Meanwhile Galt’s enemies had been drawing together secretly. Hatred, fear and envy resolved all other emotions. Men who had nothing else in common were joined in a conspiracy to destroy him. The leviathans of this deep move slowly and take their time. Besides, it was a fearsome undertaking. There was bound to be a terrific struggle. One false move and the dragon would escape.
The plan was to attack him from two sides at once.
Several of the railroad properties acquired by the Great Midwestern were in some sense competitive,—though Galt had not bought them primarily for that reason,—and as the law was never clear as to how far the merging of separate railroads might go, it would be possible to attack the Galt system under the Anti-Trust Act. If the government could be moved to do this and if then at the same time his Wall Street enemies concertedly attacked his credit his downfall might be foretold.
This plan required elaborate preparation. The government could not be directly solicited to act. It would have to be moved by suggestion, and with such finesse as to conceal the fact that it was being influenced at all, elsewise than by its own convictions of right. There are those who know how to effect these Machiavellian results. Intrigue is still man’s sovereign art. That is why he makes so much of politics.
Mrs. Valentine, pursuing vengeance in her own way, had made Galt’s name anathema throughout her precious principality. If you were anybody at all, or aspired to be, you were obliged to think and speak ill of him, for he represented vulgarity raised by its own audacity to a wicked and sinister eminence, if he had been born so one could understand it, she said. But he knew better. That made it all the worse. He had betrayed the decencies. His one passion was to amass wealth. Those who had helped him to rise he trampled down. He made his money dishonestly. A Stock Exchange gambler with a Napoleonic obsession! Well, she invariably said at the end, his time would come and then people would see what she meant.
Her own power she employed in a reckless manner. She visited disfavor upon those who were lukewarm in malignity, going so far as to make a scene with Lord Porteous, for that he dared to speak in defense of the monster. She took in people whose only recommendation was zealotry in her cause. Hersubjects going to and fro carried the evangel to other realms, especially to official society in Washington, which heard in this way every scandalous thing Galt had ever said about politicians in power.
The extent and character of her information could be explained only on the assumption that somewhere in our organization, probably on the board of directors, was a masked enemy who continually gave Galt up to Valentine. He had not disappeared from the field of action. All this time he was working in the background with a single passion,—a righteous one, as he believed,—which was to assist in the overthrow of Galt. It was natural that he should join the conspirators. He brought them much information; he had political resources and access to the means of publicity.
A fortuitous time arrived. For several years the public, now restored to high prosperity, observed with interest, awe, even with pride the appearance of those vast anonymous shapes which capital by a headlong impulse had been raising up to control production and transportation. Mergers, combines, trusts,—they came in endless succession. Hardly a day passed without a new sensation in phantasmic millions. People were seized with a gambling mania. Each day promoters threw an enormous mass of new and unseasoned securities upon the market, and they were frantically bought, as if the supply were in imminent danger of failing. Astonishing excesses were committed. The Stock Exchange wasoverwhelmed. For many weeks the lights never went out in Wall Street because clerks worked all day and all night to keep the brokers’ books straight.
The cauldron boiled over badly at last, and there was a silly panic, more theatrical than serious. It served, however, to break a dream and awaken the critical faculty. The public all at once became deeply alarmed. There arose a great clamor about trusts. Those shapes which had been viewed with pride, as symbols of the nation’s progress and strength, were now perceived in the light of fear.
Radical thought had been held in disesteem since the collapse of the Soft Money Plague. Here was a new bogey. Trusts were human evil objectified. They were swallowing the country up. In a little while all business would be in their hands. There would come to be only two kinds of people,—those few who owned the trusts and the many who worked for them, and freedom would perish in the land. Something would have to be done about it. Why had nothing been done? Were the trusts already more powerful than the state? Suddenly the trust vs. the state was the paramount political issue. There was an onset of books, essays, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles. Sense and folly, wisdom and demagoguery were hopelessly entangled. This kind of outburst is characteristic of a roaring, busy democracy, whose interest in its collective self is spasmodic and hysterical. The horse is stolen before anybody thinks of minding the barn.
Gradually the force of this anti-trust feeling, baffled by the complexity of the subject and seeking all the more for that reason a personal victim, began to focus upon Galt. You could see it taking place. The Galt Railroad System, formerly treated with respect and wonder, now was represented to be an octopus, oppressive, arrogant, holding power of life and death over helpless communities.
And all the time there were men at Washington who whispered into the official ear: “Of course a lot of this outcry is senseless. There are good trusts and bad trusts. Most of them have the economic welfare of the country at heart and are willing to submit to any reasonable regulation. The public is undiscriminating. Its mind becomes fixed on what is bad. It happens to be fixed on this Galt Railroad Trust. Well, as to that, we must say there is reason for the public’s prejudice. You would find very few even in Wall Street to defend his methods. The danger is that unless the evils justly complained of are torn away by those who understand how to do it our entire structure will be destroyed in a fit of popular passion.”
Galt was warned of what was going on at Washington; but he was so contemptuous of politics and so sure of his own way that he sneered. Who knew what the law was? It had never been construed. The legality of his acts had been attended to by the most eminent counsel, including a former Attorney General of the United States. What could happento him that wasn’t just as likely to happen to everybody else? He had only done what everyone was doing, only better, more of it, and perhaps to greater profit. If he was vulnerable, then so were all the others who had combined lesser into greater things, and they would have to find a way out together. No wealth would be destroyed. And so he reasoned himself into a state of indifference.
He greatly underestimated the force of public opinion. He knew nothing about it, for it had never touched him really. Mass psychology in Wall Street he understood perfectly. Social and political phenomena he did not comprehend at all.
One day Great Midwestern stock turned suddenly very weak, falling from 220 to 210 in half an hour. He watched it, annoyed and frowning, and sent for Mordecai, who could not explain it. That afternoon news came that the minority stockholders of the Orient & Pacific had brought a suit in equity against the Great Midwestern, alleging that Galt, by arbitrary exercise of the power of a majority stockholder, had reduced the Orient & Pacific to a state of utter subservience, had thereby destroyed its independent and competitive value, and had mulcted it heavily for the benefit of the Great Midwestern’s treasury. This, they represented, was a grievous injury to them as minority stockholders and also contrary to public interest.
That old Orient & Pacific sore had never healed. The bankers who controlled the road by sacred rightfor many years before Galt snatched it out of their hands had all this time ominously retained a minority interest in the property. Galt did intend from the beginning to make the Orient & Pacific wholly subordinate to the Great Midwestern. It was an essential part of his plan. Therefore minority stockholders, in good faith, would have had a proper grievance. But these were not minority stockholders in good faith. They were private bankers, biding their time to take revenge. Galt had been willing at any time to buy them out handsomely; they wouldn’t sell because the minority interest was a weapon which some day they would be able to use against him.
