"At least one real farmer will have to be on the job," Blackie explained, "and I nabbed Hamlet Tinkle, the prize of the neighborhood. He is a graduate of an agricultural college and all the farmers think he's a joke; but I have him doped out as being able to coax more fodder from unwilling mud than any soil tickler in these parts. He helped me select the farm library."
With a grin at his own completeness of detail, Mr. Daw indicated the sectional bookcases, where stood, in neat rows, the Government reports on everything agricultural, and treatises on every farm subject under the sun from the pip to the boll weevil. Filing cases there were, and card indexes, and every luxurythat has been devised for modern office work. With an amused air the up-to-date farmer was leafing through one after the other of the conglomeration of strange books, when Hamlet Tinkle was ushered in by the ever-grinning Nellie. He was a tall, big-boned fellow, who had divided his time at the agricultural college between playing center rush and studying the chemical capabilities of various soils. Just now, though the weather was bracing, he wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with the front turned up, and a flannel shirt with no coat or vest; and he had walked two miles, from the place at which he had telephoned, in twenty-two minutes.
"Mr. Tinkle—Mr. Wallingford," said Mr. Daw. "Mr. Wallingford, this is the gentleman whom I recommend as your working superintendent."
Both Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Tinkle accepted this title with perfect gravity.
"Sit down," said Wallingford cordially, and himself took his place at the flat-top desk in the midst of the telephones and push buttons. Already he began to feel the exhilaration of his newrôleand loomed broadly above his desk, from the waist line up a most satisfying revelation to Mr. Tinkle of what thefarmer of the future ought to be like. "Mr. Raven tells me," observed Wallingford, "that you are prepared to conduct this farm on scientific principles."
"Yes, sir," admitted Mr. Tinkle. "I shall be very glad to show to Truscot County what can be done with advanced methods. Father doesn't seem to care to have me try it on his farm. He says he made enough out of his own methods to send me to college, and I ought to be satisfied with that."
"Your father's all right, but maybe we can teach even him some new tricks. The first question, Mr. Tinkle, is how much money you want."
"Fifteen a week and board," responded Mr. Tinkle promptly. "The seasons through."
"Fine!" responded Wallingford with a wave of the hand which indicated that fifty a week and board would have been no bar, as, indeed, it would not have been. "Consider yourself engaged from the present moment. Now let's get down to brass tacks, Mr. Tinkle. I don't know enough about farming to stuff up the middle of a cipher; I don't know which end down you plant the grains of wheat; but wheat is what I want, and nothing but wheat!"
Mr. Tinkle shook his head.
"With Mr. Raven's permission I have been making tests of your soil," he observed. "Your northeast forty is still good for wheat and will make a good yield, possibly thirty bushels, but the southwest forty will do well if it gives you eight to ten bushels without thorough fertilization; and this will be much more expensive than planting it in some other crop for a couple of years."
"Jolly it any old way to get wheat," directed Wallingford. "Wheat is what I want; all you can get."
Mr. Tinkle hesitated. He made two or three false starts, during which his auditors waited with the patience born to those who lie in crouch for incautious money, and then displayed his altruistic youth.
"I have to tell you," he blurted. "You have here one hundred and sixty acres. Suppose that you could get the high average of thirty bushels per acre from it. Suppose you got a dollar a bushel for that wheat, your total income would still be less than five thousand dollars. You are hiring me as manager, and you will need other hands; you have a machinist, who is also to be your chauffeur, I understand; you have three house servants, and upon the scale you evidently intend to conduct this farmand your residence I judge that you cannot get along for less than eight to ten thousand a year. I am bound to tell you that I cannot see a profit for you."
"Which of these buttons calls one of the girls?" asked Wallingford.
"The third button is Nellie," replied Mr. Daw gravely, and touched it.
The rosy-cheeked girl appeared instantly, on the point of giggling, as she had been from the moment Mr. Daw first engaged her.
"Bring in my grip from the hall," Mr. Wallingford directed; "the one with the labels on it."
This brought in, Mr. Wallingford extracted from it a huge bundle of documents bound with rubber bands. Unfolded, they proved to be United States Government bonds, shares of railroad stocks and of particularly stable industrials, thousands of dollars worth of them. For Mr. Tinkle's inspection he passed over his bank book, showing a balance of one hundred and fifty thousand.
"Wheat," cheerfully lied Mr. Wallingford, with a wave of his hand; "all wheat! Half a million dollars!"
"Speculation?" charged Mr. Tinkle, a trace of sternness in his voice.
"Investment," protested Wallingford. "I never sold; I bought, operating always upon margin sufficient for ample protection, and always upon absolute information gathered directly from the centers of production. This farm is for the purpose of bringing me more thoroughly in touch with the actual conditions that make prices. So, as you see, Mr. Tinkle, the trifling profit or loss of this venture in a business way is a mere bagatelle."
Both Mr. Daw and Mr. Tinkle were regarding Mr. Wallingford with awe and admiration, but for somewhat different reasons. Mr. Tinkle, elated, went home to get his clothes and books, and on the way he put into breathless circulation the fact that the new proprietor of the old Spicer place was the greatest man on earth, with the possible exception of Theodore Roosevelt, and that he had already made half a million dollars in wheat! He had seen the money!
"I pass," observed Mr. Daw to Mr. Wallingford. "I'm in the kindergarten class, and I take off my lid to you as being the most valuable combination known to the history of plain or fancy robbery. You have them all beat twice around the track. You make an amateur of Ananias and a piker of Judas Iscariot."
It was already high time for fall planting operations on the Wallingford estate, and Truscot County was a-quiver with what might be the result of the new-fangled test-tube farming that Ham Tinkle was to inaugurate. From the first moment of his hiring that young enthusiast plunged into his work with a fervor that left him a scant six hours of sleep a night.
In the meantime J. Rufus took a flying trip to Chicago, where he visited one broker's office after another. Those places with fine polished woodwork and brass trimmings and expensive leather furniture he left without even introducing himself—such stage settings were too much in his own line of business for him not to be suspicious of them—but, finally, he wandered into the office of Fox & Fleecer, a dingy, poorly lighted place, where gas was kept burning on old-fashioned fixtures all day long, where the woodwork was battered andblackened, where the furniture was scratched and hacked and bound together with wires to keep it intact, and where, on a cracked and splintered blackboard, one small and lazy boy posted, for a score or so of rusty men past middle age, the fluctuating figures of the Great Gamble. Mr. Fox, a slow-spoken and absolutely placid gentleman of benevolent appearance and silvery mutton-chop whiskers, delicately blended the impressions that while he was indeed flattered by this visit from so distinguished a gentleman, his habitual conservatism would not allow him to express his delight.
"How much money can you be trusted with?" asked Wallingford bluntly.
