WEBVTT NOTE II. The Funk Idol 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Chapter 2. The Funk Idol 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:13.000 1. Where is 130 Broadway? I asked the hotel porter the next morning. 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:20.000 130 Broadway? That's in Wall Street, he said. Take the elevated downtown and get off at Rector Street. 4 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:26.000 That was literal. Broadway is in Wall Street, as may be explained. 5 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:44.000 Wall Street proper, street with a small s, is a thoroughfare. Wall Street, in another way of speaking, street with a big s, is a district, the money district, eight blocks deep by three blocks wide by anything from five to thirty stories high. 6 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:50.440 It is bounded on the north by jewelry, on the northeast by leather, on the east by sugar 7 00:00:50.440 --> 00:00:56.440 and coffee, on the south by cotton, on the southwest by shipping, and on the west by 8 00:00:56.440 --> 00:01:01.440 Greek lace, ship chandeliery, and Trinity churchyard. 9 00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:03.300 It grew that way. 10 00:01:03.300 --> 00:01:08.600 The Wall Street station of the elevated railroad is at Rector Street, and Rector Street is 11 00:01:08.600 --> 00:01:14.160 is a hand-wide thoroughfare running uphill to Broadway under the south wall of Trinity 12 00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:15.800 Graveyard. 13 00:01:15.800 --> 00:01:21.600 When you are halfway up, you begin to see over the top of the wall, rising to it gradually, 14 00:01:21.600 --> 00:01:27.280 and the first two things you see are the tombstones of Robert Fulton and Alexander Hamilton. 15 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:30.280 A few steps more, and you are in Broadway. 16 00:01:30.280 --> 00:01:33.000 Rector Street ends there. 17 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:38.040 Trinity Church is on the west side of Broadway, 30 paces to your left. 18 00:01:38.040 --> 00:01:42.560 Standing with your back to Trinity Church door, you look straight down Wall Street with 19 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:50.080 a little S. All of this is Wall Street with a big S. You are in the midst of it. 20 00:01:50.080 --> 00:01:55.160 If it is nine-thirty or a quarter to ten, you may see here and there in the preoccupied 21 00:01:55.160 --> 00:02:02.440 throng groups of three bearing wealth. In each case, two men with a box carried between 22 00:02:02.440 --> 00:02:09.440 The Theory of Money and Credit 23 00:02:32.440 --> 00:02:34.400 safely to and fro. 24 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:40.080 Banditry, that is to say, taking by force, is here unknown. 25 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:42.860 There is a legend to account for this fact. 26 00:02:42.860 --> 00:02:48.080 It is that the police keep a dead line around the money district, which thieves dare not 27 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:49.640 cross. 28 00:02:49.640 --> 00:02:54.920 Every crook in the world is supposed to know and respect the sacred taboo. 29 00:02:54.920 --> 00:02:57.260 It may be so, more or less. 30 00:02:57.260 --> 00:02:59.520 One need not believe it whole. 31 00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:03.720 A much more probable explanation is what any highwayman knows. 32 00:03:03.720 --> 00:03:09.760 He might make off with a dozen of those strong boxes and then be no richer than he was before. 33 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:15.920 They contain no money at all, but stocks and bonds, numbered and registered, which represent 34 00:03:15.920 --> 00:03:20.240 wealth reduced to an impalpable theft-proof form. 35 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:25.280 A railroad may lie in one of those boxes, but if you ran away with the box, you would 36 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:48.760 I walked a little way into Wall Street, somewhat in awe of it, almost expecting to be noticed 37 00:03:48.760 --> 00:03:51.360 and challenged for trespassing. 38 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:56.600 The atmosphere was strange and inhospitable, and the language unknown. 39 00:03:56.600 --> 00:04:01.840 Two men were quarreling excitedly, one standing on the edge of the sidewalk, the other down 40 00:04:01.840 --> 00:04:03.480 on the pavement. 41 00:04:03.480 --> 00:04:07.680 One seemed to be denouncing the government for letting the country go bankrupt. 42 00:04:07.680 --> 00:04:14.400 It is busted, he shrieked, the United States Treasury is busted. 43 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:20.040 The other at the same time spoke of the color, the shape, the bowels and religion of men 44 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:49.560 Incessantly from within a great red brick building came a sound of booing, cavernous and despairing. 45 00:04:49.560 --> 00:04:54.540 This place was the stock exchange, and the noise was that which brokers and speculators 46 00:04:54.540 --> 00:04:57.600 make when prices are falling. 47 00:04:57.600 --> 00:05:02.800 A few steps further down the street, a dray stood backed against the curb, receiving over 48 00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:06.640 its tailboard some kind of very heavy freight. 49 00:05:06.640 --> 00:05:12.360 Icklheimer and Company, bullion and foreign exchange, was the legend on the window, and 50 00:05:12.360 --> 00:05:18.480 what the men were bringing forth and loading on the dray was pure silver, in pigs so large 51 00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:41.440 Number 130 Broadway was an office building. 52 00:05:41.440 --> 00:05:47.800 The executive offices of the Great Midwestern Railroad occupied the entire sixth floor. 53 00:05:47.800 --> 00:05:53.800 Room 607, small and dim, without windows, was the general entrance where people asked 54 00:05:53.800 --> 00:05:55.560 and waited. 55 00:05:55.560 --> 00:05:58.900 High-backed wooden benches stood against the walls. 56 00:05:58.900 --> 00:06:04.540 The doors opening out of it were ground glass from the waist up, lettered in black. 57 00:06:04.540 --> 00:06:11.200 The one to the left was lettered President, the one straight ahead, Vice President, Secretary, 58 00:06:11.200 --> 00:06:14.480 and the one to the right, Private. 59 00:06:14.480 --> 00:06:19.900 In one corner of this room, at a very tiny desk, sat a boy reading a book. 60 00:06:19.900 --> 00:06:24.400 He was just turning a page and couldn't look up until he had carried over, but he held 61 00:06:24.400 --> 00:06:29.520 out his hand with a pencil and a small writing pad together, meaning that I should write 62 00:06:29.520 --> 00:06:33.280 my name, whom I wish to see, and why. 63 00:06:33.280 --> 00:06:37.280 I gave it back to him with my name, and nothing more. 64 00:06:37.280 --> 00:06:41.820 Your business, please, he said, holding it out to me again. 65 00:06:41.820 --> 00:06:46.840 I let it to him tactfully that my business was private. If necessary, I could explain 66 00:06:46.840 --> 00:06:51.700 it to the president's secretary. Might I see his secretary first? 67 00:06:51.700 --> 00:06:58.700 The boy put down his book and eyed me steadily. He left this morning. The president? His secretary? 