VICTORY
_The shorts are caught--Big John comes to my office to get terms--An
exchange of opinions--An alliance proposed--I reject it--My enemies
are flattering--I have arrived_
They sent old John Carmichael around to treat with me. He had to come to
the office the same as any other man who had a favor to ask. Slocum and
I and two or three others who were close to us were there waiting for
him, and discussing the terms we should give.
"They must be short in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand shares
common and preferred the best we can make out," Slocum reported, after
conferring with our brokers. "How did you have the nerve, Van, to run
this corner when you knew Dround's stock was loose?"
"It isn't loose," I answered.
"Where is it, then? We know pretty well where every other share is, but
his block has dropped out of the market. It was transferred to some New
York parties last October."
I smiled tranquilly. There had been no leak in our barrel. Slocum and I
had been around to all the other large holders of Meat Products, and I
knew they would not go back on us. The Strauss crowd would find the
corner invulnerable.
When Carmichael came in he nodded to me familiarly, just as he used to
at Dround's when he had been away on a trip to New York or some place,
and called out gruffly:--
"Say! I told them you were a bad one to go up against. Say, Harrington,
do you remember how you scalped poor old McGee back in the days when you
were doing odd jobs at Dround's? Well, I came over here to see what you
want for your old sausage shop, anyway."
With that gibe at my start in the packing business he settled back in
his chair and pulled out a cigar.
"I don't know that we are anxious to sell, John," I replied.
"What? That talk don't go. I know you want to get out mighty bad. What's
your figure?"
"You fellows have given us a lot of trouble, first and last," I mused
tranquilly. "There was that injunction business over the London and
Chicago Company, and the squeeze by the banks. You have tried every
dirty little game you knew."
Carmichael grinned and smoked.
"I suppose you want our outfit to turn out some more rotten canned stuff
for the Government. What you sold them isn't fit for a Chinaman to eat,
John." Thereupon I reached into a drawer of my desk and brought out a
tin of army beef marked with the well-known brand of the great Strauss.
I proceeded to open it, and as soon as the cover was removed a foul odor
offended our nostrils. "Here's a choice specimen one of our boys got for
me."
Carmichael smoked on placidly.
"That is something we have never done, though we couldn't make anything
on our contract at the figures you people set. And little of the
business we got, anyway! Strauss ought to be put where he'd have to feed
off his own rations."
So we sat and scored one another comfortably for a time, and then came
to business. The terms that Slocum and I had figured out were that
Strauss and his crowd should pay us in round numbers two hundred dollars
per share preferred and common alike, allowing every shareholder the
same terms. Carmichael leaped to his feet when he heard the figures.
"You're crazy mad, Van," he swore volubly. Then he stated his plan,
which was, in brief, that we should make an alliance with the great
Strauss and sell him at "reasonable figures" an interest in our company.
"And let you and Strauss freeze out my friends? Not for one minute! Go
back and tell your boss to find that stock he's short of."
Carmichael threw us an amused glance.
"Do you think that's worrying us? If you want a fight, I guess we can
give you some trouble."
It seems that they had another club behind their backs, and that was a
suit, which they were instigating the Attorney-general to bring against
the Meat Products Company for infringing the Illinois anti-trust act.
The impudence and boldness of this suggestion angered me.
"All right," I said. "You have our figure, John."
He left us that day, but he came the next morning with new proposals
from his master. They were anxious to have a peaceable settlement. I
had known for some time that these men were preparing for an astonishing
move, which was nothing less than a gigantic combination of all the
large food-product industries of the country, and they could not leave
us as a thorn in their side. They must annex us, cost what it might.
So now they talked of my ability, of what I had done in making a great
business out of a lot of remnants, and they wanted to buy me as well as
our company, offering me some strong inducements to join them. But I
told Carmichael shortly:--
"I will never work with Strauss in this life. It's no use your talking,
John. There isn't enough money coined to bring me to him. You must buy
our stock outright--and be quick about it, too."
He could not understand my feeling, and it was not reasonable. But all
these years of desperate fight there had grown up in my heart a hatred
of my enemy beyond the usual cold passions of business. I hated him as a
machine, as a man,--as a cruel, treacherous, selfish, unpatriotic maker
of dollars.
So in the end they came to my terms, and the lawyers set to work on the
papers. The Strauss interests were to take over the Meat Products stock
at our figure, and also the Empress Line, our private-car enterprise,
and two or three smaller matters that had grown up in connection with
the packing business. When Slocum and I went on to New York to finish
the transaction, Sarah and the girls accompanied us, on their way to
Europe, where they were going for a pleasure trip.
[Illustration: "_There isn't enough money coined to bring me to him._"]
Thus in a few months my labors came to flower, and suddenly the map of
my life changed completely. The end was not yet, but no longer was I the
needy adventurer besieging men of means to join me in my enterprises,
dodging daily blows in a hand-to-hand scrimmage--a struggling packer! I
had brought Strauss to my own terms. And when the proud firm of Morris
Brothers, the great bankers, invited me to confer with them in regard to
our railroad properties in the Southwest, and to take part in one of
those deals which in a day transform the industrial map of the country,
I felt that I had come out upon the level plateau of power.