A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.
Our game at Lattimore was one of those absorbing ones in which the
sunlight of next morning sifts through the blinds before the players are
aware that midnight is past. Day by day, deal by deal, it went on, card
followed card in fateful fall upon the table, and we who sat in, and
played the World and Destiny with so pitifully small a pile of chips at
the outset, saw the World and Destiny losing to us, until our hands
could scarcely hold, our eyes hardly estimate, the high-piled stacks of
counters which were ours.
We saw the yellowing groves and brown fields of our first autumn; we
heard the long-drawn, wavering, mounting, falling, persistent howl of
the thresher among the settings of hive-shaped stacks; we saw the loads
of red and yellow corn at the corn-cribs,--as men at the board of the
green cloth hear the striking of the hours. And we heeded them as
little. The cries of southing wild-fowl heralded the snow; winter came
for an hour or so, and melted into spring; and some of us looked up from
our hands for a moment, to note the fact that it was the anniversary of
that aguish day when three of us had first taken our seats at the table:
and before we knew it, the dust and heat and summer clouds, like that
which lightened over the fete in the park, admonished us that we were
far into our second year. And still shuffle, cut, deal, trick, and hand
followed each other, and with draw and bluff and showdown we played the
World and Destiny, and playing won, and saw our stacks of chips grow
higher and higher, as our great and absorbing game went on.
Moreover, while we won and won, nobody seemed to lose. Josie spoke that
night of fortunes which people had not earned; but surely they were
created somehow; and as the universe, when the divine fiat had formed
the world, was richer, rather than poorer, so, we felt, must these
values so magically growing into our fortunes be good, rather than evil,
and honestly ours, so far as we might be able to secure them to
ourselves. I said as much to Jim one day, at which he smiled, and
remarked that if we got to monkeying with the ethics of the trade,
piracy would soon be a ruined business.
"Better, far better keep the lookout sweeping the horizon for sails,"
said he, "and when one appears, serve out the rum and gunpowder to the
crew, and stand by to lower away the boats for a boarding-party!"
I am afraid I have given the impression that our life at this time was
solely given over to cupidity and sordidness; and that idea I may not be
able to remove. Yet I must try to do so. We were in the game to win; but
our winnings, present and prospective, were not in wealth only. To
surmount obstacles; to drive difficulties before us like scattering
sparrows; to see a town marching before us into cityhood; to feel
ourselves the forces working through human masses so mightily that, for
hundreds of miles about us, social and industrial factors were compelled
to readjust themselves with reference to us; to be masters; to
create--all these things went into our beings in thrilling and dizzying
pulsations of a pleasure which was not ignoble.
For instance, let us take the building of the Lattimore & Great Western
Railway. Before Mr. Elkins went to Lattimore this line had been surveyed
by the cooeperation of Mr. Hinckley, Mr. Ballard, the president of the
opposition bank, and some others. It was felt that there was little real
competition among the railways centering there, and the L. & G.W. was
designed as a hint to them of a Lattimore-built connection with the
Halliday system, then a free-lance in the transportation field, and
ready to make rates in an independent and competitive way. The Angus
Falls extension brought this system in, but too late to do the good
expected; for Mr. Halliday, in his dealings with us, convinced us of the
truth of the rumors that he had brought the other roads to terms, and
was a free-lance no longer. Month by month the need of real competition
in our carrying trade grew upon us. Rates accorded to other cities on
our commercial fighting line we could not get, in spite of the most
persistent efforts. In the offices of presidents and general managers,
in St. Louis, Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Kansas City, Omaha and
New York we were received by suave princes of the highways, who each
blandly assured us that his road looked with especial favor upon our
town, and that our representations should receive the most solicitous
attention. But the word of promise was ever broken to the hope.
After one of these embassies the syndicate held a meeting in Cornish's
elegant offices on the ground-floor of the new "Hotel Elkins" building.
We sent Giddings away to prepare an optimistic news-story for
to-morrow's _Herald_, and an editorial leader based upon it, both of
which had been formulated among us before going into executive session
on the state of the nation. Hinckley, who had an admirable power of
seeing the crux of a situation, was making a rather grave prognosis for
us.
"If we can't get rates which will let us into a broader territory, we
may as well prepare for reverses," said he. "Foreign cement comes almost
to our doors, in competition with ours. Wheat and live-stock go from
within twenty miles to points five hundred miles away. Who is furnishing
the brick and stone for the new Fairchild court-house and the big
normal-school buildings at Angus Falls? Not our quarries and kilns, but
others five times as far away. If you want to figure out the reason of
this, you will find it in nothing else in the world but the freight
rates."
