John Rawn, Prominent Citizen

CHAPTER VII
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN

I

Thus far, the Rawn planet had moved but in restricted orbit, to wit: one bounded as to one extremity by the dingy yard and narrow walls of a home rented at twenty dollars a month; at the other, by the still dingier and more prosaic business surroundings of a railway's general offices. Narrow and dull enough the Rawn life had been, and in such a life, lived on into middle age, you scarce could have blamed a man had he settled back for ever into the grip of the upreaching fingers of monotony. The half mechanical and parrot-like repetition of set phrases in a restricted line of business correspondence for Rawn himself, day after day; the dull and endless round of homekeeping duties for the wife—what but narrowness and dullness could come out of life such as this? Wherefore you should not have been surprised had you been told that Grace Rawn was simply the outgrowth of this sort of home, this sort of life, not much different from other girls of her class.

We are coming more and more in America to use that word "class." The theory is that we came to this continent to escape class; but surely class has followed us, and restricted us, and counted us out into elect and damned, into those above and those below the salt. Rather let us say the truth, which is that class has followed us because we ourselves have followed after class.

But continually the great laws of survival go on after their own fashion. In the production of human beings there continually are at work the five laws of evolution, the five factors of heredity, environment and selection, blended with variation and isolation. These five factors build human characters, continue ever to do their amazing sums in life and success and survival. Sometimes they produce a Grace Rawn.

II

Perhaps it was the very factor of isolation that gave Grace Rawn her quality. She was a silent girl, somewhat reserved. Silence and reserve she got from her father's solemn self-absorption, her mother's quiet self-abnegation. She was softened in part by the gentle training of her mother, who talked most when her husband was not present.

Grace Rawn stood two inches taller than her mother, and had a certain severe distinction which covered many sins in shorthand. Her brows were dark and met above her eyes; and the latter, being somewhat myopic, usually were covered by glasses—which also not infrequently shield yet other multitudes of sins in stenography. Her chin was well out and forward. Her jaw was rounded, her teeth white and good, her carriage also good, if still a trifle stiff and awkward. In air she was slow and deliberate. Her eyes were gray like her mother's, her voice deep like her father's. She was what would be called old for her years, indeed a woman at sixteen. Most would have placed her age some years further on than the eighteen years which really were hers at this time.

Grace Rawn could not be said to have any circle of friends. Her soul was eclectic. In short, isolation, selection and variation, the three less known laws of growth, had done as much for her as the more vaunted factors of heredity and environment. Self-contained, adequate enough in appearance, although lacking that sort of magnetism which draws men to women, she would have passed with small notice in the average collection of her sex. For such as these, propinquity comes as a blessing in so far as natural selection is concerned.

III

In St. Louis, natural selection operated much as in the Silurian or the Elizabethan, or eke the Jeffersonian age, choice being made from that which offered at the family doorstep in either era. In Kelly Row good folk sat upon the doorstep of an eventide. The evening assemblage upon the Rawn front doorstep in Kelly Row grew larger as Grace grew older. Certain young men came. Why did they come? Why do we walk about and around a tree that hangs full in fruit not yet ripened, watching the bloom on this, the texture of that, the size or probable flavor of yonder example hanging as yet unfinished in the alchemy of the summer sun? At least the little company at times was larger on the Rawn front stoop of an evening. It all went on in the easy, careless, hopeful, unconventional fashion of families of the Rawn class. Let it be remembered that class really is class in this country. There seemed little hope for Grace, therefore, other than in a marriage after the stereotyped fashion of Kelly Row. Perhaps if good fortune attended, she might marry a man who, at middle age, might, like her father, be drawing a salary of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month; a great man in the eyes of the world of Kelly Row, which lived on an average of half that per month.

IV

In this evening company, as Laura Rawn had mentioned, occasionally might have been found one Charles Halsey, himself now some twenty-four years of age at next spring's lambing-time; as his father, a Missouri farmer, would have said. Halsey had come to the city, a serious-minded youth, to seek his fortune, just as John Rawn had done at about the time Halsey himself was born. But whereas Rawn had concerned himself little in books, Halsey had, by such means as only himself could have told, managed a degree in engineering in what New England calls a freshwater college, the same not so good as salt, yet, in Halsey's belief better than none and cheaper than some. Once out of college and finding himself belated, he had thrust into the thick of the fray of the business world to the best of his ability, though to his surprise not setting the world into any conflagration. These four years now, as chance had had it, he had been engaged in the drafting department of the engineer's offices in the same railway which employed John Rawn. A thoughtful young chap enough, and one held rather student than good fellow by his fellow clerks, because for the most part he did not join them in their dissipations, their cheap joys, their narrow ways of thinking. Also a chap regarded as not wholly desirable because he read much, and because he had ideas.

Charles Halsey, as well as Grace Rawn, in some sort seemed to set the laws of heredity and environment at defiance in favor of the lesser factors in evolution. He had originally no right to be anything but a farm lad, yet he had dreams, and so had fought his way through college. There, in the world of books, close to the world of thought, not far from the world of art, he had become what some of us might have called an idealist, what most of us would have called a fool, and now what all of us would have called a failure.

A studious bent, a wide and unregulated way of reading, a vague, inexact and untrained habit of mentality, took young Halsey, as it does many another unformed mind, into studies of social problems for which he was but little fitted, to wit: into imaginings about human democracy, the inherent rights of man, and much other like folly. The questions of socialism, the rights and wrongs of capital, the initiative, the referendum and the recall; the direct primary, the open shop, and the living wage scale under the American standard—all these and many other things occupied him as much as tangents, curves and logarithms. As a result of his inchoate research, he started out in young manhood well seized of the belief—finely expressed in a certain immortal but wholly ignored document known in our own history—that there is a certain evenness in human nature before the eyes of the Lord.

