by Jack London
CHAPTER XX
When the ferry system began to run, and the time between Oakland andSan Francisco was demonstrated to be cut in half, the tide ofDaylight's terrific expenditure started to turn. Not that it reallydid turn, for he promptly went into further investments. Thousands oflots in his residence tracts were sold, and thousands of homes werebeing built. Factory sites also were selling, and business propertiesin the heart of Oakland. All this tended to a steady appreciation invalue of Daylight's huge holdings. But, as of old, he had his hunchand was riding it. Already he had begun borrowing from the banks. Themagnificent profits he made on the land he sold were turned into moreland, into more development; and instead of paying off old loans, hecontracted new ones. As he had pyramided in Dawson City, he nowpyramided in Oakland; but he did it with the knowledge that it was astable enterprise rather than a risky placer-mining boom.
In a small way, other men were following his lead, buying and sellingland and profiting by the improvement work he was doing. But this wasto be expected, and the small fortunes they were making at his expensedid not irritate him. There was an exception, however. One SimonDolliver, with money to go in with, and with cunning and courage toback it up, bade fair to become a several times millionaire atDaylight's expense. Dolliver, too, pyramided, playing quickly andaccurately, and keeping his money turning over and over. More thanonce Daylight found him in the way, as he himself had got in the way ofthe Guggenhammers when they first set their eyes on Ophir Creek.
Work on Daylight's dock system went on apace, yet was one of thoseenterprises that consumed money dreadfully and that could not beaccomplished as quickly as a ferry system. The engineeringdifficulties were great, the dredging and filling a cyclopean task.The mere item of piling was anything but small. A good average pile, bythe time it was delivered on the ground, cost a twenty-dollar goldpiece, and these piles were used in unending thousands. All accessiblegroves of mature eucalyptus were used, and as well, great rafts of pinepiles were towed down the coast from Peugeot Sound.
Not content with manufacturing the electricity for his street railwaysin the old-fashioned way, in power-houses, Daylight organized theSierra and Salvador Power Company. This immediately assumed largeproportions. Crossing the San Joaquin Valley on the way from themountains, and plunging through the Contra Costa hills, there were manytowns, and even a robust city, that could be supplied with power, alsowith light; and it became a street- and house-lighting project as well.As soon as the purchase of power sites in the Sierras was rushedthrough, the survey parties were out and building operations begun.
And so it went. There were a thousand maws into which he pouredunceasing streams of money. But it was all so sound and legitimate,that Daylight, born gambler that he was, and with his clear, widevision, could not play softly and safely. It was a big opportunity,and to him there was only one way to play it, and that was the big way.Nor did his one confidential adviser, Larry Hegan, aid him to caution.On the contrary, it was Daylight who was compelled to veto the wildervisions of that able hasheesh dreamer. Not only did Daylight borrowheavily from the banks and trust companies, but on several of hiscorporations he was compelled to issue stock. He did this grudginglyhowever, and retained most of his big enterprises of his own. Amongthe companies in which he reluctantly allowed the investing public tojoin were the Golden Gate Dock Company, and Recreation Parks Company,the United Water Company, the Uncial Shipbuilding Company, and theSierra and Salvador Power Company. Nevertheless, between himself andHegan, he retained the controlling share in each of these enterprises.
His affair with Dede Mason only seemed to languish. While delaying tograpple with the strange problem it presented, his desire for hercontinued to grow. In his gambling simile, his conclusion was thatLuck had dealt him the most remarkable card in the deck, and that foryears he had overlooked it. Love was the card, and it beat them all.Love was the king card of trumps, the fifth ace, the joker in a game oftenderfoot poker. It was the card of cards, and play it he would, tothe limit, when the opening came. He could not see that opening yet.The present game would have to play to some sort of a conclusion first.
