All week every one in the office knew that something new and big was
afoot in Daylight's mind. Beyond some deals of no importance, he had
not been interested in anything for several months. But now he went
about in an almost unbroken brown study, made unexpected and lengthy
trips across the bay to Oakland, or sat at his desk silent and
motionless for hours. He seemed particularly happy with what occupied
his mind. At times men came in and conferred with him--and with new
faces and differing in type from those that usually came to see him.
On Sunday Dede learned all about it. "I've been thinking a lot of our
talk," he began, "and I've got an idea I'd like to give it a flutter.
And I've got a proposition to make your hair stand up. It's what you
call legitimate, and at the same time it's the gosh-dangdest gamble a
man ever went into. How about planting minutes wholesale, and making
two minutes grow where one minute grew before? Oh, yes, and planting a
few trees, too--say several million of them. You remember the quarry I
made believe I was looking at? Well, I'm going to buy it. I'm going
to buy these hills, too, clear from here around to Berkeley and down
the other way to San Leandro. I own a lot of them already, for that
matter. But mum is the word. I'll be buying a long time to come
before anything much is guessed about it, and I don't want the market
to jump up out of sight. You see that hill over there. It's my hill
running clear down its slopes through Piedmont and halfway along those
rolling hills into Oakland. And it's nothing to all the things I'm
going to buy."
He paused triumphantly. "And all to make two minutes grow where one
grew before?" Dede queried, at the same time laughing heartily at his
affectation of mystery.
He stared at her fascinated. She had such a frank, boyish way of
throwing her head back when she laughed. And her teeth were an
unending delight to him. Not small, yet regular and firm, without a
blemish, he considered them the healthiest, whitest, prettiest teeth he
had ever seen. And for months he had been comparing them with the
teeth of every woman he met.
It was not until her laughter was over that he was able to continue.
"The ferry system between Oakland and San Francisco is the worst
one-horse concern in the United States. You cross on it every day, six
days in the week. That's say, twenty-five days a month, or three
hundred a year. How long does it take you one way? Forty minutes, if
you're lucky. I'm going to put you across in twenty minutes. If that
ain't making two minutes grow where one grew before, knock off my head
with little apples. I'll save you twenty minutes each way. That's
forty minutes a day, times three hundred, equals twelve thousand
minutes a year, just for you, just for one person. Let's see: that's
two hundred whole hours. Suppose I save two hundred hours a year for
thousands of other folks,--that's farming some, ain't it?"
Dede could only nod breathlessly. She had caught the contagion of his
enthusiasm, though she had no clew as to how this great time-saving was
to be accomplished.
"Come on," he said. "Let's ride up that hill, and when I get you out
on top where you can see something, I'll talk sense."
A small footpath dropped down to the dry bed of the canon, which they
crossed before they began the climb. The slope was steep and covered
with matted brush and bushes, through which the horses slipped and
lunged. Bob, growing disgusted, turned back suddenly and attempted to
pass Mab. The mare was thrust sidewise into the denser bush, where she
nearly fell. Recovering, she flung her weight against Bob. Both
riders' legs were caught in the consequent squeeze, and, as Bob plunged
ahead down hill, Dede was nearly scraped off. Daylight threw his horse
on to its haunches and at the same time dragged Dede back into the
saddle. Showers of twigs and leaves fell upon them, and predicament
followed predicament, until they emerged on the hilltop the worse for
wear but happy and excited. Here no trees obstructed the view. The
particular hill on which they were, out-jutted from the regular line of
the range, so that the sweep of their vision extended over
three-quarters of the circle. Below, on the flat land bordering the
bay, lay Oakland, and across the bay was San Francisco. Between the
two cities they could see the white ferry-boats on the water. Around
to their right was Berkeley, and to their left the scattered villages
between Oakland and San Leandro. Directly in the foreground was
Piedmont, with its desultory dwellings and patches of farming land, and
from Piedmont the land rolled down in successive waves upon Oakland.
"Look at it," said Daylight, extending his arm in a sweeping gesture.
"A hundred thousand people there, and no reason there shouldn't be half
a million. There's the chance to make five people grow where one grows
now. Here's the scheme in a nutshell. Why don't more people live in
Oakland? No good service with San Francisco, and, besides, Oakland is
asleep. It's a whole lot better place to live in than San Francisco.