"I would not say, sir," rejoined Mr. Fox with no resentment whatever. "We have been thirty years in these same offices, and we never yet have had enough in our hands to make it worth while for us to quit business. Permit me to show you our books."
His ledger displayed accounts running as high as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that had been intrusted to their care by single individuals. But thirty years in business at the same old stand! He insisted gently upon this point, and Wallingford nodded his head.
"Before I'm through I'll make all these bets look like cigar money," he asserted, "but just now I'm going to put fifty thousand in your hands, and I want it placed in exactly this way: Monday morning, with ten thousand dollars buy me one hundred thousand bushels of December wheat on a ten-cent margin. No more money will be put up on this deal, so place a stop-loss order against it. If wheat drops enough to wipe out the ten thousand dollars, all right; say nothing and report the finish of the transaction to me. I'll do my own grinning. If wheat goes up enough to leave me five cents a bushel profit, clear of commissions, close the deal and remit. On the following Monday, if wheat has gone up from the quotations of to-day, sell one hundred thousand bushels more at ten cents margin and close at a sufficient drop to net me five cents clear. If it has gone down, buy. Do this on five successive Mondays and handle each deal separately. Get me one winning out of five. That's all I want."
Mr. Fox considered thoughtfully for a moment, carefully polishing his bald, pink scalp around and around with the palm of his hand. He gave the curious impression of being always engaged with some blandly interestingsecret problem along with the business under consideration.
"Very well, sir," he observed. "Fox & Fleecer never makes any promises, but if you will put your instructions into writing I will place them in the hands of our Mr. Fleecer, who conducts our board operations. He will do the best he can for you."
Mr. Wallingford looked about him for a stenographer. There was none employed here, and, sitting down to the little writing table which was pointed out to him, he made out the instructions in long hand, while Mr. Fox polished away at his already glistening pate, still working at that blandly interesting secret problem.
Ten days later, at the test-tube farm, arrived a report from Messrs. Fox & Fleecer, inclosing their check for fifteen thousand dollars. Wheat, in the week following Wallingford's purchase, had fortunately gone up nearly six cents. This check, and the accompanying statement of the transaction which had brought it forth, Wallingford showed to Ham Tinkle, quite incidentally, of course, and Ham, in awe and enthusiasm, confided the five-thousand-dollar winning to Hiram Hines, who spread the report through Truscot Countythat Judge Wallingford had already made fifteen thousand dollars in wheat since he had come among them. The savings of an ordinary lifetime! The amount was fifty thousand when it reached Mapes County. Two weeks later Messrs. Fox & Fleecer reported on the second of Wallingford's deals. Wheat sold at ninety-four had dropped to eighty-eight. Luck was distinctly with J. Rufus Wallingford.
"Why, oh, why, do cheap skates sell gold bricks and good come-on men waste their talents on Broadway!" wailed Blackie Daw. "But what's the joke, J. Rufus? I see your luck, but where do the surrounding farmers get in? Or where do you get in on the surrounding farmers? Show me. I'm an infant."
"You couldn't understand it, Blackie," said J. Rufus with condescending kindness. "The mere fact that you look on these pocket-change winnings as real money lets you out. Wait till I spring the big game. To-morrow night you shall attend this winter's opening meeting of the Philomathean Literary Society at the Willow Creek schoolhouse, and observe the methods of a real bread winner."
For the memorable occasion that he had mentioned, Wallingford wore a fur-lined overcoat and quadruple-woven blue silk sweater,and, being welcomed with great acclaim, proposed for debate that burning question: "Resolved: That the farmer is a failure as a business man."
With much stamping and pawing of the air that subject was thrashed out by Abe Johnson and Dan Price for the affirmative, and Cal Whorley and Ed Wiggin for the negative. The farmer as a gold-brick purchaser, as prey for every class of tradesmen, as a producer who received less net profit than any other from the capital and labor invested, was presented to himself by men who knew their own grievances well, and the affirmative was carried almost unanimously. Flushed with pleasure, beaming with gratification, the most advanced farmer of them all arose in his place and requested of the worthy chairman the privilege to address the meeting, a privilege that was granted with pleasure and delight.
It was an eventful moment when J. Rufus Wallingford stalked up the middle aisle, passed around the red-hot, cannon-ball stove and ascended the rostrum which had been the scene of so many impassioned addresses; and, as he turned to face them from that historic elevation, he seemed to fill the entire end of the schoolroom, to blot out not only the teacher'sdesk but the judges' seats, the blackboard and the four-colored map of the United States that hung upon the wall behind him. He was a fine-looking man, a solid-looking man, a gentleman of wealth and culture, who, unspoiled by good fortune, was still a brother to all men. Already he had gained that enviable reputation among them.
Friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers, it was startling to reflect that the agriculturist was the only producer in all the world who had no voice in the price which was put upon his product! The manufacturer turned out his goods and set a price upon them and the consumer had to pay that price. And how was this done? By the throttling of competition. And how had competition been throttled? By consolidation of all the interests in any particular line of trade. Iron and steel were all controlled by one mighty corporation against which could stand no competitor except by sufferance; petroleum and all its by-products were in the hands of another, and each charged what it liked. The farmer alone, after months of weary, unending toil, of exposure in all sorts of weather, of struggle against the whims of nature and against an appalling list of possible disasters, himself hauled his output tomarket and meekly accepted whatever was offered him. Prices on every product of the soil were dictated by a clique of gamblers who, in all probability, had never seen wheat growing nor cattle grazing. Friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers, this woeful condition must end! They must coöperate! Once compacted the farmers could stand together as firm as a rock, could demand a fair and reasonable and just price for their output, and get it. To-day wheat was quoted at ninety-four cents on the Chicago Board of Trade. If the farmer, however, secured eighty-two at his delivery point in actual cash he was doing well. There was no reason why the farmers should not agree to establish a standing price of a dollar and a half a bushel for wheat; and that must be their slogan. Wheat at a dollar and a half!
He was vitally interested in this project, and he was willing to spend his life and fortune for it; and, in the furtherance of it, he invited his friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers to assemble at his house on the following Saturday night and discuss ways and means to bring this enormous movement to a practical working basis. Incidentally hemightfind a bite and a sup and a whiff of smoke to offer them.All those who would attend would please rise in their seats.
As one man they arose, and when J. Rufus Wallingford, glowing with the immensity of his noble project, stepped down from that platform, the walls of the Willow Creek schoolhouse echoed and reechoed with the cheers which followed his speech.
The Farmers' Commercial Association! There had been farmers' affiliations without number, with motives political, economical, educational; alliances for the purchasing of supplies at wholesale and for every other purpose under the sun, but nothing like this, for, to begin with, the Farmers' Commercial Association had no initiation fee and no dues, and it had for its sole and only object the securing of a flat, uniform rate of a dollar and a half a bushel for wheat. The first meeting, attended by every able-bodied tiller of the soil in Truscot County and some even from Mapes County, was so large that there was no place in the Wallingford homestead to house it, and it had to be taken out to the great new barn, where, in the spacious aisle between stalls and mows, enthusiasm had plenty of room to soar to the rafters. One feature had stilled all doubts: J. Rufus Wallingford alone was to pay!