68 00:06:58.700 --> 00:07:01.540 Suddenly, perhaps, I said. 69 00:07:01.540 --> 00:07:05.580 He slowly nodded his head several times, still gazing at me. 70 00:07:05.580 --> 00:07:10.340 How long have you been here? I asked. Two weeks. Do you care for it? 71 00:07:11.340 --> 00:07:17.580 Instead of answering, he got up, took the name I had written on the pad, and disappeared through the door to the left. 72 00:07:18.460 --> 00:07:22.340 Almost at once, he stood holding it open and beckoned me to enter. 73 00:07:23.420 --> 00:07:30.820 First was a small anti-space, probably called his office by the private secretary who had gone suddenly away. 74 00:07:30.820 --> 00:07:38.820 It was furnished with letter filing cases, two chairs and a typewriter desk standing open and littered with papers. 75 00:07:38.820 --> 00:07:44.820 The president's room immediately beyond was large and lighted by windows, but desolate. 76 00:07:44.820 --> 00:07:52.820 The rug was shabby, the walls were hung with maps and railroad scenes in photograph, their frames askew. 77 00:07:52.820 --> 00:07:56.820 At one side against the wall was a long oak table. 78 00:07:56.820 --> 00:08:03.060 On it were ink and writing materials, also some books and periodicals. 79 00:08:03.060 --> 00:08:08.060 On the other side of the room, a very large man sat writing at a small, old-fashioned 80 00:08:08.060 --> 00:08:14.620 walnut desk with a green-covered floor that pulled out and a solid curved top that opened 81 00:08:14.620 --> 00:08:18.320 up or closed down with a rotary motion. 82 00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:21.220 That kind of furniture was even then out of style. 83 00:08:21.220 --> 00:08:22.780 It is now extinct. 84 00:08:22.780 --> 00:08:26.520 It was too ugly to survive in the antique shops. 85 00:08:26.520 --> 00:08:31.440 He went on writing for a minute or two, then turned slowly, looked me through, and put 86 00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:32.920 out his hand. 87 00:08:32.920 --> 00:08:36.960 I'm preparing a speech on your subject, he said. 88 00:08:36.960 --> 00:08:37.960 Coxeism? 89 00:08:37.960 --> 00:08:38.960 Yes. 90 00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:42.080 Your reports were excellent, very good indeed. 91 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:46.480 As he said this, he turned to search for something on his desk. 92 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:51.840 It is an odd sensation to meet a notorious person at close range for the first time, 93 00:08:51.840 --> 00:08:56.460 especially one who has been much caricatured in the newspapers. 94 00:08:56.460 --> 00:09:01.860 There is an imaginary man to be got rid of surreptitiously before the real one can be 95 00:09:01.860 --> 00:09:03.660 accepted. 96 00:09:03.660 --> 00:09:09.100 One feels somehow embarrassed while this act is taking place, with an impulse to apologize 97 00:09:09.100 --> 00:09:15.580 for the human fact of its being so much easier on hearsay to believe ill than good of a fellow 98 00:09:15.580 --> 00:09:18.920 being whom you do not know. 99 00:09:18.920 --> 00:09:23.180 This John J. Valentine was a person of much figure in the country. 100 00:09:23.180 --> 00:09:28.800 He was the head of a family two generations removed from the uncouth progenitor who founded 101 00:09:28.800 --> 00:09:33.100 its fortune in commerce, real estate and transportation. 102 00:09:33.100 --> 00:09:35.780 Therefore he was an aristocrat. 103 00:09:35.780 --> 00:09:40.020 For many years he had been president of the great Midwestern Railroad. 104 00:09:40.020 --> 00:09:44.900 After his name and the directory of directors was a long list of banks, corporations and 105 00:09:44.900 --> 00:09:46.820 insurance companies. 106 00:09:46.820 --> 00:09:51.520 He made a great many authoritative speeches, which were read in the economics classes of 107 00:09:51.520 --> 00:09:57.320 of the Universities, printed at length in the newspapers and commented upon editorially. 108 00:09:57.320 --> 00:10:01.160 What he said was news because he said it. 109 00:10:01.160 --> 00:10:06.000 He represented an immovable point of view, the chief importance of which lay in the mere 110 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:08.440 fact of its existence. 111 00:10:08.440 --> 00:10:13.520 He spoke courageously and believingly for the vested rights of property. 112 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:19.960 However, he might have been all that he was and yet not a national figure in the popular 113 00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:20.960 sense. 114 00:10:20.960 --> 00:10:26.000 For the essential element of contemporary greatness, he was indebted to the fact that his features 115 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:29.800 gave themselves remarkably to caricature. 116 00:10:29.800 --> 00:10:32.760 The newspaper cartoonists did the rest. 117 00:10:32.760 --> 00:10:38.260 They had fixed him in the public's mind as the symbol of railroad capital. 118 00:10:38.260 --> 00:10:42.420 There was in him or about him an alarming contradiction. 119 00:10:42.420 --> 00:10:46.540 The explanation was too obvious to be comprehended all at once. 120 00:10:46.540 --> 00:10:52.980 It was this, that his ponderable characteristics were massive, overt, and rude, such as one 121 00:10:52.980 --> 00:10:57.000 would not associate with a notable gentleness of manner. 122 00:10:57.000 --> 00:11:02.600 And yet, his manner was gentle, to the point of delicacy, and he seemed remarkably to possess 123 00:11:02.600 --> 00:11:05.020 the gift of natural politeness. 124 00:11:05.020 --> 00:11:08.740 Physically, he was enormous in all proportions. 125 00:11:08.740 --> 00:11:14.740 The head was tall, and the forehead overhanging gave the profile a concave form. 126 00:11:14.740 --> 00:11:19.360 He had a roaring, windy voice, made husky by long restraint. 127 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:25.460 It issued powerfully from a cave partly concealed by a dense, fibrous mustache. 128 00:11:25.460 --> 00:11:30.740 Oh, here they are, he said, producing my reports. 129 00:11:30.740 --> 00:11:36.180 Turning them sheet by sheet, he questioned me at length, desiring me to be most explicit 130 00:11:36.180 --> 00:11:41.020 in my recollections as to the reactions of people to coxiaism. 131 00:11:41.020 --> 00:11:45.180 His knowledge of the country through which we had passed was surprising. 132 00:11:45.180 --> 00:11:50.620 When we were at the end, I said, I have talked with all sorts of people besides, people in 133 00:11:50.620 --> 00:11:54.220 Washington, on my way to New York, and here also. 134 00:11:54.220 --> 00:11:56.900 Nobody seems to know what is wrong. 135 00:11:56.900 --> 00:12:01.740 Some say it's the tariff, others say it's something that has been done to money. 136 00:12:01.740 --> 00:12:05.100 Nearly everyone blames Wall Street, more or less. 137 00:12:05.100 --> 00:12:06.620 What is the matter? 138 00:12:06.620 --> 00:12:10.260 Why is labor unemployed? 139 00:12:10.260 --> 00:12:16.700 He passed his hand over his face, then leaned forward in his chair and spoke slowly. 140 00:12:16.700 --> 00:12:18.880 Why the seven-year locusts? 141 00:12:18.880 --> 00:12:21.540 Why do men have seasons of madness? 142 00:12:21.540 --> 00:12:23.980 Who knows? 143 00:12:23.980 --> 00:12:30.480 After a pause, his thoughts absorbing him, he continued in a tone of soliloquy. 