Although the name never appeared in the proceedings, dummies having been put forward to act as complainants in the case, everybody knew that Bullguard & Co. inspired the suit. They were the bankers who owned the minority interest in Orient & Pacific shares. Everybody knew, too, that they bore Galt an implacable enmity. What nobody knew until afterward was that the conspiracy to destroy Galt was organized by Jerome Bullguard himself.
He was a man of tremendous character. His authority in Wall Street was pontifical. Men accepted it as a natural fact. Until the rise of Mordecai & Co., under Galt’s ægis, his house occupied a place of solitary eminence. Its traditions were fixed. Their consequences were astronomical. Bullguard was the house. His partners were insignificant, notactually if you took them as individuals, but relatively, in contrast with him. His imperious will he imposed upon men and events,—upon men by force of a personality that inspired dread and obedience, and upon events by the dynamic quality of his intelligence. His mind seemed to act in an omnipotent manner with no effort whatever. His sanctions and influence pervaded the whole scheme of things, yet he himself was as remote as a Japanese emperor. A good deal of the awe that surrounded him was owing to the fact that he worked invisibly. The hand that shaped the thunderbolts was almost never seen. There was a saying in Wall Street that his name appeared nowhere but over the door of his banking house. In a community where men must be lynx-eyed and seven-sensed, able to see the unseeable and deduce the unknowable, his objects were so elaborately concealed that nobody ever knew for sure what he was doing until it was done, and then it couldn’t be proved, for he would have had perhaps no actual contact with it at any point. There were times when he held the stock market in his two hands, doing with it as he pleased, yet never could anyone say, “He is here,” or “There he is.”
Bullguard’s attitude toward Galt was natural, quite fair and regular according to the law of conquest. Galt was an invader, a financial Attila, who had followed the conqueror’s star to that place at which the issue is joined for all or none. Nothing short of supremacy would satisfy him. Therefore, he shouldfight for it. Did he think the crown might be surrendered peaceably?
Galt perfectly understood this philosophy of combat. He would not have wished it otherwise. Fighting he loved. His fight with Valentine, because it was petty, had been personal in spite of him. His contest with Bullguard was impersonal and epic, a meeting of champions in the heroic sense.
The Orient & Pacific suit was but the opening of a barrage. An important stockholder in the Security Life Insurance Company, which was one of the capital reservoirs Galt had got control of, brought suit to compel him to take back all the Great Midwestern stocks and bonds owned by that institution, on the ground that as a member of its finance committee he had improperly influenced it to invest its funds in securities in which he was interested as a seller. The purpose of this suit was three-fold: firstly, to advertise the fact that he dominated the fiscal policies of the Security Life Insurance Company; secondly, to create the suspicion that his motive in gaining control of institutions in which people kept their savings was to unload his stocks and bonds upon them; thirdly, to cast discredit upon Great Midwestern securities as investments.
It produced an enormous popular sensation. Galt was denounced and caricatured bitterly in the newspapers. One cartoon, with a caption, “The Milkman,” represented the Security Life as a cow eatinghis stocks and bonds and giving down policyholders’ money as milk into his private pail.
Next he was sued on account of some land which, according to the complaint, he had cheapened by withholding railroad facilities, only in order to buy it, whereupon he enhanced its value an hundred times by making it the site of a large railroad development, thereby enriching himself to the extent of several millions. That, like so many other things alleged about him, was both true and untrue.
Ten private suits were brought against him within three months, each one adroitly contrived to disclose in a biased, damaging manner some phase of his complex and universal activities hitherto unknown or unobserved by the public. Each one was preceded by an attack on Great Midwestern stock and by increasingly hostile comment in the press. The cumulative effect was disastrous. Public sentiment became hysterical.
Law suits, as such, never worried Galt. He was continually engaged in litigation and kept a staff of lawyers busy. His way with lawyers was to tell them baldly what he wanted to do and leave it to them to evolve the legal technique of doing it. Then if difficulties followed he would say: “That’s your own bacon. Now cure it.” Only, they were always to fight, never to settle.
But now he became silent and brooding. He pacedhis office for hours together. When spoken to his eyes looked out of a mist. It was necessary to bring his attention to matters requiring decision. He had Mordecai in two or three times a day. They conferred endlessly in low tones and watched the ticker anxiously. So far as I could see he did nothing to support the pride of Great Midwestern stock. I wondered why. Later I knew. At this juncture he was selling it himself. He was selling not only his stock but enormous amounts of his own bonds, thereby converting his wealth into cash. That is to say, he was stripping for the fray.
For three days Great Midwestern stock had been falling in a leaden manner and Wall Street was distraught with a sense of foreboding when one morning the big shell burst. First the news tickers flashed this bulletin:
“The recent extraordinary weakness of Great Midwestern is explained by the rumor that the Government is about to bring suit under the Anti-Trust Act against the Galt Railroad System. There is talk also of criminal proceedings against Mr. Galt.”
“The recent extraordinary weakness of Great Midwestern is explained by the rumor that the Government is about to bring suit under the Anti-Trust Act against the Galt Railroad System. There is talk also of criminal proceedings against Mr. Galt.”
Galt read it with no sign of emotion. Evidently he was expecting it.
Events now were moving rapidly. Half an hour later the news tickers produced a bulletin as follows:
“Washington—It is announced at the Attorney General’s office that the government has filed suit against the Galt Railroad Trust praying for its dissolution on the ground of its being an oppressive conspiracy in restraint of trade....No confirmation of rumors that criminal proceedings will be brought against Henry M. Galt as a person.”
“Washington—It is announced at the Attorney General’s office that the government has filed suit against the Galt Railroad Trust praying for its dissolution on the ground of its being an oppressive conspiracy in restraint of trade....No confirmation of rumors that criminal proceedings will be brought against Henry M. Galt as a person.”
Details followed. They ran for an hour on the news printing machines, to the exclusion of everything else, while at the same time on the quotation tickers the price of Great Midwestern was falling headlong under terrific selling.
The government’s complaint set out the history of the Galt Railway System, discussed at length its unique power for evil, examined a large number of its acts, pronounced adverse judgment upon them, and ended with an impassioned arraignment of Galt as a man who set his will above the law. Wherefore, it prayed the court to find all his work illegal and wicked and to decree that the Galt Railway System be broken up into its component parts, to the end that competition, peace and happiness might be restored on earth.
