WEBVTT NOTE XIV. The Combat 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Chapter 14 The Combat 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:06.000 1 3 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:11.000 Meanwhile, Galt's enemies had been drawing together secretly. 4 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:16.000 Hatred, fear, and envy resolved all other emotions. 5 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:22.000 Men who had nothing else in common were joined in a conspiracy to destroy him. 6 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:27.000 The Leviathans of this deep move slowly and take their time. 7 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:32.920 Besides, it was a fearsome undertaking, there was bound to be a terrific struggle, one false 8 00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:36.320 move and the dragon would escape. 9 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:40.920 The plan was to attack him from two sides at once. 10 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:46.520 Several of the railroad properties acquired by the Great Midwestern were, in some sense, 11 00:00:46.520 --> 00:00:51.880 competitive, though Galt had not bought them primarily for that reason, and as the law 12 00:00:51.880 --> 00:01:02.880 If 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 Antitrust Act. 13 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:14.880 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. 14 00:01:14.880 --> 00:01:22.000 This plan required elaborate preparation. The government could not be directly solicited to act. 15 00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:28.480 It would have to be moved by suggestion and with such finesse as to conceal the fact that it was 16 00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:35.920 being influenced at all, elsewise than by its own convictions of right. There are those who know how 17 00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:43.440 to effect these Machiavellian results. Intrigue is still man's sovereign art. That is why he makes 18 00:01:43.440 --> 00:01:46.080 make so much of politics. 19 00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:52.160 Mrs. Valentine, pursuing vengeance in her own way, had made Galt's name anathema throughout 20 00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:54.560 her precious principality. 21 00:01:54.560 --> 00:02:00.080 If you were anybody at all, or aspired to be, you were obliged to think and speak ill 22 00:02:00.080 --> 00:02:07.120 of him, for he represented vulgarity raised by its own audacity to a wicked and sinister 23 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:08.400 eminence. 24 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:13.780 If he had been born so, one could understand it, she said, but he knew better. 25 00:02:13.780 --> 00:02:15.560 That made it all the worse. 26 00:02:15.560 --> 00:02:18.140 He had betrayed the decencies. 27 00:02:18.140 --> 00:02:21.660 His one passion was to amass wealth. 28 00:02:21.660 --> 00:02:25.020 Those who had helped him to rise, he trampled down. 29 00:02:25.020 --> 00:02:31.540 He made his money dishonestly, a stock exchange gambler with a Napoleonic obsession. 30 00:02:31.540 --> 00:02:37.700 Well, she invariably said at the end, his time would come and then people would see 31 00:02:37.700 --> 00:02:39.900 See What She Meant. 32 00:02:39.900 --> 00:02:43.320 Her own powers she employed in a reckless manner. 33 00:02:43.320 --> 00:02:49.500 She visited disfavor upon those who were lukewarm in malignity, going so far as to make a scene 34 00:02:49.500 --> 00:02:54.840 with Lord Porteous for that he dared to speak in defense of the monster. 35 00:02:54.840 --> 00:03:00.260 She took in people whose only recommendation was zealotry in her cause. 36 00:03:00.260 --> 00:03:06.360 Her subjects, going to and fro, carried the Evangel to other realms, especially to official 37 00:03:06.360 --> 00:03:11.880 Social Society in Washington, which heard in this way every scandalous thing Galt had 38 00:03:11.880 --> 00:03:15.800 ever said about politicians in power. 39 00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:20.920 The extent and character of her information could be explained only on the assumption 40 00:03:20.920 --> 00:03:27.080 that somewhere in our organization, probably on the board of directors, was a masked enemy 41 00:03:27.080 --> 00:03:31.080 who continually gave Galt up to Valentine. 42 00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:34.280 He had not disappeared from the field of action. 43 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:39.800 All this time he was working in the background with a single passion, a righteous one, as 44 00:03:39.800 --> 00:03:44.400 he believed, which was to assist in the overthrow of Galt. 45 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:47.460 It was natural that he should join the conspirators. 46 00:03:47.460 --> 00:03:49.480 He brought them much information. 47 00:03:49.480 --> 00:03:54.360 He had political resources and access to the means of publicity. 48 00:03:54.360 --> 00:03:56.940 A fortuitous time arrived. 49 00:03:56.940 --> 00:04:03.080 For several years the public, now restored to high prosperity, observed with interest, 50 00:04:03.080 --> 00:04:09.280 Law, even with pride, the appearance of those vast anonymous shapes, which capital, by a 51 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:15.160 headlong impulse, had been raising up to control production and transportation. 52 00:04:15.160 --> 00:04:21.360 Mergers, combines, trusts, they came in endless succession. 53 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:26.920 Hardly a day passed without a new sensation in phantasmic millions. 54 00:04:26.920 --> 00:04:29.940 People were seized with a gambling mania. 55 00:04:29.940 --> 00:04:35.460 Each day promoters threw an enormous mass of new and unseasoned securities upon the 56 00:04:35.460 --> 00:04:42.060 market and they were frantically bought as if the supply were in imminent danger of failing. 57 00:04:42.060 --> 00:04:44.820 Astonishing excesses were committed. 58 00:04:44.820 --> 00:04:47.420 The stock exchange was overwhelmed. 59 00:04:47.420 --> 00:04:52.260 For many weeks the lights never went out in Wall Street because clerks worked all day 60 00:04:52.260 --> 00:04:56.520 and all night to keep the brokers' books straight. 61 00:04:56.520 --> 00:05:02.460 The cauldron boiled over badly at last, and there was a silly panic, more theatrical than 62 00:05:02.460 --> 00:05:03.700 serious. 63 00:05:03.700 --> 00:05:08.740 It served, however, to break a dream and awaken the critical faculty. 64 00:05:08.740 --> 00:05:11.900 The public all at once became deeply alarmed. 65 00:05:11.900 --> 00:05:15.340 There arose a great clamor about trusts. 66 00:05:15.340 --> 00:05:21.260 Those shapes which had been viewed with pride, as symbols of the nation's progress and strength, 67 00:05:21.260 --> 00:05:25.340 were now perceived in the light of fear. 68 00:05:25.340 --> 00:05:30.740 People thought had been held in disesteem since the collapse of the soft money plague. 69 00:05:30.740 --> 00:05:33.340 Here was a new bogey. 70 00:05:33.340 --> 00:05:35.840 Trusts were human evil objectified. 71 00:05:35.840 --> 00:05:38.140 They were swallowing the country up. 72 00:05:38.140 --> 00:05:42.020 In a little while, all business would be in their hands. 73 00:05:42.020 --> 00:05:47.600 There would come to be only two kinds of people, those few who owned the trusts and the many 74 00:05:47.600 --> 00:05:52.060 who worked for them, and freedom would perish in the land. 75 00:05:52.060 --> 00:05:53.980 Something would have to be done about it. 76 00:05:53.980 --> 00:05:56.180 Why had nothing been done? 77 00:05:56.180 --> 00:06:00.380 Were the trusts already more powerful than the state? 78 00:06:00.380 --> 00:06:05.460 Suddenly the trust versus the state was the paramount political issue. 