The services which Cowperwood performed during the ensuing year and a
half for Stener, Strobik, Butler, State Treasurer Van Nostrand, State
Senator Relihan, representative of “the interests,” so-called, at
Harrisburg, and various banks which were friendly to these gentlemen,
were numerous and confidential. For Stener, Strobik, Wycroft, Harmon
and himself he executed the North Pennsylvania deal, by which he became
a holder of a fifth of the controlling stock. Together he and Stener
joined to purchase the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line and in
the concurrent gambling in stocks.
By the summer of 1871, when Cowperwood was nearly thirty-four years of
age, he had a banking business estimated at nearly two million dollars,
personal holdings aggregating nearly half a million, and prospects
which other things being equal looked to wealth which might rival that
of any American. The city, through its treasurer—still Mr. Stener—was a
depositor with him to the extent of nearly five hundred thousand
dollars. The State, through its State treasurer, Van Nostrand, carried
two hundred thousand dollars on his books. Bode was speculating in
street-railway stocks to the extent of fifty thousand dollars. Relihan
to the same amount. A small army of politicians and political
hangers-on were on his books for various sums. And for Edward Malia
Butler he occasionally carried as high as one hundred thousand dollars
in margins. His own loans at the banks, varying from day to day on
variously hypothecated securities, were as high as seven and eight
hundred thousand dollars. Like a spider in a spangled net, every thread
of which he knew, had laid, had tested, he had surrounded and entangled
himself in a splendid, glittering network of connections, and he was
watching all the details.
His one pet idea, the thing he put more faith in than anything else,
was his street-railway manipulations, and particularly his actual
control of the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line. Through an
advance to him, on deposit, made in his bank by Stener at a time when
the stock of the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line was at a low
ebb, he had managed to pick up fifty-one per cent. of the stock for
himself and Stener, by virtue of which he was able to do as he pleased
with the road. To accomplish this, however, he had resorted to some
very “peculiar” methods, as they afterward came to be termed in
financial circles, to get this stock at his own valuation. Through
agents he caused suits for damages to be brought against the company
for non-payment of interest due. A little stock in the hands of a
hireling, a request made to a court of record to examine the books of
the company in order to determine whether a receivership were not
advisable, a simultaneous attack in the stock market, selling at three,
five, seven, and ten points off, brought the frightened stockholders
into the market with their holdings. The banks considered the line a
poor risk, and called their loans in connection with it. His father’s
bank had made one loan to one of the principal stockholders, and that
was promptly called, of course. Then, through an agent, the several
heaviest shareholders were approached and an offer was made to help
them out. The stocks would be taken off their hands at forty. They had
not really been able to discover the source of all their woes; and they
imagined that the road was in bad condition, which it was not. Better
let it go. The money was immediately forthcoming, and Cowperwood and
Stener jointly controlled fifty-one per cent. But, as in the case of
the North Pennsylvania line, Cowperwood had been quietly buying all of
the small minority holdings, so that he had in reality fifty-one per
cent. of the stock, and Stener twenty-five per cent. more.
This intoxicated him, for immediately he saw the opportunity of
fulfilling his long-contemplated dream—that of reorganizing the company
in conjunction with the North Pennsylvania line, issuing three shares
where one had been before and after unloading all but a control on the
general public, using the money secured to buy into other lines which
were to be boomed and sold in the same way. In short, he was one of
those early, daring manipulators who later were to seize upon other and
ever larger phases of American natural development for their own
aggrandizement.
In connection with this first consolidation, his plan was to spread
rumors of the coming consolidation of the two lines, to appeal to the
legislature for privileges of extension, to get up an arresting
prospectus and later annual reports, and to boom the stock on the stock
exchange as much as his swelling resources would permit. The trouble is
that when you are trying to make a market for a stock—to unload a large
issue such as his was (over five hundred thousand dollars’ worth)—while
retaining five hundred thousand for yourself, it requires large capital
to handle it. The owner in these cases is compelled not only to go on
the market and do much fictitious buying, thus creating a fictitious
demand, but once this fictitious demand has deceived the public and he
has been able to unload a considerable quantity of his wares, he is,
unless he rids himself of all his stock, compelled to stand behind it.