Yet he could not shake from his brain and vision the warm recollectionof those bronze slippers, that clinging gown, and all the femininesoftness and pliancy of Dede in her pretty Berkeley rooms. Once again,on a rainy Sunday, he telephoned that he was coming. And, as hashappened ever since man first looked upon woman and called her good,again he played the blind force of male compulsion against the woman'ssecret weakness to yield. Not that it was Daylight's way abjectly tobeg and entreat. On the contrary, he was masterful in whatever he did,but he had a trick of whimsical wheedling that Dede found harder toresist than the pleas of a suppliant lover. It was not a happy scenein its outcome, for Dede, in the throes of her own desire, desperatewith weakness and at the same time with her better judgment hating herweakness cried out:--
"You urge me to try a chance, to marry you now and trust to luck for itto come out right. And life is a gamble say. Very well, let usgamble. Take a coin and toss it in the air. If it comes heads, I'llmarry you. If it doesn't, you are forever to leave me alone and nevermention marriage again."
A fire of mingled love and the passion of gambling came into Daylight'seyes. Involuntarily his hand started for his pocket for the coin.Then it stopped, and the light in his eyes was troubled.
"Go on," she ordered sharply. "Don't delay, or I may change my mind,and you will lose the chance."
"Little woman." His similes were humorous, but there was no humor intheir meaning. His thought was as solemn as his voice. "Little woman,I'd gamble all the way from Creation to the Day of Judgment; I'd gamblea golden harp against another man's halo; I'd toss for pennies on thefront steps of the New Jerusalem or set up a faro layout just outsidethe Pearly Gates; but I'll be everlastingly damned if I'll gamble onlove. Love's too big to me to take a chance on. Love's got to be asure thing, and between you and me it is a sure thing. If the odds wasa hundred to one on my winning this flip, just the same, nary a flip."
In the spring of the year the Great Panic came on. The first warningwas when the banks began calling in their unprotected loans. Daylightpromptly paid the first several of his personal notes that werepresented; then he divined that these demands but indicated the way thewind was going to blow, and that one of those terrific financial stormshe had heard about was soon to sweep over the United States. Howterrific this particular storm was to be he did not anticipate.Nevertheless, he took every precaution in his power, and had no anxietyabout his weathering it out.
Money grew tighter. Beginning with the crash of several of thegreatest Eastern banking houses, the tightness spread, until every bankin the country was calling in its credits. Daylight was caught, andcaught because of the fact that for the first time he had been playingthe legitimate business game. In the old days, such a panic, with theaccompanying extreme shrinkage of values, would have been a goldenharvest time for him. As it was, he watched the gamblers, who hadridden the wave of prosperity and made preparation for the slump,getting out from under and safely scurrying to cover or proceeding toreap a double harvest. Nothing remained for him but to stand fast andhold up.
He saw the situation clearly. When the banks demanded that he pay hisloans, he knew that the banks were in sore need of the money. But hewas in sorer need. And he knew that the banks did not want hiscollateral which they held. It would do them no good. In such atumbling of values was no time to sell. His collateral was good, allof it, eminently sound and worth while; yet it was worthless at such amoment, when the one unceasing cry was money, money, money. Findinghim obdurate, the banks demanded more collateral, and as the moneypinch tightened they asked for two and even three times as much as hadbeen originally accepted. Sometimes Daylight yielded to these demands,but more often not, and always battling fiercely.
He fought as with clay behind a crumbling wall. All portions of thewall were menaced, and he went around constantly
strengthening theweakest parts with clay. This clay was money, and was applied, a sophere and a sop there, as fast as it was needed, but only when it wasdirectly needed. The strength of his position lay in the Yerba BuenaFerry Company, the Consolidated Street Railways, and the United WaterCompany. Though people were no longer buying residence lots and factoryand business sites, they were compelled to ride on his cars andferry-boats and to consume his water. When all the financial world wasclamoring for money and perishing through lack of it, the first of eachmonth many thousands of dollars poured into his coffers from thewater-rates, and each day ten thousand dollars, in dime and nickels,came in from his street railways and ferries.
Cash was what was wanted, and had he had the use of all this steadyriver of cash, all would have been well with him. As it was, he had tofight continually for a portion of it. Improvement work ceased, andonly absolutely essential repairs were made. His fiercest fight waswith the operating expenses, and this was a fight that never ended.There was never any let-up in his turning the thumb-screws of extendedcredit and economy. From the big wholesale suppliers down through thesalary list to office stationery and postage stamps, he kept thethumb-screws turning. When his superintendents and heads ofdepartments performed prodigies of cutting down, he patted them on theback and demanded more. When they threw down their hands in despair,he showed them how more could be accomplished.