79 00:06:05.460 --> 00:06:11.820 There was an onset of books, essays, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles. 80 00:06:11.820 --> 00:06:17.180 Sense and folly, wisdom and demagoguery were hopelessly entangled. 81 00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:22.500 This kind of outburst is characteristic of a roaring busy democracy whose interest in 82 00:06:22.500 --> 00:06:26.700 and its collective self is spasmodic and hysterical. 83 00:06:26.700 --> 00:06:31.380 The horse is stolen before anybody thinks of minding the barn. 84 00:06:31.380 --> 00:06:38.100 Gradually, the force of this anti-trust feeling, baffled by the complexity of the subject and 85 00:06:38.100 --> 00:06:44.760 seeking all the more for that reason a personal victim, began to focus upon Galt. 86 00:06:44.760 --> 00:06:46.860 You could see it taking place. 87 00:06:46.860 --> 00:06:52.640 The Galt Railroad System, formerly treated with respect and wonder, now was represented 88 00:06:52.640 --> 00:07:00.440 to be an octopus, oppressive, arrogant, holding power of life and death over helpless communities. 89 00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:05.560 And all the time there were men at Washington who whispered into the official ear, 90 00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:08.900 Of course, a lot of this outcry is senseless. 91 00:07:08.900 --> 00:07:11.840 There are good trusts and bad trusts. 92 00:07:11.840 --> 00:07:16.320 Most of them have the economic welfare of the country at heart and are willing to submit 93 00:07:16.320 --> 00:07:18.860 to Any Reasonable Regulation. 94 00:07:18.860 --> 00:07:21.580 The public is undiscriminating. 95 00:07:21.580 --> 00:07:24.680 Its mind becomes fixed on what is bad. 96 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:28.080 It happens to be fixed on this galt railroad trust. 97 00:07:28.080 --> 00:07:33.520 Well, as to that, we must say there is reason for the public's prejudice. 98 00:07:33.520 --> 00:07:37.900 You would find very few even in Wall Street to defend his methods. 99 00:07:37.900 --> 00:07:44.120 The danger is that unless the evils justly complained of are torn away by those who understand 100 00:07:44.120 --> 00:07:51.280 and how to do it, our entire structure will be destroyed in a fit of popular passion. 101 00:07:51.280 --> 00:07:56.620 Galt was warned of what was going on at Washington, but he was so contemptuous of politics and 102 00:07:56.620 --> 00:08:00.100 so sure of his own way that he sneered. 103 00:08:00.100 --> 00:08:01.860 Who knew what the law was? 104 00:08:01.860 --> 00:08:03.860 It had never been construed. 105 00:08:03.860 --> 00:08:08.740 The legality of his acts had been attended to by the most eminent counsel, including 106 00:08:08.740 --> 00:08:11.880 a former Attorney General of the United States. 107 00:08:11.880 --> 00:08:16.880 What could happen to him that wasn't just as likely to happen to everybody else? 108 00:08:16.880 --> 00:08:22.800 He had only done what everyone was doing, only better, more of it, and perhaps to greater 109 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:23.800 profit. 110 00:08:23.800 --> 00:08:28.800 If he was vulnerable, then so were all the others who had combined lesser into greater 111 00:08:28.800 --> 00:08:32.080 things, and they would have to find a way out together. 112 00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:34.360 No wealth would be destroyed. 113 00:08:34.360 --> 00:08:38.820 And so he reasoned himself into a state of indifference. 114 00:08:38.820 --> 00:08:43.780 He greatly underestimated the force of public opinion. He knew nothing about it, for it 115 00:08:43.780 --> 00:08:50.420 had never touched him really. Mass psychology in Wall Street he understood perfectly. Social 116 00:08:50.420 --> 00:08:55.500 and political phenomena he did not comprehend at all. 117 00:08:55.500 --> 00:09:02.620 One day great Midwestern stock turned suddenly very weak, falling from 220 to 210 in half 118 00:09:02.620 --> 00:09:10.460 He watched it, annoyed and frowning, and set for Mordecai, who could not explain it. 119 00:09:10.460 --> 00:09:15.780 That afternoon, news came that the minority stockholders of the Orient and Pacific had 120 00:09:15.780 --> 00:09:21.600 brought a suit in equity against the Great Midwestern, alleging that Galt, by arbitrary 121 00:09:21.600 --> 00:09:27.940 exercise of the power of a majority stockholder, had reduced the Orient and Pacific to a state 122 00:09:27.940 --> 00:09:34.060 of Utter Subservience, had thereby destroyed its independent and competitive value and 123 00:09:34.060 --> 00:09:38.780 had mulched it heavily for the benefit of the great Midwestern's treasury. 124 00:09:38.780 --> 00:09:45.380 This, they represented, was a grievous injury to them as minority stockholders, and also 125 00:09:45.380 --> 00:09:48.660 contrary to public interest. 126 00:09:48.660 --> 00:09:53.060 That old Orient and Pacific sore had never healed. 127 00:09:53.060 --> 00:09:58.380 The bankers who controlled the road by sacred right for many years before Galt snatched 128 00:09:58.380 --> 00:10:06.140 it out of their hands had all this time ominously retained a minority interest in the property. 129 00:10:06.140 --> 00:10:11.000 Galt did intend from the beginning to make the Orient and Pacific wholly subordinate 130 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:12.920 to the Great Midwestern. 131 00:10:12.920 --> 00:10:15.540 It was an essential part of his plan. 132 00:10:15.540 --> 00:10:21.460 Therefore, minority stockholders in good faith would have had a proper grievance. 133 00:10:21.460 --> 00:10:25.500 But these were not minority stockholders in good faith. 134 00:10:25.500 --> 00:10:30.580 They were private bankers, biding their time to take revenge. 135 00:10:30.580 --> 00:10:34.560 Galt had been willing at any time to buy them out handsomely. 136 00:10:34.560 --> 00:10:39.500 They wouldn't sell, because the minority interest was a weapon which someday they would 137 00:10:39.500 --> 00:10:42.180 be able to use against him. 138 00:10:42.180 --> 00:10:47.660 Although the name never appeared in the proceedings, dummies having been put forward to act as 139 00:10:47.660 --> 00:10:54.420 As Complainants in the case, everybody knew that Bullgard and company inspired the suit. 140 00:10:54.420 --> 00:11:00.060 They were the bankers who owned the minority interest in Orient and Pacific shares. 141 00:11:00.060 --> 00:11:04.820 Everybody knew, too, that they bore Galt an implacable enmity. 142 00:11:04.820 --> 00:11:10.420 What nobody knew until afterward was that the conspiracy to destroy Galt was organized 143 00:11:10.420 --> 00:11:14.140 by Jerome Bullgard himself. 144 00:11:14.140 --> 00:11:16.580 He was a man of tremendous character. 145 00:11:16.580 --> 00:11:20.060 His authority in Wall Street was pontifical. 146 00:11:20.060 --> 00:11:23.340 Men accepted it as a natural fact. 147 00:11:23.340 --> 00:11:28.780 Until the rise of Mordecai and company under Galtz Aegis, his house occupied a place of 148 00:11:28.780 --> 00:11:30.900 solitary eminence. 149 00:11:30.900 --> 00:11:32.660 Its traditions were fixed. 150 00:11:32.660 --> 00:11:35.820 Their consequences were astronomical. 151 00:11:35.820 --> 00:11:38.520 Bullgard was the house. 152 00:11:38.520 --> 00:11:41.020 His partners were insignificant. 153 00:11:41.020 --> 00:11:47.020 not actually if you took them as individuals, but relatively, in contrast with him. 154 00:11:47.020 --> 00:11:53.620 His imperious will he imposed upon men and events, upon men by force of a personality 155 00:11:53.620 --> 00:12:01.180 that inspired dread and obedience, and upon events by the dynamic quality of his intelligence. 156 00:12:01.180 --> 00:12:06.560 His mind seemed to act in an omnipotent manner, with no effort whatever. 157 00:12:06.560 --> 00:12:12.400 His sanctions and influence pervaded the whole scheme of things, yet he himself was as remote 158 00:12:12.400 --> 00:12:14.680 as a Japanese emperor. 