The outer office was soon in the possession of reporters clamoring to see Galt. He obstinately refused to meet them. They demanded a statement, and while they waited we prepared one as follows:
“No step in the formation of the Great Midwestern Railway System was taken without the approval of eminent counsel. If, as it stands, it is repugnant to the law, as the law shall be construed, then of course it will have to be dissolved. If that comes to pass all those securities in the Great Midwestern’s treasury, representing ownership and control of other properties, will have to be distributed pro rata among Great Midwestern stockholders—either the securities as such or the proceeds of their sale. In either casethe profit will amount to a dividend of not less than $150 a share for Great Midwestern stockholders. That is the extent to which these securities have increased in value since the Great Midwestern bought them.“(Signed) Henry M. Galt.”
“No step in the formation of the Great Midwestern Railway System was taken without the approval of eminent counsel. If, as it stands, it is repugnant to the law, as the law shall be construed, then of course it will have to be dissolved. If that comes to pass all those securities in the Great Midwestern’s treasury, representing ownership and control of other properties, will have to be distributed pro rata among Great Midwestern stockholders—either the securities as such or the proceeds of their sale. In either casethe profit will amount to a dividend of not less than $150 a share for Great Midwestern stockholders. That is the extent to which these securities have increased in value since the Great Midwestern bought them.
“(Signed) Henry M. Galt.”
All of that was obvious, only nobody had thought of it. The statement was received with utter amazement. On the strength of it Great Midwestern stock advanced suddenly ten points.
Now occurred the strangest incident of the chapter. To imagine it you have to remember that public feeling was extremely inflamed. That afternoon a New York Grand Jury indicted Galt under an old forgotten statute making it a crime to circulate false statements calculated to advance or depress the price of shares on the Stock Exchange.
A huge broad-toe came to our office with the warrant. Galt was under arrest. His lawyers were summoned. They communicated with the District Attorney. Couldn’t they appear for Mr. Galt and arrange bail? No. The District Attorney believed in social equality. Mr. Galt would have to appear like any other criminal.
Though it was a very hot afternoon and Galt was tired he insisted that we should walk.
“Do you want to handcuff me?” he asked.
Broad-toe was ashamed and silent.
So we went, Galt and the officer leading,—past the house of Bullguard & Co., up Nassau Street, dodging trucks, bumping people, sometimes in thetraffic way, sometimes on the pavement; to the Criminal Courts Building in City Hall Park, up a winding stairway because Galt would not wait for the elevator, and to the court room where the District Attorney was waiting. There was some delay. The judge could not be found at once.
Galt sat on the extreme edge of a chair, one hand in his trouser’s pocket, the other fiddling with his watch chain, staring at the clock over the judge’s bench as if he had never seen one before. The searing emotions of chagrin and humiliation had not come through. Word of our presence there spread swiftly and the court room began to fill up with reporters and spectators.
The court arrived, adjusting its gown, read the paper that was handed up by the District Attorney, then looked down upon us, asking: “Where is the defendant?”
Galt stood up. The court eyed him curiously until the lawyers began to speak. The District Attorney wanted bail fixed at one million dollars. The court shook its head. Galt’s lawyers asked that he be released on his own recognizance. The court shook its head again. After a long wrangle it was fixed at $100,000, which the lawyers were prepared to provide on the spot.
Getting out was an ordeal. By this time the court room was stuffed with morbid humanity. Reporters surrounded Galt, adhered to him, laid hands upon him to get his attention. He made continually thegesture of brushing away flies from his face. The stairway and corridors were jammed. As we emerged on the street screaming newsboys offered us the evening papers with eight-column headlines: “Galt Indicted”—“Galt Arrested”—“Galt May Go To Jail.” From the steps across the pavement to a cab I had in waiting an open aisle had been broken through the mob by photographers, who had their cameras trained to catch Galt as we passed. He looked straight ahead, walking rapidly, but not in haste.
“Where to?” he asked, as the door of the cab slammed behind us.
“Anywhere first, to get out of this,” I said.
“Let’s go to the club,” he said.
I knew which one he meant. Though he was a member of several clubs he went always to one.
As we entered the big, quiet red lounging room, five bankers, three of whom had been counted among Galt’s supporters, were seated in various postures of ease, their minds absorbed in the evening papers. Galt’s emotions were those of a boy who, having outrun the cops, lands with a whoop in the arms of his gang. He tossed his hat aside and shouted:
“Wh-e-e-e! Wo-o-ow!”
The five bankers looked up, rose as one, and stalked out of the room.
For a minute Galt did not understand what had happened. He saw them rise as he sat down and evidently thought they were coming to him. Whenthey did not arrive he turned his head casually, then with a start he looked all around at the empty space. His eyes had a startled expression when they met mine again and his face was an ashen color. He made as if to ring the bell, hesitated, looked all around once more, and said:
“Well, Coxey, let’s go home.”
I began to fear he might collapse. The strain was telling. At the house a servant admitted us. There was no one else in sight. We went directly to his apartment. He tore off his collar and lay for some time quite still staring straight ahead.
“We are the goat,” he said. “They put it on us, Coxey. That’s all.... They will, eh?... Valentine and his newspaper friends ... those magpies at Washington ... we’ll give them something to set their teeth. Now take down what I’m going to say. Put it in the form of a signed statement to the press. Are you ready?”
He dictated:
“On the evening of July seventeen the question of proceeding against the Great Midwestern Railway System was the occasion of a special Cabinet meeting at the White House. Besides the President and the gentlemen of the Cabinet, several members of the Interstate Commerce Commission were present. The President asked each one for his opinion. The Attorney General spoke for half an hour to this effect ... that the Great Midwestern Railway System was not acombination in restraint of trade, that its methods were not illegal, that it was necessary for the proper development of the country that railroads should combine into great systems, a process that had been going on since the first two railroads were built, and, finally, that a suit for its dissolution, if brought, would be lost in the courts. Others spoke in turn. Then someone said: ‘Where is the Secretary of War. He is a great jurist. What does he think?’ The Secretary of War was asleep in a corner. They roused him. He came into the circle and said, ‘Well, Mr. President, Galt is the —— —— — —— we are after, isn’t he?’ Then the President announced his decision that proceedings should be taken. Thereupon the Attorney General spoke again, saying: ‘Since that is the decision, I will outline the plan of action. First let the Interstate Commerce Commission prepare a brief upon the facts, showing that the Great Midwestern Railway System is a combination in restraint of trade, that its ways are illegal and oppressive and that its existence is inimical to public welfare. Upon this the Attorney General’s office will prepare the legal case.’ That is how a suit for the dissolution of the Great Midwestern Railway System came to be brought. That is how politicians conduct government.”