"It's a confounded outrage," said Cornish. "Can't we get help from the
legislature?"
"I understand that some action is expected next winter," said I;
"Senator Conley had in here the other day a bill he has drawn; and it
seems to me we should send a strong lobby down at the proper time in
support of it."
"Ye-e-s," drawled Jim, "but I believe in still stronger measures; and
rather than bother with the legislature, owned as it is by the roads,
I'd favor writing cuss-words on the water-tanks, or going up the track a
piece and makin' faces at one of their confounded whistling-posts or
cattle-guards--or something real drastic like that!"
Cornish, galled, as was I, by this irony, flushed crimson, and rose.
"The situation," said he, "instead of being a serious one, as I have
believed, seems merely funny. This conference may as well end. Having
taken on things here under the impression that this was to be a city; it
seems that we are to stay a village. It occurs to me that it's time to
stand from under! Good-evening!"
"Wait!" said Hinckley. "Don't go, Cornish; it isn't as bad as that!"
As he spoke he laid his hand on Cornish's arm, and I saw that he was
pale. He felt more keenly than did I the danger of division and strife
among us.
"Yes, Mr. Hinckley," said Jim, as Cornish sat down again, "it _is_ as
bad as that! This thing amounts to a crisis. For one, I don't propose to
adopt the 'stand-from-under' tactics. They make an unnecessary disaster
as certain as death; but if we all stand under and lift, we can win more
than we've ever thought. In the legislature they hold the cards and can
beat us. It's no use fooling with that unless we seek martyrs' deaths in
the bankruptcy courts. But there is a way to meet these men, and that is
by bringing to our aid their greatest rival."
"Do you mean--" said Hinckley.
"I mean Avery Pendleton and the Pendleton system," replied Elkins. "I
mean that we've got to meet them on their own ground. Pendleton won't
declare war on the Halliday combination by building in here, but there
is no reason why we can't build to him, and that's what I propose to do.
We'll take the L. & G. W., swing it over to the east from the Elk Fork
up, make a junction with Pendleton's Pacific Division, and, in one week
after we get trains running, we'll have the freight combine here shot so
full of holes that it won't hold corn-stalks! That's what we'll do:
we'll do a little rate-making ourselves; and we'll make this danger the
best thing that ever happened to us. Do you see?"
Cornish saw, sooner than any one else. As he spoke, Jim had unrolled a
map, and pointed out the places as he referred to them, like a general,
as he was, outlining the plan of a battle. He began this speech in that
quiet, convincing way of his, only a little elevated above the sarcasm
of a moment before. As he went on, his voice deepened, his eye gleamed,
and in spite of his colloquialisms, which we could not notice, his words
began to thrill us like potent oratory. We felt all that ecstasy of
buoyant and auspicious rebellion which animated Hotspur the night he
could have plucked bright honor from the pale-faced moon. At Jim's
final question, Cornish, forgetting his pique, sprang to the map, swept
his finger along the line Elkins had described, followed the main ribs
of Pendleton's great gridiron, on which the fat of half a dozen states
lay frying, on to terminals on lakes and rivers; and as he turned his
black eyes upon us, we knew from the fire in them that he saw.
"By heavens!" he cried, "you've hit it, Elkins! And it can be done! From
to-night, no more paper railroads for us; it must be grading-gangs and
ties, and steel rails!"
So, also, there was good fighting when Cornish wired from New York for
Elkins and me to come to his aid in placing our Lattimore & Great
Western bonds. Of course, we never expected to build this railway with
our own funds. For two reasons, at least: it is bad form to do eccentric
things, and we lacked a million or two of having the money. The line
with buildings and rolling stock would cost, say, twelve thousand
dollars per mile. Before it could be built we must find some one who
would agree to take its bonds for at least that sum. As no one would pay
quite par for bonds of a new and independent road, we must add, say,
three thousand dollars per mile for discount. Moreover, while the
building of the line was undertaken from motives of self-preservation,
there seemed to be no good reason why we should not organize a
construction company to do the actual work of building, and that at a
profit. That this profit might be assured, something like three thousand
dollars per mile more must go in. Of course, whoever placed the bonds
would be asked to guarantee the interest for two or three years; hence,
with two thousand more for that and good measure, we made up our
proposed issue of twenty thousand dollars per mile of first-mortgage
bonds, to dispose of which "the former member of the firm of Lusch,
Carskaddan & Mayer" was revisiting the glimpses of Wall Street, and
testing the strength of that mighty influence which the _Herald_ had
attributed to him.