144 00:12:30.480 --> 00:12:32.680 The country was bewitched. 145 00:12:32.680 --> 00:12:39.000 The conglomerate American mind was foolishly persuaded to a variety of wistful and unverified 146 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:46.440 Economic Notions, that was to say, heresies, about such important matters as money, capital, 147 00:12:46.440 --> 00:12:48.520 prices, debts. 148 00:12:48.520 --> 00:12:53.560 People were minding things they knew nothing about, and could never settle, and were neglecting 149 00:12:53.560 --> 00:12:56.100 meanwhile to be industrious. 150 00:12:56.100 --> 00:12:58.440 This had happened before in the world. 151 00:12:58.440 --> 00:13:03.680 In the Middle Ages, Europe might have advanced, with consequences in this day not easily to 152 00:13:03.680 --> 00:13:09.800 to be imagined, but for the time and the energy of mind and body which were utterly wasted 153 00:13:09.800 --> 00:13:15.100 in quest of holy grails and dialectical forms of truth. 154 00:13:15.100 --> 00:13:21.120 So now in this magnificent new world, the resources of which were unlimited, human progress 155 00:13:21.120 --> 00:13:28.460 had been arrested by silly utopians who distracted the mind with thoughts of unattainable things. 156 00:13:28.460 --> 00:13:30.080 Take the railroads. 157 00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:35.400 With already the cheapest railroad transportation in the world, people were clamoring for it 158 00:13:35.400 --> 00:13:37.660 to be made cheaper. 159 00:13:37.660 --> 00:13:42.880 Crazy populists were telling the farmers it ought to be free, like the air. 160 00:13:42.880 --> 00:13:47.680 Prejudice against railroads was amazing, irrational and suicidal. 161 00:13:47.680 --> 00:13:52.240 All profit in railroading had been taxed and regulated away. 162 00:13:52.240 --> 00:13:55.680 Incentive to build new roads had been destroyed. 163 00:13:55.680 --> 00:14:01.720 If by a special design of the Lord a railroad did seem to prosper, the politicians pounced 164 00:14:01.720 --> 00:14:07.420 upon it and either molted it secretly or held it forth to the public as a monster that must 165 00:14:07.420 --> 00:14:10.920 be chained up with restrictive laws. 166 00:14:10.920 --> 00:14:14.440 Sometimes they practiced both these arts at once. 167 00:14:14.440 --> 00:14:15.440 Result? 168 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:19.280 The nation's transportation arteries were strangling. 169 00:14:19.280 --> 00:14:24.480 No extension of the arterial system for an increasing population was possible under these 170 00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:25.920 conditions. 171 00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:27.620 What would the sequel be? 172 00:14:27.620 --> 00:14:34.240 Rome, for all her sins, might have endured if only she had developed means of communication, 173 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:37.140 namely roads, in an adequate manner. 174 00:14:37.140 --> 00:14:39.660 It was obvious, and nobody saw it. 175 00:14:39.660 --> 00:14:44.940 Well, now he was trying to save people from a repetition of that blunder. 176 00:14:44.940 --> 00:14:50.620 He was trying to make them see, in time, that unless they allowed the railroads to prosper, 177 00:14:50.620 --> 00:14:54.580 The Great American Experiment was doomed. 178 00:14:54.580 --> 00:15:00.140 I could not help thinking, people prophesy against Wall Street and Wall Street prophesies 179 00:15:00.140 --> 00:15:02.380 against the people. 180 00:15:02.380 --> 00:15:06.940 I was surprised that he gave me so much time until it occurred to me that he was thinking 181 00:15:06.940 --> 00:15:10.740 out loud, still working on his speech. 182 00:15:10.740 --> 00:15:15.700 He wished me to take my reports, which were merely field notes, and pull them into form 183 00:15:15.700 --> 00:15:18.220 as an article on coxiaism. 184 00:15:18.220 --> 00:15:22.900 He would procure publication of it in one of the monthly reviews, perhaps, under his 185 00:15:22.900 --> 00:15:28.140 name if I didn't mind, and he could adopt it whole or under my own. 186 00:15:28.140 --> 00:15:29.820 It didn't matter which. 187 00:15:29.820 --> 00:15:34.280 An unhappy incident has just occurred in my office, he said. 188 00:15:34.280 --> 00:15:37.740 My private secretary had to be sent away suddenly. 189 00:15:37.740 --> 00:15:41.820 You might work in his room out there if it's comfortable. 190 00:15:41.820 --> 00:15:46.680 I sat down to the task at once in the ante room at the vacant desk. 191 00:16:16.680 --> 00:16:22.320 continued, the president coming and going, leaving me always informed of his movements 192 00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:27.320 and asking me to be so good as to say this or that to persons who should call up on the 193 00:16:27.320 --> 00:16:28.880 telephone. 194 00:16:28.880 --> 00:16:31.660 It took two days to finish the article. 195 00:16:31.660 --> 00:16:36.880 He conceived a liking for my style of writing and asked me to edit and touch up a manuscript 196 00:16:36.880 --> 00:16:39.360 that had been giving him some trouble. 197 00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:44.540 Then it was to go over the proofs of a monograph he had in the printer's hands. 198 00:16:44.540 --> 00:16:49.460 On the fifth day, about four o'clock, I was at work on these proofs, and the President 199 00:16:49.460 --> 00:16:54.340 was in his office alone with the door closed when someone came in from the waiting room 200 00:16:54.340 --> 00:16:55.780 unannounced. 201 00:16:55.780 --> 00:16:57.660 I did not look up. 202 00:16:57.660 --> 00:17:03.220 Whoever it was stood looking at my back, then moved a little to one side to get an angular 203 00:17:03.220 --> 00:17:09.060 view, and a voice I recognized but could not instantly identify addressed me. 204 00:17:09.060 --> 00:17:11.060 Hello, Coxie. 205 00:17:11.060 --> 00:17:14.160 Hello, I said, looking around. 206 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:17.520 It was the irritating man of the ferry boat incident. 207 00:17:17.520 --> 00:17:19.840 He sat down and ogled me offensively. 208 00:17:19.840 --> 00:17:22.840 Are you the new private secretary? 209 00:17:22.840 --> 00:17:25.320 I don't know what I am, I said. 210 00:17:25.320 --> 00:17:29.800 But you're working for Jeremiah, he said, jerking a glance at the proofs. 211 00:17:29.800 --> 00:17:31.960 Oh, toot toot. 212 00:17:31.960 --> 00:17:34.540 He was suddenly amused and shrewd. 213 00:17:34.540 --> 00:17:39.120 You must be the man who sent him those reports on the march of Coxie's army. 214 00:17:39.120 --> 00:17:40.200 That's it. 215 00:17:40.200 --> 00:17:42.040 Very fine reports they were. 216 00:17:42.040 --> 00:17:43.880 Most excellent nonsense. 217 00:17:43.880 --> 00:17:46.800 My name is Galt, Henry M. Galt. 218 00:17:46.800 --> 00:17:51.820 I'm pleased to meet you again, I said, giving him my name in return. 219 00:17:51.820 --> 00:17:54.460 And old Jobber now hasn't hired you yet? 220 00:17:54.460 --> 00:17:57.280 He said, I'll see about it. 221 00:17:57.280 --> 00:18:02.160 With that, he got up abruptly and bolted into the president's office, closing the door behind 222 00:18:02.160 --> 00:18:03.160 him. 223 00:18:03.160 --> 00:18:09.280 I hated him intensely, partly, I suppose, because, unconsciously, I transferred to him 224 00:18:09.280 --> 00:18:14.920 The feeling of humiliation and anger produced in me by that look from the girl who was with 225 00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:16.860 him on the ferry boat. 226 00:18:16.860 --> 00:18:20.000 It all came over me again. 