If, for instance, he sold five thousand shares, as was done in this
instance, and retained five thousand, he must see that the public price
of the outstanding five thousand shares did not fall below a certain
point, because the value of his private shares would fall with it. And
if, as is almost always the case, the private shares had been
hypothecated with banks and trust companies for money wherewith to
conduct other enterprises, the falling of their value in the open
market merely meant that the banks would call for large margins to
protect their loans or call their loans entirely. This meant that his
work was a failure, and he might readily fail. He was already
conducting one such difficult campaign in connection with this
city-loan deal, the price of which varied from day to day, and which he
was only too anxious to have vary, for in the main he profited by these
changes.
But this second burden, interesting enough as it was, meant that he had
to be doubly watchful. Once the stock was sold at a high price, the
money borrowed from the city treasurer could be returned; his own
holdings created out of foresight, by capitalizing the future, by
writing the shrewd prospectuses and reports, would be worth their face
value, or little less. He would have money to invest in other lines. He
might obtain the financial direction of the whole, in which case he
would be worth millions. One shrewd thing he did, which indicated the
foresight and subtlety of the man, was to make a separate organization
or company of any extension or addition which he made to his line.
Thus, if he had two or three miles of track on a street, and he wanted
to extend it two or three miles farther on the same street, instead of
including this extension in the existing corporation, he would make a
second corporation to control the additional two or three miles of
right of way. This corporation he would capitalize at so much, and
issue stocks and bonds for its construction, equipment, and
manipulation. Having done this he would then take the sub-corporation
over into the parent concern, issuing more stocks and bonds of the
parent company wherewith to do it, and, of course, selling these bonds
to the public. Even his brothers who worked for him did not know the
various ramifications of his numerous deals, and executed his orders
blindly. Sometimes Joseph said to Edward, in a puzzled way, “Well,
Frank knows what he is about, I guess.”
On the other hand, he was most careful to see that every current
obligation was instantly met, and even anticipated, for he wanted to
make a great show of regularity. Nothing was so precious as reputation
and standing. His forethought, caution, and promptness pleased the
bankers. They thought he was one of the sanest, shrewdest men they had
ever met.
However, by the spring and summer of 1871, Cowperwood had actually,
without being in any conceivable danger from any source, spread himself
out very thin. Because of his great success he had grown more
liberal—easier—in his financial ventures. By degrees, and largely
because of his own confidence in himself, he had induced his father to
enter upon his street-car speculations, to use the resources of the
Third National to carry a part of his loans and to furnish capital at
such times as quick resources were necessary. In the beginning the old
gentleman had been a little nervous and skeptical, but as time had worn
on and nothing but profit eventuated, he grew bolder and more
confident.
“Frank,” he would say, looking up over his spectacles, “aren’t you
afraid you’re going a little too fast in these matters? You’re carrying
a lot of loans these days.”
“No more than I ever did, father, considering my resources. You can’t
turn large deals without large loans. You know that as well as I do.”
“Yes, I know, but—now that Green and Coates—aren’t you going pretty
strong there?”
“Not at all. I know the inside conditions there. The stock is bound to
go up eventually. I’ll bull it up. I’ll combine it with my other lines,
if necessary.”
Cowperwood stared at his boy. Never was there such a defiant, daring
manipulator.
“You needn’t worry about me, father. If you are going to do that, call
my loans. Other banks will loan on my stocks. I’d like to see your bank
have the interest.”
So Cowperwood, Sr., was convinced. There was no gainsaying this
argument. His bank was loaning Frank heavily, but not more so than any
other. And as for the great blocks of stocks he was carrying in his
son’s companies, he was to be told when to get out should that prove
necessary. Frank’s brothers were being aided in the same way to make
money on the side, and their interests were also now bound up
indissolubly with his own.
With his growing financial opportunities, however, Cowperwood had also
grown very liberal in what might be termed his standard of living.