159 00:12:14.680 --> 00:12:20.680 A good deal of the awe that surrounded him was owing to the fact that he worked invisibly. 160 00:12:20.680 --> 00:12:25.280 The hand that shaped the thunderbolts was almost never seen. 161 00:12:25.280 --> 00:12:29.800 There was a saying in Wall Street that his name appeared nowhere but over the door of 162 00:12:29.800 --> 00:12:31.920 his banking house. 163 00:12:31.920 --> 00:12:38.240 In a community where men must be links-eyed and seven-sensed, able to see the unseeable 164 00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:44.800 and deduce the unknowable, his objects were so elaborately concealed that nobody ever knew 165 00:12:44.800 --> 00:12:48.640 for sure what he was doing until it was done. 166 00:12:48.640 --> 00:12:54.080 And then it couldn't be proved, for he would have had perhaps no actual contact with it 167 00:12:54.080 --> 00:12:56.120 at any point. 168 00:12:56.120 --> 00:13:01.480 There were times when he held the stock market in his two hands, doing with it as he pleased, 169 00:13:01.480 --> 00:13:07.480 Yet never could anyone say, he is here, or there he is. 170 00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:12.760 Bullgard's attitude toward Galt was natural, quite fair and regular, according to the law 171 00:13:12.760 --> 00:13:14.840 of conquest. 172 00:13:14.840 --> 00:13:19.960 Galt was an invader, a financial Attila, who had followed the conqueror's star to that 173 00:13:19.960 --> 00:13:24.820 place at which the issue is joined for all or none. 174 00:13:24.820 --> 00:13:27.960 Nothing short of supremacy would satisfy him. 175 00:13:27.960 --> 00:13:30.320 Therefore, he should fight for it. 176 00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:34.480 Did he think the crown might be surrendered peaceably? 177 00:13:34.480 --> 00:13:37.880 Galt perfectly understood this philosophy of combat. 178 00:13:37.880 --> 00:13:40.200 He would not have wished it otherwise. 179 00:13:40.200 --> 00:13:42.000 Fighting he loved. 180 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:47.240 His fight with Valentine, because it was petty, had been personal in spite of him. 181 00:13:47.240 --> 00:13:53.080 His contest with Bullgard was impersonal and epic, a meeting of champions in the heroic 182 00:13:53.080 --> 00:13:54.160 sense. 183 00:13:54.160 --> 00:13:58.760 The Orient and Pacific suit was but the opening of a barrage. 184 00:13:58.760 --> 00:14:03.820 An important stockholder in the security life insurance company, which was one of the capital 185 00:14:03.820 --> 00:14:10.220 reservoirs Galt had got control of, brought suit to compel him to take back all the great 186 00:14:10.220 --> 00:14:16.220 Midwestern stocks and bonds owned by that institution, on the ground that as a member 187 00:14:16.220 --> 00:14:22.180 of its finance committee he had improperly influenced it to invest its funds in securities 188 00:14:22.180 --> 00:14:25.520 in which he was interested as a seller. 189 00:14:25.520 --> 00:14:31.500 The purpose of this suit was three-fold. Firstly, to advertise the fact that he dominated the 190 00:14:31.500 --> 00:14:37.380 fiscal policies of the security life insurance company. Secondly, to create the suspicion 191 00:14:37.380 --> 00:14:43.240 that his motive in gaining control of institutions in which people kept their savings was to 192 00:14:43.240 --> 00:14:51.000 unload his stocks and bonds upon them. Thirdly, to cast discredit upon great Midwestern securities 193 00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:53.220 as Investments. 194 00:14:53.220 --> 00:14:56.560 It produced an enormous popular sensation. 195 00:14:56.560 --> 00:15:01.000 Galt was denounced and caricatured bitterly in the newspapers. 196 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:07.100 One cartoon, with a caption, The Milkman, represented the security life as a cow eating 197 00:15:07.100 --> 00:15:14.360 his stocks and bonds and giving down policyholders' money as milk into his private pail. 198 00:15:14.360 --> 00:15:20.100 Next, he was sued on account of some land, which, according to the complaint, he had 199 00:15:20.100 --> 00:15:26.420 had cheapened by withholding railroad facilities only in order to buy it, whereupon he enhanced 200 00:15:26.420 --> 00:15:32.620 its value and hundred times by making it the site of a large railroad development, thereby 201 00:15:32.620 --> 00:15:36.820 enriching himself to the extent of several millions. 202 00:15:36.820 --> 00:15:43.900 That, like so many other things alleged about him, was both true and untrue. 203 00:15:43.900 --> 00:15:48.100 Ten private suits were brought against him within three months. 204 00:15:48.100 --> 00:15:54.640 Each one adroitly contrived to disclose in a biased, damaging manner some phase of his 205 00:15:54.640 --> 00:16:01.700 complex and universal activities hitherto unknown or unobserved by the public. 206 00:16:01.700 --> 00:16:07.660 Each one was preceded by an attack on great Midwestern stock and by increasingly hostile 207 00:16:07.660 --> 00:16:10.020 comment in the press. 208 00:16:10.020 --> 00:16:13.360 The cumulative effect was disastrous. 209 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:16.860 Public sentiment became hysterical. 210 00:16:16.860 --> 00:16:22.020 Lawsuits as such never worried Galt. 211 00:16:22.020 --> 00:16:27.840 He was continually engaged in litigation and kept a staff of lawyers busy. 212 00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:32.500 His way with lawyers was to tell them baldly what he wanted to do and leave it to them 213 00:16:32.500 --> 00:16:35.500 to evolve the legal technique of doing it. 214 00:16:35.500 --> 00:16:41.780 Then, if difficulties followed, he would say, that's your own bacon, now cure it. 215 00:16:41.780 --> 00:16:46.360 Only they were always to fight, never to settle. 216 00:16:46.360 --> 00:16:49.360 But now he became silent and brooding. 217 00:16:49.360 --> 00:16:52.500 He paced his office for hours together. 218 00:16:52.500 --> 00:16:56.280 When spoken to, his eyes looked out of a mist. 219 00:16:56.280 --> 00:17:01.000 It was necessary to bring his attention to matters requiring decision. 220 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:04.260 He had Mordecai in two or three times a day. 221 00:17:04.260 --> 00:17:09.720 They conferred endlessly in low tones and watched the ticker anxiously. 222 00:17:09.720 --> 00:17:15.040 So far as I could see, he did nothing to support the pride of great Midwestern stock. 223 00:17:15.040 --> 00:17:22.480 I wondered why. Later I knew. At this juncture he was selling it himself. He was selling 224 00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:28.760 not only his stock, but enormous amounts of his own bonds, thereby converting his wealth 225 00:17:28.760 --> 00:17:35.160 into cash. That is to say, he was stripping for the fray. 226 00:17:35.160 --> 00:17:40.540 For three days Great Midwestern Stock had been falling in a leaden manner and Wall Street 227 00:17:40.540 --> 00:17:46.380 was distraught with a sense of foreboding when one morning the big shell burst. 228 00:17:46.380 --> 00:17:50.940 First, the news tickers flashed this bulletin. 229 00:17:50.940 --> 00:17:55.620 The recent extraordinary weakness of Great Midwestern is explained by the rumor that 230 00:17:55.620 --> 00:18:00.860 the government is about to bring suit under the Anti-Trust Act against the Galt Railroad 231 00:18:00.860 --> 00:18:01.940 system. 232 00:18:01.940 --> 00:18:07.060 There is talk also of criminal proceedings against Mr. Galt. 233 00:18:07.060 --> 00:18:09.620 Galt read it with no sign of emotion. 234 00:18:09.620 --> 00:18:12.280 Evidently, he was expecting it. 235 00:18:12.280 --> 00:18:14.940 Events now were moving rapidly. 236 00:18:14.940 --> 00:18:19.540 Half an hour later, the news tickers produced a bulletin as follows. 237 00:18:19.540 --> 00:18:20.620 Washington. 