CHAPTER XVII
Business as Usual
Late in March Jack MacRae came down to Vancouver and quartered himselfat the Granada again. He liked the quiet luxury of that great hostelry.It was a trifle expensive, but he was not inclined to worry aboutexpense. At home, or aboard his carriers in the season, living was anegligible item. He found a good deal of pleasure in swinging from oneextreme to the other. Besides, a man stalking big game does not armhimself with a broomstick.
He had not come to town solely for his pleasure, although he was notdisposed to shy from any diversion that offered. He had business inhand, business of prime importance since it involved spending a littlematter of twelve thousand dollars. In brief, he had to replace the_Blackbird_, and he was replacing her with a carrier of double thecapacity, of greater speed, equipped with special features of his ownchoosing. The new boat was designed to carry ten thousand salmon. Therewas installed in her holds an ammonia refrigerating plant which wouldfree him from the labor and expense and uncertainty of crushed ice.Science bent to the service of money-making. MacRae grinned to himselfwhen he surveyed the coiled pipes, the pumping engine. His new boat wasa floating, self-contained cold-storage plant. He could maintain afreezing temperature so long as he wished by chemico-mechanical means.That meant a full load every trip, since he could follow the trollerstill he got a load, if it took a week, and his salmon would still befresh.
He wondered why this had not been done before. Stubby enlightened him.
"Partly because it's a costly rig to install. But mostly because salmonand ice have always been both cheap and plentiful, and people have gotinto a habit of doing things in the same old way. You know. Until thelast season or two salmon have been so cheap that neither canneries norbuyers bothered about anything so up-to-date. If they lost their ice inhot weather and the fish rotted--why, there were plenty more fish. Therehave been times when the Fraser River stunk with rotten salmon. Theyused to pay the fishermen ten cents apiece for six-pound sockeyes andlimit them to two hundred fish to the boat if there was a big run. Thegill-netter would take five hundred in one drift, come in to the canneryloaded to the guards, find himself up against a limit. He would sell thetwo hundred and dump more than that overboard. And the Fraser Rivercanneries wonder why sockeye is getting scarce. My father used to raveabout the waste. Criminal, he used to say."
"When the fishermen were getting only ten cents apiece for sockeyes,salmon was selling at fifteen cents a pound tin," MacRae observed.
"Oh, the canneries made barrels of money." Stubby shrugged hisshoulders. "They thought the salmon would always run in millions, nomatter how many they destroyed. Some of 'em think so yet."
"We're a nation of wasters, compared to Europe," MacRae saidthoughtfully. "The only thing they are prodigal with over there is humanflesh and blood. That is cheap and plentiful. But they take care oftheir natural resources. We destroy as much as we use, fish,timber--everything. Everybody for himself and the devil take thehindmost."
"Well, I don't know what _we_ can do about it," Stubby drawled.
"Keep from being the hindmost," MacRae answered. "But I sometimes feelsorry for those who are."
"Man," Stubby observed, "is a predatory animal. You can't make anythingelse of him. Nobody develops philanthropy and the public spirit until hegets rich and respectable. Social service is nothing but a theory yet.God only helps those who help themselves."
"How does he arrange it for those who _can't_ help themselves?" MacRaeinquired.
Stubby shrugged his shoulders.
"Search me," he said.
"Do you even believe in this anthropomorphic God of the preachers?"MacRae asked curiously.
"Well, there must be something, don't you think?" Stubby hedged.
"There may be," MacRae pursued the thought. "I read a book by Wells notlong ago in which he speaks of God as the Great Experimenter. If thereis an all-powerful Deity, it strikes me that in his attitude towardhumanity he is a good deal like a referee at a football game who wouldsay to the teams, 'Here is the ball and the field and the two goals. Goto it,' and then goes off to the side lines to smoke his pipe while theplayers foul and gouge and trip and generally run amuck in a frenziedeffort to win the game."
"You're a pessimist," Stubby declared.
"What is a pessimist?" MacRae demanded.
But Stubby changed the subject. He was not concerned with abstractions.And he was vitally concerned with the material factors of his everydaylife, believing that he was able to dominate those material factors andbend them to his will if only he were clever enough and energeticenough.