"You are getting eight thousand dollars a year," he told Matthewson."It's better pay than you ever got in your life before. Your fortuneis in the same sack with mine. You've got to stand for some of thestrain and risk. You've got personal credit in this town. Use it.Stand off butcher and baker and all the rest. Savvee? You're drawingdown something like six hundred and sixty dollars a month. I want thatcash. From now on, stand everybody off and draw down a hundred. I'llpay you interest on the rest till this blows over."
Two weeks later, with the pay-roll before them, it was:--
"Matthewson, who's this bookkeeper, Rogers? Your nephew? I thoughtso. He's pulling down eighty-five a month. After--this let him drawthirty-five. The forty can ride with me at interest."
"Impossible!" Matthewson cried. "He can't make ends meet on his salaryas it is, and he has a wife and two kids--"
Daylight was upon him with a mighty oath.
"Can't! Impossible! What in hell do you think I'm running? A home forfeeble-minded? Feeding and dressing and wiping the little noses of alot of idiots that can't take care of themselves? Not on your life.I'm hustling, and now's the time that everybody that works for me hasgot to hustle. I want no fair-weather birds holding down my officechairs or anything else. This is nasty weather, damn nasty weather,and they've got to buck into it just like me. There are ten thousandmen out of work in Oakland right now, and sixty thousand more in SanFrancisco. Your nephew, and everybody else on your pay-roll, can do asI say right now or quit. Savvee? If any of them get stuck, you goaround yourself and guarantee their credit with the butchers andgrocers. And you trim down that pay-roll accordingly. I've beencarrying a few thousand folks that'll have to carry themselves for awhile now, that's all."
"You say this filter's got to be replaced," he told his chief of thewater-works. "We'll see about it. Let the people of Oakland drink mudfor a change. It'll teach them to appreciate good water. Stop work atonce. Get those men off the pay-roll. Cancel all orders for material.The contractors will sue? Let 'em sue and be damned. We'll be bustedhigher'n a kite or on easy street before they can get judgment."
And to Wilkinson:
"Take off that owl boat. Let the public roar and come home early toits wife. And there's that last car that connects with the 12:45 boatat Twenty-second and Hastings. Cut it out. I can't run it for two orthree passengers. Let them take an earlier boat home or walk. This isno time for philanthropy. And you might as well take off a few morecars in the rush hours. Let the strap-hangers pay. It's thestrap-hangers that'll keep us from going under."
And to another chief, who broke down under the excessive strain ofretrenchment:--
"You say I can't do that and can't do this. I'll just show you a fewof the latest patterns in the can-and-can't line. You'll be compelledto resign? All right, if you think so I never saw the man yet that Iwas hard up for. And when any man thinks I can't get along withouthim, I just show him the latest pattern in that line of goods and givehim his walking-papers."
And so he fought and drove and bullied and even wheedled his way along.It was fight, fight, fight, and no let-up, from the first thing in themorning till nightfall. His private office saw throngs every day. Allmen came to see him, or were ordered to come. Now it was an optimisticopinion on the panic, a funny story, a serious business talk, or astraight take-it-or-leave-it blow from the shoulder. And there wasnobody to relieve him. It was a case of drive, drive, drive, and healone could do the driving. And this went on day after day, while thewhole business world rocked around him and house after house crashed tothe ground.
"It's all right, old man," he told Hegan every morning; and it was thesame cheerful word that he passed out all day long, except at suchtimes when he was in the thick of fighting to have his will withpersons and things.
Eight o'clock saw him at his desk each morning. By ten o'clock, it wasinto the machine and away for a round of the banks. And usually in themachine with him was the ten thousand and more dollars that had beenearned by his ferries and railways the day before. This was for theweakest spot in the financial dike. And with one bank president afteranother similar scenes were enacted. They were paralyzed with fear,and first of all he played his role of the big vital optimist. Timeswere improving.