A young engineer with small salary, and a theoretical cast of mind, even though he reads text-books out of hours, has only himself to trust for his upward climb in life. Surely he might be better occupied in wondering rather about his pull with the boss than about the eyes of the Lord as bearing upon the future of this republic. But, at any rate, such was the plight of young Mr. Halsey. And, such being the nature and disposition of the doorstep-frequenting young, it chanced that, although Grace Rawn really was not yet fledged beyond the blue-tip stage of her final feathering, and although Mr. Halsey of the Engineering, draftsman, himself still lacked the main quills which support a man in his ultimate flight through life, they came more and more to meet each other; after which, each in separate fashion came to enjoy the meeting and to look forward to the next.

It was not unusual for Mr. Halsey, faring homeward from the office, to meet Grace, also faring home, at the turn of the car track on Olive Street. Taking the same car they would travel, somewhat shy and silent, until they reached the distant corner where those bound for Kelly Row must leave the car. Then, himself obliged by this to walk perhaps a mile farther, he would join her, still shy and more or less silent; and so perhaps again wander to that certain door in Kelly Row where by that time, perhaps, both Mr. Rawn and his helpmeet were sitting on the narrow porch. He was always welcome there, because Rawn knew him for a steady chap; and because, in Halsey's eyes, John Rawn was considerable of a personage. Rawn was aways ready to be consulted by the young, and, like most failures, was not averse to giving abundant good advice to others as to the problems of success. Halsey, reserved and not expansive of nature, a poor boy in college, always had had a social world as narrow as this of Kelly Row; so that after all the parties of both the first and the second part were traveling mostly in their own class. On the whole it was rather a dour assemblage, that on the porch in Kelly Row. None seemed to have any definite plan or to suspect another of plan. Life simply was running on, in the bisque shepherdess, china dog, Dying Gaul and Rock of Ages way.

V

Let us except John Rawn. He now had certain wide plans of his own, as we shall see—indeed, as we have seen—and these had somewhat to do with young Mr. Halsey himself.

Mr. Halsey himself was disposed at times rather to moroseness, not yet having discovered the full relation of liver and soul—a delicate and intimate association. Sometimes despair oppressed him.

"Once in a while I get an idea," said he, one evening, "and I think it might make good if I had a chance to put it over. But what's the use? I couldn't do anything with the best idea in the world, because I have no time nor money to work one out. I tell you, you've got to have money or pull to get anywhere to-day. This country's getting into a bad way. It doesn't look quite right to me, I tell you, the way human beings are ground under to-day."

And yet it was out of precisely such talk as this that John Rawn originally got the reason for the enthusiastic conversation with his wife which earlier has been chronicled. Behold the difference among men! Here was one who wanted to set all the world right, to discover some panacea by which all men might rest in happiness for ever, by which all men might succeed, might indeed prove themselves free and equal, and entitled to, say, ten minutes out of the twenty-four hours for the pursuit of happiness—innocent happiness, such as reading books on electricity, socialism, the steaming quality of coke, or the tortional strength of I-beams laid in concrete. Here also, one lift above him on the doorstep of Kelly Row, was another man, John Rawn, who, thinking he was full of ideas, had none, but who had every confidence in himself; a man who early in his youth had proved his ability to leave to others the skin of their bananas while he himself took the meat, and paid naught therefor. Not much of a stage, thus set in Kelly Row. But this is the stage as it was set.

VI

Among these, there was one idea waiting to be born. For, look you, the air is full of ideas—even as John Rawn in ignorant truthfulness had said. They float all about us, unborn children in the ether of the universe, waiting to be born, selecting this or that of us—you, me, gently, for a parent; the most of them to be pushed back unknown, unrecognized, into the frustrate void, and so left to await a better time. I doubt not that, at this time or that, each of us has had offered to him, thus gently, thus unknown, some idea which would have made any of us great, set us far above our fellow-man; ideas which for all of that, perhaps would have revolutionized the world. But we did not know them. What great things are left unborn, what great discoveries remain unmade, no man may measure. We do not lay hold upon that thin and vaporous hand which touches our shoulder. We do not wrestle unwearied with the angel unto the coming of the dawn. So we go on, bruised and broken, and at length buried and forgot, most of us never grasping these unseen things, not even having a hint of their immaterial presences. It is only as the jest-loving fates have it that, once in a while, something in revolutionary thought drops to earth, is caught by some materialistic mind, bred up by some materialistic hand.

It must have been first at some chance meeting here on the doorstep in Kelly Row that young Halsey let drop reference to an idea. It was the whisper of some passing wing in the universal ether, but he did not know that. It is not always the mind of the idealist which produces. But now this thin, faint, mystic sound had fallen upon the material mind of John Rawn, covetous, eager, receptive of any hint to further his own interest, concerned not in the least with science, not in the least with altruism, troubling not in the least over the fate of this republic or the welfare of mankind, concerned only with his own fate, interested only in his own welfare. Whereupon John Rawn—barring that certain prophetic outburst of his egotism with which he favored his wife but recently—in silence had accepted this sign and taken it as his own, devised for his use and behoof, and for that of none other than himself.

VII

This difference, then, lay between Rawn of the Personal Injury department of the railway office, and Halsey of the drafting offices; Rawn believed in himself, Halsey had not yet figured out whether or not he believed in anything. They met on the doorstep at Kelly Row, and out of their meeting many things began in Kelly Row which matured swiftly elsewhere, and in surprising fashion.

We now come on, sufficiently swiftly, to the history of the birth and organization of the International Power Company, Limited; a concern which grew out of nothing except the five factors of survival—environment, heredity, variation, selection and isolation. Its cradle was in Kelly Row.

CHAPTER VIII
POWER

I

"Charles," said John Rawn one evening, with that directness of habit which perhaps we have earlier noted, "I have been thinking over some scientific problems."

"Yes?" replied Halsey. "What is it—a patent car coupler? There isn't a fellow in our office who hasn't patented one, but I didn't know it was quite so catching as to get into the Personal Injury department—they only settle with the widows there."

"In my belief," went on Rawn, frowning at this flippancy, "I am upon the eve of a great success, Charles."

