s hand Steve laid a little pile of money on the desk.
"That's for a starter," he said and turned to frown at George Pike who at
that moment came to the door. The freight agent went quickly away and the
two men were left alone together. Steve shook hands with his new partner.
He went out and then came in again. "You understand," he said mysteriously.
"The fifty dollars is your first month's salary. I was ready for you. I
brought it along. You just leave everything to me, just you leave it to
me." Again he went out and Hugh was left alone. He saw the young man go
across the tracks to the old factory and walk up and down before it. When a
farmer came along and shouted at him, he did not reply, but stepping back
into the road swept the deserted old building with his eyes as a general
might have looked over a battlefield. Then he went briskly down the road
toward town and the farmer turned on his wagon seat to stare after him.

Hugh McVey also stared. When Steve had gone away, he walked to the end
of the station platform and looked along the road toward town. It seemed
to him wonderful that he had at last held conversation with a citizen
of Bidwell. A little of the import of the contract he had signed came to
him, and he went into the station and got his copy of it and put it in his
pocket. Then he came out again. When he read it over and realized anew that
he was to be paid a living wage and have time and help to work out the
problem that had now become vastly important to his happiness, it seemed
to him that he had been in the presence of a kind of god. He remembered
the words of Sarah Shepard concerning the bright alert citizens of eastern
towns and realized that he had been in the presence of such a being, that
he had in some way become connected in his new work with such a one. The
realization overcame him completely. Forgetting entirely his duties as a
telegrapher, he closed the office and went for a walk across the meadows
and in the little patches of woodlands that still remained standing in the
open plain north of Pickleville. He did not return until late at night, and
when he did, had not solved the puzzle as to what had happened. All he got
out of it was the fact that the machine he had been trying to make was of
great and mysterious importance to the civilization into which he had come
to live and of which he wanted so keenly to be a part. There seemed to him
something almost sacred in that fact. A new determination to complete and
perfect his plant-setting machine had taken possession of him.

       *       *       *       *       *

The meeting to organize a promotion company that would in turn launch the
first industrial enterprise in the town of Bidwell was held in the back
room of the Bidwell bank one afternoon in June. The berry season had just
come to an end and the streets were full of people. A circus had come to
town and at one o'clock there was a parade. Before the stores horses
belonging to visiting country people stood hitched in two long rows. The
meeting in the bank was not held until four o'clock, when the banking
business was at an end for the day. It had been a hot, stuffy afternoon
and a storm threatened. For some reason the whole town had an inkling of
the fact that a meeting was to be held on that day, and in spite of the
excitement caused by the coming of the circus, it was in everybody's mind.
From the very beginning of his upward journey in life, Steve Hunter had
the faculty of throwing an air of mystery and importance about everything
he did. Every one saw the workings of the machinery by which the myth
concerning himself was created, but was nevertheless impressed. Even the
men of Bidwell who retained the ability to laugh at Steve could not laugh
at the things he did.

For two months before the day on which the meeting was held, the town had
been on edge. Every one knew that Hugh McVey had suddenly given up his
place in the telegraph office and that he was engaged in some enterprise
with Steve Hunter. "Well, I see he has thrown off the mask, that fellow,"
said Alban Foster, superintendent of the Bidwell schools, in speaking of
the matter to the Reverend Harvey Oxford, the minister of the Baptist
Church.

Steve saw to it that although every one was curious the curiosity was
unsatisfied. Even his father was left in the dark. The two men had a sharp
quarrel about the matter, but as Steve had three thousand dollars of his
own, left him by his mother, and was well past his twenty-first year, there
was nothing his father could do.