227 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:22.840 Half an hour later, as he was going out, he said, 228 00:18:22.840 --> 00:18:26.760 All right, Coxie, you'll be here for some time. 229 00:18:26.760 --> 00:18:31.640 The last thing the president did that day was to have me in his office for a long, earnest 230 00:18:31.640 --> 00:18:33.000 conversation. 231 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:35.240 He required a private secretary. 232 00:18:35.240 --> 00:18:37.520 Several candidates had failed. 233 00:18:37.520 --> 00:18:40.920 What he needed was not a stenographer or a filing clerk. 234 00:18:40.920 --> 00:18:43.980 That kind of service could be had from the back office. 235 00:18:43.980 --> 00:18:48.960 He needed someone who could assist in a larger way, especially someone who could write as 236 00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:50.220 I could. 237 00:18:50.220 --> 00:18:51.520 He had looked me up. 238 00:18:51.520 --> 00:18:53.960 The recommendations were satisfactory. 239 00:18:53.960 --> 00:18:57.300 He knew the college from which I came and it was sound. 240 00:18:57.300 --> 00:19:00.840 In short, would I take the job at $200 a month? 241 00:19:00.840 --> 00:19:05.800 I must tell you, he said, there is no future in the railroad business, no career for a 242 00:19:05.800 --> 00:19:06.800 young man. 243 00:19:06.800 --> 00:19:11.160 A third of the railway mileage of the country is bankrupt. 244 00:19:11.160 --> 00:19:15.000 God only knows if even this railroad can stand up. 245 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.400 But you will get some valuable experience, and if at any time you wish to go back to 246 00:19:19.400 --> 00:19:23.520 newspaper work, I'll undertake to get you a place in New York no worse than the one 247 00:19:23.520 --> 00:19:25.440 you leave. 248 00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:29.720 I protested that I knew almost nothing of economics and finance. 249 00:19:29.720 --> 00:19:34.040 All the better, he said, you have nothing unsound to get rid of. 250 00:19:34.040 --> 00:19:38.640 I'll teach you by the shortcuts. Two books, if you will read them hard, will give you 251 00:19:38.640 --> 00:19:43.080 the whole groundwork. I accepted. 252 00:19:43.080 --> 00:19:50.500 2. The next morning Mr. Valentine presented me to the company secretary, J. C. Harbinger, 253 00:19:50.500 --> 00:19:53.480 and desired him to introduce me around the shop. 254 00:19:53.480 --> 00:19:59.640 This way, said Harbinger, taking me in hand with an air of deep, impersonal courtesy. 255 00:19:59.640 --> 00:20:04.460 He stepped ahead at each door, opened it, held it, and bowed me through. 256 00:20:04.460 --> 00:20:09.180 His attitude of deference was subtly yet unmistakably exaggerated. 257 00:20:09.180 --> 00:20:14.880 He was a lean, tall, efficient man, full of sudden gestures, who hated his work and did 258 00:20:14.880 --> 00:20:20.260 it well, and sublimated the petty irritation of his position in the free expression of 259 00:20:20.260 --> 00:20:23.120 violent private judgments. 260 00:20:23.120 --> 00:20:25.360 We stopped first in his office. 261 00:20:25.360 --> 00:20:31.480 It was a small room containing two very old desks with swivel chairs, an extra wooden 262 00:20:31.480 --> 00:20:36.880 chair at the end of each desk for visitors, a letter squeeze, and hundreds of box letter 263 00:20:36.880 --> 00:20:42.800 files in tiers to the ceiling, with a stepladder for reaching the top rows. 264 00:20:42.800 --> 00:20:47.900 There was that smell of damp dust which lingers in a place after the floor has been sprinkled 265 00:20:47.900 --> 00:20:48.900 and swept. 266 00:20:48.900 --> 00:20:54.760 That's the Vice President's desk, said Harbinger, indicating the other as he sat down 267 00:21:24.760 --> 00:21:29.680 Working open a drawer he brought forth a small object which I recognized as a dating 268 00:21:29.680 --> 00:21:30.840 device. 269 00:21:30.840 --> 00:21:36.700 He showed me how easily it could be set to stamp any date up to the year 2000. 270 00:21:36.700 --> 00:21:38.440 This was the tenth model. 271 00:21:38.440 --> 00:21:40.600 He had been working on it for years. 272 00:21:40.600 --> 00:21:45.980 It would be perfect now but for the stupidity of the model maker who had omitted an important 273 00:21:45.980 --> 00:21:47.560 detail. 274 00:21:47.560 --> 00:21:50.360 The next problem was how to get it on the market. 275 00:21:50.360 --> 00:21:54.760 He was waiting for estimates on the manufacturer of the first 500. 276 00:21:54.760 --> 00:21:58.280 Perhaps it would be adopted in the offices of the great Midwestern. 277 00:21:58.280 --> 00:21:59.680 That would help. 278 00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:02.580 The President had promised to consider it. 279 00:22:02.580 --> 00:22:06.260 As he talked, he filled a sheet of paper with dates. 280 00:22:06.260 --> 00:22:08.120 Then he handed it to me. 281 00:22:08.120 --> 00:22:12.400 I concealed the fact that it did not impress me wonderfully as an invention. 282 00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:15.620 Also, the sympathetic twinge, I felt. 283 00:22:15.620 --> 00:22:21.320 For one could see that he was counting on this absurd thing to get him out. 284 00:22:21.320 --> 00:22:25.100 It symbolized some secret weakness in his character. 285 00:22:25.100 --> 00:22:28.860 At the same moment, I began to feel depressed with my job. 286 00:22:28.860 --> 00:22:33.980 Well, he said, putting it back and slamming the drawer, there's nothing more to see here. 287 00:22:33.980 --> 00:22:35.660 This way, please. 288 00:22:35.660 --> 00:22:39.820 His official manner was resumed, like a garment. 289 00:22:39.820 --> 00:22:44.240 In the next room, there were two motionless men with their backs to each other, keeping 290 00:22:44.240 --> 00:22:48.400 A Perfunctory Low-Spirited Trist with an Enormous Iron Safe 291 00:22:48.400 --> 00:22:55.360 Our treasurer, John Harrier, said Harbinger, introducing me to the first one, a slight, 292 00:22:55.360 --> 00:23:01.960 shy man, almost bald, with a thick, close-growing moustache darker than his hair. 293 00:23:01.960 --> 00:23:06.840 He removed his glasses, wiped them, and sat looking at us without a word. 294 00:23:06.840 --> 00:23:11.540 There was no business before him, no sign of occupation whatever, and there seemed nothing 295 00:23:11.540 --> 00:23:13.320 to say. 296 00:23:13.320 --> 00:23:19.000 A very hearty lunch, I remarked, hysterically, calling attention to a neat pile of pasteboard 297 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:21.560 boxes on top of the desk. 298 00:23:21.560 --> 00:23:24.520 Each box was stamped in big red letters. 299 00:23:24.520 --> 00:23:27.040 Fresh eggs, one dozen. 300 00:23:27.040 --> 00:23:30.600 He went on wiping his glasses in gloomy silence. 301 00:23:30.600 --> 00:23:35.380 Mr. Harrier lives in New Jersey and keeps a few chickens, said Harbinger. 302 00:23:35.380 --> 00:23:37.180 He lets us have eggs. 303 00:23:37.180 --> 00:23:40.000 If you keep house, are you married, though? 