"What sort of success, Mr. Rawn?" inquired Halsey, more soberly.

Rawn smiled largely. "You will hardly credit me when I tell you, almost all sorts of success! To make it short, I have formed a power company—a concern for the cheap generation and general transmission of power. In the course of a few months we'll proceed in the manufacture of electrical transmitters and receivers for what I call the lost current of electricity."

Halsey stood cold for a moment, and looked at him in amazement.

"You don't mean to say—why, that's precisely what I've been thinking of for so long."

"I don't doubt many have been thinking of it," rejoined Rawn. "It had to come. These things seem to happen in cycles. It's almost a toss-up what man will first perfect an invention when once it gets in the air, so to speak. Now, this invention of mine has been due ever since the developments in wireless transmission. In truth, I may say that I have only gone a little beyond the wireless idea. What I have done is to separate the two currents of electricity."

Halsey leaned against the wall. "My God!" he half whispered. He smiled foolishly.

"Why, Mr. Rawn," he said finally, "I've been studying that, I don't know how long—ever since the researches in my university were made public. I thought for some time I might be able to figure it out further than our professors have as yet. Pflüger, of Bonn, in Germany, has been working for years and years on that theory of perpetual motion in all molecules."

"Mollycules? I don't know as I ever really saw any," hesitated Rawn.

"Very likely, Mr. Rawn!"

"I've never cared much for mere scientific rot," said Rawn, coloring a trifle. "That gets us nothing. But what were you saying?"

Halsey's enthusiasm carried him beyond resentment and amusement alike.

"Molecules are everywhere, in everything, Mr. Rawn," he explained gently; "and now we know they move, though we can see them only in mass and as though motionless."

"I don't see how that can be," began Rawn; but checked himself.

Halsey smote his hand against the solid wall. "It moves!" he exclaimed. "It's alive! It vibrates—every solid is in perpetual motion. The dance of the molecules is endless. It's in the air around us, above us—power, power—immeasurable, irresistible power, exhaustless, costless power! All you have to do is to jar it out of balance."

"Yes, I know. That's what I've been getting at, precisely—"

"I was going to figure it out sometime," said Halsey ruefully.

"I did figure it out!" said John Rawn sententiously. "Moreover, I've got the company formed."

II

"You—Mr. Rawn? How did you manage that? I didn't know that you—" Halsey at last spoke.

"A great many haven't known about a great many things," said Rawn, walking up and down, his hands in his pockets, his air gloomily dignified. "A few men always have to do the things which others don't know about. For instance, what did all the work of your professors—what-d'ye-call-'ems—amount to? Nothing at all. Maybe they'd print a paper about it. That would about end it, just as it ended it for you. You admit you got the idea from them; but I say it wasn't any idea at all. I saw it—in the papers. Didn't pay much attention to it, because there's nothing in this scientific business for practical men like me."

"I know, I know," Halsey nodded. "That's true. Here it all is." He took from his coat pocket a creased and folded newspaper page of recent date. "Here's the story—I was proud, because it was my own university did the work:

"'That the molecules composing all material substances are constantly in rapid motion, ricocheting against one another in the manner of a collection of billiard-balls suddenly stirred up, the speed of the air's components being about half that of a cannon ball, was the proof announced to-day from the University of Chicago as a further development of the experiments by Professor R. A. Threlkeld, which for the last year have been attracting the attention of scientists from all parts of the world. The absolute nature of the proof, upon which physicists all over the world have been working without result for several years, was assented to by Professor Pflüger, of Bonn University, Germany, who arrived in Chicago last Monday to witness the demonstration.'"

He paused in his literal reading from the printed page. "I told you about Pflüger," he began.

"Yes, some Dutchman," assented Rawn graciously. "They're great to dig."

Halsey, being in the presence of the man whom he proposed making his father-in-law, was perforce polite, although indignant. He went on icily, with his reading, since he had begun it:

"'The belief that the molecules of which all matter is composed are in a perpetual dance of motion has been held tentatively by scientists for several years, but, owing to the general inability to make any progress in proving it, considerable skepticism has developed among the physicists of several of the leading scientific nations. It was generally known as the kinetic theory. Professor Threlkeld's proof is a further development of his experiments, showing electricity to be a definite substance, which were announced last year and were pronounced the most important discovery concerning the nature of electricity since Benjamin Franklin.

"'The simple expedient of performing his experiments in almost a complete vacuum—a method which had not occurred to scientists before—was given by Professor Threlkeld as the foundation stone of his discovery. Minute drops of oil, sprayed into a vacuum chamber, one side of which is of glass, demonstrate by their own motions the truth of the theory.

"'Surrounded by the ordinary amount of air, the oil drops are bombarded by moving air molecules in so many thousand places at once that their motion is so rapid as to be invisible. With few molecules of air surrounding them, the drops are driven back and forth as though being used as a punching-bag.

"'By reference to his previous experiments with drops of oil bombarded by electrical ions, the motion of the oil drops has been found to be precisely the same, showing the cause of the motion to be similar in both cases.'"

"That's all right," said John Rawn, "all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough."

III

Halsey smiled. "Well, here's what the discoverer says about it," he commented. "I reckon that's plain, too, as far as it goes:

"'For the benefit of the general public, Professor Threlkeld has prepared the following statement concerning the experiments he has been conducting:

"'"The method consisted in catching atmospheric ions upon minute oil drops floating in the air and measuring the electrical charge which the drops thus acquired. This year the following extensions of this work have been made:

"'"The action of ionization itself is now being studied, each of the two electrical fragments into which a neutral molecule breaks up being caught upon oil drops at the instant of formation. This study has shown that the act of ionization of a neutral air molecule always consists in the detachment from it of one single elementary charge rather than of two or three such charges.

"'"By suspending these minute oil drops in rarefied gases instead of in air at atmospheric pressure, the authors have been able to make the oil drops partake of the motions of agitation of the molecules to such an extent that they can be seen by any observer to dance violently under the bombardment which they receive from the flying air molecules.

