The "Dutchman's Mill" and What It Ground.
We sat in conclave about the table. I saw by the lined faces of Elkins
and Hinckley that I had come back to a closely-beleaguered camp, where
heavy watching had robbed the couch of sleep, and care pressed down the
spirit. I had returned successful, but not to receive a triumph: rather,
Harper and myself constituted a relief force, thrown in by stratagem,
too weak to raise the siege, but bearing glad tidings of strong succor
on the way.
It was our first full meeting without Cornish; and Harper sat in his
place. He was unruffled and buoyant in manner, in spite of the stock in
the Grain Belt Trust Company which he held, and the loans placed with
his insurance company by Mr. Hinckley.
"I believe," said he, "that we are here to consider a communication from
Mr. Cornish. It seems that we ought to hear the letter."
"I'll read it in a minute," said Jim, "but first let me say that this
grows out of a talk between Mr. Cornish and myself. Hinckley and Barslow
know that there have been differences between us here for some time."
"Quite natural," said Harper; "according to all the experience-tables,
you ought to have had a fight somewhere in the crowd long before this."
"Mr. Cornish," went on Mr. Elkins, "has favored the policy of converting
our holdings into cash, and letting the obligations we have floated
stand solely on the assets by which they are secured. The rest of us
have foreseen such rapid liquidation, as a certain result of such a
policy, that not only would our town receive a blow from which it could
never recover, but the investment world would suffer in the collapse."
"I should say so," said Harper; "we'll have to look closely to the
suicide clause in our policies held in New England, if that takes
place!"
"Well," said Jim, continuing, "last Tuesday the matter came to an issue
between us, and some plain talk was indulged in; perhaps the language
was a little strong on my part, and Mr. Cornish considered himself
aggrieved, and said, among other things, that he, for one, would not
submit to extinguishment, and he would show me that I could not go on in
opposition to his wishes."
"What did you say to that?" asked Hinckley.
"I informed him," said Jim, "that I was from Missouri, or words to that
effect; and that my own impression was, the majority of the stock in our
concerns would control. My present view is that he's showing me."
A ghost of a smile went round at this, and Jim began reading Cornish's
letter.
"Events of the recent past convince me," the secessionist had written,
"that no good can come from the further continuance of our syndicate. I
therefore propose to sell all my interest in our various properties to
the other members, and to retire. Should you care to consider such a
thing, I am prepared to make you an alternative offer, to buy your
interests. As the purchase of three shares by one is a heavier load than
the taking over of one share by three, I should expect to buy at a lower
proportional price than I should be willing to sell for. As the
management of our enterprises seems to have abandoned the tried
principles of business, for some considerations the precise nature of
which I am not acute enough to discern, and as a sale to me would balk
the very benevolent purposes recently avowed by you, I assume that I
shall not be called upon to make an offer.
"There is at least one person among those to whom this is addressed who
knows that in beginning our operations in Lattimore it was understood
that we should so manage affairs as to promote and take advantage of a
bulge in values, and then pull out with a profit. Just what may be his
policy when this reaches him I cannot, after my experience with his
ability as a lightning change artist, venture to predict; but my last
information leads me to believe that he is championing the utopian plan
of running the business, not only past the bulge, but into the slump. I,
for one, will not permit my fortune to be jeopardized by so palpable a
piece of perfidy.
"I may be allowed to add that I am prepared to take such measures as may
seem to my legal advisers best to protect my interests. I am assured
that the funds of one corporation will not be permitted by the courts
to be donated to the bolstering up of another, over the protest of a
minority stockholder. You may confidently assume that this advice will
be tested to the utmost before the acts now threatened are permitted to
be actually done.
"I attach hereto a schedule of our holdings, with the amount of my
interest in each, and the price I will take. I trust that I may have an
answer to this at your earliest convenience. I beg to add that any great
delay in answering will be taken by me as a refusal on your part to do
anything, and I shall act accordingly.
"Very respectfully,
"J. Bedford Cornish."
"Huh!" ejaculated Harper, "would he do it, d'ye think?"
"He's a very resolute man," said Hinckley.
"He calculates," said Jim, "that if he begins operations, he can have
receiverships and things of that kind in his interest, and in that way
swipe the salvage. On the other hand, he must know that his loss would
be proportioned to ours, and would be great. He's sore, and that counts
for something. I figure that the chances are seven out of ten that he'll
do it--and that's too strong a game for us to go up against."
"What would be the worst that could happen if he began proceedings?"
said I.
"The worst," answered Jim laconically. "I don't say, you know," he went
on after a pause, "that Cornish hasn't some reason for his position.
From a cur's standpoint he's entirely right. We didn't anticipate the
big way in which things have worked out here, nor how deep our roots
would strike; and we did intend to cash in when the wave came. And a cur
can't understand our position in the light of these developments. He
can't see that in view of the number of people sucked down with her when
a great ship like ours sinks, nobody but a murderer would needlessly see
her wrecked. What he proposes is to scuttle her. Sell to him! I'd as
soon sell Vassar College to Brigham Young!"
This tragic humorousness had the double effect of showing us the
dilemma, and taking the edge off the horror of it.
"If it were my case," said Harper, "I'd call him. I don't believe he'll
smash things; but you fellows know each other best, and I'm here to give
what aid and comfort I can, and not to direct. I accept your judgment as
to the danger. Now let's do business. I've got to get back to Chicago by
the next train, and I want to go feeling that my stock in the Grain Belt
Trust Company is an asset and not a liability. Let's do business."
"As for going back on the next train," said Mr. Elkins, "you've got
another guess coming: this one was wrong. As for doing business, the
first thing in my opinion is to examine the items of this bill of
larceny, and see about scaling them down."