304 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:41.600 No, I said. 305 00:23:41.600 --> 00:23:47.240 The treasurer put on his glasses and was turning his shoulder to us when I extended my hand. 306 00:23:47.240 --> 00:23:50.480 He shook it with unexpected friendliness. 307 00:23:50.480 --> 00:23:56.640 The other man was Fred Minus, the auditor, a very obese and sociable person of the sensitive 308 00:23:56.640 --> 00:24:00.080 type, alert and naïve in his reactions. 309 00:24:00.080 --> 00:24:05.240 Nice fellows, those, when you know them a bit, said Harbinger as we closed the door 310 00:24:05.240 --> 00:24:10.400 behind us and stood for a moment surveying a very large room which might be called the 311 00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:15.240 The Innermost Premises of a Railroad's Executive Organization 312 00:24:15.240 --> 00:24:21.140 There were perhaps twenty clerks, standing or sitting on stools at high desks, not counting 313 00:24:21.140 --> 00:24:27.640 the cashier and two assistants in a wire cage, which contained also a safe. 314 00:24:27.640 --> 00:24:31.000 The bare floor was worn in pathways. 315 00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:34.840 Everything had an air of hallowed age and honorable use. 316 00:24:34.840 --> 00:24:40.980 Even the people, all save one, a magnificent person, who rose and came to meet us. 317 00:24:40.980 --> 00:24:45.200 He was introduced as Ivy Handbow, the chief clerk. 318 00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:51.820 He was under 35, full of rosy health, with an unmarried look, whose only vice at a guess 319 00:24:51.820 --> 00:24:53.440 was clothes. 320 00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:58.440 He wore them with natural art, believing in them, and, though he was conscious of their 321 00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:04.440 effect, one could not help liking him because he insisted upon it so pleasantly. 322 00:25:04.440 --> 00:25:08.400 At the furthest corner of the room was the transfer department. 323 00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:12.920 That is the place where the company's share certificates, after having changed hands on 324 00:25:12.920 --> 00:25:18.080 the stock exchange, come to be transferred from the names of the old to the names of 325 00:25:18.080 --> 00:25:20.280 the new owners. 326 00:25:20.280 --> 00:25:23.800 Five clerks were working here at high pressure. 327 00:25:23.800 --> 00:25:29.640 To my remark that it seemed the busiest spot, I had almost said the only busy spot in the 328 00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:32.640 and the whole organization, Harbinger replied, 329 00:25:32.640 --> 00:25:35.640 Our stock has recently been very active. 330 00:25:35.640 --> 00:25:39.640 With a large list of stockholders, we have more than 10,000. 331 00:25:39.640 --> 00:25:43.640 There is a constant come and go, old stockholders selling out 332 00:25:43.640 --> 00:25:46.640 and new ones taking their places. 333 00:25:46.640 --> 00:25:51.640 Then, all of a sudden, for why, nobody knows, the sellers become numerous, 334 00:25:51.640 --> 00:25:56.640 and in their anxiety to find buyers, they unfortunately attract speculators 335 00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:26.540 He began to show me the routine. We took at random a certificate for 1,000 shares that had just come in and followed it through several hands to the clerk whose task it was to cancel it and make out another certificate in the new owner's name. 336 00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:34.640 At this point Harbinger saw something that caused him to stop, forget what he was saying, and utter a grunt of surprise. 337 00:26:34.640 --> 00:26:42.640 I could not help seeing that what had caught his attention was the name that unwound itself from the transfer clerk's pen. 338 00:26:42.640 --> 00:26:48.640 Harbinger regarded it thoughtfully until it disappeared from view, overlaid by others. 339 00:26:48.640 --> 00:26:54.920 and when he became aware again of me it was to say well we've been to the end of 340 00:26:54.920 --> 00:27:00.400 the shop there's nothing more to see. The name that had arrested his attention 341 00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:09.040 was Henry M. Galt. 3. At lunchtime Harbinger asked me to go out with him. On 342 00:27:09.040 --> 00:27:14.520 our way we overtook the treasurer and auditor who joined us without words. We 343 00:27:14.520 --> 00:27:23.360 We were a strange party of four, tall discontent, bald gloom, lonely obesity and middling innocence. 344 00:27:23.360 --> 00:27:28.960 Two and two we walked down Broadway to the top of Wall Street, turned into it, and almost 345 00:27:28.960 --> 00:27:34.240 immediately turned out of it again into New Street, a narrow little thoroughfare which 346 00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:37.760 serves the stock exchange as a back alley. 347 00:27:37.760 --> 00:27:44.360 The air was distressed with that frightful destructive booing which attends falling prices. 348 00:27:44.360 --> 00:27:49.000 It seemed to issue not only from the windows and doors of the great red building, but from 349 00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:52.520 all its crevices and through the pores of the bricks. 350 00:27:52.520 --> 00:27:57.640 They are whaling us in there today, said Harbinger over his shoulder. 351 00:27:57.640 --> 00:28:00.160 Nine, said John Harrier. 352 00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:05.060 It was the first word I had heard him utter, and it surprised me that the sound was definite 353 00:28:05.060 --> 00:28:06.860 and positive. 354 00:28:06.860 --> 00:28:10.680 Are you talking about great Midwestern railroad stock, I asked? 355 00:28:10.680 --> 00:28:12.320 Yes, said Harbinger. 356 00:28:12.320 --> 00:28:17.840 John says it sold at nine this morning. That is the lowest price in all the company's history. 357 00:28:18.480 --> 00:28:23.440 Every few days there's a rumor on the stock exchange that we are busted, as so many other 358 00:28:23.440 --> 00:28:29.920 railroads are. And then the speculators, as I told you, create so much uproar and confusion 359 00:28:29.920 --> 00:28:35.120 that no legitimate buyer can find a legitimate seller. But all must do business with the 360 00:28:35.120 --> 00:28:41.280 speculator, who plays upon their emotions in the primitive manner by means of terrifying sounds 361 00:28:41.280 --> 00:28:43.280 and Horrible Grimaces. 362 00:28:43.280 --> 00:28:44.280 Hear him. 363 00:28:44.280 --> 00:28:47.660 He has also a strange power of simulation. 364 00:28:47.660 --> 00:28:53.300 He adds to the fears of the seller when the seller is already fearful, and to the anxieties 365 00:28:53.300 --> 00:28:59.000 of the buyer when the buyer is already impatient, making one to part with his stock for less 366 00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:04.120 than its worth and the other to pay for it more than he should. 367 00:29:04.120 --> 00:29:05.920 Eating was at Robin's. 368 00:29:05.920 --> 00:29:11.200 The advantage of being four was that we could occupy either a whole table against the wall 369 00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:46.200 Nobody ever goes down there, said Harbinger, seeing that I noticed the drift of traffic. 