by Alex Myers
“How can I?” Kaz said. “I’m about to raise her son.”
“I think we need to get you laid.”
CHAPTER 29
June 1856
The Patent Pirates
They were ‘patent pirates,’ people who would willfully steal someone else’s intellectual property and sell it as their own. Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, complained to a friend in a letter in 1848, I have been so constantly under the necessity of watching the movements of the most unprincipled set of pirates I have ever known, that all my time has been occupied in defense, in putting evidence into something like legal shape that I am the inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph! Would you have believed it ten years ago that a question could be raised on that subject?
And this came from a man who many thought had stolen the idea of the telegraph from Joseph Henry. The patent pirates willfully infringed patents with impunity, taking advantage of the fact that small inventors rarely had the financial resources required to enforce their rights.
If you wanted to make money, you needed to invent something that great numbers of people wanted; you needed to be able to manufacture and distribute the item; and you needed to do it all cheaply. Thomas Edison would later say, “There’s a way to do it better—find it!” Only about half the patents submitted are accepted and, even then, most of their claimed coverages are worthless. About ten percent of those that make it through the patent process are ever manufactured and, of those, only about three percent ever cover their costs.
The SAC was perhaps the worst of the pirates. A well-financed group of southern landowners, they stole every technological, industrial, agricultural and military idea that came along. But there was a difference in the way they manufactured their stolen products. It appeared that they weren’t stealing the items with the sole intent to make money by making inferior copies; stolen patents manufactured by the SAC were as integrally sound or more so than the originals. They took without guilt from all but the biggest of companies, defending their so-called patents with undue aggression, with nothing more than groundless threats to sue.
Legitimate companies spent fortunes keeping the pirates away, but they barely tried with the SAC; it was big enough to scare them away. And then they had the Washington connection and the ear of the President, which let them operate with near impunity.
“I need what this Jack Riggs knows or seems to know,” Winston Creed said. He was looking out on the James River from the SAC Manufacturing Plant in Williamsburg.
“His knowledge seems real enough” Abner Adkins said. “He’s done everything he’s talked about doing and then some.” Adkins was sitting in the guest chair at Creed’s desk. Creed’s bony, contorted figure stood silhouetted in the floor-to-ceiling window. The office had been built as close to the river as possible, giving the impression it was floating over the water. He pounded his cane into his crippled hand. The man wasn’t as old as Abbey had first thought. Creed had been in an industrial accident that prematurely aged him as well as gave him his limp. Abbey had seen a portrait hung in the Virginia Statehouse that showed him to be a rather dashing, aristocratic plantation owner.
“Get him out of Norfolk and get him working for us,” Creed said. “If these agricultural machines that I’ve heard about are real and if they make their way to market, the southern slave economy will collapse. Bob Cooper says one picker and bailer can do the work of fifty slaves. If slaves lose even a quarter of their value, it’ll bankrupt half the plantations.” Creed looked to be on the verge of speaking several times, but eventually he just stared at the river.
“He might be moving to New York,” Abner said.
“That’s right, he’s working for your wife’s company.”
“She’s not my wife, and it’s her family’s company, and he’s just doing business with them.”
“Doing business to her from what I hear.” Creed stood silhouetted against the window. A tall-masted steam-powered sailing ship passed what looked like twenty feet outside the window behind him. “What about McCord?”
“Not worth messing with. Everyone thinks he’s crazy. But the Polish guy, I might have some leverage to use against him.”
“Your whore?” Creed hissed.
Abner had learned a new trick to try to deal with Creed’s explosive anger. He would clench his fingers into fists and dig his manicured nails into the meaty palms of his hands. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Just make it happen.” Creed had his back to the lawyer as he spoke. “I need detonators and I need these guns he makes. If we can’t get him, then get me copies and we’ll reverse-engineer them as we do everything else. My men are the best in the world. And, by the way, if we can’t get him to join us . . . kill him.”
“Kill him? Don’t you think that’s being a bit harsh?”
“I’m trying to achieve something great here, something that will change—no, fix— the world. That means I don’t have time to do a little dance with someone. I’ve learned to be quick and clean and then move on.”
“He’s worth more alive to us than dead. He’s a southerner. I can’t say that he’ll join our cause, but with the way I’m keeping tabs on him, he is essentially working for us,” Abner said.
“It surprises me to hear you talk like that, considering he’s bedding your ex-wife.”
Abbey winced at the accusation. “He is not, by the way, as if it matters. I think we are going to have a profitable relationship. My job is to find items for us to manufacture—items, that is, where we have a creative or better than average chance of commandeering their patent.”
“I will tell you, Mr. Adkins, what your job description is.” A giant of a man walked into the room. He was well-dressed, calm, and ugly. He stood next to the desk in front of Abner and stared rigidly at the wall beyond his head. He didn’t say a word.