238 00:18:20.620 --> 00:18:24.660 It is announced at the Attorney General's office that the government has filed suit 239 00:18:24.660 --> 00:18:29.380 against the Galt Railroad Trust, praying for its dissolution on the ground of its 240 00:18:29.380 --> 00:18:33.780 being an oppressive conspiracy in restraint of trade. 241 00:18:33.780 --> 00:18:38.260 No confirmation of rumors that criminal proceedings will be brought against Henry 242 00:18:38.260 --> 00:18:45.860 M. Galt as a Person. Details followed. They ran for an hour on the news printing machines, 243 00:18:45.860 --> 00:18:51.180 to the exclusion of everything else, while at the same time, on the quotation tickers, 244 00:18:51.180 --> 00:18:57.220 the price of Great Midwestern was falling headlong, under terrific selling. 245 00:18:57.220 --> 00:19:02.460 The government's complaint set out the history of the Galt railway system, discussed at length 246 00:19:02.460 --> 00:19:04.460 The Theory of Money and Credit 247 00:19:32.460 --> 00:19:37.260 Their office was soon in the possession of reporters clamoring to see Galt. 248 00:19:37.260 --> 00:19:39.980 He obstinately refused to meet them. 249 00:19:39.980 --> 00:19:45.920 They demanded a statement, and while they waited, we prepared one as follows. 250 00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:51.060 No step in the formation of the Great Midwestern Railway System was taken without the approval 251 00:19:51.060 --> 00:19:53.020 of eminent counsel. 252 00:19:53.020 --> 00:19:58.600 If as it stands it is repugnant to the law, as the law shall be construed, then of course 253 00:19:58.600 --> 00:20:00.800 it will have to be dissolved. 254 00:20:00.800 --> 00:20:06.120 If that comes to pass, all those securities in the Great Midwestern's treasury, representing 255 00:20:06.120 --> 00:20:11.360 ownership and control of other properties, will have to be distributed pro rata among 256 00:20:11.360 --> 00:20:13.920 Great Midwestern stockholders. 257 00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:18.160 Either the securities as such or the proceeds of their sale. 258 00:20:18.160 --> 00:20:24.680 In either case, the profit will amount to a dividend of not less than $150 a share for 259 00:20:24.680 --> 00:20:27.360 Great Midwestern stockholders. 260 00:20:27.360 --> 00:20:32.960 That is the extent to which these securities have increased in value since the Great Midwestern 261 00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:35.120 bought them. 262 00:20:35.120 --> 00:20:38.280 Signed Henry M. Galt. 263 00:20:38.280 --> 00:20:42.320 All of that was obvious, only nobody had thought of it. 264 00:20:42.320 --> 00:20:45.520 The statement was received with utter amazement. 265 00:20:45.520 --> 00:20:51.760 On the strength of it, Great Midwestern stock advanced suddenly ten points. 266 00:20:51.760 --> 00:20:55.320 Now occurred the strangest incident of the chapter. 267 00:20:55.320 --> 00:21:01.240 To imagine it, you have to remember that public feeling was extremely inflamed. 268 00:21:01.240 --> 00:21:07.560 That afternoon, a New York grand jury indicted Galt under an old, forgotten statute, making 269 00:21:07.560 --> 00:21:14.320 it a crime to circulate false statements calculated to advance or depress the price of shares 270 00:21:14.320 --> 00:21:16.920 on the stock exchange. 271 00:21:16.920 --> 00:21:21.280 A huge broad toe came to our office with the warrant. 272 00:21:21.280 --> 00:21:23.000 Galt was under arrest. 273 00:21:23.000 --> 00:21:24.840 His lawyers were summoned. 274 00:21:24.840 --> 00:21:29.840 They communicated with the district attorney, couldn't they appear for Mr. Galt and arrange 275 00:21:29.840 --> 00:21:30.840 bail? 276 00:21:30.840 --> 00:21:36.440 No, the district attorney believed in social equality, Mr. Galt would have to appear like 277 00:21:36.440 --> 00:21:38.800 any other criminal. 278 00:21:38.800 --> 00:21:43.920 Though it was a very hot afternoon and Galt was tired, he insisted that we should walk. 279 00:21:43.920 --> 00:21:45.880 Do you want to handcuff me? 280 00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:47.360 he asked. 281 00:21:47.360 --> 00:21:50.560 Broad toe was ashamed and silent. 282 00:21:50.560 --> 00:21:56.240 So we went, Galt and the officer leading, past the house of Bullgard and company, up 283 00:21:56.240 --> 00:22:02.440 Nassau Street, dodging trucks, bumping people, sometimes in the traffic way, sometimes on 284 00:22:02.440 --> 00:22:08.440 the pavement, to the criminal courts building in City Hall Park, up a winding stairway because 285 00:22:08.440 --> 00:22:13.200 Galt would not wait for the elevator, and to the courtroom where the district attorney 286 00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:14.900 was waiting. 287 00:22:14.900 --> 00:22:16.520 There was some delay. 288 00:22:16.520 --> 00:22:20.000 The judge could not be found at once. 289 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:25.740 It sat on the extreme edge of a chair, one hand in his trousers pocket, the other fiddling 290 00:22:25.740 --> 00:22:30.460 with his watch chain, staring at the clock over the judge's bench as if he had never 291 00:22:30.460 --> 00:22:32.700 seen one before. 292 00:22:32.700 --> 00:22:38.320 The searing emotions of chagrin and humiliation had not come through. 293 00:22:38.320 --> 00:22:43.380 Word of our presence there spread swiftly and the courtroom began to fill up with reporters 294 00:22:43.380 --> 00:22:45.600 and spectators. 295 00:22:45.600 --> 00:22:50.660 The court arrived, adjusting its gown, read the paper that was handed up by the district 296 00:22:50.660 --> 00:22:56.720 attorney, then looked down upon us, asking, Where is the defendant? 297 00:22:56.720 --> 00:22:58.020 Galt stood up. 298 00:22:58.020 --> 00:23:02.460 The court eyed him curiously until the lawyers began to speak. 299 00:23:02.460 --> 00:23:06.460 The district attorney wanted bail fixed at one million dollars. 300 00:23:06.460 --> 00:23:08.700 The court shook its head. 301 00:23:08.700 --> 00:23:12.860 Galt's lawyers asked that he be released on his own recognizance. 302 00:23:12.860 --> 00:23:15.380 The court shook its head again. 303 00:23:15.380 --> 00:23:21.500 After a long wrangle, it was fixed at $100,000, which the lawyers were prepared to provide 304 00:23:21.500 --> 00:23:23.900 on the spot. 305 00:23:23.900 --> 00:23:25.840 Getting out was an ordeal. 306 00:23:25.840 --> 00:23:30.620 By this time, the courtroom was stuffed with morbid humanity. 307 00:23:30.620 --> 00:23:36.580 Reporters surrounded Galt, adhered to him, laid hands upon him to get his attention. 308 00:23:36.580 --> 00:23:41.960 He made continually the gesture of brushing away flies from his face. 309 00:23:41.960 --> 00:23:45.040 The stairway and corridors were jammed. 310 00:23:45.040 --> 00:23:49.940 As we emerged on the street, screaming newsboys offered us the evening papers with eight 311 00:23:49.940 --> 00:23:56.940 column headlines, Galt indicted, Galt arrested, Galt may go to jail. 312 00:23:56.940 --> 00:24:02.480 From the steps across the pavement to a cab I had in waiting, an open aisle had been broken 313 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:09.280 through the mob by photographers who had their cameras trained to catch Galt as we passed. 314 00:24:09.280 --> 00:24:14.200 He looked straight ahead, walking rapidly but not in haste. 315 00:24:14.200 --> 00:24:18.600 Where to? he asked, as the door of the cab slammed behind us. 316 00:24:18.600 --> 00:24:21.600 Anywhere first, to get out of this, I said. 317 00:24:21.600 --> 00:24:24.160 Let's go to the club, he said. 318 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:26.040 I knew which one he met. 319 00:24:26.040 --> 00:24:31.000 Though he was a member of several clubs, he went always to one. 320 00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:36.920 As we entered the big, quiet, red lounging-room, five bankers, three of whom had been counted 321 00:24:36.920 --> 00:24:42.800 among Galt's supporters, were seated in various postures of ease, their minds absorbed in 322 00:24:42.800 --> 00:24:44.600 and the Evening Papers. 