“On the evening of July seventeen the question of proceeding against the Great Midwestern Railway System was the occasion of a special Cabinet meeting at the White House. Besides the President and the gentlemen of the Cabinet, several members of the Interstate Commerce Commission were present. The President asked each one for his opinion. The Attorney General spoke for half an hour to this effect ... that the Great Midwestern Railway System was not acombination in restraint of trade, that its methods were not illegal, that it was necessary for the proper development of the country that railroads should combine into great systems, a process that had been going on since the first two railroads were built, and, finally, that a suit for its dissolution, if brought, would be lost in the courts. Others spoke in turn. Then someone said: ‘Where is the Secretary of War. He is a great jurist. What does he think?’ The Secretary of War was asleep in a corner. They roused him. He came into the circle and said, ‘Well, Mr. President, Galt is the —— —— — —— we are after, isn’t he?’ Then the President announced his decision that proceedings should be taken. Thereupon the Attorney General spoke again, saying: ‘Since that is the decision, I will outline the plan of action. First let the Interstate Commerce Commission prepare a brief upon the facts, showing that the Great Midwestern Railway System is a combination in restraint of trade, that its ways are illegal and oppressive and that its existence is inimical to public welfare. Upon this the Attorney General’s office will prepare the legal case.’ That is how a suit for the dissolution of the Great Midwestern Railway System came to be brought. That is how politicians conduct government.”
“Have you got all that down? Read it to me.” When I came to the offensive epithet uttered by the Secretary of War I read,—“dash, dash, dash.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“We can’t use the term itself. It’s unprintable,” I said.
“Can’t we?” he said. “But we can. It was applied to me without any dash, dash. Spell it out. Anyhow, it’s history.”
Natalie, who had come in on tip-toe, noiselessly, was standing just inside the door. Galt seemed suddenly to feel her presence. When he looked at her tears started in his eyes and he turned his face away. She rushed to his side, knelt, and put her arms around him. No word was spoken.
I left them, telephoned for the family physician to come and stay in the house, and then acted on an impulse which had been rising in me for an hour. I wished to see Vera.
She was alone in the studio. I had not seen her informally since the cataclysmic evening that wrecked the African image.
“Oh,” she said, looking up. “I thought you might come. Excuse me while I finish this.”
She was writing a note. When she had signed it with a firm hand, and blotted it, she handed it to me to read. It was a very brief note to Lord Porteous, breaking their engagement.
“He won’t accept it,” I said.
“You can be generous,” she replied. “However, it doesn’t matter. I accept it.”
“These things are all untrue that people are saying about your father. It’s a kind of hysteria. The indictment, if that’s what you are thinking of, is preposterous. Nothing will come of it. There will be a sudden reaction in public feeling.”
“I know,” she said. “That isn’t all.... I suppose you have come to take me home?”
“But what else?” I asked.
She shook her head. As we were leaving the studio she paused on the threshold to look back. I was watching her face. It expressed a premonition of farewell. Once before I had seen that look. When? Ah, yes. That night long ago when she told me the old house had been mortgaged. Then I understood.
To her, and indeed to all the family, this crisis in Galt’s affairs meant another smash. The only difference between this time and others was that they would fall from a greater height, and probably for the last time.
We drove home in a taxi.
“How I loathe it!” she whispered as we were going in, saying it to herself.
Natalie appeared.
“You’re in for it,” she said to me. “Father wants to know who brought the doctor in.”
“I was worried about him,” I said.
“So is the doctor. But it’s no use. He can’t do a thing. Father sent him away in a hurry.”
Gram’ma Galt came in for dinner. So we were five. Galt did not come down. Conversation was oblique and thin. One wondered what the servants were thinking, and wished the service were not so noiseless. If only they would rattle the plates, or break something, or sneeze, instead of moving aboutwith that oiled and faultless precision. The tinkling of water in the fountain room was a silly, exasperating sound, and for minutes together the only sound there was. Mrs. Galt was off her form. She tried and failed. Nobody else tried at all.
Natalie, as I believed, was the only one whose thoughts were outside of herself. Several times our eyes met in a lucid, sympathetic manner. This had not happened between us before. What we understood was that both of us were thinking of the same object,—of a frail, ill kept little figure with ragged hair and a mist in its eyes, wounded by the destiny that controlled it,—of Galt lying in his clothes on a bed upstairs, and nothing to be done for his ease or comfort. She was grateful to me that my thoughts were with him, and when I was not looking at her I was thinking how different these four women were. Yet one indefinable thing they had all in common. It brought and held them together in any crisis affecting Galt. It was not devotion, not loyalty, not faith. Perhaps it was an inborn fatalistic clan spirit. But whatever it was, I knew that each of them would surrender to him again, if need were, the whole of all she possessed. They were expecting to do it.
“What is the price of Great Midwestern stock to-day?” asked Gram’ma Galt in a firm, clear voice. Everybody started a little, even one of the servants who happened to stand in the line of my vision.
“One hundred and seventy,” I said.
To those of us who had just seen it fall in a fewweeks from two-hundred-and-twenty this price of one-hundred-and-seventy seemed calamitous. That shows how soon we lose the true perspective and how myopically we regard the nearest contrast.
“When my son took charge of it eight years ago it was one-and-a-half ... one-and-a-half,” said Gram’ma Galt in the same clear voice.
For this I rose and saluted her with a kiss on the forehead. She didn’t mind. Natalie gave me a splendid look. Then I excused myself and went to see Galt.
The door of his apartment was ajar. I could see him. He was in his pajamas now, apparently asleep. So I closed the door and sat at his desk in the work room outside to call up Mordecai, who had asked me to communicate with him, and attend to some other matters. Presently the hall door opened and closed gently. I looked around. It was Gram’ma Galt. In her hand she carried a large envelope tied around with a blue ribbon. She walked straight to the door of Galt’s apartment and went in without knocking. I could see her from where I sat. She left the door open behind her.
“What’s this?” Galt asked, as she put the envelope on the bed beside him. She did not answer his question, but leaned over, laid one hand on his forehead and spoke in this delphic manner:
“Fast ye for strife and smite with the fist of wickedness.”
Then she turned, came straight out, closed thedoor carefully, passed me without a glance, and was gone. Never again did I wonder whence Galt derived his thirst for combat. When he emerged some ten minutes later the mist had fallen from his eyes. The right doctor had been there. He handed me the envelope tied around with blue ribbon.
“That’s Gram’ma Galt’s little fortune ... everything she has received out of Great Midwestern. Keep it in the safe for a few days so she will think we needed it.... Did you give out that statement?”
“Not yet. There is plenty of time,” I said.
“Tear it up. That isn’t the way we fight, ... is it?”
