Windy McPherson's Son

he dry unresponsiveness in him that he did not sense more fully its meaning and its message. All day the food stuff of a vast city flowed

ns from Michigan, corn and potatoes from Iowa. In December, fur-coated men hurried through the forests of northern Michigan gathering Christmas trees that found their way to warm firesides through the stre

ork, strong, well clad, able and efficient, he looked through the streets, seeing and hearing the hurry and the roar and the shouting of voices, and then with a smile upon his lips went inside. In his brain was an unexpressed tho

a grey-haired, dignified Boston man who sat beside him, said, "I worked here once and used to sit on a barrel of apples at the

so much foodstuff and moved to epigram b

empire rattling o'er

more money here,"

n the partnership. He was oily, silent, tireless. All day he went in and out of the office and warehouses and up and down the crowded street, sucking nervously at an unlighted cigar. He was a great worker in a suburban church, but a shrewd and, Sam suspected, an unscrupulous business man

w Face let him do it. Broad Shoulders had been educated in New England and even after several years away from his college seemed more interested in it than in the welfare of the business. For a month or more in the spring he took most of the time of one of the two stenographers employed by the firm writing letters to graduates of Chicago high schools to

of the offices on the street, were dark and narrow, and smelled of decaying vegetables and rancid butter. Noisy Greek

uring the three years that he stayed there, or went out from there to towns and cities

o take advantage of the chances that he thought lay so invitingly about. Within a year he had made much progress. From a woman on Wabash Avenue he got six thousand dollars, an

nd ready to be sold at a long profit to hotels and fashionable restaurants; and there were even secret bushels of corn and wheat lying in other warehouses along the Chicago R

in the street or on the road. Daily he saw more clearly the power of cash. Other commission merchants along South Water Street came running into the office of his firm with tense, anxious faces asking Narrow-Face to help them over rough spots in the day's trading. Broad-Shoulders, who had no

ry to get it. That's all there is to business-money-getting." And then looking across to the desk of his brother he woul

ed Webster, whose reputation for the shrewd drawi

y thousand dollars with no risk on my part if I lose the money and n

warthy skin and black hair, put his hands on the

lateral?"

uch a contract that will be legal a

naturedly. "I can draw

s from his pocket, counted

wenty thousand and without collateral you're worth kno

k. He did not believe that he would by any chance lose Frank Eckardt's money, but he knew that Eckardt himself would draw back from the

emed to him to cover what he wanted covered, and having got it well fixed in his mind he

rew a chair to the window and sat down, feeling strangely alive and awake like a young man in love. He saw himself going on and on, directing, managing, ruling men. It seemed to him that there was nothing he could not do. "I will run factories and banks and mayb

emembered the unpleasant tightening of the mouth and the sudden shrewd hard look in his employer's long narrow face. He had not heard much of the talk, but he was aware of a strained pleading quality in the voice of the young man

ting on the roof, made a little stream that ran down some hidden pipe and rattled out upon the ground. The noise of the falling water and the sound of distant f

life, a battle in which the odds were very much against the quality

men. It was the quality that had sent him in secret to Lawyer Webster to protect himself without protecting the simple credulous young medical studen

eads of great industrial trusts, in factories and in great mercantile houses of whom one would like to think thus. They are the men who

ves up against the force of the brute trader, the dollar man, the man who with his one

s drunk with it, trusts were being formed, mines opened; from the ground spurted oil and gas; railroads creeping westward opened yearly vast empires of new land. To be poor was to be a fool; thoug

tract, and the same quality had sent him forth night after night to walk alone in the streets when other young men went to theatres or to walk with girls in the park. He had, in truth, a taste

silver horn in his hand. Sam watched, filled with mild curiosity. The man, not reckoning on an onlooker at so late an hour, began an elaborate and amusing schedule of personation. He opened the window, put th

ught back to his mind another man who bowed to a crowd and blew upon a horn. Getting into bed he pulled the covers about him and went to sleep. "I will get F

s of deals he had made and the growth of his bank account, going afterward into South Water Street where Sam talked

had set, and hungering for profits; "I have money but no head on my sh

ide him in the elevated train. In Sam's room the agreement was written out by Sam and

cent, and in the end gave back the principal more than doubled so that Eckardt was able to retire f

