Part 18 (1/2)

”Is that really done?” asked Montague.

”Done!” exclaimed the Major. ”It's done so often you might say it's the only thing that's done.--The people are probably trying to take you in with a fake.”

”That couldn't possibly be so,” responded the other. ”The man is a friend--”

”I've found it an excellent rule never to do business with friends,”

said the Major, grimly.

”But listen,” said Montague; and he argued long enough to convince his companion that that could not be the true explanation. Then the Major sat for a minute or two and pondered; and suddenly he exclaimed, ”I have it! I see why they won't touch it!”

”What is it?”

”It's the coal companies! They're giving the steams.h.i.+ps short weight, and they don't want the coal weighed truly!”

”But there's no sense in that,” said Montague. ”It's the steams.h.i.+p companies that won't take the machine.”

”Yes,” said the Major; ”naturally, their officers are sharing the graft.” And he laughed heartily at Montague's look of perplexity.

”Do you know anything about the business?” Montague asked.

”Nothing whatever,” said the Major. ”I am like the German who shut himself up in his inner consciousness and deduced the shape of an elephant from first principles. I know the game of big business from A to Z, and I'm telling you that if the invention is good and the companies won't take it, that's the reason; and I'll lay you a wager that if you were to make an investigation, some such thing as that is what you'd find! Last winter I went South on a steamer, and when we got near port, I saw them dumping a ton or two of good food overboard; and I made inquiries, and learned that one of the officials of the company ran a farm, and furnished the stuff--and the orders were to get rid of so much every trip!”

Montague's jaw had fallen. ”What could Major Thorne do against such a combination?” he asked.

”I don't know,” said the Major, shrugging his shoulders. ”It's a case to take to a lawyer--one who knows the ropes. Hawkins over there would know what to tell you. I should imagine the thing he'd advise would be to call a strike of the men who handle the coal, and tie up the companies and bring them to terms.”

”You're joking now!” exclaimed the other.

”Not at all,” said the Major, laughing again. ”It's done all the time.

There's a building trust in this city, and the way it put all its rivals out of business was by having strikes called on their jobs.”

”But how could it do that?”

”Easiest thing in the world. A labour leader is a man with a great deal of power, and a very small salary to live on. And even if he won't sell out--there are other ways. I could introduce you to a man right in this room who had a big strike on at an inconvenient time, and he had the president of the union trapped in a hotel with a woman, and the poor fellow gave in and called off the strike.”'

”I should think the strikers might sometimes get out of hand,” said Montague.

”Sometimes they do,” smiled the other. ”There is a regular procedure for that case. Then you hire detectives and start violence, and call out the militia and put the strike leaders into jail.”

Montague could think of nothing to say to that. The programme seemed to be complete.

”You see,” the Major continued, earnestly, ”I'm advising you as a friend, and I'm taking the point of view of a man who has money in his pocket. I've had some there always, but I've had to work hard to keep it there. All my life I've been surrounded by people who wanted to do me good; and the way they wanted to do it was to exchange my real money for pieces of paper which they'd had printed with fancy scroll-work and eagles and flags. Of course, if you want to look at the thing from the other side, why, then the invention is most ingenious, and trade is booming just now, and this is a great country, and merit is all you need in it--and everything else is just as it ought to be. It makes all the difference in the world, you know, whether a man is buying a horse or selling him!”

Montague had observed with perplexity that such incendiary talk as this was one of the characteristics of people in these lofty alt.i.tudes. It was one of the liberties accorded to their station. Editors and bishops and statesmen and all the rest of their retainers had to believe in the respectabilities, even in the privacy of their clubs--the people's ears were getting terribly sharp these days! But among the real giants of business you might have thought yourself in a society of revolutionists; they would tear up the mountain tops and hurl them at each other. When one of these old war-horses once got started, he would tell tales of deviltry to appall the soul of the hardiest muck-rake man. It was always the other fellow, of course; but then, if you pinned your man down, and if he thought that he could trust you--he would acknowledge that he had sometimes fought the enemy with the enemy's own weapons!

But of course one must understand that all this radicalism was for conversational purposes only. The Major, for instance, never had the slightest idea of doing anything about all the evils of which he told; when it came to action, he proposed to do just what he had done all his life--to sit tight on his own little pile. And the Millionaires' was an excellent place to learn to do it!

”See that old money-bags over there in the corner,” said the Major.