"They talk about monopoly, those Populist senators, but I ask you what is
a man in my place to do? If you don't eat, somebody eats you--is it not
so? Like the boa-constrictors--that is modern business. Look at the
Keystone Plate people, over there at Morris. For years we sold them steel
billets from which to make their plates, and three months ago they serve
notice on us that they are getting ready to make their own billets, they
buy mines north of the lakes and are building their plant. Here is a big
customer gone. Next year, maybe, the Empire Tube Company goes into the
business of making crude steel, and many more thousands of tons go from
us. What is left for us, Paret?"
"Obviously you've got to go into the tube and plate business yourselves,"
I said.
"So!" cried Mr. Scherer, triumphantly, "or it is close up. We are not
fools, no, we will not lie down and be eaten like lambs for any law.
Dickinson can put his hand on the capital, and I--I have already bought a
tract on the lakes, at Bolivar, I have already got a plant designed with
the latest modern machinery. I can put the ore right there, I can send
the coke back from here in cars which would otherwise be empty, and
manufacture tubes at eight dollars a ton less than they are selling. If
we can make tubes we can make plates, and if we can make plates we can
make boilers, and beams and girders and bridges.... It is not like it was
but where is it all leading, my friend? The time will come--is right on
us now, in respect to many products--when the market will be flooded with
tubes and plates and girders, and then we'll have to find a way to limit
production. And the inefficient mills will all be forced to shut down."
The logic seemed unanswerable, even had I cared to answer it.... He
unfolded his campaign. The Boyne Iron Works was to become the Boyne Iron
Works, Ltd., owner of various subsidiary companies, some of which were as
yet blissfully ignorant of their fate. All had been thought out as calmly
as the partition of Poland--only, lawyers were required; and ultimately,
after the process of acquisition should have been completed, a delicate
document was to be drawn up which would pass through the meshes of that
annoying statutory net, the Sherman Anti-trust Law. New mines were to be
purchased, extending over a certain large area; wide coal deposits;
little strips of railroad to tap them. The competition of the Keystone
Plate people was to be met by acquiring and bringing up to date the plate
mills of King and Son, over the borders of a sister state; the
Somersworth Bridge and Construction Company and the Gring Steel and Wire
Company were to be absorbed. When all of this should have been
accomplished, there would be scarcely a process in the steel industry,
from the smelting of the ore to the completion of a bridge, which the
Boyne Iron Works could not undertake. Such was the beginning of the
"lateral extension" period.
"Two can play at that game," Mr. Scherer said. "And if those fellows
could only be content to let well enough alone, to continue buying their
crude steel from us, there wouldn't be any trouble."...
It was evident, however, that he really welcomed the "trouble," that he
was going into battle with enthusiasm. He had already picked out his
points of attack and was marching on them. Life, for him, would have been
a poor thing without new conflicts to absorb his energy; and he had
already made of the Boyne Iron Works, with its open-hearth furnaces, a
marvel of modern efficiency that had opened the eyes of the Steel world,
and had drawn the attention of a Personality in New York,--a Personality
who was one of the new and dominant type that had developed with such
amazing rapidity, the banker-dinosaur; preying upon and superseding the
industrial-dinosaur, conquering type of the preceding age, builder of the
railroads, mills and manufactories. The banker-dinosaurs, the gigantic
ones, were in Wall Street, and strove among themselves for the industrial
spoils accumulated by their predecessors. It was characteristic of these
monsters that they never fought in the open unless they were forced to.
Then the earth rocked, huge economic structures tottered and fell, and
much dust arose to obscure the vision of smaller creatures, who were
bewildered and terrified. Such disturbances were called "panics," and
were blamed by the newspapers on the Democratic party, or on the
reformers who had wantonly assailed established institutions. These
dominant bankers had contrived to gain control of the savings of
thousands and thousands of fellow-citizens who had deposited them in
banks or paid them into insurance companies, and with the power thus
accumulated had sallied forth to capture railroads and industries. The
railroads were the strategic links. With these in hand, certain favoured
industrial concerns could be fed, and others starved into submission.