Stubby wanted to get in on the blueback salmon run again. He had put abig pack through Crow Harbor and got a big price for the pack. In aperiod of mounting prices canned salmon was still ascending. Food in anyimperishable, easily transported form was sure of a market in Europe.There was a promise of even bigger returns for Pacific salmon packers inthe approaching season. But Stubby was not sure enough yet of where hestood to make any definite arrangement with MacRae. He wanted to talkthings over, to feel his way.
There were changes in the air. For months the industrial pot had beenspasmodically boiling over in strikes, lockouts, boycotts, charges ofprofiteering, loud and persistent complaints from consumers, organizedlabor and rapidly organizing returned soldiers. Among other things thesalmon packers' monopoly and the large profits derived therefrom had notescaped attention.
From her eight millions of population during those years of war effortCanada had withdrawn over six hundred thousand able-bodied men. Yet thewheels of industry turned apace. She had supplied munitions, food forarmies, ships, yet her people had been fed and clothed and housed,--alltheir needs had been liberally supplied.
And in a year these men had come back. Not all. There were close on totwo hundred thousand to be checked off the lists. There was the lesserarmy of the slightly and totally disabled, the partially digested foodof the war machine. But there were still a quarter of a million men tobe reabsorbed into a civil and industrial life which had managed tofunction tolerably well without them.
These men, for the most part, had somehow conceived the idea that theywere coming back to a better world, a world purged of dross by thebloody sweat of the war. And they found it pretty much the same oldworld. They had been uprooted. They found it a little difficult to takeroot again. They found living costly, good jobs not so plentiful,masters as exacting as they had been before. The Golden Rule was no morea common practice than it had ever been. Yet the country was rich,bursting with money. Big business throve, even while it howled to highheaven about ruinous, confiscatory taxation.
The common man himself lifted up his voice in protest and backed hisprotest with such action as he could take. Besides the parent body ofthe Great War Veterans' Association other kindred groups of men who hadfought on both sea and land sprang into being. The labor organizationswere strengthened in their campaign for shorter hours and longer pay bythousands of their own members returned, all semi-articulate, all moreor less belligerent. The war had made fighters of them. War does notteach men sweet reasonableness. They said to themselves and to eachother that they had fought the greatest war in the world's history andwere worse off than they were before. From coast to coast society wasinfiltrated with men who wore a small bronze button in the left lapel oftheir coats, men who had acquired a new sense of their relation tosociety, men who asked embarrassing questions in public meetings, inclubs, in legislative assemblies, in Parliament, and who demandedanswers to the questions.
British Columbia was no exception. The British Columbia coast fishermendid not escape the influence of this general unrest, this criticalinquiry. Wealthy, respectable, middle-aged citizens viewed with alarmand denounced pernicious agitation. The common man retorted with theepithet of "damned profiteer" and worse. Army scandals were aired.Ancient political graft was exhumed. Strident voices arose in thewilderness of contention crying for a fresh deal, a clean-up, a newdispensation.
When MacRae fi
rst began to run bluebacks there were a few returnedsoldiers fishing salmon, men like the Ferrara boys who had beenfishermen before they were soldiers, who returned to their old callingwhen they put off the uniform. Later, through the season, he came acrossother men, frankly neophytes, trying their hand at a vocation which atleast held the lure of freedom from a weekly pay check and a boss. Thesemen were not slow to comprehend the cannery grip on the salmon groundsand the salmon fishermen. They chafed against the restrictions which,they said, put them at the canneries' mercy. They growled about theswarms of Japanese who could get privileges denied a white man becausethe Japs catered to the packers. They swelled with their voices thefeeble chorus that white fishermen had raised long before the war.
All of this, like wavering gusts, before the storm, was informing thesentient ears of politicians who governed by grace of electoral votes.Soldiers, who had been citizens before they became soldiers, who werefrankly critical of both business and government, won in by-elections.In the British Columbia legislature there was a major from an Islanddistrict and a lieutenant from North Vancouver. They were exponents of anew deal, enemies of the profiteer and the professional politician, andthey were thorns in the side of a provincial government which yearnedover vested rights as a mother over her ailing babe. In the Dominioncapital it was much the same as elsewhere,--a government which hadgrasped office on a win-the-war platform found its grasp wavering overthe knotty problems of peace.