Now, suppose I buy in all the street railways of Oakland, Berkeley,
Alameda, San Leandro, and the rest,--bring them under one head with a
competent management? Suppose I cut the time to San Francisco one-half
by building a big pier out there almost to Goat Island and establishing
a ferry system with modern up-to-date boats? Why, folks will want to
live over on this side. Very good. They'll need land on which to
build. So, first I buy up the land. But the land's cheap now. Why?
Because it's in the country, no electric roads, no quick communication,
nobody guessing that the electric roads are coming. I'll build the
roads. That will make the land jump up. Then I'll sell the land as
fast as the folks will want to buy because of the improved ferry system
and transportation facilities.
"You see, I give the value to the land by building the roads. Then I
sell the land and get that value back, and after that, there's the
roads, all carrying folks back and forth and earning big money. Can't
lose. And there's all sorts of millions in it.
"I'm going to get my hands on some of that water front and the
tide-lands. Take between where I'm going to build my pier and the old
pier. It's shallow water. I can fill and dredge and put in a system
of docks that will handle hundreds of ships. San Francisco's water
front is congested. No more room for ships. With hundreds of ships
loading and unloading on this side right into the freight cars of three
big railroads, factories will start up over here instead of crossing to
San Francisco. That means factory sites. That means me buying in the
factory sites before anybody guesses the cat is going to jump, much
less, which way. Factories mean tens of thousands of workingmen and
their families. That means more houses and more land, and that means
me, for I'll be there to sell them the land. And tens of thousands of
families means tens of thousands of nickels every day for my electric
cars. The growing population will mean more stores, more banks, more
everything. And that'll mean me, for I'll be right there with business
property as well as home property. What do you think of it?"
Before she could answer, he was off again, his mind's eye filled
with this new city of his dream which he builded on the Alameda hills
by the gateway to the Orient.
"Do you know--I've been looking it up--the Firth Of Clyde, where all
the steel ships are built, isn't half as wide as Oakland Creek down
there, where all those old hulks lie? Why ain't it a Firth of Clyde?
Because the Oakland City Council spends its time debating about prunes
and raisins. What is needed is somebody to see things, and, after
that, organization. That's me. I didn't make Ophir for nothing. And
once things begin to hum, outside capital will pour in. All I do is
start it going. 'Gentlemen,' I say, 'here's all the natural advantages
for a great metropolis. God Almighty put them advantages here, and he
put me here to see them. Do you want to land your tea and silk from
Asia and ship it straight East? Here's the docks for your steamers,
and here's the railroads. Do you want factories from which you can
ship direct by land or water? Here's the site, and here's the modern,
up-to-date city, with the latest improvements for yourselves and your
workmen, to live in.'"
"Then there's the water. I'll come pretty close to owning the
watershed. Why not the waterworks too? There's two water companies in
Oakland now, fighting like cats and dogs and both about broke. What a
metropolis needs is a good water system. They can't give it. They're
stick-in-the-muds. I'll gobble them up and deliver the right article
to the city. There's money there, too--money everywhere. Everything
works in with everything else. Each improvement makes the value of
everything else pump up. It's people that are behind the value. The
bigger the crowd that herds in one place, the more valuable is the real
estate. And this is the very place for a crowd to herd. Look at it.
Just look at it! You could never find a finer site for a great city.
All it needs is the herd, and I'll stampede a couple of hundred
thousand people in here inside two years. And what's more it won't be
one of these wild cat land booms. It will be legitimate. Twenty years
from now there'll be a million people on this side the bay. Another
thing is hotels. There isn't a decent one in the town. I'll build a
couple of up-to-date ones that'll make them sit up and take notice. I
won't care if they don't pay for years. Their effect will more than
give me my money back out of the other holdings. And, oh, yes, I'm
going to plant eucalyptus, millions of them, on these hills."
"But how are you going to do it?" Dede asked. "You haven't enough
money for all that you've planned."
"I've thirty million, and if I need more I can borrow on the land and
other things. Interest on mortgages won't anywhere near eat up the
increase in land values, and I'll be selling land right along."