Gram’ma Galt never got her envelope back. Two weeks later she died.
The Galt panic was one of those episodes that can never be fully explained. Elemental forces were loose. Those that derived from human passion were answerable to the will; there were others of a visitant nature fortuitous and uncontrollable. What man cannot control he may sometimes conduct. You cannot command the lightning, but if it is about to strike you may lure it here instead of there.
Weather is so often the accomplice of dark enterprise! The financial weather at this time was very bad and favored the Bullguard conspiracy. Confidence, which in this case means the expectation ofprofit, was in decline. It had never recovered from the shock of that first accident to greed’s cauldron three months before when an ignorant popular mania for speculation came all at once to grief. Since then the rise of feeling against trusts, and the certainty that it would be translated into political action, had filled Wall Street with confusion and alarm.
Bullguard’s part was to focus all this distrust and fear upon Galt. Each day the papers reported the weakness of Galt securities, how they fell under the selling of uneasy holders, and what the latest and most sinister rumors were. That was news. Nobody could help printing it. The financial editors each day repeated what eminent bankers said: “We pray to be delivered from this Jonah. His ways are not our ways, yet he bringeth wrath upon all alike.” That was true. They said it; they even believed it. The financial editors could not be blamed for writing it.
So many winds running their feet together, like people in a mob, create a storm; and when it is over and they are themselves again, sane little winds, they wonder at what was done. The Wall Street news tickers reported that certain banks were refusing to lend money on Galt securities. This may have been a stroke of the conspiracy or merely a reaction to the prevailing fear, or both interacting. One never knows. But it was true, and Great Midwestern securities suffered another frightful fall.
This went on for three weeks with scarcely aninterruption. Day after day Galt stood at the ticker watching Great Midwestern fall,—
to 150,
to 140,
to 130,
to 120, and did nothing. For the first time in his life he was on the defensive. That made the strain much worse. His normal relief was in action. He loved to carry the fight to the enemy, even rashly; but foolhardy he was not. He had foreseen that at the crucial moment he should stand alone against the field. Nobody believed he could win. The odds were too great. Therefore he could rely only upon himself.
One by one, by twos and threes, then by groups, his supporters fell away. Those who had submitted to his rule from fear were the first to go over to the other side, surreptitiously at first, lest they should have guessed wrong, then openly as they saw how the fight seemed to be going against him. Several bankers publicly renounced their relations with him. Others whose allegiance was for profit only, whose gains were wet with the sweat of their pride, forsook him as fast as they were convinced that his career as a money maker was at an end. Potter was one of these, and the last to go. He did it handsomely according to his way. One day he came in.
“Galt,” he said, “I know you are in a hell of a fix and I have done not one damn thing to help. I’m not that kind of person. I hate to quit a man introuble. So I’ve come to tell you why. There are two reasons. One reason is I’ve got so much of this Great Midwestern stuff that it’s all I can do to take care of myself. I didn’t get out in time, and now I can’t get out at all.... The other reason is ... well, I’ll say it ... why not?... You have trampled on my pride until I have no liking for you left. You’re the most hateful man I ever did business with. That’s why.”
The impulse to come and have it out in this manner was big-man-like, I thought, even though the root was self-justification. No one else had done so much. All the others had gone slinking away. If Galt had responded differently a real friendship might have blazed there, for instinctively they liked and admired each other. Their antagonism was not essential. And, besides, the real reason, as we afterward knew, was the one he gave first. Potter, with all his wealth, was himself in a tight place. Bullguard was pressing the oil crowd, too.
“That’s understood,” said Galt, in his worst manner. “I didn’t buy your pride. I only rented it. Now you’ve got it back, look it over, see how much it’s damaged, and send me a bill.”
Potter went out roaring oaths.
A change was taking place in Galt. I saw it in sudden, unexpected glimpses. The movements of his body were slower. Anger and irritation no longer found outlet in tantrums, but in sneering, terrible sarcasms, uttered in a cold voice. He lookedwithout seeing and spoke as from a great distance, high up. His mind, when he revealed it, was the same as ever. Nothing had happened to his mind. His soul lived in torment. His greatest sin had been to hold public opinion in contempt. Now it was paying him back. To have deserved the opprobrium and suspicion with which he was overwhelmed would perhaps have killed him then; but to suffer disgrace undeservedly was in one way worse. He reacted by suspecting those who suspected him, and some who didn’t. I believe at one time he almost suspected Mordecai, whose loyalty never for one moment wavered.
However, Mordecai knew, as no one else did, that Galt was still in a very strong position. He had not begun to strike. Thanks to the intuition which moved him at the onset to convert two thirds of his fortune into cash he could, when the moment came, strike hard.
Now came the day of days,—the time when Bullguard did his utmost. Fastenings gave way. Walls rocked. Strong men lost their rational faculties and retained only the power of primitive vocal utterance. The sounds that issued from the Stock Exchange were appalling. The ear would think a demented menagerie was devouring itself. Thousands of small craft disappeared that day and left no trace.
Great Midwestern, spilling out on the tape in five and ten-thousand share blocks, fell twenty points in two hours. Galt was in his office at the ticker.Mordecai was with him, holding his hands reverently together, gazing at the tape in a state of fascination. On one headlong impulse Great Midwestern touched one hundred dollars a share,—par! It had fallen from two-hundred-and-twenty in three months.
“It’s over,” said Galt, turning away. I once saw a great prizefighter, on giving the knock-out blow at the end of a hard battle, turn his back with the same gesture and walk to his own corner.
“Vhat iss id you zay?” asked Mordecai, following.
“It’s over,” Galt repeated. “They haven’t got me and they can’t go any further without breaking themselves. Get your house on the wire. That’s the direct telephone ... that one. I want to give an order.”
Mordecai picked up the telephone and asked for one of his partners, who instantly responded.
“Vhat iss ze order?” asked Mordecai, holding the telephone and looking at Galt.
“Buy all the Great Midwestern there is for sale up to one-hundred-and-f-i-f-t-y!” said Galt.
Mordecai transmitted this extraordinary order, put the telephone down softly, and lisped, “My Gott!”
Just then the door burst open. Thirty or forty reporters had been waiting in the outer office all day. Their excitement at last broke bounds; they simply came in. The Evening Post man was at their head.
“Mr. Galt,” he shouted, “you have got to make some kind of statement. Public opinion demands it.”
I expected Galt to explode with rage.
“Postey,” he said, “I don’t know a damn thing about public opinion. That’s your trade. Tell me something about it.”
“It wants to know what all this means,” said Postey.
“Well, tell it this for me,” said Galt. “Tell it just as I tell you. The panic is over.”