"You've just _got_ to win," said Giddings, who was admitted to the
secret of Cornish's embassy, "not only because Lattimore and all the
citizens thereof will be squashed in the event of your slipping up; but,
what is of much more importance, the _Herald_ will be laid in a lie
about your Wall Street pull. Remember that when foes surround thee!"
When we joined him, Cornish admitted that he was fairly well
"surrounded." He had failed to secure the aid of Barr-Smith's friends,
who said that, with the street-car system and the cement works, they had
quite eggs enough in the Lattimore basket for their present purposes. In
fact, he had felt out to blind ends nearly all the promising burrows
supposedly leading to the strong boxes of the investing public, of which
he had told us. He accounted for this lack of success on the very
natural theory that the Halliday combination had found out about his
mission, and was fighting him through its influence with the banks and
trust companies. So he had done at last what Jim had advised him to do
at first--secured an appointment with the mighty Mr. Pendleton; and,
somewhat humbled by unsuccess, had telegraphed for us to come on and
help in presenting the thing to that magnate.
Whom, being fenced off by all sorts of guards, messengers, clerks, and
secretaries, we saw after a pilgrimage through a maze of offices. He had
not the usual features which make up an imposing appearance; but command
flowed from him, and authority covered him as with a mantle. We knew
that he possessed and exerted the power to send prosperity in this
channel, or inject adversity into that, as a gardener directs water
through his trenches, and this knowledge impressed us. He was rather
thin; but not so much so as his sharp, high nose, his deep-set eyes, and
his bony chin at first sight seemed to indicate. Whenever he spoke, his
nostrils dilated, and his gray eyes said more than his lips uttered. He
was courteous, with a sort of condensed courtesy--the shorthand of
ceremoniousness. He turned full upon us from his desk as we entered,
rose and met us as his clerk introduced us.
"Mr. Barslow, I'm happy to meet you; and you also, Mr. Cornish. Mr.
Wilson 'phoned about your enterprise just now. Mr. Elkins," as he took
Jim's hand, "I have heard of you also. Be seated, gentlemen. I have
given you a time appropriation of thirty minutes. I hope you will excuse
me for mentioning that at the end of that period my time will be no
longer my own. Kindly explain what it is you desire of me, and why you
think that I can have any interest in your project."
And, with a judgment trained in the valuing of men, he turned to Jim as
our leader.
"If our enterprise doesn't commend itself to your judgment in twenty
minutes," said Jim, with a little smile, and in much the same tone that
he would have used in discussing a cigar, "there'll be no need of
wasting the other ten; for it's perfectly plain. I'll expedite matters
by skipping what we desire, for the most part, and telling you why we
think the Pendleton system ought to desire the same thing. Our plan, in
a word, is to build a hundred and fifty miles of line, and from it
deliver two full train-loads of through east-bound freight per day to
your road, and take from you a like amount of west-bound tonnage, not
one pound of which can be routed over your lines at present."
Mr. Pendleton smiled.
"A very interesting proposition, Mr. Elkins," said he; "my business is
railroading, and I am always glad to perfect myself in the knowledge of
it. Make it plain just how this can be done, and I shall consider my
half-hour well expended."
Then began the fateful conversation out of which grew the building of
the Lattimore & Great Western Railway. Jim walked to the map which
covered one wall of the room, and dropped statement after statement into
the mind of Pendleton like round, compact bullets of fact. It was the
best piece of expository art imaginable. Every foot of the road was
described as to gradients, curves, cuts, fills, trestles, bridges, and
local traffic. Then he began with Lattimore; and we who breathed in
nothing but knowledge of that city and its resources were given new
light as to its shipments and possibilities of growth. He showed how the
products of our factories, the grain from our elevators, the live-stock
from our yards, and the meats from our packing-houses could be sent
streaming over the new road and the lines of Pendleton.
Then he turned to our Commercial Club, and showed that the merchants,
both wholesale and retail, of Lattimore were welded together in its
membership, in such wise that their merchandise might be routed from the
great cities over the proposed track. He piled argument on argument. He
hammered down objection after objection before they could be suggested.
He met Mr. Pendleton in the domain of railroad construction and
management, and showed himself familiar with the relative values of
Pendleton's own lines.
"Your Pacific Division," said he, "must have disappointed some of the
expectations with which it was built. Its earnings cannot, in view of
the distance they fall below those of your other lines, be quite
satisfactory to you. Give us the traffic agreement we ask; and your next
report after we have finished our line will show the Pacific Division
doing more than its share in the great showing of revenue per mile which
the Pendleton system always makes. I see that my twenty minutes is about
up. I hope I have made good our promises as to showing cause for coming
to you with our project."
Mr. Pendleton, after a moment's thought, said: "Have you made an
engagement for lunch?"