At Pickleville the windows and doors at the back of the deserted factory
were bricked up, and over the windows and the door at the front, where a
floor had been laid, iron bars specially made by Lew Twining the Bidwell
blacksmith had been put. The bars over the door locked the place at night
and gave the factory the air of a prison. Every evening before he went to
bed Steve walked to Pickleville. The sinister appearance of the building
at night gave him a peculiar satisfaction. "They'll find out what I'm up
to when I want 'em to," he said to himself. Allie Mulberry worked at the
factory during the day. Under Hugh's direction he whittled pieces of wood
into various shapes, but had no idea of what he was doing. No one but the
half-wit and Steve Hunter were admitted to the society of the telegraph
operator. When Allie Mulberry came into the Main Street at night, every
one stopped him and a thousand questions were asked, but he only shook his
head and smiled foolishly. On Sunday afternoons crowds of men and women
walked down Turner's Pike to Pickleville and stood looking at the deserted
building, but no one tried to enter. The bars were in place and window
shades were drawn over the windows. Above the door that faced the road
there was a large sign. "Keep Out. This Means You," the sign said.

The four men who met Steve in the bank knew vaguely that some sort of
invention was being perfected, but did not know what it was. They spoke
in an offhand way of the matter to their friends and that increased the
general curiosity. Every one tried to guess what was up. When Steve was not
about, John Clark and young Gordon Hart pretended to know everything but
gave the impression of men sworn to secrecy. The fact that Steve told them
nothing seemed to them a kind of insult. "The young upstart, I believe yet
he's a bluff," the banker declared to his friend, Tom Butterworth.

On Main Street the old and young men who stood about before the stores in
the evening tried also to make light of the jeweler's son and the air of
importance he constantly assumed. They also spoke of him as a young upstart
and a windbag, but after the beginning of his connection with Hugh McVey,
something of conviction went out of their voices. "I read in the paper that
a man in Toledo made thirty thousand dollars out of an invention. He got it
up in less than a day. He just thought of it. It's a new kind of way for
sealing fruit cans," a man in the crowd before Birdie Spink's drug store
absent-mindedly observed.

Inside the drug store by the empty stove, Judge Hanby talked persistently
of the time when factories would come. He seemed to those who listened a
sort of John the Baptist crying out of the coming of the new day. One
evening in May of that year, when a goodly crowd was assembled, Steve
Hunter came in and bought a cigar. Every one became silent. Birdie Spinks
was for some mysterious reason a little upset. In the store something
happened that, had there been some one there to record it, might later have
been remembered as the moment that marked the coming of the new age to
Bidwell. The druggist, after he had handed out the cigar, looked at the
young man whose name had so suddenly come upon every one's lips and whom he
had known from babyhood, and then addressed him as no young man of his age
had ever before been addressed by an older citizen of the town. "Well, good
evening, Mr. Hunter," he said respectfully. "And how do you find yourself
this evening?"

To the men who met him in the bank, Steve described the plant-setting
machine and the work it was intended to do. "It's the most perfect thing
of its kind I've ever seen," he said with the air of one who has spent
his life as an expert examiner of machinery. Then, to the amazement of
every one, he produced sheets covered with figures estimating the cost
of manufacturing the machine. To the men present it seemed as though the
question as to the practicability of the machine had already been settled.
The sheets covered with figures made the actual beginning of manufacturing
seem near at hand. Without raising his voice and quite as a matter of
course, Steve proposed that the men present subscribe each three thousand
dollars to the stock of a promotion company, the money to be used to
perfect the machine and put it actually to work in the fields, while a
larger company for the building of a factory was being organized. For the
three thousand dollars each of the men would receive later six thousand
dollars in stock in the larger company. They would make one hundred per
cent. on their first investment. As for himself he owned the invention and
it was very valuable. He had already received many offers from other men
in other places. He wanted to stick to his own town and to the men who had
known him since he was a boy. He would retain a controlling interest in the
larger company and that would enable him to take care of his friends. John
Clark he proposed to make treasurer of the promotion company. Every one
could see he would be the right man. Gordon Hart should be manager. Tom
Butterworth could, if he could find time to give it, help him in the actual
organization of the larger company. He did not propose to do anything in
a small way. Much stock would have to be sold to farmers, as well as to
townspeople, and he could see no reason why a certain commission for the
selling of stock should not be paid.