"We might be able," said I, "to turn over properties instead of cash,
for some of it."
Elkins appointed Harper and Hinckley to do the negotiating with
Cornish. It was clear, he said, that neither he nor I was the proper
person to act. They soon went out on their mission and left me with Jim.
"Do you see what a snowfall we've had?" he asked. "It fell deeper and
deeper, until I thought it would never stop. No such sleighing for
years. And funny as it may seem, it was that that brought on this
crisis. Josie and I went sleighing, and the hound was furious. Next time
we met he started this business going."
I was studying the schedule, and said nothing. After a while he began
talking again, in a slow manner, as if the words came lagging behind a
labored train of thought.
"Remember the mill the Dutchman had?... Ground salt, and nothing but
salt ... Ours won't grind anything but mortgages ... Well, the hair of
the dog must cure the bite ... Fight fire with fire ... _Similia
similibus curantur_ ... We can't trade horses, nor methods, in the
middle of the ford.... The mill has got to go on grinding mortgages
until we're carried over; and Hinckley and the Grain Belt Trust must
float 'em. Of course the infernal mill ground salt until it sent the
whole shooting-match to the bottom of the sea; but you mustn't be misled
by analogies. The Dutchman hadn't any good old Al to lose telegrams in
an absent-minded way where they would do the most good, and sell
railroads to old man Pendleton ... As for us, it's the time-worn case of
electing between the old sheep and the lamb. We'll take the adult
mutton, and go the whole hog ... And if we lose, the tail'll have to go
with the hide.... But we won't lose, Al, we won't lose. There isn't
treason enough in all the storehouses of hell to balk or defeat us. It's
a question of courage and resolution and confidence, and imparting all
those feelings to every one else. There isn't malice enough, even if it
were a whole pack, instead of one lone hyena, to put out the fires in
those furnaces over there, or stop the wheels in that flume, or make our
streets grow grass. The things we've built are going to stay built, and
the word of Lattimore will stand!"
"My hand on that!" said I.
* * * * *
There was little in the way of higgling: for Cornish proudly refused
much to discuss matters; and when we found what we must pay to prevent
the explosion, it sickened us. Jim strongly urged upon Harper the taking
of Cornish's shares.
"No," said Harper, "the Frugality and Indemnity is too good a thing to
drop; and I can't carry both. But if you can show me how, within a short
time, you can pay it back, I'll find you the cash you lack."
We could not wait for the two millions from Pendleton; and the interim
must be bridged over by any desperate means. We took, for the moment
only, the funds advanced through Harper; and Cornish took his price.
The day after Harper went away we were busy all day long, drawing notes
and mortgages. Every unincumbered piece of our property, the orts,
dregs, and offcast of our operations, were made the subjects of
transfers to the rag-tag and bobtail of Lattimore society. A lot worth
little or nothing was conveyed to Tom, Dick, or Harry for a great
nominal price, and a mortgage for from two-thirds to three-fourths of
the sum given back by this straw-man purchaser. Our mill was grinding
mortgages.
I do not expect that any one will say that this course was justified or
justifiable; but, if anything can excuse it, the terrible difficulty of
our position ought to be considered in mitigation, if not excuse.
Pressed upon from without, and wounded by blows dealt in the dark from
within; with dreadful failure threatening, and with brilliant success,
and the averting of wide-spread calamity as the reward of only a little
delay, we used the only expedient at hand, and fought the battle
through. We were caught in the mighty swirl of a modern business
maelstrom, and, with unreasoning reflexes, clutched at man or log
indifferently, as we felt the waters rising over us; and broadcast all
over the East were sown the slips of paper ground out by our mill,
through the spout of the Grain Belt Trust Company; and wherever they
fell they were seized upon by the banks, which had through years of
experience learned to look upon our notes and bonds as good.
"Past the bulge," quoted Jim, "and into the slump! We'll see what the
whelp says when he finds that, in spite of all his attempts to scuttle,
there isn't going to be any slump!"
By which observation it will appear that, as our operations began to
bring in returns in almost their old abundance, our courage rose. At the
very last, some bank failures in New York, and a bad day on 'Change in
Chicago, cut off the stream, and we had to ask Harper to carry over a
part of the Frugality and Indemnity loan until we could settle with
Pendleton; but this was a small matter running into only five figures.
Perhaps it was because we saw only a part of the situation that our
courage rose. We saw things at Lattimore with vivid clearness. But we
failed to see that like centers of stress were sprinkled all over the
map, from ocean to ocean; that in the mountains of the South were the
Lattimores of iron, steel, coal, and the winter-resort boom; and in the
central valleys were other Lattimores like ours; that among the peaks
and canyons further west were the Lattimores of mines; that along the
Pacific were the Lattimores of harbors and deep-water terminals; that
every one of these Lattimores had in the East and in Europe its
clientage of Barr-Smiths, Wickershams, and Dorrs, feeding the flames of
the fever with other people's money; and that in every village and
factory, town and city, where wealth had piled up, seeking investment,
were the "captives below decks," who, in the complex machinery of this
end-of-the-century life, were made or marred by the same influences
which made or marred us.
The low area had swept across the seas, and now rested on us. The clouds
were charged with the thunder and lightning of disaster. Almost any
accidental disturbance might precipitate a crash. Had we known all this,
as we now know it, the consciousness of the tragical race we were
running to reach the harbor of a consummated sale to Pendleton might
have paralyzed our efforts. Sometimes one may cross in the dark, on
narrow footing, a chasm the abyss of which, if seen, would dizzily draw
one down to destruction.