With a whoop the association was organized, Judge Wallingford was made its president, and with great enthusiasm was authorized to go ahead and spend all of his own money that he cared to lay out for the benefit of the association. Only one trifling duty was laid upon the members. President Wallingford introduced an endless chain letter. It was brief. It was concise. It told in the fewest possible words just why the Farmers' Commercial Association had been formed and what it was expected to do, laying especial stress upon the fact that there were to be no initiation fees and no dues, no money to be paid for anything! All that the members were to do was to join, and when enough were in, to demand one dollar and a half for their wheat. It was a glittering proposition, for there was no trouble and no expense and no risk, with much to gain. Every one of the ninety-odd who gathered that night in Wallingford's barn was to write three or more of these letters to wheat-growing acquaintances, and each recipient of a letter was told that the only thing which need be done to enroll himself as a member of the order was to write three more such letters and send in his name to Horatio Raven, Secretary.
Horatio Raven himself was there. Therewas a barrel of good, hard cider on tap in the barn, and every few minutes Mr. Raven could be seen conducting one or two acquaintances quietly over to the cellar, where there were other things on tap. Cigars were passed around, and the good cheer which was provided became so inextricably mingled with the enthusiasm which had been aroused, that no farmer could tell which was which. It only sufficed that when they went away each one was profoundly convinced that J. Rufus Wallingford was the Moses who should lead the farmers of America out of their financial Wilderness.
During the next two or three days nearly three hundred letters left Truscot and Mapes counties, inviting nearly three hundred farmers in the great wheat belt, extending from the Rockies to the Appalachians, to take full sixty per cent. more for their produce than the average price they had always been receiving, to invite others to receive like benefits, and all to accept this boon without money and without price. It was personal solicitation from one man to another who knew him, and the first flood that went out reached every wheat-growing State in the Union. Within a week, names and requests for further information beganpouring in upon Horatio Raven, Secretary, and the card index drawers in the filing cabinet, originally bought in jest, became of actual service. One, then two, then three girls were installed. A pamphlet was printed explaining the purpose of the Farmers' Commercial Association, and these were sent to all "members," J. Rufus Wallingford furnishing both the printing and the postage.
Through the long winter the president of that great association was constantly upon the road, always in his corduroy suit and his broad felt hat, with his trousers tucked neatly into his seal-leather boots. His range was from Pennsylvania to Nebraska and from Minnesota to Texas, and everywhere his destination was some branch nucleus of the Farmers' Commercial Association where meetings had been arranged for him. Each night he addressed some body of skeptical farmers who came wondering, who saw the impressive and instantly convincing "Judge" Wallingford; who, listening, caught a touch of that magnetic thrill with which he always imbued his auditors, and who went away enthusiastic to carry to still further reaches the great work that he had planned. By the holiday season he had visited a dozen States and had addressed nearly ahundred sub-organizations. In each of these he gave the chain letters a new start, and the December meeting of the central organization of the Farmers' Commercial Association was also a Christmas celebration in the barn of that progressive and self-sacrificing and noble farmer, J. Rufus Wallingford.
It was a huge "family affair," held two nights before Christmas so as not to interfere with the Baptist Church at Three Roads or the Presbyterian Church at Miller's Crossing, and the great barn was trimmed with wreaths and festoons of holly from floor to rafters. At one end was a gigantic Christmas tree, from the branches of which glowed a myriad of electric lights and sparkled innumerable baubles of vivid coloring and metallic luster. Handsome presents had been provided for every man, woman and child, and down the extent of the wide center had been spread two enormous, long tables upon which was placed food enough to feed a small army; huge turkeys and all that went with them. At the head of the ladies' table sat Mrs. Wallingford, glittering in her diamonds, the first time she had worn them since coming into this environment, and at the head of the men's table, resplendent in a dinner coat and with huge diamond studsflashing from his wide, white shirt bosom, sat the giver of all these bounties, Judge J. Rufus Wallingford, president of the vast Farmers' Commercial Association. He was flushed with triumph, and he told them so at the proper moment. Beyond his most sanguine hopes the Farmers' Commercial Association had spread and flourished in every State, nay, in every community where wheat was grown, and the time was rapidly approaching when the farmer, now turned business man, would be able to get the full value of his investment of money, time and toil. Moreover, they would destroy the birds of prey, feathers, bones and beaks, fledgelings, eggs and nests.
Around the table, at this point, Horatio Raven, Secretary, passed a sheaf of reports upon the various successful deals that Wallingford had made, each one showing a profit of five thousand dollars on a ten-thousand-dollar investment. The secret facts of the case were that fortune had favored Wallingford tremendously. By one of those strange runs of luck which sometimes break the monotony of persistent gambling disasters, he had won not less than five out of every six of the continuous deals intrusted to Fox & Fleecer. The failures he kept to himself, and Ham Tinkleadded to the furore that the proofs of this success created by rising in his place and advising them how, upon Wallingford's certain and sure advance information of the market, he himself had been able to turn his modest little two hundred dollars into seven hundred during the past three months, with the profits still piling up.
But J. Rufus Wallingford, resuming, saw such profits vanishing in the future, for by the aid of the Farmers' Commercial Association he intended to wipe out the iniquitous grain and produce exchange, and, in fact, all gambling in food products throughout the United States. The scope of the Farmers' Commercial Association was much broader, much more far-reaching than even he had imagined when he at first conceived it. When they were ready they would not only establish a firm cash basis for wheat, but they would wipe this festering mass of corruption, called the Board of Trade, off the face of the earth by the simple process of taking all its money away from it. With their certain knowledge of what the price of wheat would be, when the time was ripe they would go into the market and, themselves, by their aggregate profits, would break every man who was in the business of manipulating priceson wheat, on oats and corn and live stock. Why, nearly one million names were now enrolled in the membership of the association, and to these million names circulars explaining in detail the plans of the organization had been mailed at a cost in postage alone of nearly ten thousand dollars. This expense he had cheerfully borne himself, in his devotion to the great work of reformation. Not one penny had been paid by any other member of the organization for the furtherance of this project. He had spent nearly twenty thousand dollars in travel and other expenses, but the market had paid for it, and he was not one penny loser by his endeavors. Even if he were, that would not stop him. He would sell every government bond and every share of industrial and railroad stock that he owned, he would even mortgage his farm, if necessary, to complete this organization and make it the powerful and impregnable factor in agricultural commerce that he had intended it to be. It was his dream, his ambition, nay, his determined purpose, to leave behind him this vast organization as an evidence that his life had not been spent in vain; and if he could only see the wheat gamblers put out of that nefarious business, and the farmers ofthe United States coming, after all these toiling generations, into their just and honest dues, he would die with peace in his heart and a smile upon his lips, even though he went to a pauper's grave!