The four men came out of the back room of the bank just as the storm that
had all day been threatening broke on Main Street. They stood together by
the front window and watched the people skurry along past the stores
homeward-bound from the circus. Farmers jumping into their wagons started
their horses away on the trot. The whole street was populous with people
shouting and running. To an observing person standing at the bank window,
Bidwell, Ohio, might have seemed no longer a quiet town filled with people
who lived quiet lives and thought quiet thoughts, but a tiny section of
some giant modern city. The sky was extraordinarily black as from the smoke
of a mill. The hurrying people might have been workmen escaping from the
mill at the end of the day. Clouds of dust swept through the street. Steve
Hunter's imagination was aroused. For some reason the black clouds of dust
and the running people gave him a tremendous sense of power. It almost
seemed to him that he had filled the sky with clouds and that something
latent in him had startled the people. He was anxious to get away from
the men who had just agreed to join him in his first great industrial
adventure. He felt that they were after all mere puppets, creatures he
could use, men who were being swept along by him as the people running
along the streets were being swept along by the storm. He and the storm
were in a way akin to each other. He had an impulse to be alone with the
storm, to walk dignified and upright in the face of it as he felt that in
the future he would walk dignified and upright in the face of men.

Steve went out of the bank and into the street. The men inside shouted
at him, telling him he would get wet, but he paid no attention to their
warning. When he had gone and when his father had run quickly across the
street to his jewelry store, the three men who were left in the bank
looked at each other and laughed. Like the loiterers before Birdie Spinks'
drug-store, they wanted to belittle him and had an inclination to begin
calling him names; but for some reason they could not do it. Something had
happened to them. They looked at each other with a question in their eyes.
Each man waited for the others to speak. "Well, whatever happens we can't
lose much of anything," John Clark finally observed.

And over the bridge and out into Turner's Pike walked Steve Hunter, the
embryo industrial magnate. Across the great stretches of fields that lay
beside the road the wind ran furiously, tearing leaves off trees, carrying
great volumes of dust before it. The hurrying black clouds in the sky were,
he fancied, like clouds of smoke pouring out of the chimneys of factories
owned by himself. In fancy also he saw his town become a city, bathed in
the smoke of his enterprises. As he looked abroad over the fields swept by
the storm of wind, he realized that the road along which he walked would in
time become a city street. "Pretty soon I'll get an option on this land,"
he said meditatively. An exalted mood took possession of him and when
he got to Pickleville he did not go into the shop where Hugh and Allie
Mulberry were at work, but turning, walked back toward town in the mud and
the driving rain.

It was a time when Steve wanted to be by himself, to feel himself the one
great man of the community. He had intended to go into the old pickle
factory and escape the rain, but when he got to the railroad tracks, had
turned back because he realized suddenly that in the presence of the
silent, intent inventor he had never been able to feel big. He wanted to
feel big on that evening and so, unmindful of the rain and of his hat,
that was caught up by the wind and blown away into a field, he went along
the deserted road thinking great thoughts. At a place where there were no
houses he stopped for a moment and lifted his tiny hands to the skies. "I'm
a man. I tell you what, I'm a man. Whatever any one says, I tell you what,
I'm a man," he shouted into the void.




CHAPTER VII


Modern men and women who live in industrial cities are like mice that have
come out of the fields to live in houses that do not belong to them. They
live within the dark walls of the houses where only a dim light penetrates,
and so many have come that they grow thin and haggard with the constant
toil of getting food and warmth. Behind the walls the mice scamper about
in droves, and there is much squealing and chattering. Now and then a bold
mouse stands upon his hind legs and addresses the others. He declares he
will force his way through the walls and conquer the gods who have built
the house. "I will kill them," he declares. "The mice shall rule. You shall
live in the light and the warmth. There shall be food for all and no one
shall go hungry."

The little mice, gathered in the darkness out of sight in the great houses,
squeal with delight. After a time when nothing happens they become sad and
depressed. Their minds go back to the time when they lived in the fields,
but they do not go out of the walls of the houses, because long living in
droves has made them afraid of the silence of long nights and the emptiness
of skies. In the houses giant children are being reared. When the children
fight and scream in the houses and in the streets, the dark spaces between
the walls rumble with strange and appalling noises.