370 00:29:46.200 --> 00:29:49.420 It's gloomy, and the food isn't so good. 371 00:29:49.420 --> 00:29:54.600 The food all came from one kitchen, as you could see, but as for its being more cheerful 372 00:29:54.600 --> 00:30:01.120 here than in the lower room, that was obviously true because of the brilliantly lighted bar. 373 00:30:01.120 --> 00:30:06.340 And cheerfulness was something our party could stand a great deal of, I was thinking. 374 00:30:06.340 --> 00:30:10.160 Harbinger had left himself in a temper and was now silent. 375 00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:16.560 and the other two were lumpish. Presently we got a stall and sat there in torpid seclusion. 376 00:30:16.560 --> 00:30:21.940 The enormous surrounding clatter of chairs, feet, doors, china ware and voices touched 377 00:30:21.940 --> 00:30:28.440 us not at all. We were as remote as if we existed in another dimension. Lunch was procured 378 00:30:28.440 --> 00:30:34.480 without one unnecessary vocal sound. Not only was there no conversation among us, there 379 00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:38.600 There was no feeling or intuition of thought taking place. 380 00:30:38.600 --> 00:30:43.120 I was obliged to believe either that I was a dead weight upon them, or that it was their 381 00:30:43.120 --> 00:30:46.580 habit to make an odious rite of lunch. 382 00:30:46.580 --> 00:30:51.080 In one case I couldn't help it, in the other I shouldn't have been asked. 383 00:30:51.080 --> 00:30:55.800 In either case a little civility might have saved the taste of the food. 384 00:30:55.800 --> 00:31:00.920 When there is no possibility of making matters worse than they are, one becomes reckless. 385 00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:07.920 Who is Henry M. Galt? I asked suddenly, addressing the question to the three of them collectively. 386 00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:16.920 I expected it to produce some result, possibly a strange effect, yet I was surprised at their reactions to the sound of the name. 387 00:31:16.920 --> 00:31:23.920 It was as if I had spilled a family taboo. Unconsciously, gestures of anxiety went around the table. 388 00:31:23.920 --> 00:31:29.920 For several minutes no one spoke, apparently because no one could think just what to say. 389 00:31:30.920 --> 00:31:35.920 He's a speculator, said Harbinger. Have you met him? But of course you have. 390 00:31:35.920 --> 00:31:42.920 The kind of speculator who comes between buyer and seller and harries the market, as you were telling, I asked. 391 00:31:42.920 --> 00:31:57.920 He has several characters, said Harbinger. He is a member of the stock exchange, professional speculator, floor trader, broker, broker's broker, private counselor, tipster, gray bird of mystery, an offensive, insulting man. 392 00:31:57.920 --> 00:32:03.120 Why does he do that? 393 00:32:03.120 --> 00:32:07.600 He transacts the company's business on the stock exchange, which isn't much. 394 00:32:07.600 --> 00:32:12.040 I believe he does something in that way also for the President, who, as you know, is a 395 00:32:12.040 --> 00:32:14.480 man of large affairs. 396 00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:18.320 He seems to have a good deal of influence with the President, I said. 397 00:32:18.320 --> 00:32:19.640 There was no answer. 398 00:32:19.640 --> 00:32:22.000 Harbinger looked uncomfortable. 399 00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:24.740 But there is one thing to be said for him, I continued. 400 00:32:24.740 --> 00:32:27.180 He believes in the Great Midwestern Railroad. 401 00:32:27.180 --> 00:32:32.620 Harbinger alone understood what I meant. 402 00:32:32.620 --> 00:32:39.060 It's true, he said, speaking to the other two, stock is being transferred to his name. 403 00:32:39.060 --> 00:32:41.820 It was the secretary's business to know this. 404 00:32:41.820 --> 00:32:46.540 Harrier and Minas were at first incredulous, and then thoughtful. 405 00:32:46.540 --> 00:32:51.820 But you cannot know for sure, Harbinger added, that kind of man never does the same thing 406 00:32:51.820 --> 00:32:53.700 with both hands at once. 407 00:32:53.700 --> 00:32:58.740 He may be buying the stock in his own name for purposes of record and selling it anonymously 408 00:32:58.740 --> 00:33:01.300 at the same time. 409 00:33:01.300 --> 00:33:07.620 While listening to Harbinger, I had been watching John Harrier, and now I addressed him pointedly. 410 00:33:07.620 --> 00:33:10.780 What do you think of this Henry Galt? 411 00:33:10.780 --> 00:33:15.820 His reply was prompt and unexpected, delivered with no trace of emotion. 412 00:33:15.820 --> 00:33:19.820 He knows more about the GM railroad than its own president knows. 413 00:33:19.820 --> 00:33:26.500 John! I never heard you say that before, said Harbinger. Harrier said it again, exactly 414 00:33:26.500 --> 00:33:31.640 as before. And there the subject stuck, head on. 415 00:33:31.640 --> 00:33:37.080 We returned by the way we had come, passing the rear of the stock exchange again. At the 416 00:33:37.080 --> 00:33:41.300 member's entrance, people to the number of thirty or forty were standing in a hollow 417 00:33:41.300 --> 00:33:47.220 group with the air of meaning to be entertained by something that was about to happen. We 418 00:33:47.220 --> 00:33:59.220 Harbinger pushed me through the Rhine to the hollow center of the crowd and pointed downward at some blades of grass growing against the curbstone. 419 00:33:59.220 --> 00:34:09.220 The sight caused nothing to click in my brain. For an instant I thought it might be a personal hoax. It couldn't be that, however, with so many people participating. 420 00:34:09.220 --> 00:34:15.060 I was beginning to feel silly when the crowd cheered respectfully and parted at one side 421 00:34:15.060 --> 00:34:18.160 to admit a man with a sprinkling pot. 422 00:34:18.160 --> 00:34:23.860 He watered those blades of grass in an absent philosophical manner, apparently deaf to the 423 00:34:23.860 --> 00:34:29.780 ironic words of praise and encouragement hurled at him by the spectators, and retired with 424 00:34:29.780 --> 00:34:30.780 dignity. 425 00:34:30.780 --> 00:34:34.480 I watched him disappear through an opposite doorway. 426 00:34:34.480 --> 00:34:36.740 The crowd instantly vanished. 427 00:34:36.740 --> 00:34:40.100 The four of us stood alone in the middle of New Street. 428 00:34:40.100 --> 00:34:46.060 Grass growing at the door of the New York Stock Exchange, said Harbinger, grinning warily 429 00:34:46.060 --> 00:34:50.820 as one does at a joke that is both bad and irresistible. 430 00:34:50.820 --> 00:34:53.560 The origin of the grass was obvious. 431 00:34:53.560 --> 00:34:58.660 An untidy horse had been fed at that spot from a nose-bag, and some of the oats that were 432 00:34:58.660 --> 00:35:05.780 spilled had sprouted in a few ounces of silt gathered in a crevice at the base of the curbstone. 433 00:35:05.780 --> 00:35:08.980 The incident gave me a morose turn of thought. 434 00:35:08.980 --> 00:35:11.220 As a jest, it was pitiable. 435 00:35:11.220 --> 00:35:16.260 What had happened to people to abase their faith in themselves and in each other? 436 00:35:16.260 --> 00:35:19.700 Simple believing seemed everywhere bankrupt. 437 00:35:19.700 --> 00:35:22.540 Nobody outside of it believed in Wall Street. 438 00:35:22.540 --> 00:35:24.300 That you might understand. 439 00:35:24.300 --> 00:35:30.420 But here was Wall Street, nurturing and fun, a symbol of its own decay, and by this sign 440 00:35:30.420 --> 00:35:33.180 not believing in itself. 