The British Columbia salmon fisheries were controlled by the Dominion,through a department political in its scope. Whether the Macedonian crypenetrated through bureaucratic swaddlings, whether the fact thatfishermen had votes and might use them with scant respect for personagesto whom votes were a prerequisite to political power, may remain ariddle. But about the time Jack MacRae's new carrier was ready to takethe water, there came a shuffle in the fishery regulations which felllike a bomb in the packers' camp.
The ancient cannery monopoly of purse-seining rights on given territorywas broken into fine large fragments. The rules which permitted none buta cannery owner to hold a purse-seine license and denied all other menthat privilege were changed. The new regulations provided that any malecitizen of British birth or naturalization could fish if he paid thelicense fee. The cannery men shouted black ruin,--but they girded uptheir loins to get fish.
MacRae was still in Vancouver when this change of policy was announced.He heard the roaring of the cannery lions. Their spokesmen filled thecorrespondence columns of the daily papers with their views. MacRae hadnot believed such changes imminent or even possible. But taking them asan accomplished fact, he foresaw strange developments in the salmonindustry. Until now the packers could always be depended upon to standshoulder to shoulder against the fishermen and the consumer, to dragoonone another into the line of a general policy. The American buyers,questing adventurously from over the line, had alone saved theindividual fisherman from eating humbly out of the British Columbiacanner's hand.
The fishermen had made a living, such as it was. The cannery men haddwelt in peace and amity with one another. They had their own looselyknit organization, held together by the ties of financial interest. Theysat behind mahogany desks and set the price of salmon to the fishermenand very largely the price of canned fish to the consumer, and theirmost arduous labor had been to tot up the comfortable balance after eachseason's operations. All this pleasantness was to be done away with,they mourned. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry was to be turned loose on thesalmon with deadly gear and greedy intent to exterminate a valuablespecies of fish and wipe out a thriving industry. The salmon would allbe killed off, so did the packers cry. What few small voices arose,suggesting that the deadly purse seine had never been considered deadlywhen only canneries had been permitted to use such gear and that _they_had not worried about the extermination of the salmon so long as theydid the exterminating themselves and found it highly profitable,--thesefew voices, alas, arose only in minor strains and were for the most partdrowned by the anvil chorus of the cannery men.
MacRae observed, listened, read the papers, and prophesied to himself ascramble. But he did not see where it touched him,--not untilRobbin-Steele Senior asked him to come to his office in the BondBuilding one afternoon.
MacRae faced the man over a broad table in an office more like thelibrary of a well-appointed home than a place of calculatedprofit-mongering. Robbin-Steele, Senior, was tall, thin, sixty years ofage, sandy-haired, with a high, arched nose. His eyes, MacRae thought,were disagreeably like the eyes of a dead fish, lusterless and sunken; acold man with a suave manner seeking his own advantage. Robbin-Steelewas a Scotchman of tolerably good family who had come to BritishColumbia with an inherited fortune and made that fortune grow to vastproportions in the salmon trade. He had two pretty and clever daughters,and three of his sons had been notable fighters overseas. MacRae knewthem all, liked them well enough. But he had never come much in contactwith the head of the family. What he had seen of Robbin-Steele, Senior,gave him the impression of cold, calculating power.
"I wonder," MacRae heard him saying after a brief exchange ofcourtesies, "if we could make an arrangement with you to deliver all thesalmon you can get this season to our Fraser River plant."
"Possibly," MacRae replied. "But there is no certainty that I will getany great number of salmon."
"If you were as uncertain as that," Robbin-Steele said dryly, "you wouldscarcely be putting several thousand dollars into an elaboratelyequipped carrier. We may presume that you intend to get the salmon--asyou did last year."
"You seem to know a great deal about my business," MacRae observed.
"It is our policy to know, in a general way, what goes on in the salmonindustry," Robbin-Steele assented.
MacRae waited for him to continue.
"You have a good deal of both energy and ability," Robbin-Steele wenton. "It is obvious that you have pretty well got control of the bluebacksituation around Squitty Island. You must, however, have an outlet foryour fish. We can use these salmon to advantage. On what basis will youdeliver them to us on the Fraser if we give you a contract guaranteeingto accept all you can deliver?"
"Twenty per cent, over Folly Bay prices," MacRae answered promptly.
The cannery man shook his head.
"No. We can't afford to boost the cost of salmon like that. It'll ruinthe business, which is in a bad enough way as it is. The more you pay afisherman, the more he wants. We must keep prices down. That is to yourinterest, too."