The mice are terribly afraid. Now and then a single mouse for a moment
escapes the general fear. A mood comes over such a one and a light comes
into his eyes. When the noises run through the houses he makes up stories
about them. "The horses of the sun are hauling wagon loads of days over
the tops of trees," he says and looks quickly about to see if he has been
heard. When he discovers a female mouse looking at him he runs away with
a flip of his tail and the female follows. While other mice are repeating
his saying and getting some little comfort from it, he and the female mouse
find a warm dark corner and lie close together. It is because of them that
mice continue to be born to dwell within the walls of the houses.

When the first small model of Hugh McVey's plant-setting machine had been
whittled out by the half-wit Allie Mulberry, it replaced the famous ship,
floating in the bottle, that for two or three years had been lying in the
window of Hunter's jewelry store. Allie was inordinately proud of the new
specimen of his handiwork. As he worked under Hugh's directions at a bench
in a corner of the deserted pickle factory, he was like a strange dog that
has at last found a master. He paid no attention to Steve Hunter who, with
the air of one bearing in his breast some gigantic secret, came in and
went out at the door twenty times a day, but kept his eyes on the silent
Hugh who sat at a desk and made drawings on sheets of paper. Allie tried
valiantly to follow the instructions given him and to understand what his
master was trying to do, and Hugh, finding himself unembarrassed by the
presence of the half-wit, sometimes spent hours trying to explain the
workings of some intricate part of the proposed machine. Hugh made each
part crudely out of great pieces of board and Allie reproduced the part in
miniature. Intelligence began to come into the eyes of the man who all his
life had whittled meaningless wooden chains, baskets formed out of peach
stones, and ships intended to float in bottles. Love and understanding
began a little to do for him what words could not have done. One day when a
part Hugh had fashioned would not work the half-wit himself made the model
of a part that worked perfectly. When Hugh incorporated it in the machine,
he was so happy that he could not sit still, and walked up and down cooing
with delight.

When the model of the machine appeared in the jeweler's window, a fever of
excitement took hold of the minds of the people. Every one declared himself
either for or against it. Something like a revolution took place. Parties
were formed. Men who had no interest in the success of the invention, and
in the nature of things could not have, were ready to fight any one who
dared to doubt its success. Among the farmers who drove into town to see
the new wonder were many who said the machine would not, could not, work.
"It isn't practical," they said. Going off by themselves and forming
groups, they whispered warnings. A hundred objections sprang to their lips.
"See all the little wheels and cogs the thing has," they said. "You see
it won't work. You take now in a field where there are stones and old
tree roots, maybe, sticking in the ground. There you'll see. Fools'll buy
the machine, yes. They'll spend their money. They'll put in plants. The
plants'll die. The money'll be wasted. There'll be no crop." Old men, who
had been cabbage farmers in the country north of Bidwell all their lives,
and whose bodies were all twisted out of shape by the terrible labor of
the cabbage fields, came hobbling into town to look at the model of the
new machine. Their opinions were anxiously sought by the merchant, the
carpenter, the artisan, the doctor--by all the townspeople. Almost without
exception, they shook their heads in doubt. Standing on the sidewalk before
the jeweler's window, they stared at the machine and then, turning to the
crowd that had gathered about, they shook their heads in doubt. "Huh," they
exclaimed, "a thing of wheels and cogs, eh? Well, so young Hunter expects
that thing to take the place of a man. He's a fool. I always said that boy
was a fool." The merchants and townspeople, their ardor a little dampened
by the adverse decision of the men who knew plant-setting, went off by
themselves. They went into Birdie Spinks' drugstore, but did not listen
to the talk of Judge Hanby. "If the machine works, the town'll wake up,"
some one declared. "It means factories, new people coming in, houses to
be built, goods to be bought." Visions of suddenly acquired wealth began
to float in their minds. Young Ed Hall, apprentice to Ben Peeler the
carpenter, grew angry. "Hell," he exclaimed, "why listen to a lot of damned
old calamity howlers? It's the town's duty to get out and plug for that
machine. We got to wake up here. We got to forget what we used to think
about Steve Hunter. Anyway, he saw a chance, didn't he? and he took it.
I wish I was him. I only wish I was him. And what about that fellow we
thought was maybe just a telegraph operator? He fooled us all slick, now
didn't he? I tell you we ought to be proud to have such men as him and
Steve Hunter living in Bidwell. That's what I say. I tell you it's the
town's duty to get out and plug for them and for that machine. If we don't,
I know what'll happen. Steve Hunter's a live one. I been thinking maybe he
was. He'll take that invention and that inventor of his to some other town
or to a city. That's what he'll do. Damn it, I tell you we got to get out
and back them fellows up. That's what I say."