323 00:24:44.600 --> 00:24:50.540 Galt's emotions were those of a boy who, having outrun the cops, lands with a whoop in the 324 00:24:50.540 --> 00:24:52.420 arms of his gang. 325 00:24:52.420 --> 00:24:57.800 He tossed his hat aside and shouted, Wee, wow! 326 00:24:57.800 --> 00:25:04.140 The five bankers looked up, rose as one, and stalked out of the room. 327 00:25:04.140 --> 00:25:07.740 For a minute, Galt did not understand what had happened. 328 00:25:07.740 --> 00:25:12.760 He saw them rise as he sat down and evidently thought they were coming to him. 329 00:25:12.760 --> 00:25:18.240 When they did not arrive, he turned his head casually, then, with a start, he looked all 330 00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:21.000 around at the empty space. 331 00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:26.960 His eyes had a startled expression when they met mine again and his face was an ashen color. 332 00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:32.920 He made as if to ring the bell, hesitated, looked all around once more, and said, 333 00:25:32.920 --> 00:25:36.520 Well, Coxie, let's go home. 334 00:25:36.520 --> 00:25:38.440 3. 335 00:25:38.440 --> 00:25:41.320 I began to fear he might collapse. 336 00:25:41.320 --> 00:25:43.280 The Strain was telling. 337 00:25:43.280 --> 00:25:45.660 At the house a servant admitted us. 338 00:25:45.660 --> 00:25:47.780 There was no one else in sight. 339 00:25:47.780 --> 00:25:50.160 We went directly to his apartment. 340 00:25:50.160 --> 00:25:55.760 He tore off his collar and lay for some time quite still, staring straight ahead. 341 00:25:55.760 --> 00:25:58.720 We are the goat, he said. 342 00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:01.440 They put it on us, Coxie, that's all. 343 00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:03.440 They will, eh? 344 00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:07.920 Valentine and his newspaper friends, those magpies at Washington, we'll give them something 345 00:26:07.920 --> 00:26:09.520 to set their teeth. 346 00:26:09.520 --> 00:26:14.680 Now take down what I'm going to say, put it in the form of a signed statement to the press. 347 00:26:14.680 --> 00:26:16.040 Are you ready? 348 00:26:16.040 --> 00:26:18.360 He dictated. 349 00:26:18.360 --> 00:26:23.680 On the evening of July 17, the question of proceeding against the great Midwestern railway 350 00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:28.360 system was the occasion of a special Cabinet meeting at the White House. 351 00:26:28.360 --> 00:26:32.600 Besides the President and the gentlemen of the Cabinet, several members of the Interstate 352 00:26:32.600 --> 00:26:35.240 Commerce Commission were present. 353 00:26:35.240 --> 00:26:38.480 The President asked each one for his opinion. 354 00:26:38.480 --> 00:26:43.320 The Attorney General spoke for half an hour to this effect, that the great Midwestern 355 00:26:43.320 --> 00:26:49.840 railway system was not a combination in restraint of trade, that its methods were not illegal, 356 00:26:49.840 --> 00:26:54.880 that it was necessary for the proper development of the country that railroads should combine 357 00:26:54.880 --> 00:27:00.440 into great systems, a process that had been going on since the first two railroads were 358 00:27:00.440 --> 00:27:07.880 built, and finally that a suit for its dissolution, if brought, would be lost in the courts. 359 00:27:07.880 --> 00:27:09.840 Others spoke in turn. 360 00:27:09.840 --> 00:27:12.960 Then someone said, Where is the Secretary of War? 361 00:27:12.960 --> 00:27:14.280 He is a great jurist. 362 00:27:14.280 --> 00:27:16.040 What does he think? 363 00:27:16.040 --> 00:27:18.920 The Secretary of War was asleep in a corner. 364 00:27:18.920 --> 00:27:20.420 They roused him. 365 00:27:20.420 --> 00:27:25.940 He came into the circle and said, Well, Mr. President, Galt is the dash, dash, dash we 366 00:27:25.940 --> 00:27:28.760 are after, isn't he? 367 00:27:28.760 --> 00:27:33.480 Then the President announced his decision that proceedings should be taken. 368 00:27:33.480 --> 00:28:02.920 Upon this, the Attorney General's office will prepare the legal case. 369 00:28:02.920 --> 00:28:07.480 That is how a suit for the dissolution of the great mid-western railway system came 370 00:28:07.480 --> 00:28:09.240 to be brought. 371 00:28:09.240 --> 00:28:13.640 That is how politicians conduct government. 372 00:28:13.640 --> 00:28:15.280 Have you got all that down? 373 00:28:15.280 --> 00:28:17.440 Read it to me. 374 00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:23.560 When I came to the offensive epithet uttered by the Secretary of War, I read, dash, dash, 375 00:28:23.560 --> 00:28:24.560 dash. 376 00:28:24.560 --> 00:28:25.560 What's that? 377 00:28:25.560 --> 00:28:26.560 He asked. 378 00:28:26.560 --> 00:28:27.920 We can't use the term itself. 379 00:28:27.920 --> 00:28:30.120 It's unprintable, I said. 380 00:28:30.120 --> 00:28:31.120 Can't we? 381 00:28:31.120 --> 00:28:32.120 He said. 382 00:28:32.120 --> 00:28:39.120 It was applied to me without any dash-dash. Spell it out. Anyhow, it's history. 383 00:28:39.120 --> 00:28:41.120 4. 384 00:28:41.120 --> 00:28:47.120 Natalie, who had come in on tiptoe, noiselessly, was standing just inside the door. 385 00:28:47.120 --> 00:28:56.120 Galt seemed suddenly to feel her presence. When he looked at her, tears started in his eyes, and he turned his face away. 386 00:28:56.120 --> 00:29:02.120 She rushed to his side, knelt, and put her arms around him. No word was spoken. 387 00:29:02.120 --> 00:29:14.120 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. 388 00:29:14.120 --> 00:29:22.120 She was alone in the studio. I had not seen her informally since the cataclysmic evening that wrecked the African image. 389 00:29:22.120 --> 00:29:29.360 Oh, she said, looking up, I thought you might come. Excuse me while I finish this. 390 00:29:29.360 --> 00:29:34.600 She was writing a note. When she had signed it with a firm hand and blotted it, she handed 391 00:29:34.600 --> 00:29:41.880 it to me to read. It was a very brief note to Lord Porteous, breaking their engagement. 392 00:29:41.880 --> 00:29:44.240 He won't accept it, I said. 393 00:29:44.240 --> 00:29:50.600 You can be generous, she replied. However, it doesn't matter. I accept it. 394 00:29:50.600 --> 00:29:54.320 These things are all untrue that people are saying about your father. 395 00:29:54.320 --> 00:29:56.000 It's a kind of hysteria. 396 00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:59.360 The indictment, if that's what you are thinking of, is preposterous. 397 00:29:59.360 --> 00:30:00.400 Nothing will come of it. 398 00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:03.160 There will be a sudden reaction in public feeling. 399 00:30:03.160 --> 00:30:05.200 I know, she said. 400 00:30:05.200 --> 00:30:06.200 That isn't all. 401 00:30:06.200 --> 00:30:08.560 I suppose you have come to take me home? 402 00:30:08.560 --> 00:30:10.500 But what else, I asked. 403 00:30:10.500 --> 00:30:12.200 She shook her head. 404 00:30:12.200 --> 00:30:16.280 As we were leaving the studio, she paused on the threshold to look back. 405 00:30:16.280 --> 00:30:18.480 I was watching her face. 406 00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:21.760 It expressed a premonition of farewell. 407 00:30:21.760 --> 00:30:24.000 Once before I had seen that look. 408 00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:25.000 When? 409 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:31.280 Ah, yes, that night long ago when she told me the old house had been mortgaged. 410 00:30:31.280 --> 00:30:33.560 Then I understood. 411 00:30:33.560 --> 00:30:40.520 To her, and indeed to all the family, this crisis in Galt's affairs meant another smash. 412 00:30:40.520 --> 00:30:44.640 The only difference between this time and others was that they would fall from a greater 413 00:30:44.640 --> 00:30:46.640 The Theory of Money and Credit 414 00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:21.840 were five. Galt did not come down. Conversation was oblique and thin. 415 00:31:21.840 --> 00:31:26.920 One wondered what the servants were thinking, and wished the service were not so noiseless. 