immediate release, and to that end he
purposed sending the telegram.
When he returned to the office Duncan handed him for inspection and
signature the letters he had written.
"Here is the telegram, also," he said, "but, if you will pardon the
impertinence, I think you had better not send it--at least in the form
you have given it."
"What's the matter?" quickly snapped Hallam.
"It binds you to more than I think you intend."
"Go on! Explain!"
"Why, I cannot help seeing that if you send this dispatch you will make
yourself legally responsible, not only for the claim for which the boat
is now attached, but also for every claim against her that may exist
anywhere. There may be none such, or there may be many. In any case I do
not think you intend to assume them all."
"Go on! The boat must be got away. What do you advise?"
"That you go on her bond for this claim--which seems to me so clearly
illegal that I think you can never be held upon the bond--and----"
"Remind me, when this is over, that you are to come to my house to-night
for consultation on that point. Now go on."
"Well, by going on her bond for this claim, instead of asking the
creditors to release the boat on your promise as made in the telegram,
you can secure her immediate release, making yourself liable, at worst,
for no more than the six hundred dollars claimed."
"But if I do that, what is to prevent another tie-up at Memphis and
another at Vicksburg and others wherever the boat may happen to land.
She's in debt up to the top of her smokestacks, all along the river."
"As you own the cargo, and she can't carry another ton, why should you
let her stop at all? I suppose the captain would do as you desire in
that matter. You might request him to run through without any
landings."
"Request be hanged. I'll tell him what to do and he'll do it. He knows
where cargoes come from. Can you get the papers ready?"
"I can, sir."
"All right. Do it at once." Then turning to a shipping clerk he sent for
the captain of the steamer, to whom he said:
"Get up steam at once. You are to leave in less than an hour. How much
coal have you?"
The captain told him.
"Take two light barges of coal in tow, one on each side, and draw on
them for fuel. When they're empty cast them loose with two men on each
to land them. You can pick them up on your return trip. You are to steam
to New Orleans without a landing anywhere. You understand?"
The captain understood. By this time the papers were ready and after
half an hour spent in legal formalities the released steamboat cast
loose from the wharf and backed out into the river.
Then Captain Hallam turned to Guilford Duncan and said:
"I've an idea that you'll do. If you like I'll put you at regular work
at a monthly salary, and we'll see how we get on together."
"I should like that."
"Very well. Now, where are you boarding?"
"Nowhere. I get what I want to eat at the booths down along the levee."
"But where do you sleep?"
"Among the big lumber piles down there on Fourth street."
Captain Hallam looked at the young man for a moment with something like
admiration in his eyes. Presently he said:
"You'll do. You've got grit and you'll 'make the riffle,' sure. But you
must live more regularly, now that you are to have a salary. I know what
it means to live as you've been doing. I used to do it myself. I could
tell to a cent the nutritive value of a pegged pie or a sewed one, and
at a single glance I could guess the probable proportions of the dog and
cat in a sausage. That sort of thing's all right for a little while, but
not for long, and as for the sleeping among lumber piles, it's risky. I
used to sleep in an empty sugar hogshead by preference, but sleeping out
of doors may give you rheumatism."
"I've been doing it for four years," answered Duncan, smiling, "and I
still have the use of my limbs."
"Yes, of course. I didn't think of that. But you must live better now.
There's a well-furnished room above the office. It was my brother's
quarters before he got married, and it is very comfortable. You can take
it for your own. Give Dutch John, the scrub boy, half a dollar a week to
take care of it for you and that's all the rent you need pay. As for
your meals, most young men in Cairo feed their faces at the hotel. But
that's expensive and what the proprietor calls his 'kuzene' is
distinctly bad. There's a lady, however,--Mrs. Deming,--who furnishes
very good 'square meals,' I hear, over in Walnut street. You'd better
try there, I think. She's what you would call a gentlewoman, but she
needs all the money you'll pay her."
Duncan wondered a little what a 'square meal' might be, but he was
getting somewhat used to the prevalence in the West of those figurative
forms of expression which we call slang. So he took it for granted that
"square meals" were for some reason preferable to meals of any other
geometrical form, and answered simply that he would look up Mrs.
Deming's house after business hours should be over.
"Remember," said Captain Hallam as he passed out of the office, "you are
to see me at my house to-night. Better come to supper--say at seven--and
after supper we'll talk over that law point you mentioned, and other
things."
Duncan wondered a little that Captain Hallam should give him so intimate
an invitation when he knew so little of him. Everybody else in the
office understood. Captain Will was planning to "size up his man" still
further, in an evening's conversation.
IX
ONE NIGHT'S WORK
As the weeks and months went on the results of Guilford Duncan's work
completely justified the confident assertion he had made to Captain
Hallam that _a capable man can learn anything if he really wants to_.
He rapidly familiarized himself with the technicalities, as well as with
the methods and broad principles of business. He sat up till midnight
for many nights in succession, in order to learn from the head
bookkeeper the rather scant mysteries of bookkeeping. By observing the
gaugers who measured coal barges to determine their contents, he quickly
acquired skill in doing that.
It was so with everything. He was determined to master every art and
mystery that in anywise pertained to business, whether the skill in
question was or was not one that he was ever likely to need or to
practice.
His diligence, his conscientiousness in work, his readiness of resource,
his alert intelligence, and his sturdy integrity daily commended him
more and more to the head of the firm, and not many months had passed
before everyone in the office tacitly recognized the young Virginian as
the confidential adviser and assistant of Captain Hallam himself, though
no formal appointment of that kind had been made.
But no advance of salary came to the young man as a result. It was one
of Captain Hallam's rules never to pay a man more for his services than
he must, and never to advance a man's salary until the advance was asked
for.