On the whole the town of Bidwell agreed with young Hall. The excitement
did not die, but grew every day more intense. Steve Hunter had a carpenter
come to his father's store and build in the show window facing Main
Street, a long shallow box formed in the shape of a field. This he filled
with pulverized earth and then by an arrangement of strings and pulleys
connected with a clockwork device the machine was pulled across the field.
In a receptacle at the top of the machine had been placed some dozens of
tiny plants no larger than pins. When the clockwork was started and the
strings pulled to imitate applied horse power, the machine crept slowly
forward, an arm came down and made a hole in the ground, the plant dropped
into the hole and spoon-like hands appeared and packed the earth about the
plant roots. At the top of the machine there was a tank filled with water,
and when the plant was set, a portion of water, nicely calculated as to
quantity, ran down a pipe and was deposited at the plant roots.

Evening after evening the machine crawled forward across the tiny field,
setting the plants in perfect order. Steve Hunter busied himself with it;
he did nothing else; and rumors of a great company to be formed in Bidwell
to manufacture the device were whispered about. Every evening a new tale
was told. Steve went to Cleveland for a day and it was said that Bidwell
was to lose its chance, that big moneyed men had induced Steve to take his
factory project to the city. Hearing Ed Hall berate a farmer who doubted
the practicability of the machine, Steve took him aside and talked to him.
"We're going to need live young men who know how to handle other men for
jobs as superintendent and things like that," he said. "I make no promises.
I only want to tell you that I like live young fellows who can see the hole
in a bushel basket. I like that kind. I like to see them get up in the
world."

Steve heard the farmers continually expressing their skepticism about
making the plants that had been set by the machine grow into maturity, and
had the carpenter build another tiny field in a side window of the store.
He had the machine moved and plants set in the new field. He let these
grow. When some of the plants showed signs of dying he came secretly at
night and replaced them with sturdier shoots so that the miniature field
showed always a brave, vigorous front to the world.

Bidwell became convinced that the most rigorous of all forms of human labor
practiced by its people was at an end. Steve made and had hung in the store
window a large sheet showing the relative cost of planting an acre of
cabbage with the machine, and by what was already called "the old way," by
hand. Then he formally announced that a stock company would be formed in
Bidwell and that every one would have a chance to get into it. He printed
an article in the weekly paper in which he said that many offers had come
to him to take his project to the city or to other and larger towns.
"Mr. McVey, the celebrated inventor, and I both want to stick to our own
people," he said, regardless of the fact that Hugh knew nothing of the
article and had never been taken into the lives of the people addressed.
A day was set for the beginning of the taking of stock subscriptions, and
in private conversations Steve whispered of huge profits to be made. The
matter was talked over in every household and plans were made for raising
money to buy stock. John Clark agreed to lend a certain percentage on the
value of the town property and Steve secured a long-time option on all the
land facing Turner's Pike clear down to Pickleville. When the town heard
of this it was filled with wonder. "Gee," the loiterers before the store
exclaimed, "old Bidwell is going to grow up. Now look at that, will you?
There are going to be houses clear down to Pickleville." Hugh went to
Cleveland to see about having one of his new machines made in steel and
wood and in a size that would permit its actual use in the field. He
returned, a hero in the town's eyes. His silence made it possible for the
people, who could not entirely forget their former lack of faith in Steve,
to let their minds take hold of something they thought was truly heroic.