"'"By measuring accurately the amount of the motion of agitation of the oil drops and comparing it with the motions which they assume under the influence of an electrical field because of the charge which they carry, the authors have been able to make an exact and certain identification, with the aid of computations made by Mr. Fletcher, of the electrical charge carried by an atmospheric ion (and measured in their preceding work), with the electrical charge carried by univalent ions in solution.

"'"This work not only supplies complete proof of the correctness of the atomic theory of electricity, but gives a much more satisfactory demonstration than had before been found of the perpetual dance of the molecules of matter."'"*

*With but a change of name, Mr. Halsey quoted literally from the journal—The Author.

IV

"Fine! Fine! Charley!" interrupted Rawn sardonically. "Everybody's read that who cared to read it. It's too dry for most folks. It's public; it's wide open, no secret about it. But who wants it? What use has a mollycule and a drop of oil in a glass jar got in actual business? What ice does it cut?"

"I know—I know, Mr. Rawn; very little indeed. But, one idea grows out of another. Now, what I was experimenting with was this same second current of electricity—whatever it is. It's got something to do—I don't just know what—with this same movement of the molecules. Now, can't you see, something has got to move them. If you've got perpetual motion, you've got a perpetual power somewhere back at it, and a power that is endless, universal—

"Mr. Rawn," he resumed earnestly, "when I got that far along, I got to—well—sort of dreaming! I followed that dance of the atoms on out—into the universe—into the manifestation of—"

"Well, of what?"

"Of God! Of Providence! Of Something, whatever it is that begins and perpetuates; something that plans! Something that created. Something that intends life and comfort and joy for the things It created."

V

Rawn eyed him coldly. "Charley," said he, "you're talking tommyrot! You can't run this world into the spiritual world. That's wrong. It's irreligious. Besides, it's rot."

Halsey hardly heard him. "So then I began to wonder what we'd find yet, when we had that vast, universal power all for our own—all for man, you know, Mr. Rawn. Living's hard to-day, Mr. Rawn. There's a lot of injustice in the world nowadays. So—well, I wondered if it weren't nearly time that things should change. We've always moved on up—or thought we did, anyhow—so why shouldn't we keep on moving, keep on making discoveries?"

"That's what I thought, Charley!"

—"Something that would lighten the world's labor, and give the world more time to think, more time to grow—to enjoy—well, to love, you know—"

"Charley, you're nothing better than a damned Socialist! You're siding with the lower classes. Labor!—There's always got to be labor, long as the world lasts—always has been and always will be. And some do that sort of work, while others don't. There are differences among men. Look at those professors—look at you! A mollycule in a glass jar—what'd it get you? Did any of you form a company for the perpetual sale of something that's everlasting and that don't cost anything? You didn't. But I did."

"Yes. And it was my dream—but not as you state it, Mr. Rawn. I didn't want to sell it. I wanted to give it. I wanted to do something for the people, for humanity—for the country—you see. That is—"

"Humanity be damned!" broke in John Rawn brutally. "You can't do anything for humanity—you can't make the weak men strong—it's God A'mighty does that, Charley. Give it away, eh? Well, let me have the second current that costs nothing, and let me sell it for ever at my own price—and I reckon I'll let you and your professor and Mr. Dutchman, whatever his name is, trail along any way you like with your mollycule in the glass jar. I want canned power—definite, marketable, something you can wrap up in a package and sell, do you understand—sell to those same laboring men that you're wasting your sympathy on. Work for yourself, my son, remember that; never mind about humanity. And I'll give you a chance, Charley—in my company," he added.

VI

"Is it a big company?" queried Halsey wearily.

"Twenty-five million dollars," answered John Rawn calmly. And it is to be remembered that at this time John Rawn was drawing a salary of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, the highest pay he had ever received in all his life; also that he was at this time a man forty-seven years of age. We have classes in America, but occasionally the lines that separate one from the other prove susceptible of successful attack at the hands of a determined man. As Rawn stood before Halsey, who only goggled and gasped at such statements as his last, he seemed a determined man.

"We are going to dam the Mississippi River, a couple of hundred miles above here at the ledges," Rawn remarked casually. "For the time, that will be our central power plant. We will contract for a million and a half dollars' worth of power each year in St. Louis alone. That comes down by regular wire transmission. That is nothing, it's only a drop in the bucket. Our big killing is going to be with the other scheme—the second current—the same idea you've been trifling with. We'll go East with that."

"You seem to mean almost what I mean, when I talked with you long ago—"

"Do you think so?" Rawn's tone was affable and he held out his hand. "I should be happy indeed to think that we had been studying along the same lines, Charles. That will enable you all the better to understand my own ideas and my business plans. Of course—and I'll be frank with you, Charles—Mrs. Rawn and I have doubted the wisdom of Grace's engagement to a young man without means or prospects. But I can give you prospects, and you can make your own means. I'll put you in our central factory. We need good men, of course, and I need you especially, Charles. In fact, I've had you in my eye."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I shall be president of the concern."

Halsey smiled sardonically. "The difference between men!"

"Pardon me, but you seem to think that you ought to stand in my shoes in this matter, Charles. I don't recall any warrant for that." Rawn spoke with asperity, aggrieved. "Of course, we speak loosely of certain things, all of us, and all of us have unformed wishes, all that sort of thing. I'm willing to admit, too, as I said before, that when the time comes for a great idea to be discovered, it may be almost by accident that it is discovered by this man or that.

"But now, as I take it, Charles," he continued, "you never had any definite and exact idea of handling the unattuned current of electricity which runs free in the air, and which—according to my theory—can be taken down by the proper receivers and used locally—harnessed, set to work; and retailed at a price. That's the wireless idea, of course, in one form. It's the one big thing left for big business to discover. There's nothing left in timber, mines, irrigation, railroads; cream's all off the country now. But now here comes this idea of mine, and it's bigger than any of those old ones. Money?" He threw out his hands. "Were you working on this yourself, my son?" he concluded. "How singular! But it's in the air."