Adolf Scherer might be said to represent a transitional type. For he was
not only an iron-master who knew every detail of his business, who kept
it ahead of the times; he was also a strategist, wise in his generation,
making friends with the Railroad while there had yet been time, at length
securing rebates and favours. And when that Railroad (which had been
constructed through the enterprise and courage of such men as Nathaniel
Durrett) had passed under the control of the banker-personality to whom I
have referred, and had become part of a system, Adolf Scherer remained in
alliance, and continued to receive favours.... I can well remember the
time when the ultimate authority of our Railroad was transferred,
quietly, to Wall Street. Alexander Barbour, its president, had been a
great man, but after that he bowed, in certain matters, to a greater one.
I have digressed.... Mr. Scherer unfolded his scheme, talking about
"units" as calmly as though they were checkers on a board instead of
huge, fiery, reverberating mills where thousands and thousands of human
beings toiled day and night--beings with families, and hopes and fears,
whose destinies were to be dominated by the will of the man who sat
opposite me. But--did not he in his own person represent the triumph of
that American creed of opportunity? He, too, had been through the fire,
had sweated beside the blasts, had handled the ingots of steel. He was
one of the "fittest" who had survived, and looked it. Had he no memories
of the terrors of that struggle?... Adolf Scherer had grown to be a
giant. And yet without me, without my profession he was a helpless giant,
at the mercy of those alert and vindictive lawmakers who sought to
restrain and hamper him, to check his growth with their webs. How
stimulating the idea of his dependence! How exhilarating too, the thought
that that vision which had first possessed me as an undergraduate--on my
visit to Jerry Kyme--was at last to be realized! I had now become the
indispensable associate of the few who divided the spoils, I was to have
a share in these myself.
"You're young, Paret," Mr. Scherer concluded. "But Watling has confidence
in you, and you will consult him frequently. I believe in the young men,
and I have already seen something of you--so?"...
When I returned to the office I wrote Theodore Watling a letter
expressing my gratitude for the position he had, so to speak, willed me,
of confidential legal adviser to Adolf Scherer. Though the opportunity
had thrust itself upon me suddenly, and sooner than I expected it, I was
determined to prove myself worthy of it. I worked as I had never worked
before, making trips to New York to consult leading members of this new
branch of my profession there, trips to Washington to see my former
chief. There were, too, numerous conferences with local personages, with
Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Grierson, and Judah B. Tallant,--whose newspaper
was most useful; there were consultations and negotiations of a delicate
nature with the owners and lawyers of other companies to be "taken in."
Nor was it all legal work, in the older and narrower sense. Men who are
playing for principalities are making war. Some of our operations had all
the excitement of war. There was information to be got, and it was
got--somehow. Modern war involves a spy system, and a friendly telephone
company is not to be despised. And all of this work from first to last
had to be done with extreme caution. Moribund distinctions of right and
wrong did not trouble me, for the modern man labours religiously when he
knows that Evolution is on his side.
For all of these operations a corps of counsel had been employed,
including the firm of Harrington and Bowes next to Theodore Watling, Joel
Harrington was deemed the ablest lawyer in the city. We organized in due
time the corporation known as the Boyne Iron Works, Limited; a trust
agreement was drawn up that was a masterpiece of its kind, one that
caused, first and last, meddling officials in the Department of Justice
at Washington no little trouble and perplexity. I was proud of the fact
that I had taken no small part in its composition.... In short, in
addition to certain emoluments and opportunities for investment, I
emerged from the affair firmly established in the good graces of Adolf
Scherer, and with a reputation practically made.
A year or so after the Boyne Company, Ltd., came into existence I chanced
one morning to go down to the new Ashuela Hotel to meet a New Yorker of
some prominence, and was awaiting him in the lobby, when I overheard a
conversation between two commercial travellers who were sitting with
their backs to me.
