_ CHAPTER XXIII. The "Dutchman's Mill" and What It Ground
We sat in conclave about the table. I saw by the lined faces of Elkins and Hinckley that I had come back to a closely-beleaguered camp, where heavy watching had robbed the couch of sleep, and care pressed down the spirit. I had returned successful, but not to receive a triumph: rather, Harper and myself constituted a relief force, thrown in by stratagem, too weak to raise the siege, but bearing glad tidings of strong succor on the way.
It was our first full meeting without Cornish; and Harper sat in his place. He was unruffled and buoyant in manner, in spite of the stock in the Grain Belt Trust Company which he held, and the loans placed with his insurance company by Mr. Hinckley.
"I believe," said he, "that we are here to consider a communication from Mr. Cornish. It seems that we ought to hear the letter."
"I'll read it in a minute," said Jim, "but first let me say that this grows out of a talk between Mr. Cornish and myself. Hinckley and Barslow know that there have been differences between us here for some time."
"Quite natural," said Harper; "according to all the experience-tables, you ought to have had a fight somewhere in the crowd long before this."
"Mr. Cornish," went on Mr. Elkins, "has favored the policy of converting our holdings into cash, and letting the obligations we have floated stand solely on the assets by which they are secured. The rest of us have foreseen such rapid liquidation, as a certain result of such a policy, that not only would our town receive a blow from which it could never recover, but the investment world would suffer in the collapse."
"I should say so," said Harper; "we'll have to look closely to the suicide clause in our policies held in New England, if that takes place!"
"Well," said Jim, continuing, "last Tuesday the matter came to an issue between us, and some plain talk was indulged in; perhaps the language was a little strong on my part, and Mr. Cornish considered himself aggrieved, and said, among other things, that he, for one, would not submit to extinguishment, and he would show me that I could not go on in opposition to his wishes."
"What did you say to that?" asked Hinckley.
"I informed him," said Jim, "that I was from Missouri, or words to that effect; and that my own impression was, the majority of the stock in our concerns would control. My present view is that he's showing me."
A ghost of a smile went round at this, and Jim began reading Cornish's letter.
"Events of the recent past convince me," the secessionist had written, "that no good can come from the further continuance of our syndicate. I therefore propose to sell all my interest in our various properties to the other members, and to retire. Should you care to consider such a thing, I am prepared to make you an alternative offer, to buy your interests. As the purchase of three shares by one is a heavier load than the taking over of one share by three, I should expect to buy at a lower proportional price than I should be willing to sell for. As the management of our enterprises seems to have abandoned the tried principles of business, for some considerations the precise nature of which I am not acute enough to discern, and as a sale to me would balk the very benevolent purposes recently avowed by you, I assume that I shall not be called upon to make an offer.
"There is at least one person among those to whom this is addressed who knows that in beginning our operations in Lattimore it was understood that we should so manage affairs as to promote and take advantage of a bulge in values, and then pull out with a profit. Just what may be his policy when this reaches him I cannot, after my experience with his ability as a lightning change artist, venture to predict; but my last information leads me to believe that he is championing the utopian plan of running the business, not only past the bulge, but into the slump. I, for one, will not permit my fortune to be jeopardized by so palpable a piece of perfidy.
"I may be allowed to add that I am prepared to take such measures as may seem to my legal advisers best to protect my interests. I am assured that the funds of one corporation will not be permitted by the courts to be donated to the bolstering up of another, over the protest of a minority stockholder. You may confidently assume that this advice will be tested to the utmost before the acts now threatened are permitted to be actually done.
"I attach hereto a schedule of our holdings, with the amount of my interest in each, and the price I will take. I trust that I may have an answer to this at your earliest convenience. I beg to add that any great delay in answering will be taken by me as a refusal on your part to do anything, and I shall act accordingly.
"Very respectfully,
"J. Bedford Cornish."
"Huh!" ejaculated Harper, "would he do it, d'ye think?"
"He's a very resolute man," said Hinckley.
"He calculates," said Jim, "that if he begins operations, he can have receiverships and things of that kind in his interest, and in that way swipe the salvage. On the other hand, he must know that his loss would be proportioned to ours, and would be great. He's sore, and that counts for something. I figure that the chances are seven out of ten that he'll do it--and that's too strong a game for us to go up against."
"What would be the worst that could happen if he began proceedings?" said I.
"The worst," answered Jim laconically. "I don't say, you know," he went on after a pause, "that Cornish hasn't some reason for his position. From a cur's standpoint he's entirely right. We didn't anticipate the big way in which things have worked out here, nor how deep our roots would strike; and we did intend to cash in when the wave came. And a cur can't understand our position in the light of these developments. He can't see that in view of the number of people sucked down with her when a great ship like ours sinks, nobody but a murderer would needlessly see her wrecked. What he proposes is to scuttle her. Sell to him! I'd as soon sell Vassar College to Brigham Young!"
This tragic humorousness had the double effect of showing us the dilemma, and taking the edge off the horror of it.
"If it were my case," said Harper, "I'd call him. I don't believe he'll smash things; but you fellows know each other best, and I'm here to give what aid and comfort I can, and not to direct. I accept your judgment as to the danger. Now let's do business. I've got to get back to Chicago by the next train, and I want to go feeling that my stock in the Grain Belt Trust Company is an asset and not a liability. Let's do business."
"As for going back on the next train," said Mr. Elkins, "you've got another guess coming: this one was wrong. As for doing business, the first thing in my opinion is to examine the items of this bill of larceny, and see about scaling them down."