"Not very much," said Halsey honestly. "I didn't have time to work steadily at it. We're pretty busy in the office. I did make a little model, though. I spent quite a lot of time on it, as I could."

"We are busy in our office, too," said Rawn grimly. "But I found time. We'll look over your model together, some day."

CHAPTER IX
CHANGE IN KELLY ROW

I

Unless the Day of Judgment shall, in its extraordinary phenomena, accomplish that result, it is scarcely to be held probable that any cataclysm inaugurated by God or man ever will essentially disturb the placid business of simply being alive. Vesuvius erupts; a few human ants are scorched. A city burns, and a few ant-hills perish. An earthquake rocks half a continent; the other half stands firm. Nothing much matters, and nothing happens. That men fly in the air, that men talk across seas by machines—as right presently they will talk mind to mind, free of all mechanical hindrance—attracts no attention beyond passing chronicle in the argot of the day. The large things of the age, of course, are the ball games and the encounters of the prize ring. Why should we think? Why should we feel apprehension, whereas we know full well that, come what may—unless that shall be, to wit: the ball game, the prize fight, or the Day of Judgment—nothing really can much matter, and nothing much can happen?

Nothing much happened in Kelly Row. The old monotony of business and domestic routine went on with no alteration. Grace went with her father daily to the common and accustomed scene of their labors; Mrs. Rawn baked bread, roasted meat when meat could be afforded—for this was in the America of to-day—swept the hall carpet and dusted off the Dying Gaul; while as to Charles Halsey, he still read late at night and made none too good use of India ink, try-square and straight-edge by day. No great disturbance was to be noted anywhere. All that was proposed was that the people should be—with a very commendable benevolence—offered the opportunity of purchasing for ever, to the behoof of a very few, something that had been given them free and for ever by the will of God. A simple thing, this, and of no consequence. It ranked not even with an earthquake; certainly not with a ball game.

II

Yet, with sufficient steadiness, the plans for all this went forward, and that with a commendable celerity also; for John Rawn now proved himself no idler in a matter where his own welfare was concerned. He and Halsey very often, in their daily meetings, discussed their future plans; Halsey none too happily. Rawn consoled him.

"Never mind about it, Charles. You shall be my right-hand man. You'll be able to understand my plans more perfectly than anybody else. And listen, Charles—" he laid a hand on the young man's shoulder, "I'm not going to stand in the way of your own plans. You and Grace shall marry as soon as you like, after we get this thing going. It won't be long. I shall have abundant means."

"How ever did you do it?" demanded the young man, even as his face lightened at what seemed to him the most desirable news in the world. He had just gained Grace's consent and her mother's, but dreaded to ask that of her sterner parent. "How in the world did you manage it, Mr. Rawn? You hadn't any money, and you hadn't any influence."

"I did it by force of conviction," answered John Rawn severely, setting his knuckles on the table and leaning forward as he faced him. "I did it by my own original thoughts. I impressed these other men with the importance of my invention."

III

He strode up and down now, as he went on: "I'll tell you, Charles, so that you can understand these things. I suppose you do a certain amount of reading on current events. You must know, as we all do, what a keen search there has been made by capitalists all over the country for water power sites? There are few who know to what extent the greater power sites have been monopolized already—that's kept quiet, and the people don't care. Oh, I admire them, those leaders—those men who see into the future—those men who are our kings in industry. It's there I've wanted to stand all my life—among them, in their company, shoulder to shoulder with them, even-up with them—or better.

"Of course, you know the newspapers and the magazines—all of them managed by a lot of reformers who have no weight in the world of affairs—have done all they could to thwart the plans of these brainier men. But they can't stop what's going to happen. A few men are going to control the resources of this country. A few men are going to administer the business affairs of this country. It can't be stopped. Even the Supreme Court realizes that now. Congress learned it long ago—the Senate proves it every day of the week. My son, this invention of mine is going to make that likelihood a certainty, a certainty! I want my place among those men, those few leaders who are to control this country. And I'm going to have it!"

Young Halsey, dull white, simply sat staring at him as he went on.

"We all know what the old ideas of fuel and power are—they're obsolete. Electricity is the power of the future, the power of to-day. Speed, speed, speed is what we want. Power, power, power is what every industry needs, as well as what every man craves.

"Now, heretofore, the only question has been to get electricity over the country, to distribute it cheaply. The water powers manufacture it well enough, but even water powers cost money; and there has always been a limit to the range of transmission. Now, when I set aside all these old, costly, inefficient methods, and hand, ready-made, to the great capitalists of this country the very answer to the last question they have been asking, what is going to be the natural result? When I tell them that I can wipe out all this enormous industrial waste that has been going on in power, what are they going to say to me? Are they going to kick me out of their offices?

"They didn't kick me out. When I went to them—a few of them, men who run our road—and told them that I could separate electricity into two parts, two sorts, common and preferred, old and new, costly and cheap, localized and wholly mobile—what were they going to say to me? They didn't kick me out of the office! They got up and locked the office door. That's what they did. They were afraid I'd get away from them!

"They had thought of these things before—about as much as you have, I reckon. That is, they had hoped something would be discovered some time, by somebody. But I told them that I could send one-half of this divided power up into the air, now! I said I could store it in the air without cost to any one, and then take it down, at any manufacturing plant, anywhere, any lighting plant, any enterprise using power, whenever and wherever I pleased, at a cost not worth mentioning—and now! It was then they locked the office door, for fear I'd get away."

IV

"It's wonderful," said Halsey, warmly as he could.

"I told them that, as certainly as anything is certain, I could take that stored charge out of the air, and set it at work in Chicago, or Cleveland, or Pittsburgh, or Minneapolis, or where I liked. I said I could put in the scrap heap every factory run under the old and obsolete power methods. Then they began to sit up. I had 'em pale before I got through! I tell you, Charles, I saw the president of this railroad we have been working for look pale and sick when I, I, John Rawn, one of his underpaid clerks—a man who had had enough trouble to get to see him—who had to make some excuse to get to see him—stood up right to his face and proved these things."