There were actual tears in his eyes as he closed with these words, and his voice quivered. From the foot of the table Blackie Daw was watching with a curious smile that was almost a sardonic grin. From the head of the parallel table Mrs. Wallingford was watching him with a pallor that deepened as he went on, but no one noticed these significant indications, and as J. Rufus Wallingford sat down a mighty cheer went up that made every branch of the glittering Christmas tree dance and quiver.
He was a wonderful man, this Wallingford, a genius, a martyr, a being made in his entirety of the milk of human kindness and brotherly love; but this rapidly growing organization that he had formed was more wonderful still. They could see as plain as print what it would do for them; they could see even plainer than print how, with the certain knowledge of the price to which wheat would eventually rise, they could safely dabble in fictitious wheat themselves, and by their enormous aggregate winnings, obliterate all boards of trade. It was a conceptionTitanic in its immensity, perfect in its detail, amazing in its flawlessness, and not one among them who listened but went home that night—J. Rufus Wallingford's seal-leather pocketbook in his pocket, J. Rufus Wallingford's box of lace handkerchiefs on his wife's lap, J. Rufus Wallingford's daintily dressed French doll in his little girl's arm, J. Rufus Wallingford's toy engine in his little boy's hands—but foresaw, not as in a dream but as in a concrete reality that needed only to be clutched, the future golden success of the Farmers' Commercial Association; and on the forehead of that success was emblazoned in letters of gold:
"$1.50 WHEAT!"
The holidays barely over, Wallingford was upon the road again, and until the first of May he spent his time organizing new branches, keeping the endless chain letters booming and taking subscriptions for his new journal, theCommercial Farmer, a device by which he had solved the grave problem of postage. TheCommercial Farmerwas issued every two weeks. It was printed on four small pages of thin paper, and to make it second-class postal matter a real subscription price was charged—five cents a year! For this he paid postage of one cent a pound, and there were eighty copies to the pound. He could convey his semi-monthly message to a million people at a cost of one hundred and twenty-five dollars, as against the ten thousand dollars it would cost him to mail a million letters with a one-cent stamp upon them. And five cents a year was enough to pay expenses. On the first of May, the enterprising promoter, who seriouslyaspired now to become a financial star of the first magnitude, took a swift thousand-mile journey to the offices of Fox & Fleecer, where Mr. Fox, polishing, as always, at his glazed scalp, was still intent upon that bland but perplexing secret problem. Mr. Wallingford, as a preliminary to conversation, drew his chair up to the opposite side of the desk and laid upon it a check book and a package of documents with a rubber band around them. "Four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and negotiable securities," he stated, "and all to buy September wheat."
Mr. Fox said nothing, but unconsciously his palm went to the top of his head.
"The September option is at this moment quoted at eighty-seven and one-eighth cents," went on Mr. Wallingford. "Could it possibly go lower than sixty-two?"
"It is the invariable rule of Fox & Fleecer," said Mr. Fox slowly, "never to give advice nor to predict any future performances of wheat. Wheat can go to any price, up or down. I may add, however, that it has been several years since the September option has touched the low level you name."
"Well, I'm going to bet this four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars that it don'tgo as low as sixty-two," retorted Wallingford stiffening. "I want you to take this wad and invest it in September wheat right off the bat, at the market, on a twenty-five cent margin, which covers one million, seven hundred thousand bushels."
Mr. Fox, his eyes hypnotically glued upon the little stack of securities which represented four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, and a larger commission than his firm had ever in all its existence received in one deal, filled his lungs with a long, slow intake of air which he strove to make as noiseless as possible.
"You must understand, Mr. Wallingford," he finally observed, "that it will be impossible to buy an approximate two million bushels of the September option at this time without disturbing the market and running up the price on yourself, and it may take us a little time to get this trade launched. Probably five hundred thousand bushels can be placed at near the market, and then we will have to wait until a favorable moment to place another section. Our Mr. Fleecer, however, is very skillful in such matters and will no doubt get a good price for you."
"I understand about that," said Wallingford, "and I understand about the other end ofit, too. I want to turn this four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars into a clean million or I don't want a cent. September wheat will go to one dollar and a quarter."
Mr. Fox reserved his smile until Mr. Wallingford should be gone. At present he only polished his pate.
"That's when you would probably fall down," continued Wallingford; "when September wheat reaches a dollar and a quarter. If you try to throw this seventeen hundred thousand bushels on the market you will break the price, unless on the same day that you sell it you can buy the same amount for somebody else. Will that let you get the price without dropping it off ten or fifteen cents?"
"Fox & Fleecer never predict," said Mr. Fox slowly, "but in a general way I should say that if we were to buy in as much as we sold, the market would probably be strengthened rather than depressed."
"All right," said Wallingford. "Now I have another little matter to present to you." From his pocket he drew a copy of theCommercial Farmer, the pages scarcely larger than a sheet of business letter paper. "I want an advertisement from you for the back page of this. Just a mere card, with your name and address and the fact that you have been in business at the same location for thirty years; and at the bottom I want to put: 'We handle all the wheat transactions of J. Rufus Wallingford.'"
Of course in a matter so trifling Mr. Fox could not refuse so good a customer, and J. Rufus departed, well satisfied, to work and wait while Nature helped his plans.
Across a thousand miles of fertile land the spring rains fell and the life-giving sun shone down; from the warm earth sprang up green blades and tall shoots that through their hollow stems sucked the life of the soil, and by a transformation more wonderful than ever conceived by any magician, upon the stalks there swelled heads of grain that nodded and yellowed and ripened with the advancing summer. From the windows of Pullman cars, as he rode hither and yonder throughout this rich territory in the utmost luxury that travelers may have, J. Rufus Wallingford, the great liberator of farmers, watched all this magic of the Almighty with but the one thought of what it might mean to him. Back on the Wallingford farm, Blackie Daw and his staff of assistants, now half-a-dozen girls, kept up an ever-increasing correspondence. Ham Tinkle was jealous of the very night that hid his handiwork fora space out of each twenty-four hours, and begrudged the time that he spent in sleep. During every waking moment, almost, he was abroad in his fields, and led his neighbors, when he could, to see his triumph, for never had the old Spicer farm brought forth such a yield, and nowhere in Truscot County or in Mapes County could such fields be shown. Upon these broad acres the wheat was thicker and sturdier, the heads longer and larger and fuller of fine, fat grain than anywhere in all the region round.