In the evening, after going again to see the machine in the window of the
jewelry store, crowds of young and old men wandered down along Turner's
Pike to the Wheeling Station where a new man had come to replace Hugh.
They hardly saw the evening train when it came in. Like devotees before
a shrine they gazed with something like worship in their eyes at the old
pickle factory, and when by chance Hugh came among them, unconscious of
the sensation he was creating, they became embarrassed as he was always
embarrassed by their presence. Every one dreamed of becoming suddenly rich
by the power of the man's mind. They thought of him as thinking always
great thoughts. To be sure, Steve Hunter might be more than half bluff and
blow and pretense, but there was no bluff and blow about Hugh. He didn't
waste his time in words. He thought, and out of his thought sprang almost
unbelievable wonders.

In every part of the town of Bidwell, the new impulse toward progress was
felt. Old men, who had become settled in their ways and who had begun to
pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual
passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the
evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a
Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake
and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on
the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected places.
Rumors flew from lip to lip. It was said that within a year Bidwell was to
have a brick factory covering acres of ground, that there would be paved
streets and electric lights.

Oddly enough the most persistent decrier of the new spirit in Bidwell was
the man who, if the machine turned out to be a success, would profit most
from its use. Ezra French, the profane, refused to be convinced. When
pressed by Ed Hall, Dr. Robinson, and other enthusiasts, he fell back upon
the word of that God whose name had been so much upon his lips. The decrier
of God became the defender of God. "The thing, you see, can't be done.
It ain't all right. Something awful'll happen. The rains won't come and
the plants'll dry up and die. It'll be like it was in Egypt in the Bible
times," he declared. The old farmer with the twisted leg stood before the
crowd in the drug-store and proclaimed the truth of God's word. "Don't it
say in the Bible men shall work and labor by the sweat of their brows?" he
asked sharply. "Can a machine like that sweat? You know it can't. And it
can't do the work either. No, siree. Men've got to do it. That's the way
things have been since Cain killed Abel in the Garden of Eden. God intended
it so and there can't no telegraph operator or no smart young squirt like
Steve Hunter--fellows in a town like this--set themselves up before me to
change the workings of God's laws. It can't be done, and if it could be
done it would be wicked and ungodly to try. I'll have nothing to do with
it. It ain't right. That's what I say and all your smart talk ain't a-going
to change me."

It was in the year 1892 that Steve Hunter organized the first industrial
enterprise that came to Bidwell. It was called the Bidwell Plant-Setting
Machine Company, and in the end it turned out to be a failure. A large
factory was built on the river bank facing the New York Central tracks. It
is now occupied by an enterprise called the Hunter Bicycle Company and is
what in industrial parlance is called a live, going concern.

For two years Hugh worked faithfully trying to perfect the first of his
inventions. After the working models of the plant-setter were brought from
Cleveland, two trained mechanics were employed to come to Bidwell and work
with him. In the old pickle factory an engine was installed and lathes and
other tool-making machines were set up. For a long time Steve, John Clark,
Tom Butterworth, and the other enthusiastic promoters of the enterprise had
no doubt as to the final outcome. Hugh wanted to perfect the machine, had
his heart set on doing the job he had set out to do, but he had then and,
for that matter, he continued during his whole life to have but little
conception of the import in the lives of the people about him of the things
he did. Day after day, with two city mechanics and Allie Mulberry to drive
the team of horses Steve had provided, he went into a rented field north of
the factory. Weak places developed in the complicated mechanism, and new
and stronger parts were made. For a time the machine worked perfectly. Then
other defects appeared and other parts had to be strengthened and changed.
The machine became too heavy to be handled by one team. It would not work
when the soil was either too wet or too dry. It worked perfectly in both
wet and dry sand but would do nothing in clay. During the second year
and when the factory was nearing completion and much machinery had been
installed, Hugh went to Steve and told him of what he thought were the
limitations of the machine. He was depressed by his failure, but in working
with the machine, he felt he had succeeded in educating himself as he never
could have done by studying books. Steve decided that the factory should be
started and some of the machines made and sold. "You keep the two men you
have and don't talk," he said. "The machine may yet turn out to be better
than you think. One can never tell. I have made it worth their while
to keep still." On the afternoon of the day on which he had his talk
with Hugh, Steve called the four men who were associated with him in the
promotion of the enterprise into the back room of the bank and told them of
the situation. "We're up against something here," he said. "If we let word
of the failure of this machine get out, where'll we be? It is a case of the
survival of the fittest."