"No," MacRae disagreed. "I think it is to my interest to pay thefishermen top prices, so long as I make a profit on the deal. I don'twant the earth--only a moderate share of it."
"Twenty per cent. on Folly Bay prices is too uncertain a basis."Robbin-Steele changed his tactics. "We can send our own carriers thereto buy at far less cost."
MacRae smiled.
"You can send your carriers," he drawled, "but I doubt if you would getmany fish. I don't think you quite grasp the Squitty situation."
"Yes, I think I do," Robbin-Steele returned. "Gower had things prettymuch his own way until you cut in on his grounds. You have undoubtedlysecured quite an advantage in a peculiar manner, and possibly you feelsecure against competition. But your hold is not so strong as Gower'sonce was. Let me tell you, your hold on that business can be broken, myyoung friend."
"Undoubtedly," MacRae readily admitted. "But there is a world-widedemand for canned salmon, and I have not suffered for a market--evenwhen influence was used last season to close the home market against me,on Folly Bay's behalf. And I am quite sure, from what I have seen andheard, that many of the big British Columbia packers like yourself areso afraid the labor situation will get out of hand that they would shutdown their plants rather than pay fishermen what they could afford topay if they would be content with a reasonable profit. So I am not atall afraid of you seducing the Squitty trollers with high prices."
"You are laboring under the common error about cannery profits,"Robbin-Steele declared pointedly. "Consideri
ng the capital invested, thetotal of the pack, the risk and uncertainty of the business, our returnsare not excessive."
MacRae smiled amusedly.
"That all depends on what you regard as excessive. But there is nothingto be gained by an argument on that subject. Canning salmon is a highlyprofitable business, but it would not be the gold mine it has been ifcanneries hadn't been fostered at the expense of the men who actuallycatch the fish, if the government hadn't bestowed upon cannery men thegift of a strangle hold on the salmon grounds, and license privilegesthat gave them absolute control. I haven't any quarrel with cannery menfor making money. You only amuse me when you speak of doubtful returns.I wish I could have your cinch for a season or two."
"You shouldn't have any quarrel with us. You started with nothing andmade twenty thousand dollars in a single season," Robbin-Steelereminded.
"I worked like a dog. I took chances. And I was very lucky," MacRaeagreed. "I did make a lot of money. But I paid the fishermen more thanthey ever got for salmon--a great deal more than they would have got ifI hadn't broken into the game. Abbott made money on the salmon Idelivered him. So everybody was satisfied, except Gower--who perhapsfeels that he is ordained by the Almighty to get cheap salmon."
"You're spoiling those men," Robbin-Steele declared irritably. "Myobservation of that class of labor is that the more money they get theless they will do and the more they will want. You can't carry on anyindustry on that basis. But that's beside the point. We're getting awayfrom the question. We want you to deliver those fish to us, if you cando so at a reasonable price. We should like to have some sort ofagreement, so that we may know what to expect."
"I can deliver the fish," MacRae asserted confidently. "But I don't careto bind myself to anything. Not this far in advance. Wait till thesalmon run."
"You are a very shrewd young man, I should say." Robbin-Steele paid hima reluctant compliment and let a gleam of appreciation flicker in hisdead-fish eyes. "I imagine you will get on. Come and see me when youfeel like considering this matter seriously."
MacRae went down the elevator wondering if the gentleman's agreementamong the packers was off, if there was going to be something in thenature of competition among them for the salmon. There would be a fewmore gill-net licenses issued. More important, the gill-netters would befree to fish where they chose, for whosoever paid the highest price,and not for the cannery which controlled their license. There would bescores of independent purse seiners. Would the packers bid against oneanother for the catch? It rather seemed to MacRae as if they must. Theycould no longer sit back secure in the knowledge that the salmon from agiven area must come straight to their waiting cans. And BritishColumbia packers had always dreaded American competition.
Following that, MacRae took train for Bellingham. The people he haddealt with there at the close of the last season had dealt fairly.American salmon packers had never suffered the blight of a monopoly.They had established their industry in legitimate competition, withoutgovernmental favors. They did not care how much money a fisherman madeso long as he caught fish for them which they could profitably can.