The Farmers' Commercial Association, a "combination in restraint of trade" which was well protected by the fear-inspiring farmer vote, met monthly, and Wallingford ran in to the meetings as often as he could, though there was no need to sustain their enthusiasm; for not only was the plan one of such tremendous scope as to compel admiration, but Nature and circumstances both were kind. There came the usual early rumors of a drought in Kansas, of over-much rotting rain in the Dakotas, of the green bug in Oklahoma, of foreign wars and domestic disturbances, and these things were good for the price of wheat, as they were exaggerated upon the floors of the great boards of trade in Chicago and New York. Through these causes alone September wheat climbedfrom eighty-seven to ninety, to ninety-five, to a dollar, to a dollar-five; but in the latter part of July there came a new and an unexpected factor. Dollar-and-a-half wheat had been the continuous slogan of the Farmers' Commercial Association, and every issue of theCommercial Farmerhad dwelt upon the glorious day when that should be made the standard price. Now, in the mid-July issue, the idea was driven home and the entire first page was given up to a great, flaming advertisement:
HOLD YOUR WHEAT!SEPTEMBER WHEAT WILL GO TO$1.50!DON'T SELL A BUSHEL OF IT FOR LESS!
The result was widespread and instantaneous. In Oklahoma a small farmer drove up to the elevator and asked:
"What's wheat worth to-day?"
"A dollar, even," was the answer.
"This is all you get from me at that price," said the farmer, "and you wouldn't get this if I didn't need fifty dollars to-day. Take it in."
"Think wheat's going higher?" asked the buyer.
"Higher! It's going to a dollar and a half," boasted the farmer. "I got twelve hundredbushels at home, and nobody gets it for a cent less than eighteen hundred dollars."
"You'd better see a doctor before you drive back," advised the elevator man, laughing.
Over in Kansas at one of the big collecting centers the telephone bell rang.
"What's cash wheat worth to-day?"
"Dollar-one."
"A dollar-one! I'll hold mine a while."
"Better take this price while you can get it," advised the shipper. "Big crop this year."
"A dollar and a half's the price," responded the farmer on the other end of the wire.
"Who is this?" asked the shipper.
"J. W. Harkness."
The man rubbed his chin. Harkness owned five hundred acres of the best wheat land in Kansas.
In South Dakota, on the same day, two farmers who had brought in their wheat drove home with it, refusing the price offered with scorn. In Pennsylvania not one-tenth of the grain was delivered as on the same date a year before, and the crop was much larger. In Ohio, in Indiana, in Illinois, in Iowa, in Nebraska, all through the wheat belt began these significant incidents, and to brokers in Chicago and New York were wired startling reports from a hundredcenters: farmers were delivering no wheat and were holding out for a dollar and a half!
"You can scare the entire Board of Trade black in the face with a Hallowe'en pumpkin," Wallingford had declared to Blackie Daw. "Say 'Boo!' and they drop dead. Step on a parlor match and every trader jumps straight up into the gallery. Four snowflakes make a blizzard, and a frost on State Street kills all the crops in Texas."
Results seemed to justify his summing up. On that day wheat jumped ten cents within the last hour before closing, and ten thousand small speculators who had been bearing the market, since they could see no good reason for the already high price, were wiped out before they had a chance to protect their margins. On the following day a special edition of theCommercial Farmerwas issued. It exulted, it gloated, it fairly shrieked over the triumph that had already been accomplished by the Farmers' Commercial Association. The first minute that it had shown its teeth it had made for the farmers of the United States ten cents a bushel on four hundred million bushels of wheat! It had made for them in one hour forty million dollars net profit, and this was but the beginning. The farmers themselves, by standingtogether, had already raised the price of wheat to a dollar-fifteen, and dollar-and-a-half wheat was but a matter of a few days. On the boards of trade it would go even higher. There would be no stopping it. It would soar to a dollar and a half, to a dollar-seventy-five, to two dollars! Speculation was a thing ordinarily to be discouraged, yet under these circumstances the farmers themselves should reap the wealth that was now ripe. They should take out of "Wall Street" and La Salle Street their share of the money that these iniquitous centers of financial jugglery had taken from the agricultural interests of the country for these many years. They themselves knew now, by the events of one day, that the Farmers' Commercial Association was strong enough to accomplish what it had meant to accomplish, and now was the time to get into the market. It should be not only the pleasure and profit of every farmer, but the duty of every farmer, to hit the gamblers a fatal blow by investing every loose dollar, on safe and conservative margins, in this certain advance of wheat. On the last page of this issue of theCommercial Farmerappeared for the first time the advertisement of Fox & Fleecer, and copies went to a million wheat growers.
The response was many-phased. Farmers who were convinced of this logic, and those who were not, rushed their wheat to market at the then prevailing price, not waiting for the dollar and a half, but turning their produce into cash at once. To offset this sudden release of grain, buying orders poured into the markets, the same cash that had been received from the sale of actual wheat being put into margins upon fictitious wheat. Prices fluctuated in leaps of five and ten cents, and the pit went crazy. It was a seething, howling mob, tossing frenzied trades back and forth until faces were red and voices were hoarse; and the firm of Fox & Fleecer, long noted for its conservative dealing and almost passed by in the course of events, suddenly became the most important factor on the floor.
On the ticker that on the first of May he had installed in his now mortgaged house upon his mortgaged farm, Wallingford saw the price mount to a dollar and a quarter, drop to a dollar-eighteen, jump to a dollar-twenty-two, back to twenty, up to twenty-five, back to twenty-two, up to twenty-eight. This last quotation he came back into the room to see after he had on his hat and ulster, and while his automobile, carrying Blackie Daw and Mrs. Wallingford,was spluttering and quivering at the door. Then he started for Chicago, leaving his neighbors back home to keep his telephone in a continuous jingle.
Hiram Hines met Len Miller in the road, for example. Both were beaming.
"What's the latest about wheat?" asked Len.
"A dollar twenty-eight and seven-eighths," replied Hiram; "at least it was about an hour ago when I telephoned to Judge Wallingford's house. Suppose its climbing for a dollar-thirty by now. How much you got, Len?"
"Twenty thousand bushels," answered Len jubilantly. "Bought it at a dollar twenty-four on a five-cent margin, and got that much profits already, nearly. Raised a thousand dollars on my sixty acres and have made nearly a thousand on it in two weeks; with Judge Wallingford's own brokers, too."
"So's mine," exulted Hiram. "Paid a dollar-twenty-six, but I'm satisfied. When it reaches a dollar-forty I'll quit."
Ezekiel Tinkle walked six miles to see his son Ham at the Wallingford place.
"Jonas Whetmore's bragging about two thousand dollars he's made in a few days in this wheat business," he stated. "I don'trightly understand it, Hamlet. How about it? I don't believe in speculating, but Jonas says this ain't speculating, and if there's such a lot of money to be made I want some."