“But, Mr.—”
“Now, that’s all,” said Galt. “Ain’t it enough?”
I had been to look at the tape.
“Great Midwestern is a hundred and thirty,” I announced at large.
The reporters stared at me wide-eyed.
Postey ran to look for himself, bumping Mordecai aside.
“That’s right,” he said, making swiftly for the door. The others followed him in a trampling rush.
The sensation now to be accounted for was not the weakness but the sudden recovery of Great Midwestern and Galt’s statement explained it. So they were anxious to spread their news.
It was true. Galt had timed his stroke unerringly.
Everyone was amazed to see how little Great Midwestern stock was actually for sale when a buying hand appeared. That was because so much of the selling had been fictitious. The stock closed that day at one-hundred-and-fifty and never while Galt livedwas it so low again. The feet of many winds ran rapidly apart and the storm collapsed.
That evening, for the first time in many weeks, Galt had dinner with the family.
We do not see each other change and grow old as a continuous process. It is imperceptible that way. But as one looks at a tree that has been in one’s eye all the time and says with surprise, “Why, the leaves have turned!” so suddenly we look at a person we have seen every day and say, “How he has changed!” some association of place or act causing a vivid recollection to arise in contrast.
We had all seen Galt coming and going. I had been with him constantly. Yet now as he sat there at table we remembered him only as he was the last time before this at dinner, making a scene because there was never anything he liked to eat and the cook put cheese in the potatoes. The difference was distressing. He was old and world-weary. He ate sparingly, complained of nothing and was so absent that when anyone spoke to him he started and must have the words repeated.
Natalie alone succeeded in drawing his interest. She had spent the day at Moonstool. This name had been provisionally bestowed upon the country place, because it happened to be the local name of the mountain, and then became permanent in default of agreement on any other.
Work there had been progressing rapidly. The house itself was finished; the principal apartments were ready to be occupied. The surroundings of course were in confusion. Steam drills were going all the time. Roadways were blasting through solid rock. The landscape was in turmoil.
“But you could live there now,” said Natalie, “if you didn’t mind the noise,” closing a long recital, to which Galt had listened thoughtfully.
“We might have the wedding there,” he said.
His suggestion produced a ghastly silence. Mrs. Galt tried to turn it away. Galt was alert.
“What have I stepped on now?” he wanted to know. “Suffering Moses! It ain’t safe for me to walk around in my own house. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Natalie.
“Yes, there is. What is it?”
When he couldn’t be put off any longer Vera said, quietly: “My engagement to Lord Porteous is broken.”
“Why?” asked Galt, astonished. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“No matter why,” said Vera. “Let’s not talk about it.”
He looked into their faces severally. His expression was utterly wretched and they avoided it. He guessed the reason why,—made it perhaps even worse than it was.
In his own household he was on the defensive. There was always that inaudible accusation he couldnever get hold of. In the old days it was that he stretched them on the rack of insecurity and was not like other men. Then it was the way he had made them rich. Now it was that dreadful sense of insecurity again. They did not know whether they were rich or poor. They thought he was heading for a last spectacular smash-up. And suppose he had told them there was happily no danger of that. Their thoughts would accuse him still. Why couldn’t they be rich as other people were, decently, quietly and in good taste? The Valentines were rich and no obloquy pursued them. Their privacy was not besieged by newspaper reporters. The finger of scorn never pointed at them.
Vera’s broken engagement was a harrowing symbol. Galt was extremely miserable. One could imagine what he was thinking. The Galt fortune was saved. The Galt power had survived. But the Galt name was a sound of reproach. The public opinion that had so devastated his spirit did not leave his family unwhipped. These women had suffered for being his. Though they might not believe the things that were said of him, still they could not help feeling ashamed of the wealth he had brought them. They were defenseless. He was clothed with a sense of justification that he could not impart. They were naked to the scourge.
His day of victory ended in gloom and dumb wretchedness.
Then with one swift intention the sun broke through,—and there were the heights!... directly in front of him. The rest of the way was enchanted. All its difficulties were illusions. They vanished as he approached.
His Wall Street enemies were scattered in the night. It was as he had said. They had been unable to destroy him and they did not dare carry the fight any further for fear of involving themselves in ruin. His amazing counter stroke, delivered at the very moment when their utmost effort had failed, threw them into a panic. It took the stock market out of their hands and turned it squarely against them. The conspiracy was not abandoned. It collapsed. After that it was every man for himself, with the fear of Galt in his heart.
The penitential procession started early the next day. Those who had deserted him returned with gestures of humility, begging to be chastised and forgiven. The vanquished sat patiently in his outer office, bearing tokens of amity and proposals ofalliance. For he was Galt, the one, unique and indestructible.
He treated the spectacle as it deserved, cynically, with a saving salt of humor.
“They make their beds fast,” he said.
Among the first to come was one of Bullguard’s partners,—a peasant-minded, ingratiating person whose use to Bullguard was his ability to face the devil smirk for smirk. His errand was to say that Bullguard & Co. would entertain any reasonable offer for the purchase of their minority interest in Orient & Pacific shares, and if they could be of service to Mr. Galt at any time, why, etc., he had only to oblige them by letting them know how. Galt was cool as to the services, etc., but he made an offer for the minority Orient & Pacific shares which was accepted a few hours later. That was Bullguard’s way of declaring war at an end. It was the grand salute.
Horace Potter was the only man who never came back. He could not sneak back and there was no other way. They had mortally wounded each other’s pride.
Meanwhile Congress, like the old woman of the story book, heavy-footed, slow to be amazed, always late but nevernever, heard of Galt, became much alarmed and solemnly resolved to investigate him. He was summoned to appear before a Committeeof the House with all his papers and books. The Committee felt incompetent to conduct the examination. Finance is a language politicians must not know. It is not the language of the people. So it engaged counsel,—a notorious lawyer named Samuel Goldfuss.
He was a man who knew all the dim and secret pathways of the law, and charged Wall Street clients enormous fees for leading them past the spirit to the letter. He charged them more when he caught them alone in the dark, or lost in the hands of a bungling guide, for then he could threaten to expose them to the light if they declined to accept his saving services at his own price. Having got very rich by this profession he put his money beyond reach of the predacious and became public spirited, or pretended to have done so, and proceeded to sell out Satan to the righteous. It became his avocation to plead the cause of people against mammon, and where or whensoever a malefactor of great wealth was haled to court or brought to appear before a committee of Congress, Goldfuss thrust himself in to act as prosecuting attorney, with or without fees; and his name was dread to any such, for he knew their devious ways and all the wickedness that had ever been practiced in or about the Stock Exchange. His motives were never quite understood. Some said he attended to Satan’s business still, never sold him out completely, but put the hounds on the wrong scent by some subtle turn at the end. Others said hismotive was to terrorize the great malefactors so that when they were in trouble he could extort big fees simply for undertaking not to appear on the people’s side.