Certain young art dealers in Philadelphia, learning of his artistic
inclinations and his growing wealth, had followed him up with
suggestions as to furniture, tapestries, rugs, objects of art, and
paintings—at first the American and later the foreign masters
exclusively. His own and his father’s house had not been furnished
fully in these matters, and there was that other house in North Tenth
Street, which he desired to make beautiful. Aileen had always objected
to the condition of her own home. Love of distinguished surroundings
was a basic longing with her, though she had not the gift of
interpreting her longings. But this place where they were secretly
meeting must be beautiful. She was as keen for that as he was. So it
became a veritable treasure-trove, more distinguished in furnishings
than some of the rooms of his own home. He began to gather here some
rare examples of altar cloths, rugs, and tapestries of the Middle Ages.
He bought furniture after the Georgian theory—a combination of
Chippendale, Sheraton, and Heppelwhite modified by the Italian
Renaissance and the French Louis. He learned of handsome examples of
porcelain, statuary, Greek vase forms, lovely collections of Japanese
ivories and netsukes. Fletcher Gray, a partner in Cable & Gray, a local
firm of importers of art objects, called on him in connection with a
tapestry of the fourteenth century weaving. Gray was an enthusiast and
almost instantly he conveyed some of his suppressed and yet fiery love
of the beautiful to Cowperwood.
“There are fifty periods of one shade of blue porcelain alone, Mr.
Cowperwood,” Gray informed him. “There are at least seven distinct
schools or periods of rugs—Persian, Armenian, Arabian, Flemish, Modern
Polish, Hungarian, and so on. If you ever went into that, it would be a
distinguished thing to get a complete—I mean a
representative—collection of some one period, or of all these periods.
They are beautiful. I have seen some of them, others I’ve read about.”
“You’ll make a convert of me yet, Fletcher,” replied Cowperwood. “You
or art will be the ruin of me. I’m inclined that way temperamentally as
it is, I think, and between you and Ellsworth and Gordon
Strake”—another young man intensely interested in painting—“you’ll
complete my downfall. Strake has a splendid idea. He wants me to begin
right now—I’m using that word ‘right’ in the sense of ‘properly,’” he
commented—“and get what examples I can of just the few rare things in
each school or period of art which would properly illustrate each. He
tells me the great pictures are going to increase in value, and what I
could get for a few hundred thousand now will be worth millions later.
He doesn’t want me to bother with American art.”
“He’s right,” exclaimed Gray, “although it isn’t good business for me
to praise another art man. It would take a great deal of money,
though.”
“Not so very much. At least, not all at once. It would be a matter of
years, of course. Strake thinks that some excellent examples of
different periods could be picked up now and later replaced if anything
better in the same held showed up.”
His mind, in spite of his outward placidity, was tinged with a great
seeking. Wealth, in the beginning, had seemed the only goal, to which
had been added the beauty of women. And now art, for art’s sake—the
first faint radiance of a rosy dawn—had begun to shine in upon him, and
to the beauty of womanhood he was beginning to see how necessary it was
to add the beauty of life—the beauty of material background—how, in
fact, the only background for great beauty was great art. This girl,
this Aileen Butler, her raw youth and radiance, was nevertheless
creating in him a sense of the distinguished and a need for it which
had never existed in him before to the same degree. It is impossible to
define these subtleties of reaction, temperament on temperament, for no
one knows to what degree we are marked by the things which attract us.
A love affair such as this had proved to be was little less or more
than a drop of coloring added to a glass of clear water, or a foreign
chemical agent introduced into a delicate chemical formula.
In short, for all her crudeness, Aileen Butler was a definite force
personally. Her nature, in a way, a protest against the clumsy
conditions by which she found herself surrounded, was almost
irrationally ambitious. To think that for so long, having been born
into the Butler family, she had been the subject, as well as the victim
of such commonplace and inartistic illusions and conditions, whereas
now, owing to her contact with, and mental subordination to Cowperwood,
she was learning so many wonderful phases of social, as well as
financial, refinement of which previously she had guessed nothing. The
wonder, for instance, of a future social career as the wife of such a
man as Frank Cowperwood. The beauty and resourcefulness of his mind,
which, after hours of intimate contact with her, he was pleased to
reveal, and which, so definite were his comments and instructions, she
could not fail to sense. The wonder of his financial and artistic and
future social dreams. And, oh, oh, she was his, and he was hers. She
was actually beside herself at times with the glory, as well as the
delight of all this.