"We all do," laughed Ham Tinkle, who, since he had "made good" with his new-fangled farming, was accepted as an equal by his father. "I had two hundred when I started. It's a thousand now, and will be five thousand before I quit. Bring your money to me, father, and I'll show you how to get in on the profits. But hurry. How much can you spare?"
"Well," figured Ezekiel, "there's that fifteen hundred I've saved up for Bobbie's schooling; then when I sell my wheat——"
"Don't do that!" interposed his son quickly. "Wheat is going up so rapidly because the growers are holding it for a dollar and a half. Every man who sells his now, weakens the price that much."
"Isthatthe way of it!" exclaimed the old man, enlightened at last, and he kicked reflectively at a piece of turf. "To make money out of this all the farmers must hold their wheat for a dollar and a half! Say, Hamlet; Charlie Granice sold his wheat at a dollar-six to go into this thing. Adam Spooner and Burt Powers and Charlie Dorsett all sold theirs, and they'reall members of this association. Ham, I'm going right home to sell my wheat."
"They are traitors!" charged Hamlet angrily. "I won't send that money away for you."
"Send it away!" retorted the old man. "Not by a danged sight you won't! I'll sell my wheat right now while it's high, and put my money in the bank along with the fifteen hundred I've got there; and you go ahead and be your own fool. I know advice from your old daddy won't stop you."
Not many, however, were like old man Tinkle, and J. Rufus Wallingford, as he sped toward Chicago, was more self-congratulatory than he had ever been in all his life. A million dollars! A real million! Why, dignity could now attach to the same sort of dealing that had made him forever avoid the cities where he had "done business." Heretofore his operations had been on such a small scale that they could be called "common grafting," but now, with a larger scope, they would be termed "shrewd financiering." It was entirely a matter of proportion. A million! Well, he deserved a million, and the other millions that would follow. Didn't he look the part? Didn't he act it? Didn't he live it?
"Me for the big game!" he exulted. "Watchme take my little old cast-iron dollars into Wall Street and keep six corporations rotating in the air at one and the same time. Who's the real Napoleon of Finance? Me; Judge Wallingford, Esquire!"
"Pull the safety-rope and let out a little gas, J. Rufus," advised Blackie Daw dryly. "Your balloon will rip a seam. The boys on Wall Street were born with their eye-teeth cut, and eat marks like you before breakfast for appetizers."
J. Rufus only laughed.
"They'd be going some," he declared. "Any wise Willie who can make a million farmers jump in to help him up into the class of purely legitimate theft, like railroad mergers and industrial holding companies, ought to be able to stay there. The manipulator that swallows me will have a horrible stomachache."
Mrs. Wallingford had listened with a puzzled expression.
"But I don't understand it, Jim," she said. "I can see why you got the farmers together to raise the price of wheat. It does them good as well as you. But why have you worked so hard to make them speculate?"
J. Rufus looked at her with an amused expression.
"My dear infant," he observed; "when Fox & Fleecer got ready to sell my near-two-million bushels of wheat this morning, somebody had to be ready to buy them. I provided the buyers. That's all."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Wallingford, and pondered the matter slowly. "I see. But, Jim! Mr. Hines, Mr. Evans, Mr. Whetmore, Mr. Granice, and the others—to whom do they sell after they have bought your wheat?"
"The sheriff," interposed Blackie with a grin.
"Not necessarily," Wallingford hastened to contradict him in answer to the troubled frown upon his wife's brow. "My deal don't disturb the market, and I expect wheat to go on up to at least a dollar and a half. If these farmers get out on the way up they make money. But the boobs who buy from them——"
"Ain't it funny?" inquired Blackie plaintively. "There's always a herd of 'em just crazy eager to grab the hot end."
A boy came on the train with evening papers containing the closing market quotations. Wheat had touched thirty-four, but a quick break had come at the close, back to twenty-six! Another column told why. Every cent of advance in the actual grain had brought outcash wheat in floods. Members of the great Farmers' Commercial Association had hurried their holdings to market, trusting to the great body of the loosely bound organizations to keep up the price—and the great body of the organization was doing precisely the same thing. At bottom they had, in fact, small faith in it, and the Board of Trade, sensitive as a barometer, was quick to feel this psychological change in the situation. Wallingford said nothing of this to his wife. He had begun to fear her. Always she had set herself against actual dishonesty, and more so than ever of late as he had begun to pride himself upon being a great financier. In the smoking compartment, however, he handed the paper to Blackie Daw, with his thumb upon the quotations.
"There's the answer," he said. "The Rubes have cut their own throats, as I figured they would, and you'll see wheat tumble to lower than it was when this raise began. Hines and Evans and Granice and the rest of them will hold the bag on this deal, and they needn't blame it to me. They can only blame it to the fact that farmers won't stick. I'm lucky that they hung together long enough to reach my price of a dollar and a quarter."
"How do you know you got out?" askedBlackie, passing over as a matter of no moment whatever the fact that all their neighbors of Truscot and Mapes Counties, who had followed "Judge" Wallingford's lead and urging in the matter of speculation, would lose their all; as would hundreds if not thousands of other "members" who had been led through the deftly worded columns of theCommercial Farmerto gamble in their own grain.
"Easy," explained J. Rufus. "The quotations themselves tell it. Fox & Fleecer had instructions to unload at a dollar twenty-five, and they follow such instructions absolutely. They began unloading at that price, buying in at the same time for my farmers, and, in spite of the fact that they were pitching nearly two million bushels of wheat on the market after it hit the twenty-five mark, it went on up to thirty-four before it broke, showing that the buying orders until that time were in excess of selling orders. The farmers throughout the country simply ate up my two million bushels of wheat."
"Then it's their money you got, after all," observed Blackie.
"It's mine now," responded J. Rufus with a chuckle. "I saw it first."
They arrived in Chicago late and they arose late. At breakfast, with languid interest, Wallingford picked up the paper that lay beside his plate, and the first item upon which his eyes rested was a sensational article headed: "BROKER SUICIDES." Even then he was scarcely interested until his eye caught the name of Edwin H. Fox.
"What is the matter?" asked his wife anxiously, as, with a startled exclamation, he hastily pushed back his chair and arose. It was the first time that she had ever in any emergency seen his florid face turn ghastly pale. Dilemmas, reverses and even absolute defeats he had always accepted with a gambler's coolness, but now, since his vanity had let him dignify his pursuit of other people's money by the name of financiering, the blow came with crushing force; for it maimed not only his pocketbook but his pride as it sweptaway the glittering air castles that he had been building for the past year.