And this sinister embodiment of public opinion was the man whom Galt was to face, who had never before faced public opinion in any manner at all. It was likely to be a stiff ordeal. Counsel warned him accordingly.
“I’ve got a straight story to tell,” he said. “I don’t need any help.”
However, they insisted on standing by. We arrived in Washington one hot August morning, left all our eminent counsel in their favorite hotel, and went empty handed to the Capitol, where neither of us had been before. We wandered about for half an hour, trying to find the place where the Committee sat. It was a special Committee with no room of its own. We were directed at last to the Rivers and Harbors Committee room. It was full of smoke, electric fans and men in attitudes of waiting. Six, looking very significant, sat around a long table covered with green cloth. Others to the number of thirty or forty sat on chairs against the walls. At a smaller table were the reporters with reams of paper in front of them.
“Is this the Committee that wants to see Henry M. Galt?” he asked, standing on the threshold.
“It is,” said the man at the head of the table. He was the chairman. He sat with one leg over thearm of his chair, his back to the door, and did not turn or so much as move a hair. He spoke in that loud, disembodied voice which makes the people’s business seem so impressive to the multitude and glared at us through the back of his head.
“I am that person,” said Galt.
“You have delayed us a quarter of an hour,” said the chairman, still with his back to us.
“You were hard to find,” said Galt, very simply, looking about for a place to sit. A chair was placed for him at the opposite end of the table. There was no place for me, so I stood a little aside. Goldfuss, whom I had never seen and had not yet identified, sat beside the chairman. They had their heads together, whispering. The chairman spoke.
“The question is raised as to whether witness may be permitted to appear with counsel. It is decided in the negative. Counsel will be excused.”
Silence. Nothing happened.
“Counsel will be excused,” said the chairman again.
Still nothing happened.
“If you are talking at me,” said Galt, “I have no counsel. I didn’t bring any,—that is, I left them at the hotel.”
“Who is the gentleman with you?” the chairman asked.
“Oh,” said Galt, looking at me. “That’s all right. He’s my secretary. He doesn’t know any more law than I do.”
There was a formal pause. The official stenographer leaned toward Galt, speaking quietly, and took his name, age, address and occupation. The chairman said, “Proceed.”
Goldfuss poised himself for theatrical effect. He was a small, body-conscious man with a coarse, loose skin, very close shaven, powdered, sagging at the jowls; a tiny wire mustache, unblinking blue eyes close together and a voice like the sound of a file in the teeth of a rusty saw.
“So this is the great Galt,” he said, sardonically, slowly bobbing his head.
“And you,” said Galt, “are the Samuel Goldfuss who once tried to blackmail me for a million dollars.”
Oh, famous beginning! The crowd was tense with delight.
Goldfuss, looking aggrieved and disgusted, turned to the chairman, saying: “Will the Committee admonish the witness?”
The chairman took his leg down, carefully relighted a people’s cigar, and said: “Strike that off the record.... I will inform the witness that this is a Committee of Congress, with power to punish contumacious and disrespectful conduct.... The witness is warned to answer questions without any irrelevant remarks of his own.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Galt. “What was the question?”
The official stenographer read from his notes,—“So this is the great Galt.”
“That ain’t a question,” said Galt.
The round was his. The audience tittered. The chairman put his leg back and glared wearily into space.
“I withdraw it,” said Goldfuss. “Start the record new from here.... Mr. Galt, you were directed to produce before this Committee all your books and papers. Have you brought them?”
“No.”
“No? Why not, please?”
“They would fill this whole room,” said Galt.
Mr. Goldfuss started again.
“Your occupation, Mr. Galt,—you said it was what?”
“Farmer,” said Galt.
“Yes? What do you farm?”
“The country,” said Galt.
“Do you consider that a nice expression?”
“Nicest I know, depending on how you take it,” said Galt.
“Well, now tell this Committee, please, how you farm the country, using your own expression.”
“I fertilize it,” said Galt. “I sow and reap, improve the soil and keep adding new machinery and buildings.”
“What do you fertilize it with, Mr. Galt?”
“Money.”
“What do you sow, Mr. Galt?”
“More money.”
“And what do you reap?”
“Profit.”
“A great deal of that?”
“Plenty,” said Galt.
“And what do you do with the profit, Mr. Galt?”
“Sow it again.”
“A lovely parable, Mr. Galt. Is it not true, however, that you are also a speculator?”
“Yes, that’s true,” said Galt.
“To put it plainly, is it not true that you are a gambler?”
“That’s part of my trade,” said Galt. “Every farmer is a gambler. He gambles in weather, worms, bugs, acts of Congress and the price of his produce.”
“You gamble in securities, Mr. Galt?”
“Yes.”
“In the securities of the railroad properties you control?”
“Heavily,” said Galt.
“If, for example, you are going to increase the dividend on Great Midwestern stock you first go into the market and buy it for a rise,—buy it before either the public or the other stockholders know that you are going to increase the dividend?”
“That’s the case,” said Galt.
“As a matter of fact, you did some time ago increase the dividend on Great Midwestern from four to eight per cent., and the stock had a big rise for that reason. Tell this Committee, please, when andhow and at what prices you bought the stock in anticipation of that event?”
“In anticipation of that eight per cent. dividend,” said Galt reminiscently, “I began to buy Great Midwestern stock ... let me see ... nine years ago at ten dollars a share. It went down, and I bought it at five dollars a share, at two dollars, at a dollar-and-a-half. The road went into the hands of a receiver, and I stuck to it. I bought it all the way up again, at fifteen dollars a share, at fifty dollars, at a hundred-and-fifty, and I’m buying still.”
Goldfuss was bored. He seemed to be saying to the audience: “Well, so much for fun. Now we get down to the hard stuff.” He took time to think, stirred about in his papers and produced a certain document.
“Mr. Galt, I show you a certified list of the investments of the Security Life Insurance Company. You are a director of that institution, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“You used some of your farming profits to buy a large interest in the Security Life Insurance Company?”
“Yes.”
“You are chairman of its finance committee?”
“Yes.”
“In fact, Mr. Galt, you control the investments of the Security Life. You recommend what securities the policy holders’ money shall be investedin and your suggestions are acted upon. Is that true?”
“Something like that,” said Galt.