441 00:35:33.180 --> 00:35:38.480 Harbinger denounced the stock exchange speculators who depressed the price of Great Midwestern 442 00:35:38.480 --> 00:35:43.320 shares and circulated rumors damaging the railroad's credit. 443 00:35:43.320 --> 00:35:47.060 But did Harbinger himself believe in Great Midwestern? 444 00:35:47.060 --> 00:35:48.100 No. 445 00:35:48.100 --> 00:35:51.300 The Great Midwestern did not believe in itself. 446 00:35:51.300 --> 00:35:53.980 Its own president did not believe in it. 447 00:35:53.980 --> 00:35:58.820 He was busily advertising his disbelief in the whole railroad business. 448 00:35:58.820 --> 00:36:02.380 Why had he no faith in the railroad business? 449 00:36:02.380 --> 00:36:08.200 Because people had power over railroads and he disbelieved in people, therefore people 450 00:36:08.200 --> 00:36:11.000 disbelieved in him. 451 00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:16.680 I was saying to myself that I had yet to meet a man with downright faith in anything when 452 00:36:16.680 --> 00:36:18.520 I thought of Galt. 453 00:36:18.520 --> 00:36:20.580 He believed in the country. 454 00:36:20.580 --> 00:36:24.240 I remembered vividly what he said about it on the ferry boat. 455 00:36:24.240 --> 00:36:27.480 It was rich and nobody would believe it. 456 00:36:27.480 --> 00:36:32.140 He believed also in Great Midwestern, for he was buying the stock in the face of those 457 00:36:32.140 --> 00:36:48.320 4. 458 00:36:48.320 --> 00:36:51.760 The President was in Chicago on two errands. 459 00:36:51.760 --> 00:36:57.320 One was to hold a solemn quarterly conference with the operating officials on the ground. 460 00:36:57.320 --> 00:37:01.940 There was supposed to be much merit in having it take place on the ground. 461 00:37:01.940 --> 00:37:06.520 The first time I heard the locution, it made me think of Indian chiefs debating around 462 00:37:06.520 --> 00:37:08.300 a campfire. 463 00:37:08.300 --> 00:37:13.180 The executive offices in New York were more than a thousand miles from the Great Midwestern's 464 00:37:13.180 --> 00:37:15.440 first rail's end. 465 00:37:15.440 --> 00:37:21.280 It does not matter so much where a railway's brains are, but its other organs must remain 466 00:37:21.280 --> 00:37:28.580 where they naturally belong, and that is why all the operating departments were in Chicago. 467 00:37:28.580 --> 00:37:32.360 Four times a year, the brains were present in the physical sense. 468 00:37:32.360 --> 00:37:37.280 At all other times, the operating officials either brought their problems to New York, 469 00:37:37.280 --> 00:37:43.180 solved them on the spot, or put them in a pigeon hole to await the next conference. 470 00:37:43.180 --> 00:37:48.980 His other errand was to deliver a speech entitled, Lynching the Railroads, at a Manufacturer's 471 00:37:48.980 --> 00:37:50.660 Banquet. 472 00:37:50.660 --> 00:37:55.580 On the plane of large ideas, the great Valentine mind was explicit. 473 00:37:55.580 --> 00:37:58.500 Elsewhere, it was vague and liable. 474 00:37:58.500 --> 00:38:02.580 Although this was the first time I had been left alone with the New York office for more 475 00:38:02.580 --> 00:38:06.100 than one day, my instructions were very dim. 476 00:38:06.100 --> 00:38:09.860 At the last moment, the President said, You will know what to do. 477 00:38:09.860 --> 00:38:11.260 Use your own judgment. 478 00:38:11.260 --> 00:38:12.940 Open everything that comes in. 479 00:38:12.940 --> 00:38:16.140 Tell Mr. Harbinger to be very careful about the earnings. 480 00:38:16.140 --> 00:38:19.140 They got out again last week. 481 00:38:19.140 --> 00:38:24.680 He was referring to the private weekly statement of gross and net revenues compiled jointly 482 00:38:24.680 --> 00:38:30.920 by the Secretary and Treasurer and delivered by Harbinger's own hand to the President. 483 00:38:30.920 --> 00:38:34.680 This exhibit was not for publication, like the monthly statement. 484 00:38:34.680 --> 00:38:39.880 It was a special sounding for the information of the executive, or a kind of statistical 485 00:38:39.880 --> 00:38:46.020 cheese auger by means of which the trained sense could sample the state of business. 486 00:38:46.020 --> 00:38:49.100 The figures were supposed to be jealously guarded. 487 00:38:49.100 --> 00:38:55.000 On no account were they to go out of the office, save by direct order of the president. 488 00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.980 The crime of my predecessor had been to let them fall regularly into the hands of certain 489 00:38:59.980 --> 00:39:03.460 stock exchange speculators. 490 00:39:03.460 --> 00:39:08.220 Knowing all this, everybody knowing it, I wondered at Harbinger when late one evening 491 00:39:08.220 --> 00:39:12.660 he brought the statement to my desk, saying, Here are the weekly figures. 492 00:39:12.660 --> 00:39:13.660 You take them. 493 00:39:13.660 --> 00:39:16.900 It's better to keep them all in one place while the chief is away. 494 00:39:16.900 --> 00:39:19.660 I haven't even a copy. 495 00:39:19.660 --> 00:39:25.460 I was not surprised that he should be trying to rid himself of a distasteful responsibility, 496 00:39:25.460 --> 00:39:29.400 but the act of avoidance was in itself puerile. 497 00:39:29.400 --> 00:39:31.120 Suppose there was another leak. 498 00:39:31.120 --> 00:39:35.380 He could say that he had put the statement out of his keeping into mine. 499 00:39:35.380 --> 00:39:37.980 He could say he had not kept a copy. 500 00:39:37.980 --> 00:39:43.100 But could he expect anyone to believe he had erased them from his mind? 501 00:39:43.100 --> 00:39:44.420 It irritated me. 502 00:39:44.420 --> 00:39:46.760 I kept thinking about it that night. 503 00:39:46.760 --> 00:39:52.400 I concluded there was something I did not understand, and there was. 504 00:39:52.400 --> 00:39:57.600 As I was opening my desk the next morning, Galt came in, and without a word or sign of 505 00:39:57.600 --> 00:40:00.600 salutation addressed me summarily. 506 00:40:00.600 --> 00:40:03.600 Harbinger says you have the earnings. 507 00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:05.660 The weekly earnings, I asked. 508 00:40:05.660 --> 00:40:11.180 The weekly earnings, he repeated after me, trying to mimic my voice and manner. 509 00:40:11.180 --> 00:40:15.360 He would have been ridiculous except that he was angry, and anger was an emotion that 510 00:40:15.360 --> 00:40:17.360 The Theory of Money and Credit 511 00:40:45.360 --> 00:40:49.040 which he understood to be sarcastic, completed his rage. 512 00:40:49.040 --> 00:40:54.080 Do I get them? he asked, bulging at me in a menacing manner. 513 00:40:54.080 --> 00:40:59.520 Sorry, I said, there's no hole for you in my instructions. 514 00:40:59.520 --> 00:41:05.680 At that he began to pass in front of me, with long stealthy steps, his shoulders crouched, 515 00:41:05.680 --> 00:41:11.400 his hands in his pockets, his head low and cocked right, and then left, as he turned 516 00:41:11.400 --> 00:41:18.640 and Past Again, all the while looking at me fixedly with a preposterous, maleficent glare. 517 00:41:18.640 --> 00:41:21.600 The effect was so ludicrous that I laughed. 518 00:41:21.600 --> 00:41:26.400 And then, for only so long as it takes to see a flashing thing, there was a look in 519 00:41:26.400 --> 00:41:29.200 his eyes that made me shudder. 520 00:41:29.200 --> 00:41:33.980 Suddenly he went out, slamming the door so hard that I held my breath for the sound of 521 00:41:33.980 --> 00:41:36.720 falling glass. 