"Matter!" he spluttered, half choking. "We are broke!" And leaving his breakfast untasted he hastily ordered a cab and drove to the office of Fox & Fleecer, devouring the details of the tragedy as he went. The philanthropic Mr. Fox, he of the glistening bald pate and the air of cold probity, the man who had been for thirty years in business at the old stand, who had seemed as firm as a rock and as unsusceptible as a quart of clams, had been leading not only a double but a sextuple life, for half a dozen pseudo-widows mourned his demise and the loss of a generous banker. To support all these expensive establishments, which, once set up, firmly declined to ever go out of existence, Mr. Fox had been juggling with the money of his customers; robbing Peter to pay Paul, until the time had come when Paul could be no longer paid and there was only one debt left that he could by any possibility wipe out—the debt he owed to Nature. That he had paid with a forty-four caliber bullet through the temple. At last he had solved that perplexing problem which had bothered him all these years.
Wallingford had expected to find the officeof Fox & Fleecer closed, but the door stood wide open and the dingy apartment was filled with a crowd of men, all equally nervous but violently contrasted as to complexion, some of them being extremely pale and some extremely flushed, according to their temperaments. Mr. Fleecer, one of those strangest of all anomalies, a nervous fat man, stood behind Mr. Fox's desk, his collar wilted with perspiration and the flabby pouches under his eyes black from his vigil of the night. He was almost as large as Wallingford himself, but a careless dresser, and a pitiable object as he started back on hearing Wallingford's name, tossing up his right hand with a curious involuntary motion as if to ward off a blow. His crisp, quick voice, however, did not fit at all with his appearance of crushed indecision.
"I might as well tell you the blunt truth at first, Mr. Wallingford," he said. "You haven't a cent, so far as Fox & Fleecer is concerned. Nobody has. I haven't a dollar in the world and Fox was head over heels in debt, I find. How that sanctimonious old hypocrite ever got away with it all these years is the limit. I looked after the buying and selling orders as he gave them to me, and never had anything to do with the books. I never knew when adeal was in the office until I received market orders. I have spent all night on Fox's private accounts, however, and since yours was the largest item, I naturally went into it as deeply as I could. If they had telephones in Hell I could give you more accurate information, but the way I figure it is this: when he got hold of your four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars with instructions to buy and not to close until it reached a dollar and a quarter, he evidently classed your proposition as absurd. There was absolutely nothing to make wheat go to that price, and, with the big margin you had put up, he figured that the account would drag along at least until September, without being touched; so he used what he had to have of the money to cover up his other steals, expecting to juggle the market with the rest of it on his own judgment, and expecting, in the end, to have it back to hand to you when you got tired. When he understood this upward movement, however, and saw the big thing you had done, he jumped into the market with what was left, something less than three hundred thousand dollars. The only way to make that up to the amount you should have by the time it reached a dollar and a quarter was to pyramid it, and this he did.He bought on short margin, closed when he had a good profit, and spread the total amount over other short margin purchases. He did this three times. On the last deal he had upward of five million bushels bought to your account, and it was this strong buying, coupled with the other buying orders which came in at about the dollar-and-a-quarter mark, that sent the market up to a dollar thirty-four. If the market could have held half an hour he would have gotten out all right and turned over to you a million dollars, after using two hundred and fifty thousand for his own purposes, but when he attempted to unload the market broke; and by —— we're all broke!"
Mr. Wallingford laughed, quite mechanically, and from his pocket drew two huge black cigars with gold bands around them.
"Have a smoke," he said to Mr. Fleecer.
Lighting his own Havana he turned and elbowed his way out of the room. One of the men who had stood near him exchanged a wondering stare with his neighbor.
"That's the limit of gameness," he observed.
But he was mistaken. It was not gameness. Wallingford was merely dazed. He could find no words to express the bitter depth to which he had fallen. As he passed out through theticker-room he glanced at the blackboard. The boy was just chalking up the latest morning quotation on September wheat—a dollar twelve.
In the cab he opened his pocketbook and counted the money in it. Before he had started on this trip he had scarcely thought of money, except that at Fox & Fleecer's there would be waiting for him a cool, clean million. Instead of that he found himself with exactly fifty-four dollars.
Mrs. Wallingford was in her room, pale to the lips.
"How much money have you?" he asked her.
Without a word she handed him her purse. A few small bills were in it. She handed him another small black leather case which he took slowly. He opened it, and from the velvet depths there gleamed up at him the old standby—her diamonds. He could get a couple of thousand dollars on these at any time. He put the case in his pocket, but without any gleam of satisfaction, and sat down heavily in one of the huge leather-padded chairs.
"Fanny," said he savagely, "never preach to me again! I have tried a straight-out legitimate deal and it dumped me. Hereafter, be satisfied with whatever way I make money, just so long as I have the law on my side.Why," and his indignation over this last reflection was beyond expression, "I've coaxed a carload of money out of the farmers of this country, and I don't get away with a cent of it! A thief got it!A thief and a grafter!"
Mrs. Wallingford did not answer him. She was crying. It was not so much that they had lost all of this money, it was not that he had spoken harshly to her for almost the first time since he had come into her life, but the shattering once more of certain hopeful dreams that had grown up within her since their sojourn in Battlesburg. Of course, he was instantly regretful and made such clumsy amends as he could, but the sting, not of bitterness but of sorrow, was there, and it remained for long after; until, in fact, she came to realize how much to heart her husband had taken his only real defeat. For the first time in his life he became despondent. The height to which he had aspired and had almost reached, looked now so utterly unattainable that the contemplation of it took out of him all ambition, all initiative, all life. He seemed to have lost his creative faculty. Where his fertile brain had heretofore teemed with plans and projects, crowding upon each other, clamoring for fulfilment, now he seemed incapable of thought,and fell into an apathy from which he could not arouse himself no matter how hard he tried. Parting company with Blackie Daw, who seemed equally rudderless, they moved aimlessly about from city to city, pawning Mrs. Wallingford's diamonds as they needed the money, but the man's spirit was gone, and no matter how often he changed his environment or brought himself into contact with new fields and new opportunities, no plan for getting back upon his feet seemed to offer itself. He was too much disheartened, in fact, even to try. To husband their fast waning resources they even descended to living in boarding houses, where the brief gratification of exciting awe among the less impressive boarders was but small compensation for the loss of the luxury to which they had been used.
It was the sight of a miserable dinner in one of these boarding houses that proved the turning point for him. His chair was drawn back from the table for him when he suddenly shoved it to its place again, and with a darkening brow stalked out of the dining room, followed by the bewildered Mrs. Wallingford.
"I can't stand this thing, Fanny," he declared. "I've insulted my stomach withthat sort of fodder until it's too late for an apology."
"What are you going to do?" she asked in concern.
"Go where the good steaks grow," he answered emphatically. "We're going to pack up and move to the best hotel in town and eat ourselves blue in the face, and to-morrow J. Rufus is going to go back on the job. I haven't the money in my pocket to pay for it, and we haven't another thing we can soak, but if I run up a hotel bill I'll have to get out and dig to pay it, and that's what I need. I'm lazy."