416 00:31:26.920 --> 00:31:32.120 If only they would rattle the plates, or break something, or sneeze, instead of moving about 417 00:31:32.120 --> 00:31:37.800 with that oiled and faultless precision. The tinkling of water in the fountain room was 418 00:31:37.800 --> 00:31:44.480 a silly, exasperating sound, and for minutes together, the only sound there was. Mrs. Galt 419 00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:51.000 was off her form. She tried and failed. Nobody else tried at all. 420 00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:56.880 Natalie, as I believed, was the only one whose thoughts were outside of herself. Several 421 00:31:56.880 --> 00:32:04.300 times our eyes met in an elusive, sympathetic manner. This had not happened between us before. 422 00:32:04.300 --> 00:32:09.760 What we understood was that both of us were thinking of the same object, of a frail, ill-kept 423 00:32:09.760 --> 00:32:15.560 Little Figure with ragged hair and a mist in its eyes, wounded by the destiny that controlled 424 00:32:15.560 --> 00:32:22.120 it, of Galt, lying in his clothes on a bed upstairs, and nothing to be done for his ease 425 00:32:22.120 --> 00:32:23.960 or comfort. 426 00:32:23.960 --> 00:32:28.720 She was grateful to me that my thoughts were with him, and when I was not looking at her, 427 00:32:28.720 --> 00:32:33.200 I was thinking how different these four women were. 428 00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:37.000 Yet one indefinable thing they had all in common. 429 00:32:37.000 --> 00:32:41.300 brought and held them together in any crisis affecting Galt. 430 00:32:41.300 --> 00:32:48.860 It was not devotion, not loyalty, not faith, perhaps it was an inborn fatalistic clan spirit, 431 00:32:48.860 --> 00:32:54.140 but whatever it was, I knew that each of them would surrender to him again if need were 432 00:32:54.140 --> 00:32:56.800 the whole of all she possessed. 433 00:32:56.800 --> 00:32:59.000 They were expecting to do it. 434 00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:06.000 What is the price of great Midwestern stock today? asked Grandma Gault, in a firm, clear voice. 435 00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:12.000 Everybody started a little, even one of the servants who happened to stand in the line of my vision. 436 00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:15.000 One hundred and seventy, I said. 437 00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:24.000 To those of us who had just seen it fall in a few weeks from two hundred and twenty, this price of one hundred and seventy seemed calamitous. 438 00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:32.000 That shows how soon we lose the true perspective and how myopically we regard the nearest contrast. 439 00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:37.000 When my son took charge of it eight years ago, it was one and a half. 440 00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:43.500 One and a half, said Grandma Gault, in the same clear voice. 441 00:33:43.500 --> 00:33:47.500 For this, I rose and saluted her with a kiss on the forehead. 442 00:33:47.500 --> 00:33:49.000 She didn't mind. 443 00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:51.500 Natalie gave me a splendid look. 444 00:33:51.500 --> 00:33:59.020 Then I excused myself and went to see Galt. The door of his apartment was a jar. I could see him. 445 00:33:59.020 --> 00:34:05.100 He was in his pajamas now, apparently asleep. So I closed the door and sat at his desk in the 446 00:34:05.100 --> 00:34:10.700 workroom outside to call up Mordecai, who had asked me to communicate with him and attend to 447 00:34:10.700 --> 00:34:17.500 some other matters. Presently the hall door opened and closed gently. I looked around. 448 00:34:17.500 --> 00:34:23.740 It was Grandma Galt. In her hand she carried a large envelope tied around with a blue ribbon. 449 00:34:24.380 --> 00:34:29.100 She walked straight to the door of Galt's apartment and went in without knocking. 450 00:34:29.100 --> 00:34:33.180 I could see her from where I sat. She left the door open behind her. 451 00:34:34.620 --> 00:34:38.700 What's this? Galt asked as she put the envelope on the bed beside him. 452 00:34:39.420 --> 00:34:45.660 She did not answer his question but leaned over, laid one hand on his forehead and spoke in this 453 00:34:45.660 --> 00:34:53.420 in its Delphic manner. Fast ye for strife, and smite with the fist of wickedness. 454 00:34:53.420 --> 00:34:59.100 Then she turned, came straight out, closed the door carefully, passed me without a glance, 455 00:34:59.100 --> 00:35:06.460 and was gone. Never again did I wonder whence Galt derived his thirst for combat. When he 456 00:35:06.460 --> 00:35:12.500 emerged some ten minutes later, the mist had fallen from his eyes. The right doctor had 457 00:35:12.500 --> 00:35:17.500 had been there. He handed me the envelope tied around with blue ribbon. 458 00:35:17.500 --> 00:35:22.500 That's Grandma Galt's little fortune, everything she has received out of Great Midwestern. 459 00:35:22.500 --> 00:35:26.500 Keep it in the safe for a few days so she will think we needed it. 460 00:35:26.500 --> 00:35:28.500 Did you give out that statement? 461 00:35:28.500 --> 00:35:31.500 Not yet. There is plenty of time, I said. 462 00:35:31.500 --> 00:35:35.500 Tear it up. That isn't the way we fight, is it? 463 00:35:35.500 --> 00:35:39.500 Grandma Galt never got her envelope back. 464 00:35:39.500 --> 00:35:50.700 The Galt Panic was one of those episodes that can never be fully explained. 465 00:35:50.700 --> 00:35:52.820 Elemental forces were loose. 466 00:35:52.820 --> 00:35:57.060 Those that derived from human passion were answerable to the will. 467 00:35:57.060 --> 00:36:02.420 There were others of a visitant nature, fortuitous and uncontrollable. 468 00:36:02.420 --> 00:36:06.880 What man cannot control, he may sometimes conduct. 469 00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:12.200 You cannot command the lightning, but if it is about to strike, you may lure it here instead 470 00:36:12.200 --> 00:36:14.520 of there. 471 00:36:14.520 --> 00:36:18.360 Weather is so often the accomplice of dark enterprise. 472 00:36:18.360 --> 00:36:24.080 The financial weather at this time was very bad and favored the bullguard conspiracy. 473 00:36:24.080 --> 00:36:30.460 Confidence, which in this case means the expectation of profit, was in decline. 474 00:36:30.460 --> 00:36:35.440 It had never recovered from the shock of that first accident to Greed's cauldron three 475 00:36:35.440 --> 00:37:05.440 The Theory of Money and Credit 476 00:37:05.440 --> 00:37:10.440 the selling of uneasy holders and what the latest and most sinister rumors were. 477 00:37:10.440 --> 00:37:13.440 That was news. Nobody could help printing it. 478 00:37:13.440 --> 00:37:18.440 The financial editors each day repeated what eminent bankers said. 479 00:37:18.440 --> 00:37:21.440 We pray to be delivered from this Jonah. 480 00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:26.440 His ways are not our ways, yet he bringeth wrath upon all alike. 481 00:37:26.440 --> 00:37:29.440 That was true. They said it. They even believed it. 482 00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:33.440 The financial editors could not be blamed for writing it. 483 00:37:33.440 --> 00:37:39.800 So many winds running their feet together, like people in a mob, create a storm. 484 00:37:39.800 --> 00:37:44.920 And when it is over, and they are themselves again, sane little winds, they wonder at what 485 00:37:44.920 --> 00:37:46.540 was done. 486 00:37:46.540 --> 00:37:50.820 The Wall Street news tickers reported that certain banks were refusing to lend money 487 00:37:50.820 --> 00:37:53.020 on Galt securities. 