Of course they were. The signs were already in the air. All thatanybody had to do was to sit tight a little longer and hold on. Thatwas all. Money was already more active in the East. Look at thetrading on Wall Street of the last twenty-four hours.
That was the straw that showed the wind. Hadn't Ryan said so and so?and wasn't it reported that Morgan was preparing to do this and that?
As for himself, weren't the street-railway earnings increasingsteadily? In spite of the panic, more and more people were coming toOakland right along. Movements were already beginning in real estate.He was dickering even then to sell over a thousand of his suburbanacres. Of course it was at a sacrifice, but it would ease the strainon all of them and bolster up the faint-hearted. That was thetrouble--the faint-hearts. Had there been no faint-hearts there wouldhave been no panic. There was that Eastern syndicate, negotiating withhim now to take the majority of the stock in the Sierra and SalvadorPower Company off his hands. That showed confidence that better timeswere at hand.
And if it was not cheery discourse, but prayer and entreaty or showdown and fight on the part of the banks, Daylight had to counter inkind. If they could bully, he could bully. If the favor he asked wererefused, it became the thing he demanded. And when it came down to rawand naked fighting, with the last veil of sentiment or illusion tornoff, he could take their breaths away.
But he knew, also, how and when to give in. When he saw the wallshaking and crumbling irretrievably at a particular place, he patchedit up with sops of cash from his three cash-earning companies. If thebanks went, he went too. It was a case of their having to hold out.If they smashed and all the collateral they held of his was thrown onthe chaotic market, it would be the end. And so it was, as the timepassed, that on occasion his red motor-car carried, in addition to thedaily cash, the most gilt-edged securities he possessed; namely, theFerry Company, United Water and Consolidated Railways. But he did thisreluctantly, fighting inch by inch.
As he told the president of the Merchants San Antonio who made the pleaof carrying so many others:--
"They're small fry. Let them smash. I'm the king pin here. You've gotmore money to make out of me than them. Of course, you're carrying toomuch, and you've got to choose, that's all. It's root hog or die foryou or them. I'm too strong to smash. You could only embarrass me
andget yourself tangled up. Your way out is to let the small fry go, andI'll lend you a hand to do it."
And it was Daylight, also, in this time of financial anarchy, who sizedup Simon Dolliver's affairs and lent the hand that sent that rival downin utter failure. The Golden Gate National was the keystone ofDolliver's strength, and to the president of that institution Daylightsaid:--
"Here I've been lending you a hand, and you now in the last ditch, withDolliver riding on you and me all the time. It don't go. You hear me,it don't go. Dolliver couldn't cough up eleven dollars to save you.Let him get off and walk, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll giveyou the railway nickels for four days--that's forty thousand cash. Andon the sixth of the month you can count on twenty thousand more fromthe Water Company." He shrugged his shoulders. "Take it or leave it.Them's my terms."
"It's dog eat dog, and I ain't overlooking any meat that's floatingaround," Daylight proclaimed that afternoon to Hegan; and SimonDolliver went the way of the unfortunate in the Great Panic who werecaught with plenty of paper and no money.
Daylight's shifts and devices were amazing. Nothing however large orsmall, passed his keen sight unobserved. The strain he was under wasterrific. He no longer ate lunch. The days were too short, and hisnoon hours and his office were as crowded as at any other time. By theend of the day he was exhausted, and, as never before, he sought reliefbehind his wall of alcoholic inhibition. Straight to his hotel he wasdriven, and straight to his rooms he went, where immediately was mixedfor him the first of a series of double Martinis. By dinner, his brainwas well clouded and the panic forgotten. By bedtime, with theassistance of Scotch whiskey, he was full--not violently noruproariously full, nor stupefied, but merely well under the influenceof a pleasant and mild anesthetic.
Next morning he awoke with parched lips and mouth, and with sensationsof heaviness in his head which quickly passed away. By eight o'clock hewas at his desk, buckled down to the fight, by ten o'clock on hispersonal round of the banks, and after that, without a moment'scessation, till nightfall, he was handling the knotty tangles ofindustry, finance, and human nature that crowded upon him. And withnightfall it was back to the hotel, the double Martinis and the Scotch;and this was his program day after day until the days ran into weeks.