In the weeks that followed, Daylight was a busy man. He spent most of
his time in Oakland, rarely coming to the office. He planned to move
the office to Oakland, but, as he told Dede, the secret preliminary
campaign of buying had to be put through first. Sunday by Sunday, now
from this hilltop and now from that, they looked down upon the city and
its farming suburbs, and he pointed out to her his latest acquisitions.
At first it was patches and sections of land here and there; but as the
weeks passed it was the unowned portions that became rare, until at
last they stood as islands surrounded by Daylight's land.
It meant quick work on a colossal scale, for Oakland and the adjacent
country was not slow to feel the tremendous buying. But Daylight had
the ready cash, and it had always been his policy to strike quickly.
Before the others could get the warning of the boom, he quietly
accomplished many things. At the same time that his agents were
purchasing corner lots and entire blocks in the heart of the business
section and the waste lands for factory sites, he was rushing
franchises through the city council, capturing the two exhausted water
companies and the eight or nine independent street railways, and
getting his grip on the Oakland Creek and the bay tide-lands for his
dock system. The tide-lands had been in litigation for years, and he
took the bull by the horns--buying out the private owners and at the
same time leasing from the city fathers.
By the time that Oakland was aroused by this unprecedented activity in
every direction and was questioning excitedly the meaning of it,
Daylight secretly bought the chief Republican newspaper and the chief
Democratic organ, and moved boldly into his new offices. Of necessity,
they were on a large scale, occupying four floors of the only modern
office building in the town--the only building that wouldn't have to be
torn down later on, as Daylight put it. There was department after
department, a score of them, and hundreds of clerks and stenographers.
As he told Dede: "I've got more companies than you can shake a stick
at. There's the Alameda & Contra Costa Land Syndicate, the
Consolidated Street Railways, the Yerba Buena Ferry Company, the United
Water Company, the Piedmont Realty Company, the Fairview and Portola
Hotel Company, and half a dozen more that I've got to refer to a
notebook to remember. There's the Piedmont Laundry Farm, and Redwood
Consolidated Quarries. Starting in with our quarry, I just kept
a-going till I got them all. And there's the ship-building company I
ain't got a name for yet. Seeing as I had to have ferry-boats, I
decided to build them myself. They'll be done by the time the pier is
ready for them. Phew! It all sure beats poker. And I've had the fun
of gouging the robber gangs as well. The water company bunches are
squealing yet. I sure got them where the hair was short. They were
just about all in when I came along and finished them off."
"But why do you hate them so?" Dede asked.
"Because they're such cowardly skunks."
"But you play the same game they do."
"Yes; but not in the same way." Daylight regarded her thoughtfully.
"When I say cowardly skunks, I mean just that,--cowardly skunks. They
set up for a lot of gamblers, and there ain't one in a thousand of them
that's got the nerve to be a gambler. They're four-flushers, if you
know what that means. They're a lot of little cottontail rabbits making
believe they're big rip-snorting timber wolves. They set out to
everlastingly eat up some proposition but at the first sign of trouble
they turn tail and stampede for the brush. Look how it works. When
the big fellows wanted to unload Little Copper, they sent Jakey Fallow
into the New York Stock Exchange to yell out: 'I'll buy all or any part
of Little Copper at fifty five,' Little Copper being at fifty-four.
And in thirty minutes them cottontails--financiers, some folks call
them--bid up Little Copper to sixty. And an hour after that, stampeding
for the brush, they were throwing Little Copper overboard at forty-five
and even forty.
"They're catspaws for the big fellows. Almost as fast as they rob the
suckers, the big fellows come along and hold them up. Or else the big
fellows use them in order to rob each other. That's the way the
Chattanooga Coal and Iron Company was swallowed up by the trust in the
last panic. The trust made that panic. It had to break a couple of
big banking companies and squeeze half a dozen big fellows, too, and it
did it by stampeding the cottontails. The cottontails did the rest all
right, and the trust gathered in Chattanooga Coal and Iron. Why, any
man, with nerve and savvee, can start them cottontails jumping for the
brush. I don't exactly hate them myself, but I haven't any regard for
chicken-hearted four-flushers."