488 00:37:53.020 --> 00:37:58.600 This may have been a stroke of the conspiracy, or merely a reaction to the prevailing fear, 489 00:37:58.600 --> 00:38:00.840 or both interacting. 490 00:38:00.840 --> 00:38:02.380 One never knows. 491 00:38:02.380 --> 00:38:08.340 And it was true and Great Midwestern securities suffered another frightful fall. 492 00:38:08.340 --> 00:38:12.140 This went on for three weeks with scarcely an interruption. 493 00:38:12.140 --> 00:38:20.780 Day after day Galt stood at the ticker watching Great Midwestern fall to 150, to 140, to 130, 494 00:38:20.780 --> 00:38:24.120 to 120 and did nothing. 495 00:38:24.120 --> 00:38:27.860 For the first time in his life he was on the defensive. 496 00:38:27.860 --> 00:38:30.220 That made the strain much worse. 497 00:38:30.220 --> 00:38:32.980 His normal relief was inaction. 498 00:38:32.980 --> 00:38:39.280 He loved to carry the fight to the enemy, even rashly, but foolhardy he was not. 499 00:38:39.280 --> 00:38:44.920 He had foreseen that at the crucial moment he should stand alone against the field. 500 00:38:44.920 --> 00:38:46.680 Nobody believed he could win. 501 00:38:46.680 --> 00:38:48.700 The odds were too great. 502 00:38:48.700 --> 00:38:52.720 Therefore he could rely only upon himself. 503 00:38:52.720 --> 00:38:59.220 One by one, by twos and threes, then by groups, his supporters fell away. 504 00:38:59.220 --> 00:39:04.540 Those who had submitted to his rule from fear were the first to go over to the other side, 505 00:39:04.540 --> 00:39:09.700 surreptitiously at first, lest they should have guessed wrong, then openly as they saw 506 00:39:09.700 --> 00:39:13.380 how the fight seemed to be going against him. 507 00:39:13.380 --> 00:39:16.820 Several bankers publicly renounced their relations with him. 508 00:39:16.820 --> 00:39:22.380 Others, whose allegiance was for profit only, whose gains were wet with the sweat of their 509 00:39:22.380 --> 00:39:28.060 pride, forsook him as fast as they were convinced that his career as a moneymaker was at an 510 00:39:28.060 --> 00:39:32.340 Potter was one of these, and the last to go. 511 00:39:32.340 --> 00:39:35.400 He did it handsomely, according to his way. 512 00:39:35.400 --> 00:39:36.400 One day he came in. 513 00:39:36.400 --> 00:39:42.540 Galt, he said, I know you are in a hell of a fix, and I have done not one damn thing 514 00:39:42.540 --> 00:39:43.540 to help. 515 00:39:43.540 --> 00:39:45.140 I'm not that kind of person. 516 00:39:45.140 --> 00:39:49.260 I hate to quit a man in trouble, so I've come to tell you why. 517 00:39:49.260 --> 00:39:51.060 There are two reasons. 518 00:39:51.060 --> 00:39:56.020 One reason is I've got so much of this great Midwestern stuff that it's all I can do to 519 00:39:56.020 --> 00:39:57.660 take care of myself. 520 00:39:57.660 --> 00:40:02.020 I didn't get out in time, and now I can't get out at all. 521 00:40:02.020 --> 00:40:05.860 The other reason is, well, I'll say it, why not? 522 00:40:05.860 --> 00:40:10.220 You have trampled on my pride until I have no liking for you left. 523 00:40:10.220 --> 00:40:15.600 You're the most hateful man I ever did business with, that's why. 524 00:40:15.600 --> 00:40:21.060 The impulse to come and have it out in this manner was big manlike, I thought, even though 525 00:40:21.060 --> 00:40:23.900 the root was self-justification. 526 00:40:23.900 --> 00:40:25.980 No one else had done so much. 527 00:40:25.980 --> 00:40:29.000 All the others had gone slinking away. 528 00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:34.780 If Galt had responded differently, a real friendship might have blazed there, for instinctively 529 00:40:34.780 --> 00:40:37.320 they liked and admired each other. 530 00:40:37.320 --> 00:40:39.920 Their antagonism was not essential. 531 00:40:39.920 --> 00:40:45.540 And besides, the real reason, as we afterward knew, was the one he gave first. 532 00:40:45.540 --> 00:40:50.740 Potter, with all his wealth, was himself in a tight place. 533 00:40:50.740 --> 00:40:53.380 Bullgard was pressing the oil crowd too. 534 00:40:53.380 --> 00:40:59.580 That's understood, said Galt, in his worst manner, I didn't buy your pride, I only rented 535 00:40:59.580 --> 00:41:00.580 it. 536 00:41:00.580 --> 00:41:06.060 Now you've got it back, look it over, see how much it's damaged and send me a bill. 537 00:41:06.060 --> 00:41:09.580 Potter went out, roaring oaths. 538 00:41:09.580 --> 00:41:12.540 A change was taking place in Galt. 539 00:41:12.540 --> 00:41:16.060 I saw it in sudden, unexpected glimpses. 540 00:41:16.060 --> 00:41:18.740 The movements of his body were slower. 541 00:41:18.740 --> 00:41:25.020 His anger and irritation no longer found outlet in tantrums, but in sneering, terrible sarcasms 542 00:41:25.020 --> 00:41:27.420 uttered in a cold voice. 543 00:41:27.420 --> 00:41:32.860 He looked without seeing, and spoke as from a great distance, high up. 544 00:41:32.860 --> 00:41:36.340 His mind, when he revealed it, was the same as ever. 545 00:41:36.340 --> 00:41:38.540 Nothing had happened to his mind. 546 00:41:38.540 --> 00:41:40.840 His soul lived in torment. 547 00:41:40.840 --> 00:41:45.500 His greatest sin had been to hold public opinion in contempt. 548 00:41:45.500 --> 00:41:48.100 Now it was paying him back. 549 00:41:48.100 --> 00:41:52.940 To have deserved the opprobrium and suspicion with which he was overwhelmed would perhaps 550 00:41:52.940 --> 00:41:54.780 have killed him then. 551 00:41:54.780 --> 00:41:59.420 But to suffer disgrace undeservedly was in one way worse. 552 00:41:59.420 --> 00:42:04.940 He reacted by suspecting those who suspected him and some who didn't. 553 00:42:04.940 --> 00:42:10.620 I believe at one time he almost suspected Mordecai, whose loyalty never for one moment 554 00:42:10.620 --> 00:42:11.620 wavered. 555 00:42:11.620 --> 00:42:18.660 However, Mordecai knew, as no one else did, that Galt was still in a very strong position. 556 00:42:18.660 --> 00:42:20.940 He had not begun to strike. 557 00:42:20.940 --> 00:42:26.160 Thanks to the intuition which moved him at the onset to convert two-thirds of his fortune 558 00:42:26.160 --> 00:42:32.060 into cash, he could, when the moment came, strike hard. 559 00:42:32.060 --> 00:42:37.540 Now came the Day of Days, the time when Bulgard did his utmost. 560 00:42:37.540 --> 00:42:44.180 Fastenings gave way, walls rocked, strong men lost their rational faculties and retained 561 00:42:44.180 --> 00:42:47.740 only the power of primitive vocal utterance. 562 00:42:47.740 --> 00:42:51.620 The sounds that issued from the stock exchange were appalling. 563 00:42:51.620 --> 00:42:56.500 The ear would think a demented menagerie was devouring itself. 564 00:42:56.500 --> 00:43:02.020 Thousands of small craft disappeared that day and left no trace. 565 00:43:02.020 --> 00:43:08.340 Great Midwestern, spilling out on the tape in 5 and 10,000-share blocks, fell 20 points 566 00:43:08.340 --> 00:43:10.380 in two hours. 567 00:43:10.380 --> 00:43:12.940 Galt was in his office at the ticker. 568 00:43:12.940 --> 00:43:18.380 Mordecai was with him, holding his hands reverently together, gazing at the tape in a state of 569 00:43:18.380 --> 00:43:20.340 fascination. 570 00:43:20.340 --> 00:43:27.260 On one headlong impulse, Great Midwestern touched $100 a share, par. 571 00:43:27.260 --> 00:43:31.740 had fallen from 220 in three months. 572 00:43:31.740 --> 00:43:35.420 It's over, said Galt, turning away. 573 00:43:35.420 --> 00:43:41.180 I once saw a great prizefighter on giving the knockout blow at the end of a hard battle 574 00:43:41.180 --> 00:43:45.460 turn his back with the same gesture and walk to his own corner. 575 00:43:45.460 --> 00:43:49.820 What is it you say? asked Mordecai, following. 576 00:43:49.820 --> 00:43:52.200 It's over, Galt repeated. 577 00:43:52.200 --> 00:43:57.100 They haven't got me and they can't go any further without breaking themselves. 578 00:43:57.100 --> 00:44:03.540 Get your house on the wire. That's the direct telephone. That one. I want to give an order. 