MacRae had no contract with them. He did not want a contract. If he madehard and fast agreements with any one it would be with Stubby Abbott.But he did want to fortify himself with all the information he couldget. He did not know what line Folly Bay would take when the seasonopened. He was not sure what shifts might occur among the BritishColumbia canneries. If such a thing as free and unlimited competitionfor salmon took place he might need more than one outlet for hiscarriers. MacRae was not engaged in a hazardous business for pastime. Hehad an objective, and this objective was contingent upon making money.
From the American source he learned that a good season was anticipatedfor the better grades of salmon. He found out what prices he couldexpect. They were liberal enough to increase his confidence. These menwere anxious to get the thousands of British Columbia salmon MacRaecould supply.
MacRae returned to Vancouver. Before he had finished unpacking his bagthe telephone rang. Hurley, of the Northwest Cold Storage, spoke when hetook down the receiver. Could he drop into the Northwest office? MacRaegrinned to himself and went down to the grimy wharf where deep-seahalibut schooners rubbed against the dock, their stubby top-hamperswaying under the office windows as they rocked to the swell of passingharbor craft.
He talked with Hurley,--the same gentleman whom he had once approachedwith no success in the matter of selling salmon. The situation wasreversed now. The Northwest was eager to buy. They would pay him, _subrosa_, two cents a pound over the market price for fresh salmon if hewould supply them with the largest possible quantity from the beginningof the blueback run.
As with Robbin-Steele, MacRae refused to commit himself. More clearly heperceived that the scramble was beginning. The packers and thecold-storage companies had lost control. They must have fish tofunction, to make a profit. They would cut one another's throats forsalmon. So much the better, MacRae cynically reflected. He told Hurley,at last, as he had told Robbin-Steele, to wait till the salmon began torun.
He left the Northwest offices with the firm conviction that it was notgoing to be a question of markets, but a question of getting the salmon.And he rather fancied he could do that.
Last of all on the list of these men who approached him in this fashioncame Stubby Abbott. Stubby did not ask him to call. He came to theGranada in search of Jack and haled him, nothing loth, out to the stonehouse in the West End. It happened that Betty Gower, Etta Robbin-Steele,and two gilded youths, whom MacRae did not know, were there. They hadbeen walking in the Park. Nelly and her mother were serving tea.
It happened, too, that as they chatted over the teacups, a blue-bodiedlimousine drew up under the Abbott pergola and deposited Mrs. Horace A.Gower for a brief conversation with Mrs. Abbott. It was MacRae's firstreally close contact with the slender, wonderfully preserved lady whoselife had touched his father's so closely in the misty long ago. Heregarded her with a reflective interest. She must have been verybeautiful then, he thought. She was almost beautiful still. Certainlyshe was a very distinguished person, with her costly clothing, her richfurs, her white hair, and that faded rose-leaf skin. The petulant,querulous droop of her mouth escaped MacRae. He was not a physiognomist.But the distance of her manner did not escape him. She acknowledged theintroduction and thereafter politely overlooked MacRae. He meant nothingat all to Mrs. Horace A. Gower, he saw very clearly. Merely a young manamong other young men; a young man of no particular interest. Thirtyyears is a long time, MacRae reflected. But his father had notforgotten. He wondered if she had; if those far-off hot-blooded days hadgrown dim and unreal to her?
He turned his head once and caught Betty as intent upon him as he wasupon her mother, under cover of the general conversation. He gatheredthat there was a shade of reproach, of resentment, in her eyes. But hecould not be sure. Certainly there was nothing like that in her manner.But the manner of these people, he understood very well, was pretty mucha mask. Whatever went on in their secret bosoms, they smiled and jokedand were unfailingly courteous.
He made another discovery within a few minutes. Stubby maneuveredhimself close to Etta Robbin-Steele. Stubby was not quite so adept atrepression as most of his class. He was a little more naive, more proneto act upon his natural, instinctive impulses. MacRae was aware of that.He saw now a swift by-play that escaped the rest. Nothing of anyconsequence,--a look, the motion of a hand, a fleeting something on thegirl's face and Stubby's. Jack glanced at Nelly Abbott sitting besidehim, her small blonde head pertly inclined. Nelly saw it too. She smiledknowingly.
"Has the brunette siren hooked Stubby?" MacRae inquired in a discreetundertone.