At the same time, her father’s local reputation as a quondam garbage
contractor (“slop-collector” was the unfeeling comment of the vulgarian
cognoscenti); her own unavailing efforts to right a condition of
material vulgarity or artistic anarchy in her own home; the
hopelessness of ever being admitted to those distinguished portals
which she recognized afar off as the last sanctum sanctorum of
established respectability and social distinction, had bred in her,
even at this early age, a feeling of deadly opposition to her home
conditions as they stood. Such a house compared to Cowperwood’s! Her
dear, but ignorant, father! And this great man, her lover, had now
condescended to love her—see in her his future wife. Oh, God, that it
might not fail! Through the Cowperwoods at first she had hoped to meet
a few people, young men and women—and particularly men—who were above
the station in which she found herself, and to whom her beauty and
prospective fortune would commend her; but this had not been the case.
The Cowperwoods themselves, in spite of Frank Cowperwood’s artistic
proclivities and growing wealth, had not penetrated the inner circle as
yet. In fact, aside from the subtle, preliminary consideration which
they were receiving, they were a long way off.
None the less, and instinctively in Cowperwood Aileen recognized a way
out—a door—and by the same token a subtle, impending artistic future of
great magnificence. This man would rise beyond anything he now dreamed
of—she felt it. There was in him, in some nebulous, unrecognizable
form, a great artistic reality which was finer than anything she could
plan for herself. She wanted luxury, magnificence, social station.
Well, if she could get this man they would come to her. There were,
apparently, insuperable barriers in the way; but hers was no weakling
nature, and neither was his. They ran together temperamentally from the
first like two leopards. Her own thoughts—crude, half formulated, half
spoken—nevertheless matched his to a degree in the equality of their
force and their raw directness.
“I don’t think papa knows how to do,” she said to him, one day. “It
isn’t his fault. He can’t help it. He knows that he can’t. And he knows
that I know it. For years I wanted him to move out of that old house
there. He knows that he ought to. But even that wouldn’t do much good.”
She paused, looking at him with a straight, clear, vigorous glance. He
liked the medallion sharpness of her features—their smooth, Greek
modeling.
“Never mind, pet,” he replied. “We will arrange all these things later.
I don’t see my way out of this just now; but I think the best thing to
do is to confess to Lillian some day, and see if some other plan can’t
be arranged. I want to fix it so the children won’t suffer. I can
provide for them amply, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Lillian
would be willing to let me go. She certainly wouldn’t want any
publicity.”
He was counting practically, and man-fashion, on her love for her
children.
Aileen looked at him with clear, questioning, uncertain eyes. She was
not wholly without sympathy, but in a way this situation did not appeal
to her as needing much. Mrs. Cowperwood was not friendly in her mood
toward her. It was not based on anything save a difference in their
point of view. Mrs. Cowperwood could never understand how a girl could
carry her head so high and “put on such airs,” and Aileen could not
understand how any one could be so lymphatic and lackadaisical as
Lillian Cowperwood. Life was made for riding, driving, dancing, going.
It was made for airs and banter and persiflage and coquetry. To see
this woman, the wife of a young, forceful man like Cowperwood, acting,
even though she were five years older and the mother of two children,
as though life on its romantic and enthusiastic pleasurable side were
all over was too much for her. Of course Lillian was unsuited to Frank;
of course he needed a young woman like herself, and fate would surely
give him to her. Then what a delicious life they would lead!
“Oh, Frank,” she exclaimed to him, over and over, “if we could only
manage it. Do you think we can?”
“Do I think we can? Certainly I do. It’s only a matter of time. I think
if I were to put the matter to her clearly, she wouldn’t expect me to
stay. You look out how you conduct your affairs. If your father or your
brother should ever suspect me, there’d be an explosion in this town,
if nothing worse. They’d fight me in all my money deals, if they didn’t
kill me. Are you thinking carefully of what you are doing?”
“All the time. If anything happens I’ll deny everything. They can’t
prove it, if I deny it. I’ll come to you in the long run, just the
same.”
They were in the Tenth Street house at the time. She stroked his cheeks
with the loving fingers of the wildly enamored woman.
“I’ll do anything for you, sweetheart,” she declared. “I’d die for you
if I had to. I love you so.”
“Well, pet, no danger. You won’t have to do anything like that. But be
careful.”