“Now, Mr. Galt, look at this certified statement, please. The investments amount to more than four hundred millions. I call your attention to the fact that nearly one quarter of that enormous total consists of what are known as Galt securities, that is, the stocks and bonds of railroad companies controlled by Henry M. Galt. Is that correct?”
“Substantially,” said Galt.
“Did you, as chairman of the finance committee of the Security Life, recommend the purchase of those securities?”
“Yes.”
“And at the same time, as head of the Great Midwestern railway system, you were interested in selling those securities, were you not?”
“We need a great deal of capital,” said Galt. “We are selling new securities all the time. We sell all we can and wish we could sell more. There is always more work to do than we can find the money for.”
“So, Mr. Galt, it comes to this: As head of a great railroad system you create securities which you are anxious to sell. In that rôle you are a seller. Then as chairman of the finance committee of the Security Life Insurance Company, acting as trustee for the policy holders, you are a buyer of securities. In that position of trust, with power tosay how the policy holders’ money shall be invested, you recommend the purchase of securities in which you are interested as a seller. Is that true?”
“I don’t like the way you put it, but let it stand,” said Galt.
“How can you justify that, Mr. Galt? Is it right, do you think, that a trustee should buy with one hand what he sells with the other?”
Galt leaned over, beating the table slowly with his fist.
“I justify it this way,” he said. “I know all about the securities of the Great Midwestern. I don’t know of anything better for the Security Life to put its money into. If you can tell me of anything better I will advise the finance committee at its next meeting to sell all of its Great Midwestern stuff and buy that, whatever it is. I’ll do more. If you can tell me of anything better I will sell all of my own Great Midwestern stocks and bonds and buy that instead. I have my own money in Great Midwestern. There’s another Galt you left out. As head of a great railway system I am a seller of securities to investors all over the world. That is how we find the capital to build our things. But as an individual I am a buyer of those same securities. I sell to everybody with one hand and buy for myself all that I can with the other hand. Do you see the point? I buy them because I know what they are worth. I recommend them to the Security Life because Iknow what they are worth. That is how I justify it, sir.”
Enough of that. Goldfuss had meant to go from the Security Life to each of the other financial institutions controlled by Galt, meaning to show how he had been unloading Galt securities upon them. But what was the use? What could he do with an answer like that? He passed instead to the Orient & Pacific matter. Galt admitted that he had used the power of majority stockholder to make the property subservient to the Great Midwestern because that was the efficient thing to do.
“And that, you think, is a fair way to treat minority stockholders?” Goldfuss asked.
“We were willing at any time to buy them out at the market price,” said Galt. “However, that’s now an academic matter. The Great Midwestern has acquired all that minority interest in Orient & Pacific.”
This was news. There was a stir at the reporters’ table. Several rose and went out to telegraph Galt’s statement to Wall Street, where nobody yet knew how Bullguard & Co. had made peace with him.
So they went from one thing to another. They came to that notorious land transaction on account of which he had been sued.
“We needed that land for an important piece of railroad development,” said Galt. “Some land traders got wind of our plans, formed a syndicate, bought up all the ground around, and then tried tomake us buy it through the nose. We simply sat tight until they went broke. Then we took it off their hands. There was more than the Great Midwestern needed because they were hogs. The Great Midwestern took what it wanted and I took the rest. The directors knew all about it.”
“And it was very profitable to you personally, this outcome?”
“Incidentally it was,” said Galt. “Somebody would get it. It fell into my hands. What would you have done?”
“Strike that off the record,—‘What would you have done?’” said Goldfuss. “Counsel is not being examined.”
After lunch he took a new line.
“Mr. Galt,” he asked, “what are you worth?”
“I don’t know,” said Galt.
“You don’t know how rich you are?”
“No.”
Goldfuss lay back in his chair with an exaggerated air of astonishment.
“But you will admit you are very rich?” he said, having recovered slowly.
“Yes,” said Galt. “I suppose I am.”
“Well, as briefly as possible, will you tell this Committee how you made it?”
“Now you’ve asked me something,” said Galt, leaning forward again. “I’ll tell you. I made it buying things nobody else wanted. I bought Great Midwestern when it was bankrupt and peoplethought no railroad was worth its weight as junk. When I took charge of the property I bought equipment when it was cheap because nobody else wanted it and the equipment makers were hungry, and rails and ties and materials and labor to improve the road with, until everybody thought I was crazy. When the business came we had a railroad to handle it. I’ve done that same thing with every property I have taken up. No railroad I’ve ever touched has depreciated in value. I’m doing it still. You may know there has been an upset in Wall Street recently, a panic in fact. Everybody is uneasy and business is worried because a financial disturbance has always been followed by commercial depression. There are signs of that already. But we’ll stop it. In the next twelve months the Great Midwestern properties will spend five hundred million dollars for double tracking, grade reductions, new equipment and larger terminals.”
This was news. Again there was a stir at the reporters’ table as several rose to go out and flash Galt’s statement to Wall Street.
“Mr. Galt,” said Goldfuss, “do you realize what it means for one man to say he will spend five hundred millions in a year? That is half the national debt.”
“I know exactly what it means,” said Galt. “It means for once a Wall Street panic won’t be followed by unemployment and industrial depression. Our orders for materials and labor now going out willstart everything up again at full speed. Others will act on our example. You’ll see.”
“You will draw upon the financial institutions you control, the Security Life and others, for a good deal of that money,—the five hundred millions?”
“You get the idea,” said Galt. “That’s what financial institutions are for. There’s no better use for their money.”
“You have great power, Mr. Galt.”
“Some,” he said.
“If it goes on increasing at this rate you will soon be the economic dictator of the country.”
No answer.
“I say you will be the economic dictator of the whole country.”
“I heard you say it,” said Galt. “It ain’t a question.”
“But do you think it desirable that one man should have so much power,—that one man should run the country?”
“Somebody ought to run it,” said Galt.
“Is it your ambition to run it?”
“It is my idea,” said Galt, “that the financial institutions of the country,—I mean the insurance companies and the banks,—instead of lending themselves out of funds in times of high prosperity ought then to build up great reserves of capital to be loaned out in hard times. That would keep people from going crazy with prosperity at one time and committing suicide at another time. But they won’t do itby themselves. Somebody has to see to it,—somebody who knows not only how not to spend money when everybody is wild to buy, but how to spend it courageously when there is a surplus of things that nobody else wants. Every financial institution that I have anything to do with will be governed by that idea, and the Great Midwestern properties, while I run them, will decrease their capital expenditures as prices rise and increase them as prices fall. When we show them the whole trick and how it pays everybody will do it. We won’t have any more depressions and Coxey’s armies. We won’t have any more unemployment. In a country like this unemployment is economic lunacy.”