"I think so. I'm not sure. Etta's such an outrageous flirt," Nelly said."I hope not, anyway. I'm afraid I can't quite appreciate Etta as aprospective sister-in-law."
"No?"
"She's catty--and vain as a peacock. Stubby ought to marry a nicesensible girl who'd mother him," Nelly observed with astonis
hingconviction; "like Betty, for instance."
"Oh, you seem to have very definite ideas on that subject," MacRaesmiled. He did not commit himself further. But he resented thesuggestion. There was also an amusing phase of Nelly's declaration whichdid not escape him,--the pot calling the kettle black. EttaRobbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung achallenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all herbaby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable ofinfinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriatingmen who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. Itpleased her to do that with Jack MacRae whenever he was available. Anduntil Betty had preempted a place in his heart without even trying, JackMacRae had been quite willing to let his fancy linger romantically onNelly Abbott.
As it was,--he looked across the room at Betty chatting with young Lane.What a damned fool he was,--he, MacRae! All his wires were crossed. Ifsome inescapable human need urged him to love, how much better to lovethis piquant bit of femininity beside him? But he couldn't do it. Itwasn't possible. All the old rebellion stirred in him. The lockedchambers of his mind loosed pictures of Squitty, memories of thingswhich had happened there, as he let his eyes drift from Betty, whom heloved, to her mother, whom his father had loved and lost. She had madehis father suffer through love. Her daughter was making Donald MacRae'sson suffer likewise. Again, through some fantastic quirk of hisimagination, the stodgy figure of Horace Gower loomed in the background,shadowy and sinister. There were moments, like the present, when he felthatred of the man concretely, as he could feel thirst or hunger.
"A penny for your thoughts," Nelly bantered.
"They'd be dear at half the price," MacRae said, forcing a smile.
He was glad when those people went their way. Nelly put on a coat andwent with them. Stubby drew Jack up to his den.
"I have bought up the controlling interest in the Terminal Fish Companysince I saw you last," Stubby began abruptly. "I'm going to put up acold-storage plant and do what my father started to do early in thewar--give people cheaper fish for food."
"Can you make it stick," MacRae asked curiously, "with the otherwholesalers against you? Their system seems to be to get all the trafficwill bear, to boost the price to the consumer by any means they can use.And there is the Packers' Association. They are not exactly--well,favorable to cheap retailing of fish. Everybody seems to think theproper caper is to tack on a cent or two a pound wherever he can."
"I know I can," Stubby declared. "The pater would have succeeded only hetrusted too much to men who didn't see it his way. Look at Cunningham--"Stubby mentioned a fish merchant who had made a resounding splash inmatters piscatorial for a year or two, and then faded, along with hisgreat cheap-fish markets, into oblivion--"he made it go like a houseafire until he saw a chance to make a quick and easy clean-up bysticking people. It can be done, all right, if a man will be satisfiedwith a small profit on a big turnover. I know it."
MacRae made no comment on that. Stubby was full of his plan, eager totalk about its possibilities.
"I wanted to do it last year," he said, "but I couldn't. I had to playthe old game--make a bunch of money and make it quick. Between you andGower's pig-headedness, and the rest of the cannery crowd letting me gotill it was too late to stop me, and a climbing market, I made moremoney in one season than I thought was possible. I'm going to use thatmoney to make more money and to squash some of these damned fishpirates. I tell you it's jolly awful. We had baked cod for lunch to-day.That fish cost twenty cents a pound. Think of it! When the fishermansells it for six cents within fifty miles of us. No wonder everybody ishowling. I don't know anything about other lines of food supply, but Ican sure put my finger on a bunch of fish profiteers. And I feel likeputting my foot on them. Anyway, I've got the Terminal for a starter;also I have a twenty-five-year lease on the water frontage there. I havethe capital to go ahead and build a cold-storage plant. The wholesalecrowd can't possibly bother me. And the canneries are going to havetheir hands full this season without mixing into a scrap over localprices of fresh fish. You've heard about the new regulations?"
MacRae nodded assent.
"There's going to be a free-for-all," Stubby chuckled. "There'll be alot of independent purse seiners. If the canneries don't pay good pricesthese independent fishermen, with their fast, powerful rigs, will seinethe salmon under the packers' noses and run their catch down to thePuget Sound plants. This is no time for the British Columbia packers toget uppish. Good-by, four hundred per cent."