mselves out in detail in his brain as he went about town drinking with young men, or sat at dinner in the Pergrin house. He even began working over in his head various schemes for getting into the firm by which he was employed, and thought that he might work upon Broad-Shoulder

great Rainey Arms Company sent for him and offered him a po

. There was, in the talk with Colonel Tom, a hint of future opportunities to get stock in the company and perhaps to become event

king of a profitable arrangement touching percentages on the amount saved in b

thing to his mind. Any kind of travel was a keen pleasure to him. Against the hardships and discomforts he balanced the tremendous advantages of seeing new places and faces and getting a look into many lives, and he looked back with a kind of

yscrapers and millionaire stockholders and men high in the service of the state and of the government at Washington came in and went out at the door. Sam looked at them closely. He wanted to have a tilt with them and try if

of a judge pronouncing the death sentence, and sat dutifully at his desk day after day looking very important and thoughtful, smoking long black cigars and signing personally piles of letters brought him by the heads of various departments. He looked upon himself as a silent but very important spoke in the government at Washington and every day issued

there was some one man to whom all looked for guidance, who at critical moments became dominant, saying "Do this, or that," and making no explanations. In

Among the department heads there was a great deal of loyalty and devotion to Colonel Tom, and

give lip service to the resounding talk of the colonel about the fine old traditions of the company, he could not bring himself to a

and followed the thought with another. "A man will come along,

vil War. Whittaker had been an inventor, making one of the first practical breech-loading guns, a

ing rifles and making improvements, enlarging the plant, getting out the goods. The drygoods merchant scurried about the country, going to Wa

hands of Confederate soldiers, but this story which increased Sam's respect for the energetic little drygoods merchant, Colonel Tom, his son, indignantly denied. In reality Co

through the marriage of Jane Whittaker, the last of her line, to the only surviving Rainey, and upon her death her

t of it. The position as buyer had for ten years been occupied by a distant cousin to Colonel Tom, now dead. Whether the cousin was a fool or a knave Sam could never quit

nd left, and making for himself during his first year twenty-three thousand dollars. At the end of the year, when the directors asked to have an adjustment made and the percentage contract annulled, he g

f-hearted way, standing on its reputation, its financial strength, and on the glory of its past achievements. Dry rot ate at its heart. The damage done was not great, but was growing greater. The heads of the departments, in whose hands so much of the running of the business lay, w

ed done, Sam began working to get suggestions into the older man's mind. Within a month after his elevation the two

ed them tirelessly to Colonel Tom. He hated waste; he cared nothing for company tradition; he had no idea, as did the heads of other departments, of getting into a comfortable be

effacing the tracks of the cousin. For years the company had been overpaying for inferior material. Sam put his own material inspectors into the west side factories and brought several big Pennsylvani

of realisation of the part he wanted to play in the business world. The president of a lumber company took Sam i

e should like to take hold of the man's throat and press as he had once pressed on the throat of Windy McPherson. And then a cold gleam com

ung-looking man in a fancy waistcoat-and then turning and taking

easonable," he said, as he

u will get a receipt for this when I get back to the office," he said; "it is about what you owe our company f

lonel Tom, forced big changes everywhere. He discharged useless foremen, knocked out partitions between rooms, pushed everywhere for more and

rders, throwing back his shoulders like a man remade. All day long he was at it, discharging, directing, roaring against waste. When a strike broke out in one of the shops because of innovations Sam had force

Colonel Tom brought what threatened to be a squally affair to a hurrahing climax by the announcement of a five per cent incr

orce had come into the company. Men began dropping quietly into Sam's office, asking questions, suggesting, seeking favours. He felt that he was getting hold. Of the department heads, about half fought him and were secretly marked for slaughter; the oth

If a man applying for a place suited him, he got admission to the colonel's office and listened for half an hour to a talk anent the fine old t

se employee directors. During the same year five heads of departments resigning in a moment of indignation over one of Sam's innovations-to be replaced later by two-their stock by a prearranged agreement cam

was the swing and go of new life and he felt that he was in a position to move on toward real control and had begun laying lines with that end in view. Standing in the offices in LaSalle Street or amid the clang and roar of the shops he tilted up his chin with the same odd little gesture that had