It was a positive elation to him to dash up in a cab to a palatial hotel, to walk into its gilded and marble corridors with a deferential porter carrying his luggage, to loom up before a suave clerk in his impressive immensity and sign his name with a flourish, to demand the best accommodations they had in the house and to be shown into apartments that bathed him once more in a garish atmosphere where everything tasted and felt and smelled of money. It was like the prodigal son coming home again, and instantly his spirits arose with a bound. He began as of old to live like a lord, and though the long sought idea did not come to him for almost two weeks, he held tothe untroubled tenor of his way with all his old arrogance, blessed with a cheerful belief that some lucky solution of his difficulties would be found.
One thing alone bothered him toward the last, and that was the rapid disappearance of such little ready money as he needed for tips when he was in the hotel, and for drinks and cigars when he found himself away from it. He was sensitive about ordering inferior goods in good places, and when away from his source of credit supplies, took to turning in at obscure cigar stores, preferring to buy the best they had rather than to taking a second grade in a better place. It was in one of these obscure little establishments that the elusive inspiration at last came to him.
"The government is rotten!" the stoop-shouldered cigar maker had complained just a moment before, rasping the air of his dingy little store with a high-pitched voice that was almost a whine. "It fosters consolidations. Big profits for rich men and bankruptcy for poor men, that's what we have come to!"
The stoop-shouldered cigar maker had no chin worth mentioning, and grew a thin, down-pointed mustache which accentuated that lack.He wore a green eye-shade and an apron of bed ticking, and he held in his hand a split mold, gripping the two parts together while he feebly and hopelessly groped for an inspiration in the mending line. The flabby man in the greasy vest, who was playing solitaire with a pack of cards so grimy that it took an experienced eye to tell whether the backs or the faces were up, did not raise his head, nor did the apathetic young man with the chronic dent in his time-yellowed Derby, who, sitting motionless with his crossed arms resting on his knees, had been making a business of watching the solitaire game in silence.
"That's right," agreed the flabby man, laying the trey of diamonds carefully upon the four of clubs and peeping to see what the next card would have been; "all the laws are against the poor man, and we're ground right down."
A pimple-faced youngster, clearly below the legal age, came in and bought two cigarettes for a cent, and the cigar maker waited upon him in sour-visaged nonchalance; neither the solitaire expert nor his interested watcher raised his eyes; a young man with a flashy tie and a soiled collar bought three stogies for a nickel and still apathy reigned; thenWallingford's huge bulk darkened the open doorway and everybody woke up.
Wallingford was so large that he seemed to crowd the little shop and absorb all its light, and he approached the cigar case doubtingly, surveying its contents with the eye of aconnoisseur. A brand or two that he knew quite well he passed over, for the boxes were nearly empty and no doubt had been reeking for a long time in that sponge-moistened assortment of flavors, but finally he settled upon a newly opened box from which but two cigars had been sold, and tapped his finger on the glass above it. The cigar maker reached in for that box with alacrity, for they were two-for-a-quarter goods, and as he brought them forth he gave to the buyer the appreciative scrutiny due one of so impressive appearance. He did not know that under his inspection the big man winced. In the fine scarf there should have glowed a huge diamond; the scarf itself had two or three frayed threads; the binding of the hat brim was somewhat worn; the cuffs were a little ragged. Wallingford felt that all the world saw this unwonted condition, but still he smiled richly; and the cigar dealer saw only richness. Probably the imposing customer would have left the store in the samesilence in which he had made his purchase, but, as he stopped to fastidiously cut the tip from one of his cigars, an undersized but pompous young collector bustled in and threw down a bill.
"Hundred Blue Rings," he announced curtly.
With a mechanical curiosity, Wallingford glanced into the case where a box of cigars with cheap blue bands was displayed. The cigar maker opened his money drawer and slowly counted out a pile of small silver.
"Three fifty," he lifelessly whined as he shoved it over, and the collector receipted the bill, dashing out with the same absurd self-assertiveness with which he had come in.
"Thirty-five a thousand," observed Wallingford incredulously. "That price is claimed for every nickel cigar on earth, but I always thought it was phoney. It's a stiff rate, isn't it?"
"It's a hold up," snarled the other, "but I got to keep 'em. I make a better cigar myself but people don't know anything about tobacco. They only smoke advertising. Here's my cigar," and he set a box on the case; "Ed Nickel's Nickelfine. There's a piece of real goods."
The big man picked one out of the box, andtwirled it in his deft fingers with a scrutiny that betokened keen judgment of all small articles of manufacture.
"It's well made," he admitted; "but what's the use? I could deliver your week's output in my pocket, and on the way back could spend the money getting my shoes shined; all because you haven't the wherewith to advertise."
"I got a little money," insisted the other aggressively, touched on a point of pride; "money I saved and pinched and scraped together; but it ain't enough to push a cigar. Some of these big manufacturers spread around a fortune on a new brand before they sell a single box. There's John Crewly & Company. They spent a hundred thousand dollars advertising Blue Rings."
"And you small dealers have handed it back to them," laughed Wallingford. "You pay that advertising difference above what the cigar is worth."
"Ten times over!" exploded Mr. Nickel. "The houses that buy in big quantities get them for below twenty-eight, I've heard. But that's where the government is rotten! It's fixed so the little man always gets it in the neck. Combines and trusts eat us up. Everyman that joins a consolidation ought to get ten years at hard labor."
"Don't grouch," advised Wallingford, grinning; "consolidate. If all the small dealers in this town formed a consolidation, they could buy their supplies in quantity for spot cash and get the lowest price going."
Ed Nickel looked out of the window at the clanging street cars and digested this palatable new idea.
"I reckon they could," he mused, "if there was any way to work it so they wouldn't all spike each other trying to get the best of it," and J. Rufus chuckled as he recognized this business anarchist's willingness to undergo an instant change of opinion about consolidation.
The door opened, and a tall, thin man, with curly gray hair and a little gray goatee, strode nervously in and threw a half dollar on the case.
"Two packs of Kiosks," he demanded.
Almost in the same breath he saw Wallingford, whose face was at that moment illuminated by the lighter to which he held his cigar.
"J. Rufus, by Heck!" he exclaimed.
Before Wallingford could give voice to his amazement the strangely altered Blackie Daw was shaking hands eagerly with him.
"You probably don't remember me," wenton Blackie with an expansive grin. "Rush is the name. I. B. Rush, and I never was so bug-house glad to see anybody in my life!"
The eyes of Wallingford twinkled.
"Well, well, well, Mr. Rush! How you have changed!" he declared.
Blackie shook his head warningly.
"Nix on the advertisement," he cautioned. "Wallingford, you're the long-sought message from home! Feel in your vest pocket and see if there isn't an overlooked hundred or two down in the corner."