"They'll wiggle through legislation to prevent export of raw salmon,"MacRae suggested; "same as they have on the sockeye."
"No chance. They've tried, and it can't be done," Stubby grinned. "Therearen't going to be any special privileges for British Columbia salmonpackers any more. I know, because I'm on the inside. The fishermen havemade a noise that disturbs the politicians, I guess. Another thing,there's a slack in the demand for all but the best grades of salmon. Butthe number one grades, sockeye and blueback and coho, are short. So thata cannery man with an efficient plant can pay big for those fish. Ifyou can hold that Squitty fleet of trollers like you did last year,you'll make some money."
"Do you want those salmon?" MacRae asked.
"Sure I want them. I want them as soon as they begin to run big enoughto be legally taken for sale," Stubby declared. "I'm going to rush thatcold-storage construction. By the time you begin collecting bluebacksI'll have a place for them, all you can buy. I'll have storage for threehundred thousand fish. I'm going to buy everything and start half adozen retail stores at the same time. Just imagine the situation in thisburg of a hundred and fifty thousand people with waters that swarm withfish right at our doors--salmon selling for thirty cents a pound, hardlyever below twenty, other fish in about the same proportion. It's adamned scandal, and I don't much blame a man who works for four dollarsa day thinking he might as well turn Bolshevik. I know that I can paytwelve cents for salmon and make a good profit selling for sixteen. Canyou make money supplying me with bluebacks at twelve cents a pound?"
"Yes, more money than I made last year," MacRae replied--"unless FollyBay boosts prices to the sky in an effort to drive me out of business."
"I don't think there's much danger of that," Stubby said. "I doubt ifFolly Bay opens this season. It's reported that Gower is broke."
"Eh?" MacRae looked his doubt.
"That's what they say," Stubby went on. "It's common talk. He sold hisplace in town a short while ago. He has the cannery on the market. Andthere are no takers. Folly Bay used to be a little gold mine. But Gowerrode the fishermen too hard. And you balled things up last season. Helost his grip. I suppose he was involved other ways, too. Lots of theseold-timers are, you know. Anyway, he seems to be trying to get out fromunder. But nobody wants to take over a plant that has a black eye amongthe men who catch the fish, in a territory where you appear to have apretty strong hold."
"At the same time, if I can pay so much for salmon, haul them up thecoast and make a profit on that, and if you can pay this advanced priceand pack them at a still bigger profit, why in blazes can't a plantright there on the grounds pay top price and still make money?" MacRaeasked impatiently.
"Could," Stubby declared. "Certainly. But most men in the salmon canningbusiness aren't like you and me, Jack. They are used to big returns on athree months' season. They simply can't stand the idea of paying out biggobs of money to a sulky, un-shaven bohunk whose whole equipment isn'tworth a thousand dollars. They think any man in sea boots ought to bedamn well satisfied if he makes a living. They say high wages, orreturns, spoil fishermen. On top of these new regulations nobody hankersto buy a plant where they might have to indulge in a price war with acouple of crazy young fools like you and me--that's what they call us,you know. That is why no experienced cannery man will touch Folly Baythe way things stand now. It's a fairly good plant, too. I don't knowhow Gower has managed to get in a hole. I don't believe one poor seasoncould do that to him. But he sure wa
nts to get rid of Folly Bay. It is aforty-thousand-dollar plant, including the gas boats. He has beennibbling at an offer of twenty-five thousand. I know, because I made itmyself."
"What'll you do with it if you get it?" MacRae asked curiously. "It'sno good unless you get the fish. You'd have to put me out of business."
"Well, I wasn't exactly figuring on that," Stubby grinned. "In the firstplace, the machinery and equipment is worth that much in the openmarket. And if I get it, we'll either make a deal for collecting thefish, or you can take a half-interest in the plant at the ground-floorprice. Either way, we can make it a profitable investment for both ofus."
"You really think Gower is in a bad way?" Jack asked reflectively.
"I know it," Stubby replied emphatically. "Oh, I don't mean to say thatabject poverty is staring him in the face, or anything like that. But itlooks to me as if he had lost a barrel of money somehow and was anxiousto get Folly Bay off his hands before it sets him further in the hole.You could make Folly Bay pay big dividends. So could I. But so long asyou cover his ground with carriers, every day he operates is a deadloss. I haven't much sympathy for him. He has made a fortune out of thatplace and those fishermen and spent it making a big splurge in town.Anyway, his wife has all kinds of kale, so we should worry about oldHorace A."