579 00:44:03.540 --> 00:44:08.580 Mordecai picked up the telephone and asked for one of his partners, who instantly responded. 580 00:44:08.580 --> 00:44:15.660 Vatis zi order? asked Mordecai, holding the telephone and looking at Galt. By all the 581 00:44:15.660 --> 00:44:22.380 great midwestern there is for sale, up to one hundred and fifty, said Galt. 582 00:44:22.380 --> 00:44:27.980 When I transmitted this extraordinary order, put the telephone down softly and lisped, 583 00:44:27.980 --> 00:44:30.460 My Gott! 584 00:44:30.460 --> 00:44:32.780 Just then the door burst open. 585 00:44:32.780 --> 00:44:37.820 Thirty or forty reporters had been waiting in the outer office all day. 586 00:44:37.820 --> 00:44:40.460 Their excitement at last broke bounds. 587 00:44:40.460 --> 00:44:42.260 They simply came in. 588 00:44:42.260 --> 00:44:44.940 The evening postman was at their head. 589 00:44:44.940 --> 00:44:49.880 Mr. Galt, he shouted, you have got to make some kind of statement. 590 00:44:49.880 --> 00:44:52.340 Public opinion demands it. 591 00:44:52.340 --> 00:44:55.740 I expected Galt to explode with rage. 592 00:44:55.740 --> 00:45:00.260 Posty, he said, I don't know a damn thing about public opinion. 593 00:45:00.260 --> 00:45:01.380 That's your trade. 594 00:45:01.380 --> 00:45:03.500 Tell me something about it. 595 00:45:03.500 --> 00:45:06.620 It wants to know what all this means, said Posty. 596 00:45:06.620 --> 00:45:09.340 Well, tell it this for me, said Galt. 597 00:45:09.340 --> 00:45:11.420 Tell it just as I tell you. 598 00:45:11.420 --> 00:45:13.620 The panic is over. 599 00:45:13.620 --> 00:45:16.460 But Mr. Now that's all, said Galt. 600 00:45:16.460 --> 00:45:18.420 Ain't it enough? 601 00:45:18.420 --> 00:45:21.060 I had been to look at the tape. 602 00:45:21.060 --> 00:45:25.580 Great Midwestern is 130, I announced at large. 603 00:45:25.580 --> 00:45:28.980 The reporters stared at me wide-eyed. 604 00:45:28.980 --> 00:45:32.700 Postey ran to look for himself, bumping Mordecai aside. 605 00:45:32.700 --> 00:45:37.420 That's right, he said, making swiftly for the door. 606 00:45:37.420 --> 00:45:41.040 The others followed him in a trampling rush. 607 00:45:41.040 --> 00:45:46.360 The sensation now to be accounted for was not the weakness but the sudden recovery of 608 00:45:46.360 --> 00:45:50.200 Great Midwestern, and Galt's statement explained it. 609 00:45:50.200 --> 00:45:53.580 So they were anxious to spread their news. 610 00:45:53.580 --> 00:45:58.740 It was true, Galt had timed his stroke unerringly. 611 00:45:58.740 --> 00:46:03.720 Everyone was amazed to see how little great Midwestern stock was actually for sale when 612 00:46:03.720 --> 00:46:06.060 a buying hand appeared. 613 00:46:06.060 --> 00:46:10.300 That was because so much of the selling had been fictitious. 614 00:46:10.300 --> 00:46:17.620 The stock closed that day at 150 and never while Galt lived was it so low again. 615 00:46:17.620 --> 00:46:24.140 The feet of many winds ran rapidly apart, and the storm collapsed. 616 00:46:24.140 --> 00:46:26.500 6. 617 00:46:26.500 --> 00:46:32.100 That evening, for the first time in many weeks, Galt had dinner with the family. 618 00:46:32.100 --> 00:46:37.460 We do not see each other change and grow old as a continuous process. 619 00:46:37.460 --> 00:46:39.820 It is imperceptible that way. 620 00:46:39.820 --> 00:46:45.220 But as one looks at a tree that has been in one's eye all the time and says with surprise 621 00:46:45.220 --> 00:46:47.220 Why the Leaves Have Turned 622 00:47:15.220 --> 00:47:35.220 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. 623 00:47:35.220 --> 00:47:41.220 Natalie alone succeeded in drawing his interest. She had spent the day at Moonstuhl. 624 00:47:41.220 --> 00:47:52.220 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. 625 00:47:52.220 --> 00:48:01.220 Work there had been progressing rapidly. The house itself was finished. The principal apartments were ready to be occupied. 626 00:48:01.220 --> 00:48:10.220 The surroundings, of course, were in confusion. Steam drills were going all the time. Roadways were blasting through solid rock. 627 00:48:10.220 --> 00:48:12.380 The landscape was in turmoil. 628 00:48:12.380 --> 00:48:17.860 But you could live there now, said Natalie, if you didn't mind the noise, closing a long 629 00:48:17.860 --> 00:48:21.660 recital to which Galt had listened thoughtfully. 630 00:48:21.660 --> 00:48:24.500 We might have the wedding there, he said. 631 00:48:24.500 --> 00:48:28.140 His suggestion produced a ghastly silence. 632 00:48:28.140 --> 00:48:30.820 Mrs. Galt tried to turn it away. 633 00:48:30.820 --> 00:48:32.620 Galt was alert. 634 00:48:32.620 --> 00:48:35.620 What have I stepped on now, he wanted to know. 635 00:48:35.620 --> 00:48:39.780 Suffering Moses, it ain't safe for me to walk around in my own house. 636 00:48:39.780 --> 00:48:40.780 What's the matter? 637 00:48:40.780 --> 00:48:42.820 Nothing, said Natalie. 638 00:48:42.820 --> 00:48:44.660 Yes, there is. 639 00:48:44.660 --> 00:48:46.380 What is it? 640 00:48:46.380 --> 00:48:50.700 When he couldn't be put off any longer, Vera said quietly, 641 00:48:50.700 --> 00:48:53.900 My engagement to Lord Porteous is broken. 642 00:48:53.900 --> 00:48:56.980 Why? asked Galt, astonished. 643 00:48:56.980 --> 00:48:58.940 That's the first I've heard of it. 644 00:48:58.940 --> 00:49:03.180 No matter why, said Vera, let's not talk about it. 645 00:49:03.180 --> 00:49:05.540 He looked into their faces severally. 646 00:49:05.540 --> 00:49:09.220 His expression was utterly wretched, and they avoided it. 647 00:49:09.220 --> 00:49:14.780 He guessed the reason why, made it perhaps even worse than it was. 648 00:49:14.780 --> 00:49:18.140 In his own household he was on the defensive. 649 00:49:18.140 --> 00:49:23.140 There was always that inaudible accusation he could never get hold of. 650 00:49:23.140 --> 00:49:27.920 In the old days it was that he stretched them on the rack of insecurity and was not like 651 00:49:27.920 --> 00:49:29.800 other men. 652 00:49:29.800 --> 00:49:32.460 Then it was the way he had made them rich. 653 00:49:32.460 --> 00:49:36.300 Now it was that dreadful sense of insecurity again. 654 00:49:36.300 --> 00:49:39.280 They did not know whether they were rich or poor. 655 00:49:39.280 --> 00:49:43.400 They thought he was heading for a last spectacular smash-up. 656 00:49:43.400 --> 00:49:47.200 And suppose he had told them there was happily no danger of that. 657 00:49:47.200 --> 00:49:49.940 Their thoughts would accuse him still. 658 00:49:49.940 --> 00:49:56.080 Why couldn't they be rich as other people were, decently, quietly, and in good taste? 659 00:49:56.080 --> 00:50:00.740 The Valentines were rich and no obloquy pursued them. 660 00:50:00.740 --> 00:50:04.680 Their privacy was not besieged by newspaper reporters. 661 00:50:04.680 --> 00:50:08.080 The Finger of Scorn never pointed at them. 662 00:50:08.080 --> 00:50:12.360 Vera's broken engagement was a harrowing symbol. 663 00:50:12.360 --> 00:50:14.540 Galt was extremely miserable. 664 00:50:14.540 --> 00:50:16.880 One could imagine what he was thinking. 665 00:50:16.880 --> 00:50:18.760 The Galt fortune was saved. 666 00:50:18.760 --> 00:50:20.920 The Galt power had survived. 667 00:50:20.920 --> 00:50:24.720 But the Galt name was a sound of reproach. 668 00:50:24.720 --> 00:50:31.020 The public opinion that had so devastated his spirit did not leave his family unwipped. 669 00:50:31.020 --> 00:50:34.280 These women had suffered for being his. 670 00:50:34.280 --> 00:50:38.720 Though they might not believe the things that were said of him, still they could not help 671 00:50:38.720 --> 00:50:42.000 feeling ashamed of the wealth he had brought them. 672 00:50:42.000 --> 00:50:43.540 They were defenseless. 673 00:50:43.540 --> 00:50:48.560 He was clothed with a sense of justification that he could not impart. 674 00:50:48.560 --> 00:50:51.940 They were naked to the scourge. 675 00:50:51.940 --> 00:50:56.340 His day of victory ended in gloom and dumb wretchedness.