Halsey, duller white, listened on as Rawn talked on.

"Of course, they didn't believe it—he called in his crony, the general traffic manager—that beast Ackerman—you see, they have some side lines of investment together, on their personal account—and it makes 'em a lot more than their salaries. But they were afraid not to believe what I said. They tried to talk and couldn't. About all they could say to me at the end of an hour or so was 'How much?'

"Then I told them how much," concluded John Rawn.

"How much was it, then?" Halsey tried to smile, palely.

"That is not for me to say. Business men handling large matters are pledged to mutual secrecy. The president of this railroad left for New York yesterday. I'm taking chances in telling you this much, and promising you as much as I have. I would not do it if I did not regard you as one of my own family. You must keep close in this, or else—" A savage look came into Rawn's face, which he himself would scarcely have recognized, a new trait in his nature, kept back all these years; the savagery of the stronger having a weaker being in its power.

"Breathe a word of this, even to Grace," he said, "and it'll cost you Grace, and it'll cost you more than that."

V

Halsey made no answer but to sit looking at him, his eyes slightly distended. He loved this girl. If he must pay for that love, very well. Love was worth all a man could have, all a man could do. He loved a girl, and he was young. Any price for her seemed small.

Rawn allowed his last remark to sink in before he resumed:

"It was some time ago that I went to these men. They sent for me often enough after that—"

"And could you prove it out?—"

"Wait a minute—don't interrupt me when I'm speaking." Rawn raised an imperious hand. "They sent for me, yes; until at length the president told me they hadn't known they had had this big and brainy a man right at their elbows all the time.

"Then," he went on blandly, unctuously, "they showed me how large-minded and generous great business men can be when you come to know them. The people don't know these great business men—why, they're just as simple, and human, and kind! They said they wanted to identify me with their own fortunes. For instance, they put me in for five thousand shares of stock in a rubber company they are floating, and some automobile stock. The automobile industry is sure to grow. That rubber stock alone would make me rich, I have no doubt."

"But what have you done?—"

"Wait a minute! These men, it seems, are in with a lot of other railroad men who are developing an oil field in lower California. They have been waiting till things got ripe. They've got two or three gushers capped out there that they're holding back until they get ready. They'll make millions out of that alone. These men play in with Standard Oil, and you know how strong their hold is since the Supreme Court threw down the cards. A salary! I a salary—what did I make? They have their salaries, but what do such sums count with men of real genius in affairs?

"Well, they put me in for some of those oil shares, too. That alone would make me rich. I could stop right here, taking no chance, and be rich, now, to-day. It pays to trail in with the right bunch. What can the muckrakers do toward stopping men like that?

"I'm telling you things which of course I ought not to, but I know I can trust you, Charles. And, as I told you, I'm going to keep you about me in the business. I believe in you, my son. We'll have plenty of work to do together."

"Have you laid before them a complete plan, then, Mr. Rawn—how did you figure it all out so soon? I've worked on this a bit, and I never got much beyond a model that didn't quite turn the trick."

"I would hardly be foolish," smiled John Rawn. "They do not have my secrets. Let them complete their own plans. Let them raise their money. Let them form their company. Let them give me legally my fifty-one shares of International Power for control—then I'll tell them, not before. It's a question whether they're big enough to stack up in my class, that's all."

"Why, you're like the Keeley motor man!" grinned young Halsey. "It lasted—for a while. But can you keep on putting this over with these people?"

"The president of this railroad started for New York yesterday, I told you! We've not been idle. Two months ago we told our Senators in Congress what we wanted in the way of laws in the matter of our great central power dam. Work is going on in the state legislatures, both sides of the river. Money? There's no trouble raising money in America when you have a valid idea—no, not if it's only one-tenth as good as this. And this is the best and biggest monopoly this country ever saw. They'll pay for an idea like this!"

VI

"It's an idea that'll rivet chains on this country!" broke out Halsey suddenly, starting up. "It's an idea that'll make still worse slaves of this American people!"

"Yet just a while ago," said Rawn, with a fine air of Christian fortitude, "you said that you were trying to get hold of this very same idea."

"Yes, yes, I was! I am! I did! But I wanted to take a burden off from the shoulders of the world, not to put a greater there. I wanted to lessen the dread and despair that our people feel to-day. I wanted to work it out, I say, so that every man could have the benefit—and free!"

"Every man is going to have it," remarked John Rawn grimly, "but not free. What did I tell you a while ago? Get an idea, cinch it—and then sell it! The people can have this benefit, yes; but they'll pay for it. That's the way success is made."

"Ah, is it so?" was Halsey's answer. He flung himself against the table, his pale face thrust forward over his outspread arms. "Success! You mean only that the corporation grip on this country will be stiffened more than any one ever dreamed. That's what your idea means, then? That's your success?"

Rawn nodded. "Of course. That has to be. Business conditions have changed. I told you, a few men are to control the destiny of this country. Individual competition—it's foolish now. There are differences among men. We have to take the world as we find it, and improve it if we can. When a fortunate man hits upon some great improvement in the living conditions of humanity, he gets rich. That's the way of life. Why fight it? Why not get on the right side, instead of the wrong side of the world? Why not trail in with the main bunch, if that's where the money is?"

"Go on, then, go on!" said Halsey after a long while, the expression on his face now changing. "I'm going to trail in, as you say. When does the riveting begin?"

"The public will be taken in when the larger interests have completed all their plans," answered John Rawn. "The stock of International may not go on the market for some time; indeed, I doubt if much of it ever gets out beyond our fellows,—it's too good a thing to share with the public. I know what'll happen with my fifty-one per cent.—it'll stay in my safety-box until John Rawn is in need of bread.

"We start with fifteen million bonds," he continued, "thirty millions preferred stock, with a forty per cent., common, as a bonus. It looks as though the thing would be all inside. The management—"

"But you?—You'll think me personal—"

"Not at all. I'll hold the control."

"Of what?"

