THE STRUGGLE
_Hard times--How to make something out of nothing--The problem of
finance--Getting help--Cousin Farson--A trip down the
coast--Paternal admonition--The beautiful city beside the lake--The
last ditch--A strong woman's nonsense--The Drounds sail for
Europe--I am in command_
It is not my purpose to recall all the details of the crowded years that
followed. From the autumn of '92, when the events that I have just
related occurred, through the period of deepening depression in all
business and the succeeding era of prosperity, I can do little more than
touch here and there upon more vital events. Suffice it to say that we
were met at the start with hard times, a period of tight money, which
prevented the quick realization of my plan to incorporate the properties
that had been gathered together. One way and another the companies were
carried along, by issuing notes and securing what financial help could
be got, waiting for the favorable time to launch our enterprise. Here
Mr. Dround was a strong help: once committed to the undertaking, he
persuaded others and used his credit generously. Sometimes he looked
back, seeking to retreat from the positions to which he was being
forced; but he saw only ruin behind him, and perforce went ahead.
Strange to say, we met at first little or no opposition from our strong
rivals. Whether it was that Strauss and his crowd were willing to let
the mice foregather into one trap before showing their claws, or that
they despised us as weaklings, no one could say. We were able, even, to
join the great packers in one of those private agreements that made it
possible for us to secure our share of the home trade. Mr. Dround was
aware of this fact, but averted his eyes. Necessity knows little
squeamishness. It must have filled John Carmichael with unholy joy to
know that Dround had come to this compromise with his virtue.
So, in spite of the hard times, we pushed on, branching out here and
there as the chance offered, building a plant in Texas, where Will was
sent to take charge, and making a deal with a car line that had been
started by some Boston men. But the time came when we had to have more
money, and have it at once. There was none to be raised in Chicago,
where the frost of the panic had settled first and hardest. Slocum, who
was my right hand all these months, suggested that the money might be
had from the Boston men who owned the car line. So in July, '93, we made
a hurried trip to the East. They were frightened in Boston, and we met
with little but disappointment. Men were waiting for Congress to repeal
the silver law, or do something else to make it pleasant, and wouldn't
listen to putting out another dollar in a Chicago enterprise. Then it
occurred to Slocum that we might interest a man he knew named Farson,
the rich man of his old home, Portland.
Farson, we found, was down the coast somewhere on his vacation, and we
followed after him. It was the first time I had ever been in that part
of the country, and the look of it was queer to me--a lot of scrawny,
rocky fields and wooden-built towns. When we failed to find Farson in
Portland, it did not seem to me worth while to go on--I doubted if there
was as much money in the whole town as we had to have; but Sloco was
strongly of the opinion that these Maine people had fortunes tucked away
in their old stockings. So we kept on down the coast, and found our man
at his summer cottage, on a little rocky island.
This Mr. Farson was a short, wiry, little man, almost sixty years old,
with a close-cropped gray mustache, and looked for all the world like a
retired school-teacher. He received us on his front piazza, and it took
him and Slocum half an hour to establish just the degree of cousinship
they were to each other. I wanted to laugh and to put in: "We've come to
make your fortune, cousin. It don't make any difference whether you are
third once removed or second twice removed." But I thought it likely
that Slocum knew his business best with these people and kept quiet.
When Slocum got around to saying that we were interested in various
Western enterprises, the weather seemed to grow cool all of a sudden.
But Cousin Farson listened politely and asked some good questions at the
end. Then he let us go all the way across the harbor to the hotel where
we had put up, to get our dinner. I thought we had lost him, but Slocum
thought not. For Cousin Farson had asked us to go fishing with him in
the afternoon.
"He might have given us a sandwich," I growled to Slocum. "That place of
his looks as if he could afford it."
Slocum smiled at my irritation.
"He did not ask you down here. He doesn't feel responsible for your
coming. Probably Cousin Susan would need a warning before inviting two
strangers to dinner."
Well, the little old schoolmaster came over in the afternoon with a very
pretty steam launch. The fishing was not all a pretence. He liked to
fish; but I never saw a man who listened as keenly as that man did. And
I did the talking. I let him see that we were engaged on a big work;
that in putting his dollars into our packing-houses he wasn't just
taking a flyer, way off at the end of the earth. I had had some
experience in dealing with men by this time; it was no raw young schemer
who came to this party. And I had observed that what men want when they
are thinking of putting their money into a new enterprise is to have
confidence in the men who will spend their dollars. My experience has
shown me that the cheapest thing to get in this world is money. If you
have the ideas, the money will flow like water downhill. At any rate,
that was the way it worked with good Mr. Farson.
We stayed there in Deer Isle three days, and had one simple meal in the
banker's house after Cousin Susan had been duly warned. At the end of
the time Farson thought he would give us a couple of hundred thousand
dollars and take some of our bonds, and he thought maybe his
brother-in-law would take a few more, and also his brother-in-law's
brother. In short, Mr. Farson was the first one in a long row of bricks.
He went up with us on the Boston boat, when we started back, to secure
the others. It was a glorious night early in August, and, after Slocum
had gone to bed, the old banker and I sat up there on the deck watching
the coast fade away in the moonlight. I had never seen anything like it
before in my life--the black rocks starting right out of the water, the
stiff little fir trees, the steep hills rolling back from the sea.
[Illustration: _The black rocks starting right out of the water._]
"This is the prettiest thing I have ever seen!" I exclaimed. "My wife
must come down here next summer."
"Yes," the old gentleman replied, with evident pleasure in my praise of
his native rocks. "I can tell you that there is very little in the world
to compare with the charm of this coast."