Steve explained his plan to the men in the room. After all, he said, there
was no occasion for any of them to get excited. He had taken them into the
thing and he proposed to get them out. "I'm that kind of a man," he said
pompously. In a way, he declared, he was glad things had turned out as
they had. The four men had little actual money invested. They had all
tried honestly to do something for the town and he would see to it that
everything came out all right. "We'll be honest with every one," he said.
"The stock in the company has all been sold. We'll make some of the
machines and sell them. If they're failures, as this inventor thinks, it
will not be our fault. The plant, you see, will have to be sold cheap. When
that times comes we five will have to save ourselves and the future of the
town. The machinery we have bought, is, you see, iron and wood working
machinery, the very latest kind. It can be used to make some other thing.
If the plant-setting machine is a failure we'll simply buy up the plant at
a low price and make something else. Perhaps it'll be better for the town
to have the entire stock control in our hands. You see we few men have got
to run things here. It's going to be on our shoulders to see that labor is
employed. A lot of small stock-holders are a nuisance. As man to man I'm
going to ask each of you not to sell his stock, but if any one comes to you
and asks about its value, I expect you to be loyal to our enterprise. I'll
begin looking about for something to replace the plant-setting machine, and
when the shop closes we'll start right up again. It isn't every day men get
a chance to sell themselves a fine plant full of new machinery as we can do
in a year or so now."

Steve went out of the bank and left the four men staring at each other.
Then his father got up and went out. The other men, all connected with the
bank, arose and wandered out. "Well," said John Clark, somewhat heavily,
"he's a smart man. I suppose after all it is up to us to stick with him
and with the town. As he says, labor has got to be employed. I can't see
that it does a carpenter or a farmer any good to own a little stock in a
factory. It only takes their minds off their work. They have foolish dreams
of getting rich and don't attend to their own affairs. It would be an
actual benefit to the town if a few men owned the factory." The banker
lighted a cigar and going to a window stared out into the main street of
Bidwell. Already the town had changed. Three new brick buildings were being
erected on Main Street within sight of the bank window. Workmen employed in
the building of the factory had come to town to live, and many new houses
were being built. Everywhere things were astir. The stock of the company
had been oversubscribed, and almost every day men came into the bank and
spoke of wanting to buy more. Only the day before a farmer had come in with
two thousand dollars. The banker's mind began to secrete the poison of his
age. "After all, it's men like Steve Hunter, Tom Butterworth, Gordon Hart,
and myself that have to take care of things, and to be in shape to do it
we have to look out for ourselves," he soliloquized. Again he stared into
Main Street. Tom Butterworth went out at the front door. He wanted to be by
himself and think his own thoughts. Gordon Hart returned to the empty back
room and standing by a window looked out into an alleyway. His thoughts
ran in the same channel as those that played through the mind of the bank
president. He also thought of men who wanted to buy stock in the company
that was doomed to failure. He began to doubt the judgment of Hugh McVey
in the matter of failure. "Such fellows are always pessimists," he told
himself. From the window at the back of the bank, he could see over the
roofs of a row of small sheds and down a residence street to where two
new workingmen's houses were being built. His thoughts only differed from
the thoughts of John Clark because he was a younger man. "A few men of
the younger generation, like Steve and myself will have to take hold of
things," he muttered aloud. "We'll have to have money to work with. We'll
have to take the responsibility of the ownership of money."

At the front of the bank John Clark puffed at his cigar. He felt like a
soldier weighing the chances of battle. Vaguely he thought of himself as
a general, a kind of U. S. Grant of industry. The lives and happiness of
many people, he told himself, depended on the clear working of his brain.
"Well," he thought, "when factories start coming to a town and it begins to
grow as this town is growing no man can stop it. The fellow who thinks of
individual men, little fellows with their savings invested, who may be hurt
by an industrial failure, is just a weakling. Men have to face the duties
life brings. The few men who see clearly have to think first of themselves.
They have to save themselves in order that they may save others."