"Of all of it," said John Rawn, gently smiling, as he leaned his knuckles on the dingy table in the dining-room in Kelly Row.

Halsey smiled at him, tapping his finger on the side of his head. "I see," said he.

"No, I'm not crazy. What do you think you see?"

"Things don't happen in that way, Mr. Rawn. Inventors don't get off in the money like that. Don't tell me that."

"Right you are," said Rawn, dropping a clenched fist on the table top. "Inventors don't! But men of that same class—men of grip and grasp—they do get off where the money is! I'll show you. They won't rob John Rawn!"

VII

"Did they take it easy?" queried Halsey finally.

"Threatened to kill me, that was all! As I said, they locked the door. It was the traffic manager, Ackerman, who took it roughest. We both looked along his pistol barrel. 'All right,' I said. 'Shoot. Kill me, and what is there left? You can't take me in with you—it's only a question whether I'll take you in with me!

"'Now, you listen,' I said to Standley and Ackerman—and I wasn't afraid of them—'I'll show you how to make something that everybody has to have. I'll put speed into the work of every laboring man—I'll double his efficiency, double his hours and halve his pay, and I'll cut off his ability to help himself. I'll make labor unions impossible. I'll gear up, pace up, stiffen up the whole theory of life and work, I tell you, gentlemen,' said I, 'so that one hour will count for two, one man will count for two, one wage will count for two! Do you get me, gentlemen?' I asked of them—just those two were in the office then, and the door was locked behind me. 'You're big men,' said I, 'but you're not as big as I am. It's a cheap bluff about that gun,' I said to Ackerman. 'Put it up. You wouldn't dare kill me, or dare do anything I didn't want you to. I came to you because it was easier to walk down this hall than it was to walk across the street. Do you want me to walk across the street?'"

Rawn chuckled gently; and now indeed he did present the very image of self-confidence. "Well, then, they saw it," said he finally. "They didn't want me to walk across the street! Standley laughed at Ackerman. 'No use to kill him yet,' says he. I laughed then, we all laughed. 'No, it wouldn't be any use,' said I to them. 'The question is, how much I ought to give you.'

"Ackerman took it hard. He's a bulldog sort of man. 'You're damned impudent!' said he. 'I'll have you fired.'

"'I'm fired now!' says I to them. 'You think I'm only a common clerk. Didn't both of you come up from clerking? Can't I take you higher yet than where you are now?' The Old Man, Standley, nodded then; and pretty soon he reached out and took my hand. 'Come in, son,' says he. 'You're on.'

"Well, that's nearly all there was about it, Charley. I say to you, too, 'Come in, son—you're on.'

VIII

"Now then," he went on in his monologue, "we're up to the wait while the laws are being made, and while all the plans for financing the proposition are going through. We'll have to pro-rate this stuff with the big railway companies, of course, and with the oil and steel industries, and some of the other leading combinations—Standley and Ackerman'll have no trouble, with their acquaintance among the big men of the East. You can't stop such men. Give them this idea of mine and you can't keep them from controlling this country. These are things that can't be altered."

"But it will alter the world!" exclaimed young Halsey, at last beginning to arouse. "Who knows how much power there is in the water of even one big river? You can use it over and over again. Why, on that one river—"

"Our river," said John Rawn, smiling.

"The people's river!" retorted Halsey fiercely. "Their river! God made that river, and all the rest of them, for something, I don't know what. But it wasn't for this."

"It'll have to work," answered John Rawn. "That river'll have to work to earn its keep—they'll all have to!"

"And the country—the republic—what will become of it?"

"The republic? That was a compromise. We perhaps had to live through that. Conditions in government change." Mr. Rawn spoke largely, finely, with a nice appreciation of all values.

"My God!" whispered Halsey. "What do you mean?"

IX

Rawn paid small attention to him, and he broke out yet more vehemently. "But it is an enormous thing—you are dealing with the power of powers! The great force of the world is gravitation. It makes the world move, keeps the sun in its place. Water running down hill never tires. It doesn't know any eight-hour day."

"That term will cease to exist within two years," said John Rawn grimly. "It is a detestable thing. It has hampered business long enough."

"What do you mean?"

"There's no such thing as an arbitrary length for a day's work. The agreed day has lasted long enough. Money is made by setting other men to work for you, and then seeing that they do work. When you have something every man must use, when you've got the final whip-hand, it's you who set the working day, and not those who work for you."

"You're talking of using what God gave to human beings, and talking of making worse slaves of them to that gift. That's monstrous, Mr. Rawn!"

"Is it, then? To our notion it has been monstrous what these labor combinations have tried to do. Our great industrial leaders have been used unjustly. Yet labor is only mechanical power, that has to eat, and sleep, and wear clothes. Our kind of power doesn't have to do those things."

"But, Mr. Rawn! if that were true—of course it can't be true—what would there be left for the average man? I say that a man has a right to work when he likes, and a right to stop when he likes."

"Precisely; but the labor unions say that he must stop when they like. Why don't you use your brains, Charles? The old war was between capital, that is to say, concentrated power, and labor, which is unconcentrated power. That war has held back business in this country for years. Now, when I told these men, Standley and Ackerman, that I had something which would wipe out every labor union within a few years—well, they had to come in with me, that was all. They had to.

X

"The trouble with you," contended Rawn, himself now speaking fiercely as he loomed and lowered above Halsey, "the trouble with all you dreamers is that you have no real imagination. What's the use talking about the rights of the average man? When did the average man ever start or stop a revolutionary idea? When these things come, they come, and you can't help them. They had machinery riots in Great Britain a generation or two ago, but the spinning jennies stuck. It's always been so—progress sticks. The people have to adjust. But why should capital keep on fighting labor, or truckling to it, or treating with it, when we can take labor for nothing, as you just said, out of the power of gravitation—send it where we like, practically for nothing—labor that is power, labor that doesn't have to eat and doesn't have to be paid wages? I say if you had any imagination in your soul, my son, you'd rise to a thought like that."