"Did you notice that fellow who went up to the desk a moment ago?" asked
one.
"The young fellow in the grey suit? Sure. Who is he? He looks as if he
was pretty well fixed."
"I guess he is," replied the first. "That's Paret. He's Scherer's
confidential counsel. He used to be Senator Watling's partner, but they
say he's even got something on the old man."
In spite of the feverish life I led, I was still undoubtedly
young-looking, and in this I was true to the incoming type of successful
man. Our fathers appeared staid at six and thirty. Clothes, of course,
made some difference, and my class and generation did not wear the sombre
and cumbersome kind, with skirts and tails; I patronized a tailor in New
York. My chestnut hair, a little darker than my father's had been, showed
no signs of turning grey, although it was thinning a little at the crown
of the forehead, and I wore a small moustache, clipped in a straight line
above the mouth. This made me look less like a college youth. Thanks to a
strong pigment in my skin, derived probably from Scotch-Irish ancestors,
my colour was fresh. I have spoken of my life as feverish, and yet I am
not so sure that this word completely describes it. It was full to
overflowing--one side of it; and I did not miss (save vaguely, in rare
moments of weariness) any other side that might have been developed. I
was busy all day long, engaged in affairs I deemed to be alone of vital
importance in the universe. I was convinced that the welfare of the city
demanded that supreme financial power should remain in the hands of the
group of men with whom I was associated, and whose battles I fought in
the courts, in the legislature, in the city council, and sometimes in
Washington,--although they were well cared for there. By every means
ingenuity could devise, their enemies were to be driven from the field,
and they were to be protected from blackmail.
A sense of importance sustained me; and I remember in that first flush of
a success for which I had not waited too long--what a secret satisfaction
it was to pick up the Era and see my name embedded in certain dignified
notices of board meetings, transactions of weight, or cases known to the
initiated as significant. "Mr. Scherer's interests were taken care of by
Mr. Hugh Paret." The fact that my triumphs were modestly set forth gave
me more pleasure than if they had been trumpeted in headlines. Although I
might have started out in practice for myself, my affection and regard
for Mr. Watling kept me in the firm, which became Watling, Fowndes and
Paret, and a new, arrangement was entered into: Mr. Ripon retired on
account of ill health.
There were instances, however, when a certain amount of annoying
publicity was inevitable. Such was the famous Galligan case, which
occurred some three or four years after my marriage. Aloysius Galligan
was a brakeman, and his legs had become paralyzed as the result of an
accident that was the result of defective sills on a freight car. He had
sued, and been awarded damages of $15,000. To the amazement and
indignation of Miller Gorse, the Supreme Court, to which the Railroad had
appealed, affirmed the decision. It wasn't the single payment of $15,000
that the Railroad cared about, of course; a precedent might be
established for compensating maimed employees which would be expensive in
the long run. Carelessness could not be proved in this instance. Gorse
sent for me. I had been away with Maude at the sea for two months, and
had not followed the case.
"You've got to take charge, Paret, and get a rehearing. See Bering, and
find out who in the deuce is to blame for this. Chesley's one, of course.
We ought never to have permitted his nomination for the Supreme Bench. It
was against my judgment, but Varney and Gill assured me that he was all
right."
I saw Judge Bering that evening. We sat on a plush sofa in the parlour of
his house in Baker Street.
"I had a notion Gorse'd be mad," he said, "but it looked to me as if they
had it on us, Paret. I didn't see how we could do anything else but
affirm without being too rank. Of course, if he feels that way, and you
want to make a motion for a rehearing, I'll see what can be done."
"Something's got to be done," I replied. "Can't you see what such a
decision lets them in for?"
"All right," said the judge, who knew an order when he heard one, "I
guess we can find an error." He was not a little frightened by the report
of Mr. Gorse's wrath, for election-day was approaching. "Say, you
wouldn't take me for a sentimental man, now, would you?"