We had not. He turned to the telephone, and called for a number.
"Is this Mr. Wade's office?... Yes, if you please.... Is this Mr.
Wade?... This is Pendleton talking to you.... Yes, Pendleton.... There
are some gentlemen in my office, Mr. Wade, whom I want you to meet, and
I should be glad if you could join us at lunch at the club.... Well,
can't you call that off, now?... Say, at one-thirty.... Yes.... Very
kind of you.... Thanks! Good-by."
Having made his arrangements with Mr. Wade, he hung up the telephone,
and pushed an electric button. A young man from an outer office
responded.
"Tell Mr. Moore," said Pendleton to him, "that he will have to see the
gentlemen who will call at twelve--on that lake terminal matter--he will
understand. And see that I am not disturbed until after lunch.... And,
say, Frank! See if Mr. Adams can come in here--at once, please."
Mr. Adams, who turned out to be some sort of a freight expert, came in,
and the rest of the interview was a bombardment of questions, in which
we all took turns as targets. When we went to lunch we felt that Mr.
Pendleton had possessed himself of all we knew about our enterprise, and
filed the information away in some vast pigeon-hole case with his own
great stock of knowledge.
We met Mr. Wade over an elaborate lunch. He said, as he shook hands with
Cornish, that he believed they had met somewhere, to which Cornish bowed
a frigid assent. Mr. Wade was the head of The Allen G. Wade Trust
Company, and seemed in a semi-comatose condition, save when cakes,
wine, or securities were under discussion. He addressed me as "Mr.
Corning," and called Cornish "Atkins," and once in a while opened his
mouth to address Jim by name, but halted, with a distressful look, at
the realization of the fact that he could not remember names enough to
go around. He made an appointment with me for the party for the next
morning.
"If you will come to my office before you call on Mr. Wade," said Mr.
Pendleton, "I will have a memorandum prepared of what we will do with
you in the way of a traffic agreement: it may be of some use in
determining the desirability of your bonds. I'm very glad to have met
you, gentlemen. When Lattimore gets into my world--by which I mean our
system and connections--I hope to visit the little city which has so
strong a business community as to be able to send out such a committee
as yourselves; good-afternoon!"
"Well," said I, as we went toward our hotel, "this looks like progress,
doesn't it?"
"I sha'n't feel dead sure," said Jim, "until the money is in bank,
subject to the check of the construction company. But doesn't it look
juicy, right now! Why, boys, with that traffic agreement we can get the
money anywhere--on the prairie, out at sea--anywhere under the shining
sun! They can't beat us. What do you say, Cornish? Will, your friend
Wade jar loose, or shall we have to seek further?"
"He'll snap at your bonds now," said Cornish, rather glumly, I thought,
considering the circumstances; "but don't call him a friend of mine!
Why, damn him, not a week ago he turned me out of his office, saying
that he didn't want to look into any more Western railway schemes! And
now he says he believes we've met before!"
This seemed to strike Mr. Elkins as the best practical joke he had ever
heard of; and Cornish suggested that for a man to stop in Homeric
laughter on Broadway might be pleasant for him, but was embarrassing to
his companions. By this time Cornish himself was better-natured. Jim
took charge of our movements, and commanded us to a dinner with him, in
the nature of a celebration, with a theater-party afterward.
"Let us," said he, "hear the chimes at midnight, or even after, if we
get buncoed doing it. Who cares if we wind up in the police court! We've
done the deed; we've made our bluff good with Halliday and his gang of
highwaymen; and I feel like taking the limit off, if it lifts the roof!
Al, hold your hand over my mouth or I shall yell!"
"Come into my parlor, and yell for me," said Cornish, "and you may do my
turn in police court, too. Come in, and behave yourself!"
I began writing a telegram to my wife, apprising her of our good luck.
The women in our circle knew our hopes, ambitions, and troubles, as the
court ladies know the politics of the realm, and there were anxious
hearts in Lattimore.
"I'm going down to the telegraph-office with this," said I; "can I take
yours, too?"
When I handed the messages in, the man who received them insisted on my
reading them over with him to make sure of correct transmission. There
was one to Mr. Hinckley, one to Mr. Ballard, and two to Miss Josephine
Trescott. One ran thus, "Success seems assured. Rejoice with me. J. B.
C." The other was as follows: "In game between Railway Giants and
Country Jakes here to-day, visiting team wins. Score, 9 to 0. Barslow,
catcher, disabled. Crick in neck looking at high buildings. Have Mrs. B.
prepare porous plaster for Saturday next. Sell Halliday stock short, and
buy L. & G. W. And in name all things good and holy don't tell Giddings!
J. R. E."