Then he began to talk of other lands, and I found that he had been all
over the earth. He talked of Italy, and India, and Japan, and parts of
Russia. After a time he began to ask me questions about myself, and
being an easy talker, and happy over the success we had had, I told him
a good deal of my story, and how I had come to enter the present
undertaking. It was easy to tell him things--he had quick sympathy and
was as keen as a boy. He seemed to approve of my general plan, but
advised patience.
"This silver trouble will lead to a period of bad times," he remarked.
"The very time to prepare," I retorted.
"True," he laughed, "when you have the faith and energy. But I am an old
man. I wish to live in peace the rest of my life. Young man, I have been
through two panics and the war. I lost a son while I was in the
Wilderness. He would have been about your age," he added, in a far-away
tone.
That switched the talk from business, and we sat there on deck until
nearly dawn, discussing religion all the time. As he bade me good-by at
the Boston station the next evening, I remember his saying to me with
one of the pleasantest smiles I ever saw on a man's face:--
"Now, Mr. Harrington, I can see that yours will be a busy life. Success
will come not merely in these matters, but in many others." He wagged
his head confidently. "I don't make many mistakes in men. But if you
ever want to have such pleasant talks as we had last night, when you get
to be an old man like me, you must see to it that your hands are kept
clean. Remember that, my boy!" And he patted my shoulder like a father.
It was a queer thing for one man to say to another at the end of a
business day. I had occasion to think of it later, although at the time
I put it down to the old gentleman's eccentricity. We parted very
cordially. I felt that a valuable ally had been secured--one who had it
in his power to bring others with him to our aid,--and I liked the old
boy himself.
Among other things, Mr. Farson had asked me casually about a little line
of Missouri railroad--the St. Louis Great Southern, it was called. He
and his friends were pretty well loaded with the securities of this
bankrupt little road, and the banker wanted me to look into it and
advise him what to do with the property. Thus it happened that the St.
Louis Great Southern became another link in my plan of conquest.
Altogether it was a most important connection, that between us and
Farson's crowd, and it was fortunate that Slocum thought of Cousin
Farson in our hour of need.
* * * * *
All this time there had been building the beautiful city of white
palaces on the lake, and it was now open for the world to see what
Chicago had dreamed and created. Although it had made me impatient to
have Mr. Dround spend on it his energy that was needed in his own
business, now that it was accomplished, in all its beauty and grandeur,
it filled me with admiration.
There were few hours that I could spend in its enjoyment, but I remember
one evening after my return from the East when we had a family party at
the Fair. May and Will were spending his vacation with us during the hot
weather, and the four of us, having had our dinner, took an electric
launch and glided through the lagoons beneath the lofty peristyle out
to the lake, which was as quiet as a pond. The long lines of white
buildings were ablaze with countless lights; the music from the bands
scattered over the grounds floated softly out upon the water; all else
was silent and dark. In that lovely hour, soft and gentle as was ever a
summer night, the toil and trouble of men, the fear that was gripping
men's hearts in the market, fell away from me, and in its place came
Faith. The people who could dream this vision and make it real, those
people from all parts of the land who thronged here day after day--their
sturdy wills and strong hearts would rise above failure, would press on
to greater victories than this triumph of beauty--victories greater than
the world had yet witnessed!
Nevertheless, in spite of hopeful thoughts like these, none knew better
than I the skeleton that lay at the feast, the dread of want and failure
that was stealing over all business. But for that night we were happy
and without fear....
As our launch drew up at the landing beside the great fountain, another
launch glided by our side, holding a number of the Commissioners and
some guests of distinction. Among them were the Drounds, who had
entertained liberally all this season. The two boat parties came to
shore together, and stood looking at the display of fireworks. The Court
of Honor was thronged with thousands and thousands; the great fountain
rippled in a blaze of light; the dark peristyle glowed for a moment in
the fantastic flame from the fireworks. I turned and caught the light of
the illumination in the dark face of Jane Dround. She bowed and smiled.
"In your honor!" she murmured half mockingly, as a rocket burst into a
shower of fiery spray in the heavens above. "I hear that you return from
Boston victor. You should hear Henry! He has no doubts now." She laughed
in high spirits, and we stood there awhile gazing.
"To-night I have no doubts; but to-morrow--who knows?"
Her brows contracted seriously.
"You need, my friend, one great quality, and you must get it
somehow--patience!"
"That is true, but--"
"Patience!" she repeated slowly; "the patience that covers years.
Perhaps you think that is a woman's virtue, but men, too, must have it
if they are to endure. Remember--patience! Now, before any one comes,
let me tell you: we are to leave for Europe as soon as the Fair closes.
Do you think that it will be all right by that time? Say yes or no," she
added, as we were approached by May and Sarah.
"Yes," I answered with a strange feeling of sadness.
Once more, before we left the grounds, I caught a moment of talk with
Mrs. Dround.
"To you the game--the great game!" she exclaimed softly. "And to me the
waiting. But remember, one useless woman is watching across the water
every move you make, and when the time comes that you want help, when
you cannot go on alone--"
[Illustration: "_When the time comes that you want help, when you cannot
go on alone_--"]
It sounded like woman's sentiment, and I interrupted jokingly:--
"When I am in the last ditch, cable you?"
"Don't laugh at me! I am more earnest than you know. If that time
comes--if you don't know which way to turn for help, if you have done
_all_, and still--"
We were standing beside a bandstand, and at that moment the music
crashed out, flooding us with deafening sound.
She pressed my hand, smiled, and turned away. I thought no more of her
words then. But some weeks later, before the Drounds sailed for Europe,
there came in my mail an envelope addressed in a woman's hand. Inside
there was only another envelope, marked:--
"For the last ditch!"
I tossed it into a drawer, rather annoyed by the silliness of it all. It
was the first evidence of weakness I had ever detected in this
intelligent woman.