Captain Hallam was in no fibre of his being a miser, but he acted always
upon those cold-blooded prudential principles that had brought him
wealth. It was not money that this great captain of commerce worshiped,
but success. Success was the one god of his idolatry. Outside of his
business he was liberal in the extreme. Even in his business operations
he never hesitated at lavish expenditure where such expenditure promised
good results. But he regarded all unnecessary spending as waste, of the
kind that imperils success.
In his cynical moments, indeed, he sometimes said that "if you have a
valuable man in your employ, you must keep him poor; otherwise you'll
lose him." But in so saying he perhaps did himself an injustice. He was
apt to feign a heartless selfishness that he did not feel.
Little by little Guilford Duncan had learned all this as he had learned
business methods. He had at first modestly proposed to himself nothing
more in the way of achievement than to make himself a valuable
subordinate--a private, or at most a corporal or a sergeant--in the
ranks of the great army of work. But before many months had passed his
modesty was compelled to yield somewhat to an increasingly clear
understanding of conditions and possibilities. Somewhat to his own
surprise he began to suspect himself of possessing capacities superior
to those of the men about him, and even superior to those of many men
who had risen to high place in commerce and finance.
As Captain Hallam came more and more to rely upon the sagacity and
character of this his most trusted man, he more and more brought young
Duncan into those confidential conferences with the leading men of
affairs, which were frequently necessary in the planning and execution
of important enterprises, or in the meeting of difficulties and
obstacles. In that way Duncan was brought into personal contact with the
recognized masters--big and little--with railroad presidents,
financiers, bankers, capitalists, and other men whose positions were in
a greater or less degree commanding.
At first he modestly held himself as nothing more than the tool and
servitor of these great men. But presently he began to suspect that they
were not very great men after all--to see that it was usually he himself
who devised and suggested the enterprises that these men undertook, and
he who saved them from mistakes in the execution of those enterprises.
Guilford Duncan had never in his life kept a diary. He regarded that
practice as a useless puerility and usually an indulgence in morbid
self-communing and unwholesome self-consciousness. But it was his
practice, sometimes, late at night, to set down upon paper such thoughts
as had interested him during the day, for the sole sake of formulating
them in his own mind. Often he would in this way discuss with himself
questions concerning which he had not yet matured his opinion.
He found the practice conducive to clear thinking and sound judgment. It
served for him the same purpose that the writing of intimate letters
might have done if he had had any intimates to whom to write letters.
"I've been in conference this day," he wrote one night, "with half a
dozen nabobs--not great nabobs, but second rate ones. Mr. M---- was the
biggest one. He's a railroad president, and he always talks loftily of
his 'system' when he means the single railroad he presides over and its
little branches. Then there was D----. He's a General Freight Agent, and
he never forgets the fact or lets anybody else forget it. That's because
he was a small shipping clerk until less than two years ago. I don't
think much of his capacity. Yes, I do. He knows how to manage a big
traffic fairly well, and he has had _nous_ enough to climb out of his
small clerkship into a position of responsibility. What I mean is that
he has little education, no culture, and no intelligence outside of
business. But I begin to see that except in its very highest places,
business does not require anything better than good ordinary ability
inspired by inordinate selfishness. Perhaps that is the reason that the
novelists so rarely--I may say never--take a man of business for the
hero of a romantic story.
"All this has put a new thought into my mind. Why should not I, Guilford
Duncan, make myself a leader, a captain, or even a commanding general of
affairs. I am far better educated than any of these men. They hold that
education is a hindrance rather than a help in business, but in that
they are mightily wrong, as I intend presently to show them. Other
things being equal, a man of trained mind should certainly achieve
better results, even in business, than a man of untrained mind. A man of
trained mind, if he has natural capacity and energy, _can do anything
that he chooses to do_. I must never forget that.
"But the man who would do things of any consequence in business ways
must have money. The bank account is his tool chest.
"I suggested some combinations to-night to those nabobs, and they are
going to carry them out. They would never have thought of the
combinations but for my suggestion. But they can and will carry them
out, with great credit and profit to themselves, because they have
command of money. _I_ could not even think of conducting such affairs,
simply because I have no command of money.
"Very well, then. I shall proceed to get money, just as I should study
to acquire skill in a profession, or just as I should read up the law
pertaining to a matter with which I must deal.
"I shall not learn to love money. That would degrade my soul. I shall
regard money always as a means--a mere tool with which to do such work
as I can in this great undeveloped country.
"That also is something to be remembered. The era of development is just
beginning. These men are nation builders, though they don't know it, or
intend it, or care anything about that aspect of their activities. Their
motives are the sordid impulses of greed and selfish ambition alone.
"At least that is true of all of them except Captain Hallam. He is a man
apart. His attitude is a peculiar one. He does not care for wealth in
itself and yet he scrambles for it as greedily and as hungrily as the
rest of them. Sometimes I think he regards the whole thing as a game
which he enjoys playing with superior skill, just as one might with
whist or chess. He likes to win, not for the sake of the winnings, but
for the sake of the winning.
"I must go to bed now. To-morrow I'll begin thinking out plans for
getting money. One thing is sure. No man can get much money by working
for any other man. The man who gets rich is he who hires other men to
work for him for less than their work is worth. But it is only by
working for another man that one can get the first little capital--the
first rude but handy tool with which to achieve success. I'll go on
working as a hired man till I get a little hoard together. After
that--well, we shall see."
Duncan was greatly admired but little understood by his fellows in the
service of the Hallam firm, or by the similar people who thronged the
town. His fellows, in and out of the office, were commonplace young men,
all looking to the main chance alone and pursuing it with only such
honesty of conduct as business prudence required. They felt no further
interest in their work than such as was necessary to enable them to
retain their places and their salaries.