"But that average man still must eat," said Halsey bitterly.

"Let him eat from our hands, then!" croaked John Rawn harshly. "I tell you, when I explained this thing—when I showed them what we had in our hands, those big men broke into a sweat. They could see it, if you can't.

"But as for me," he continued, standing erect and spreading apart his hands, his voice softened almost to tremulousness, "when I saw where this thing really was going to put us all—in control of the labor question—beyond the attacks of the muckraking brigade—beyond the Supreme Court, if the time ever came for that—when I saw what perfect political, legislative, and industrial control we'd have in all this country—I say, when I realized what all this meant, I felt small and humble—I did indeed. I saw that I was only an instrument of Providence, that's all. The people? Why, we'll be the custodians of their welfare, that's all. Some men are set apart, devoted to that duty—humble agents of Providence, my son."

XI

A frown of consecrated unselfishness sat upon the brow of John Rawn. The younger man sat looking at him, wondering whether there were not here really some Homeric jest. "I didn't know it was in you," said he, rather unfortunately, at last, and hastened to cover: "That's right—it is imagination!"

Rawn raised a hand magnificently. "Never mind as to that, Charles. A great many didn't know it was in me. Why, a few months ago I told my wife something of this. She asked if I'd ever be rich enough to give her a silk dress! When the factory's up and the wheels are moving—then I'll take her out to the place, and I'll say to her just what you said to me—'You didn't think it was in me, did you? But it was!' Women nearly always think their husbands can't do anything in the world. A silk dress! My God! And she wanted a new gate in the picket fence, too."

"I didn't know that about women," said Halsey simply. "I thought it was the other way about."

"Well, well, I hope it may be that way in your case. Listen, Charles. I love my girl, Grace. She has always been a good child. I'm putting you in a place where you can take good care of her. I want you to stick to her for ever, through thick and thin. Remember, my son, that your wife is your wife, and that nothing must separate you from her."

"Maybe it'll work out something after my idea, after all." Halsey spoke pleasantly as he could at this mention of Grace.

"We'll take our chances but what it will work out our way!" said John Rawn, grinning in return. "You want to work for man, do you? Well, I want men to work for me!"

XII

"But we've no quarrel," he said suddenly, wheeling about. "We'll be partners from the start. There are some minor particulars to work out. I've got to have some sort of shop out in the back yard. Bring your little machine there—the model you said would not quite work."

"How long before we begin, Mr. Rawn?" asked Halsey simply.

"I have my last pay envelope in my pocket now, to-day."

"Didn't they give you any capital to start with?"

"I did not dare ask it."

"But how much funds have you of your own?"

"Mighty little. I've been kept down all my life. It's been pretty much week to week with me, although Laura's been a wonderful manager, I'll say that."

"I've saved a little money," said Halsey, quietly as before. "I even believe Grace has saved her salary—eight a week. You see, we were making plans—here's my bank-book. A little over five hundred. How much would you need, Mr. Rawn, to take care of you for the next few days that you require for this work?"

"I've got to have some working models made, and it'll take some cash," said Rawn. "I've hardly had time to work out all these things as yet. All right. All the more pleasure for you to feel that you had a hand in it."

He reached across the table and took the dog-eared bank-book which Halsey extended, and ran his eye down the column of pitiable figures. The total was more than he himself had ever saved in all his life. Yet John Rawn stood there now calm, large and strong, and spoke in millions.

XIII

"All right, Mr. Rawn," said Halsey cheerfully. "Take it along. I'll draw the balance out for you. I reckon Grace and I won't have to wait any longer this way than we would the other."

"Well, be mighty careful to keep things to yourself, that's all!" was Rawn's answer. "If you're going to be my son-in-law, you're going to be loyal to my ideas. One of my ideas is that a man has a right to what he can take."

"Mr. Rawn, do you know anything about socialism?" asked Halsey suddenly.

"Not very much. Why should I?"

"There's sort of a brotherhood, or chapter, or society, or what you'd call it here, you know."

"I've heard so."

"And they let anybody who is interested come to the meetings—I've been there often—did I ever tell you? Our rooms are up-stairs over a saloon, up under the rafters. We have lanterns there, the way the revolutionists used to have over in Europe, when they had to meet in secret. We have speakers there sometimes—from Milwaukee, New York, even from Europe. And I want to tell you it's astonishing what a talk you'll hear there sometimes, from some chap that you wouldn't think had it in him—just rough-dressed fellows that look as if they hadn't a dollar in the world."

"They usually haven't," said John Rawn coldly. "They want to get the dollars of men like myself and my friends, who really have done something in the way of developing this country. But one thing sure, you'll cut out that brotherhood business when you go to work with us. The rights of man!—the future of this country! Why, good God, boy, with the grip you can get on business, with us to help you, what difference does it make to you whether you call this a republic or anything else? What is this republic? That is, what was it?"

XIV

Halsey sat staring at him fixedly for some time, without making answer. Rawn, carelessly buttoning up in his pocket the bank-book, as though it had been his own, rose at length and held out his hand.

"You're a good boy, Charles," said he. "You've done the best you knew, and that's about all I've done. You couldn't say, of course, that our ideas have been the same in regard to this discovery, so I suppose we can't wonder they are not the same in regard to its eventual application. Let's not argue about that. We'll start out with our little shop, the first thing."

The young man still looked at him, still withheld comment. Rawn, once more full of himself, almost forgot him now. He stood erect, his arms spread out, in a favorite posture, as though exhorting a multitude. A pleasant, gentle, generous smile spread over his countenance, a smile which showed his content with himself, his future prospects, his past performances.

"You ought to have been there with me, Charles, when I talked to old Standley and his side partner, Ackerman. That was the big scene of my whole life!"

"The big scene?" said Halsey, half musingly. "No! Maybe not. We don't know what there may be on ahead."

"Isn't that the truth!" assented John Rawn graciously. "When a man of brains and energy gets his start, there's no telling where he won't go, or what he won't do. Yes, that's the truth!"