MacRae lit a cigarette and listened to the flow of Stubby's talk, withpart of his mind mulling over this information about Horace Gower. Hewondered if that was why Robbin-Steele was so keen on getting a contractfor those Squitty bluebacks, why Hurley of the Northwest wanted to makea deal for salmon; if they reckoned that Gower had ceased to be a factorand that Jack MacRae held the Squitty Island business in the hollow ofhis hand. MacRae smiled to himself. If that were true it was anadvantage he meant to hold for his own good and the good of all thosehard-driven men who labored at the fishing. In a time that waseconomically awry MacRae's sympathy turned more to those whose strugglewas to make a living, or a little more if they could, than to men whoalready had more than they needed, men who had no use for more moneyexcept to pile it up, to keep piling it up. MacRae was neither anidealist nor a philanthropic dreamer. But he knew the under dog of thegreat industrial scramble. In his own business he would go out of hisway to add another hundred dollars a year to a fisherman's earnings. Hedid not know quite clearly why he felt like that. It was more or lessinstinctive. He expected to make money out of his business, he was eagerto make money, but he saw very clearly that it was only in and throughthe tireless labor of the fishermen that he could reap a profit. And hewas young enough to be generous in his impulses. He was not afraid, likethe older men, that if those who worked with their hands got a littlemore than sufficient to live on from season to season they would growfat and lazy and arrogant, and refuse to produce.
Money was a necessity. Without it, without at least a reasonable amountof money, a man could not secure any of the things essential towell-being of either body or mind. The moneyless man was a slave so longas he was moneyless. MacRae smiled at those who spoke slightingly of thepower of money. He knew they were mistaken. Money was king. No amount ofit, cash in hand, would purchase happiness, perhaps, but lack of it madea man fall an easy victim to dire misfortunes. Without money a man wasless than the dirt beneath the feet of such as Robbin-Steele and Hurleyand Gower, because their criterion of another man's worth was hisability to get money, to beat the game they all played.
MacRae put himself and Stubby Abbott in a different category. Theywanted to get on. They were determined to get on. But their programme ofgetting on, MacRae felt, was a better one for themselves and for othermen than the mere instinct to grab everything in sight. MacRae was notexactly a student of economics or sociology, but he had an idea that theworld, and particularly his group-world, was suffering from thegrab-instinct functioning without control. He had a theory that societywould have to modify that grab-instinct by legislation and custom beforethe world was rid of a lot of its present ills. And both his reason andhis instinct was to modify it himself, in his dealings with his fellows,more particularly when those he dealt with were simple, uneducated menwho worked as hard and complained as little as salmon fishermen.
He talked with Stubby in the den until late in the afternoon, and thenwalked downtown. When he reached the Granada he loafed uneasily in thebilliard room until dinner. His mind persistently turned from materialconsiderations of boats and gear and the season's prospects to dwellupon Betty Gower. This wayward questing of his mind irritated him. Buthe could not help it. Whenever he met her, even if it were only a brief,casual contact, for hours afterward he could not drive her out of hismind. And he was making a conscious effort to do that. It was a matterof sheer self-defense. Only when he shut Betty resolutely out of thechambers of his brain could he be free of that hungry longing for her.While he suffered from that vain longing there was neither peace norcontent in his life; he could get no satisfaction out of working orplanning or anything that he undertook.
That would wear off, he assured himself. But he did not always havecomplete confidence in this assurance. He was aware of a tenacity ofimpressions and emotions and ideas, once they took hold of him. OldDonald MacRae had been afflicted with just such characteristics, heremembered. It must be in the blood, that stubborn constancy to eitheran affection or a purpose. And in him these two things were at war,pulling him powerfully in opposite directions, making him unhappy.
Sitting deep in a leather chair, watching the white and red balls rolland click on the green cloth, MacRae recalled one of the maxims ofHafiz:
"'Two things greater than all things are And one is Love and the other is War.'"
MacRae doubted this. He had had experience of both. At the moment hecould see nothing in either but vast accumulations of futile anguishboth of the body and the soul.
Poor Man's Rock Page 18