"We might be able," said I, "to turn over properties instead of cash, for some of it."
Elkins appointed Harper and Hinckley to do the negotiating with Cornish. It was clear, he said, that neither he nor I was the proper person to act. They soon went out on their mission and left me with Jim.
"Do you see what a snowfall we've had?" he asked. "It fell deeper and deeper, until I thought it would never stop. No such sleighing for years. And funny as it may seem, it was that that brought on this crisis. Josie and I went sleighing, and the hound was furious. Next time we met he started this business going."
I was studying the schedule, and said nothing. After a while he began talking again, in a slow manner, as if the words came lagging behind a labored train of thought.
"Remember the mill the Dutchman had?... Ground salt, and nothing but salt ... Ours won't grind anything but mortgages ... Well, the hair of the dog must cure the bite ... Fight fire with fire ...
Similia similibus curantur ... We can't trade horses, nor methods, in the middle of the ford.... The mill has got to go on grinding mortgages until we're carried over; and Hinckley and the Grain Belt Trust must float 'em. Of course the infernal mill ground salt until it sent the whole shooting-match to the bottom of the sea; but you mustn't be misled by analogies. The Dutchman hadn't any good old Al to lose telegrams in an absent-minded way where they would do the most good, and sell railroads to old man Pendleton ... As for us, it's the time-worn case of electing between the old sheep and the lamb. We'll take the adult mutton, and go the whole hog ... And if we lose, the tail'll have to go with the hide.... But we won't lose, Al, we won't lose. There isn't treason enough in all the storehouses of hell to balk or defeat us. It's a question of courage and resolution and confidence, and imparting all those feelings to every one else. There isn't malice enough, even if it were a whole pack, instead of one lone hyena, to put out the fires in those furnaces over there, or stop the wheels in that flume, or make our streets grow grass. The things we've built are going to stay built, and the word of Lattimore will stand!"
"My hand on that!" said I.
* * * * *
There was little in the way of higgling: for Cornish proudly refused much to discuss matters; and when we found what we must pay to prevent the explosion, it sickened us. Jim strongly urged upon Harper the taking of Cornish's shares.
"No," said Harper, "the Frugality and Indemnity is too good a thing to drop; and I can't carry both. But if you can show me how, within a short time, you can pay it back, I'll find you the cash you lack."
We could not wait for the two millions from Pendleton; and the interim must be bridged over by any desperate means. We took, for the moment only, the funds advanced through Harper; and Cornish took his price.
The day after Harper went away we were busy all day long, drawing notes and mortgages. Every unincumbered piece of our property, the orts, dregs, and offcast of our operations, were made the subjects of transfers to the rag-tag and bobtail of Lattimore society. A lot worth little or nothing was conveyed to Tom, Dick, or Harry for a great nominal price, and a mortgage for from two-thirds to three-fourths of the sum given back by this straw-man purchaser. Our mill was grinding mortgages.
I do not expect that any one will say that this course was justified or justifiable; but, if anything can excuse it, the terrible difficulty of our position ought to be considered in mitigation, if not excuse. Pressed upon from without, and wounded by blows dealt in the dark from within; with dreadful failure threatening, and with brilliant success, and the averting of wide-spread calamity as the reward of only a little delay, we used the only expedient at hand, and fought the battle through. We were caught in the mighty swirl of a modern business maelstrom, and, with unreasoning reflexes, clutched at man or log indifferently, as we felt the waters rising over us; and broadcast all over the East were sown the slips of paper ground out by our mill, through the spout of the Grain Belt Trust Company; and wherever they fell they were seized upon by the banks, which had through years of experience learned to look upon our notes and bonds as good.
"Past the bulge," quoted Jim, "and into the slump! We'll see what the whelp says when he finds that, in spite of all his attempts to scuttle, there isn't going to be any slump!"
By which observation it will appear that, as our operations began to bring in returns in almost their old abundance, our courage rose. At the very last, some bank failures in New York, and a bad day on 'Change in Chicago, cut off the stream, and we had to ask Harper to carry over a part of the Frugality and Indemnity loan until we could settle with Pendleton; but this was a small matter running into only five figures.
Perhaps it was because we saw only a part of the situation that our courage rose. We saw things at Lattimore with vivid clearness. But we failed to see that like centers of stress were sprinkled all over the map, from ocean to ocean; that in the mountains of the South were the Lattimores of iron, steel, coal, and the winter-resort boom; and in the central valleys were other Lattimores like ours; that among the peaks and canyons further west were the Lattimores of mines; that along the Pacific were the Lattimores of harbors and deep-water terminals; that every one of these Lattimores had in the East and in Europe its clientage of Barr-Smiths, Wickershams, and Dorrs, feeding the flames of the fever with other people's money; and that in every village and factory, town and city, where wealth had piled up, seeking investment, were the "captives below decks," who, in the complex machinery of this end-of-the-century life, were made or marred by the same influences which made or marred us.
The low area had swept across the seas, and now rested on us. The clouds were charged with the thunder and lightning of disaster. Almost any accidental disturbance might precipitate a crash. Had we known all this, as we now know it, the consciousness of the tragical race we were running to reach the harbor of a consummated sale to Pendleton might have paralyzed our efforts. Sometimes one may cross in the dark, on narrow footing, a chasm the abyss of which, if seen, would dizzily draw one down to destruction. _