       *       *       *       *       *

Things kept on the stir in Bidwell and the gods of chance played into the
hands of Steve Hunter. Hugh invented an apparatus for lifting a loaded
coal-car off the railroad tracks, carrying it high up into the air and
dumping its contents into a chute. By its use an entire car of coal could
be emptied with a roaring rush into the hold of a ship or the engine room
of a factory. A model of the new invention was made and a patent secured.
Then Steve Hunter carried it off to New York. He received two hundred
thousand dollars in cash for it, half of which went to Hugh. Steve's faith
in the inventive genius of the Missourian was renewed and strengthened. He
looked forward with a feeling almost approaching pleasure to the time when
the town would be forced to face the fact that the plant-setting machine
was a failure, and the factory with its new machinery would have to be
thrown on the market. He knew that his associates in the promotion of the
enterprise were secretly selling their stock. One day he went to Cleveland
and had a long talk with a banker there. Hugh was at work on a corn-cutting
machine and already he had secured an option on it. "Perhaps when the
time comes to sell the factory there'll be more than one bidder," he told
Ernestine, the soap maker's daughter, who had married him within a month
after the sale of the car-unloading device. He grew indignant when he told
her of the disloyalty of the two men in the bank, and the rich farmer,
Tom Butterworth. "They're selling their shares and letting the small
stock-holders lose their money," he declared. "I told 'em not to do it. Now
if anything happens to spoil their plans they'll not have me to blame."

Nearly a year had been spent in stirring up the people of Bidwell to the
point of becoming investors. Then things began to stir. The ground was
broken for the erection of the factory. No one knew of the difficulties
that had been encountered in attempting to perfect the machine and word
was passed about that in actual tests in the fields it had proven itself
entirely practical. The skeptical farmers who came into town on Saturdays
were laughed at by the town enthusiasts. A field, that had been planted
during one of the brief periods when the machine finding ideal soil
conditions had worked perfectly, was left to grow. As when he operated
the tiny model in the store window, Steve took no chances. He engaged Ed
Hall to go at night and replace the plants that did not live. "It's fair
enough," he explained to Ed. "A hundred things can cause the plants to die,
but if they die it'll be blamed on the machine. What will become of the
town if we don't believe in the thing we're going to manufacture here?"

The crowds of people, who in the evenings walked out along Turner's Pike
to look at the field with its long rows of sturdy young cabbages, moved
restlessly about and talked of the new days. From the field they went along
the railroad tracks to the site of the factory. The brick walls began to
mount up into the sky. Machinery began to arrive and was housed under
temporary sheds against the time when it could be installed. An advance
horde of workmen came to town and new faces appeared on Main Street in the
evening. The thing that was happening in Bidwell happened in towns all over
the Middle West. Out through the coal and iron regions of Pennsylvania,
into Ohio and Indiana, and on westward into the States bordering on the
Mississippi River, industry crept. Gas and oil were discovered in Ohio and
Indiana. Over night, towns grew into cities. A madness took hold of the
minds of the people. Villages like Lima and Findlay, Ohio, and like Muncie
and Anderson in Indiana, became small cities within a few weeks. To some of
these places, so anxious were the people to get to them and to invest their
money, excursion trains were run. Town lots that a few weeks before the
discovery of oil or gas could have been bought for a few dollars sold for
thousands. Wealth seemed to be spurting out of the very earth. On farms in
Indiana and Ohio giant gas wells blew the drilling machinery out of the
ground, and the fuel so essential to modern industrial development rushed
into the open. A wit, standing in the presence of one of the roaring gas
wells exclaimed, "Papa, Earth has indigestion; he has gas on his stomach.
His face will be covered with pimples."

Having, before the factories came, no market for the gas, the wells were
lighted and at night great torches of flame lit the skies. Pipes were laid
on the surface of the ground and by a day's work a laborer earned enough to
heat his house at tropical heat through an entire winter. Farmers owning
oil-producing land went to bed in the evening poor and owing money at the
bank, and awoke in the morning rich. They moved into the towns and invested
their money in the factories that sprang up everywhere. In one county in
southern Michigan, over five hundred patents for woven wire farm fencing
were taken out in one year, and almost every patent was a magnet about
which a company for the manufacture of fence formed itself. A va