The Deluge. David Graham Phillips
better.”
“No doubt you're right,” agreed the white-haired old scoundrel, giving no sign that I had fathomed his motive for trying to “hint” me out of my stronghold. “I will talk the matter over with Langdon and Melville. Rest assured, my boy, that you will be satisfied.” He got up, put his arm affectionately round my shoulders. “We all like you. I have a feeling toward you as if you were my own son. I am getting old, and I like to see young men about me, growing up to assume the responsibilities of the Lord's work whenever He shall call me to my reward.”
It will seem incredible that a man of my shrewdness and experience could be taken in by such slimy stuff as that—I who knew Roebuck as only a few insiders knew him, I who had seen him at work, as devoid of heart as an empty spider in an empty web. Yet I was taken in to the extent that I thought he really purposed to recognize my services, to yield to the only persuasion that could affect him—force. I fancied he was actually about to put me where I could be of the highest usefulness to him and his associates, as well as to myself. As if an old man ever yielded power or permitted another to gain power, even though it were to his own great advantage. The avarice of age is not open to reason.
It was with tears in my eyes that I shook hands with him, thanking him emotionally. It was with a high chin and a proud heart that I went back to my offices. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that I was about to get my deserts, was about to enter the charmed circle of “high finance.”
That small and exclusive circle, into which I was seeing myself admitted without the usual arduous and unequal battle, was what may be called the industrial ring—a loose, yet tight, combine of about a dozen men who controlled in one way or another practically all the industries of the country. They had no formal agreements; they held no official meetings. They did not look upon themselves as an association. They often quarreled among themselves, waged bitter wars upon each other over divisions of power or plunder. But, in the broad sense, in the true sense, they were an association—a band united by a common interest, to control finance, commerce and therefore politics; a band united by a common purpose, to keep that control in as few hands as possible. Whenever there was sign of peril from without they flung away differences, pooled resources, marched in full force to put down the insurrection. For they looked on any attempt to interfere with them as a mutiny, as an outbreak of anarchy. This band persisted, but membership in it changed, changed rapidly. Now, one would be beaten to death and despoiled by a clique of fellows; again, weak or rash ones would be cut off in strenuous battle. Often, most often, some too-powerful or too-arrogant member would be secretly and stealthily assassinated by a jealous associate or by a committee of internal safety. Of course, I do not mean literally assassinated, but assassinated, cut off, destroyed, in the sense that a man whose whole life is wealth and power is dead when wealth and power are taken from him.
Actual assassination, the crime of murder—these “gentlemen” rarely did anything which their lawyers did not advise them was legal or could be made legal by bribery of one kind or another. Rarely, I say—not never. You will see presently why I make that qualification.
I had my heart set upon membership in this band—and, as I confess now with shame, my prejudices of self-interest had blinded me into regarding it and its members as great and useful and honorable “captains of industry.” Honorable in the main; for, not even my prejudice could blind me to the almost hair-raising atrocity of some of their doings. Still, morality is largely a question of environment. I had been bred in that environment. Even the atrocities I excused on the ground that he who goes forth to war must be prepared to do and to tolerate many acts the church would have to strain a point to bless. What was Columbus but a marauder, a buccaneer? Was not Drake, in law and in fact, a pirate; Washington a traitor to his soldier's oath of allegiance to King George? I had much to learn, and to unlearn. I was to find out that whenever a Roebuck puts his arm round you, it is invariably to get within your guard and nearer your fifth rib. I was to trace the ugliest deformities of that conscience of his, hidden away down inside him like a dwarfed, starved prisoner in an underground dungeon. I was to be astounded by revelations of Langdon, who was not a believer, like Roebuck, and so was not under the restraint of the feeling that he must keep some sort of conscience ledgers against the inspection of the angelic auditing committee in the day of wrath.
Much to learn—and to unlearn. It makes me laugh as I recall how, on that May day, I looked into the first mirror I was alone with, smiled delighted, as an idiot with myself and said: “Matt, you are of the kings now. Your crown suits you and, as you've earned it, you know how to keep it. Now for some fun with your subjects and your fellow sovereigns.”
A little premature, that preening!
III. CAME A WOMAN
In my suite in the Textile Building, just off the big main room with its blackboards and tickers, I had a small office in which I spent a good deal of time during Stock Exchange hours. It was there that Sam Ellersly found me the next day but one after my talk with Roebuck.
“I want you to sell that Steel Common, Matt,” said he.
“It'll go several points higher,” said I. “Better let me hold it and use my judgment on selling.”
“I need money—right away,” was his answer.
“That's all right,” said I. “Let me give you an order for what you need.”
“Thank you, thank you,” said he, so promptly that I knew I had done what he had been hoping for, probably counting on.
I give this incident to show what our relations were. He was a young fellow of good family, to whom I had taken a liking. He was a lazy dog, and as out of place in business as a cat in a choir. I had been keeping him going for four years at that time, by giving him tips on stocks and protecting him against loss. This purely out of good nature and liking; for I hadn't the remotest idea he could ever be of use to me beyond helping to liven things up at a dinner or late supper, or down in the country, or on the yacht. In fact, his principal use to me was that he knew how to “beat the box” well enough to shake fairly good music out of it—and I am so fond of music that I can fill in with my imagination when the performer isn't too bad.
They have charged that I deliberately ruined him. Ruined! The first time I gave him a tip—and that was the second or third time I ever saw him—he burst into tears and said: “You've saved my life, Blacklock. I'll never tell you how much this windfall means to me now.” Nor did I with deep and dark design keep him along on the ragged edge. He kept himself there. How could I build up such a man with his hundred ways of wasting money, including throwing it away on his own opinions of stocks—for he would gamble on his own account in the bucket-shops, though I had shown him that the Wall Street game is played always with marked cards, and that the only hope of winning is to get the confidence of the card-markers, unless you are big enough to become a card-marker yourself.
As soon as he got the money from my teller that day, he was rushing away. I followed him to the door—that part of my suite opened out on the sidewalk, for the convenience of my crowds of customers. “I'm just going to lunch,” said I. “Come with me.”
He looked uneasily toward a smart little one-horse brougham at the curb. “Sorry—but I can't,” said he. “I've my sister with me. She brought me down in her trap.”
“That's all right,” said I; “bring her along. We'll go to the Savarin.” And I locked his arm in mine and started toward the brougham.
He was turning all kinds of colors, and was acting in a way that puzzled me—then. Despite all my years in New York I was ignorant of the elaborate social distinctions that had grown up in its Fifth Avenue quarter. I knew, of course, that there was a fashionable society and that some of the most conspicuous of those in it seemed unable to get used to the idea of being rich and were in a state of great agitation over their own importance. Important they might be, but not to me. I knew nothing of their careful gradations of snobbism—the