522 00:41:36.720 --> 00:41:42.080 As the pantomime reconstructed itself in reflection, it assumed a comic aspect. 523 00:41:42.080 --> 00:41:45.000 No, it couldn't have been serious. 524 00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:50.600 I was almost persuaded it had been a bit of undignified acting, an absurd, though harmless 525 00:41:50.600 --> 00:41:57.360 way of working off a fit of temper, when I recalled that look and shuddered again. 526 00:41:57.360 --> 00:42:02.160 Once before I had seen that expression in the eyes of a malevolent hunchback. 527 00:42:02.160 --> 00:42:06.960 It was the look of a giant tragically trapped in a puny body. 528 00:42:06.960 --> 00:42:14.400 Galt was a small man, weighing less than 100 pounds, with a fretful, nagging body. 529 00:42:14.400 --> 00:42:19.520 Before lunch, the President called me on the GM's private telegraph wire. 530 00:42:19.520 --> 00:42:24.240 He stood at the key in the Chicago office and I stood at the key in the New York office 531 00:42:24.240 --> 00:42:28.640 and we conversed through the operators without written messages. 532 00:42:28.640 --> 00:42:30.760 Was everything all right, he asked me. 533 00:42:30.760 --> 00:43:00.760 His anxiety to seem casual about it betrayed the fact that he had called me expressly to say that Galt should have the earnings, and there was no doubt in my thoughts that Galt, since leaving me, had been in communication with my 534 00:43:00.760 --> 00:43:05.760 by Chief by Telegraph. What an amazing to-do! 535 00:43:05.760 --> 00:43:12.760 If my deductions were true, then I might expect to be presently favored with another visit. So I was. 536 00:43:12.760 --> 00:43:17.760 He came in about two o'clock and sat down at the end of my desk without speaking. 537 00:43:17.760 --> 00:43:21.760 I did not speak either, but handed him the Statement of Earnings. 538 00:43:21.760 --> 00:43:25.760 He crippled the paper in his hand and dropped it in the wastebasket. 539 00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:28.760 I was sure he hadn't looked at it. 540 00:43:28.760 --> 00:43:33.920 Coxie, he said, promised never again to laugh at me like that. 541 00:43:33.920 --> 00:43:37.480 We've got a long way to go, up and down grade. 542 00:43:37.480 --> 00:43:42.560 But promise whatever happens, never to do that again. 543 00:43:42.560 --> 00:43:44.440 Somehow I was not surprised. 544 00:43:44.440 --> 00:43:47.240 For a little time we sat looking at each other. 545 00:43:47.240 --> 00:43:51.120 All right, I said, holding out my hand to him. 546 00:43:51.120 --> 00:43:53.560 It was an irrational experience. 547 00:43:53.560 --> 00:43:58.680 We shook hands in the veiled mysterious manner of boys sealing a lifetime compact 548 00:43:58.680 --> 00:44:04.440 for High Adventure, No More Words, Either Necessary or Feasible. 549 00:44:04.440 --> 00:44:08.280 But with Harbinger some further conversation seemed appropriate. 550 00:44:08.280 --> 00:44:13.320 So later I said to him, Why are you so afraid of Galt? 551 00:44:13.320 --> 00:44:16.720 You do ask some very extraordinary questions. 552 00:44:16.720 --> 00:44:21.640 I have a right to ask this one, I said, seeing that you put it upon me to refuse him the 553 00:44:21.640 --> 00:44:22.720 earnings. 554 00:44:22.720 --> 00:44:24.680 You were afraid to refuse him. 555 00:44:24.680 --> 00:44:28.020 Isn't that why you gave the figures to me? 556 00:44:28.020 --> 00:44:33.000 You will have to think what you like of my motives, he said, with rather fine dignity, 557 00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:35.540 though at the same time turning red. 558 00:44:35.540 --> 00:44:41.040 I don't see why you shouldn't learn yours as we've had to learn ours, he added. 559 00:44:41.040 --> 00:44:42.040 My what? 560 00:44:42.040 --> 00:44:48.120 That's all, he said, twirling about in his swivel chair and avoiding my regard. 561 00:44:48.120 --> 00:44:49.880 Why do you dislike him? 562 00:44:49.880 --> 00:44:54.700 It isn't that I dislike him, he retorted, beginning to lose his temper a bit. 563 00:44:54.700 --> 00:44:57.360 The thing of it is, I don't know how to treat him. 564 00:44:57.360 --> 00:45:03.320 He has no authority here that one can understand, get hold of, or openly respect, yet there 565 00:45:03.320 --> 00:45:07.560 are times when you might think he owned the whole lot of us. 566 00:45:07.560 --> 00:45:09.360 How did this come about? 567 00:45:09.360 --> 00:45:14.720 Gradually, he said, or at least it was only about a year ago that he began to have the 568 00:45:14.720 --> 00:45:16.460 run of the place. 569 00:45:16.460 --> 00:45:21.760 Before that we knew him merely as a broker who made a specialty of dealing in great mid-western 570 00:45:21.760 --> 00:45:22.880 securities. 571 00:45:22.880 --> 00:45:30.880 In the time dealing so much in our securities, he came to have a personal curiosity about the property. That's what he said. 572 00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:36.880 So he began to pry into things, wanting information about this and that, some of it very private. 573 00:45:36.880 --> 00:45:41.880 And when we asked the president about it, he said, oh, give him anything but the safe. 574 00:45:41.880 --> 00:45:46.880 Lately he's been spending so much time around here that I wonder how he makes a living. 575 00:45:46.880 --> 00:45:52.640 He knows too much about the company. You heard John Harrier. He knows as much about our mortgages, 576 00:45:52.640 --> 00:45:59.200 indentures, leases and records as I know, and that's my end of the business. He's made me look up facts 577 00:45:59.200 --> 00:46:05.840 I never heard of before. He's been all over the road looking at it with a microscope. I do believe 578 00:46:05.840 --> 00:46:12.000 he knows generally more about the Great Midwestern than any other person living. Why? Tell me why. 579 00:46:12.000 --> 00:46:13.740 Why? 580 00:46:13.740 --> 00:46:16.960 He and the President are old friends, did you say? 581 00:46:16.960 --> 00:46:22.280 He paused for effect and said, Henry Galt has only one friend in the world. 582 00:46:22.280 --> 00:46:23.760 That's himself. 583 00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:26.000 Ask anybody who knows him in Wall Street. 584 00:46:26.000 --> 00:46:28.880 He's been around here twenty years. 585 00:46:28.880 --> 00:46:32.560 Maybe it's his extensive knowledge of the property that gives him his influence with 586 00:46:32.560 --> 00:46:35.320 the President, I suggested. 587 00:46:35.320 --> 00:46:40.680 Harbinger came forward with a lurch, rested his elbows on his desk, hung his chin over 588 00:46:40.680 --> 00:46:45.680 The Theory of Money and Credit 589 00:47:10.680 --> 00:47:18.480 Galt does? He nodded, and at the same time implored me by gesture not to let my voice rise. 590 00:47:18.480 --> 00:47:26.680 Maybe anywhere around, in the next room, he said, hardly above a whisper. Yes, he knows things that haven't happened. 591 00:47:26.680 --> 00:47:30.680 If there's such a gift as pre-vision, he has it. 592 00:47:30.680 --> 00:47:35.680 If that were true, I objected, he would have all the money in the world. 593 00:47:35.680 --> 00:47:41.680 Just the same, it's true, said Harbinger, rising and reaching for his coat. 594 00:47:41.680 --> 00:47:48.680 He looked at me a little askance, doubtless with misgivings as to the propriety of having talked so much.