“Abner, this is Miles Drake. He’s in our enforcement, er, security department. Jack Riggs basically killed his brother Quentin; let him drown while saving a dead nigger. Now I suppose you could call him an enforcer, a bodyguard. For all I care you can call him your best friend. He is going to be working with you. As a matter of fact, I’m sending him on the road with you from now on.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Oh, you do. If you are smart and play by my rules, you will do well; you can even give him orders—to a point. But if you cross the company, or me, Miles will kill you. Now go get me Riggs.”
CHAPTER 30
June 1856
Cyrus McCormick
Jack had limited time before the Civil War was inevitable. He needed to join forces with the most innovative people he could remember from the history books, and one such man was Cyrus McCormick. A quiet revolution had swept the Midwest with the introduction of Cyrus McCormick’s horse-drawn reaper. Before its invention, men cut grain with a scythe; McCormick’s reaper did the same thing, doing the all-day work of three men in less than an hour.
McCormick was also a pioneer of modern marketing techniques. He advertised heavily, sent out agents, and sold on the installment plan. One of these agents had stopped in Kaz’s gunsmithing shop when Jack had been there. Jack knew McCormick’s company would go on to become International Harvester.
In 1856, Cyrus McCormick was already a worldwide celebrity. Almost 49, portly, bearded, and an earnest Presbyterian, McCormick up till then had little interest in anything but business and had led a very spartan existence. Now newly married, he had changed his ways and enjoyed certain luxuries.
“I really appreciate you taking the time to see me, Mr. McCormick,” Jack said, sitting down in a pierced and carved arabesque armchair. McCormick’s office was all mahogany, rosewood, and black walnut. Nothing seemed to match, save for the fact that it was all expensive-looking. Cyrus McCormick sat behind a massive, white-marble-topped desk that stood on deeply cut spiral-turned legs.
“I just want you to know the only reason I agreed to see you is that I owe Andrew Sanger a favor,” McCormic
k said in a loud, self-righteous voice.
Jack already knew about this favor. Ten years earlier, while McCormick was still struggling in Cincinnati, Andrew had persuaded him to base his operations in Chicago. He told McCormick that Chicago was going to be an important city, that much of the capital of the west was centered there. The Illinois & Michigan Canal connected Chicago to the Mississippi River, so that trade that had previously gone through St. Louis went instead to Chicago. In 1850, Chicago was a city of thirty thousand people. By the end of the decade, its population would have more than tripled to 109,000.
Andrew Sanger even sold Cyrus the property on which he built his reaper factory.
“I would like to talk to you about distribution lines and raw material acquisition,” Jack said.
“That’s what we call ‘trade secrets,’ sir,” he said, sitting back in his oversized chair and lighting a cigar. “I just don’t give that kind of information out to strangers.”
“I assure you, Mr. McCormick. The Sangers have no interest in reapers.”
“I‘m not talking about the Sangers, I’m talking about you. Do you think I don’t know about the plow you are trying to put into production?”
“As far as I know, your company doesn’t make anything similar.”
“John Deere, the man you are fighting in court—or is it the Sanger’s money that is fighting—is a friend of mine. It looks to me like you‘re trying to get into the farm implement business.”
Jack knew that Deere and McCormick were anything but friends, but he could also see the resolve on the man’s face. He knew how difficult McCormick could be. He wasn’t going to get anywhere using this tack, so he switched to the real reason why he’d come. “What if I deeded over the rights to a combine harvester and thresher that will double the yield of yours with half the work and half the waste?”
“I would say that’s impossible,” Cyrus huffed.
“I’m going to show you the plans,” Jack said pulling the blueprints out of a leather tube.
“And what if this plan of yours works? What would keep me from just taking your idea and making it my own?”
“You mean other than the fact that I have a patent filed by the best patent lawyer in the United States?”
“And to that I’d say he hasn’t done you much good in the Deere Case.”
“Well, I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse….” Jack said as he laid the plans for the machine on McCormick’s desk.
McCormick’s big bushy eyebrows shot up as he glanced at the details. “Just what are you offering?” McCormick asked, showing new interest.
“I’m offering to sell you the rights to the combine. You can keep the patent, manufacture it here at your plant, and distribute it along the same lines as your reaper.”
“Now you’ve got my interest. What kind of money are you talking? Considering your case with Deere is still in court and all.”
“I’m sure the copyright litigation with your close friend John Deere will turn out in my favor.”
“Friendship is one thing, but we are talking business here.”
“I would sell you the rights for a ten percent share of future profits from sales of the plow and a one-time fee of $35,000.”
Without pause or hesitation McCormick said, “I’ll have my secretary make out a draft for the money.”
“Mr. McCormick….”
“Cyrus.”
“Cyrus. Now that we have made a deal, can I tell you how these machines are going to help stop a great civil war?”
“And hopefully add to my bottom line.” Cyrus opened the hand-carved humidor on his desk and pulled out two cigars.
Jack and Cyrus talked the rest of that day and had dinner at Cyrus’s club that night. Jack learned all he needed about materials and shipping and finally, over dessert, struck the deal he’d hoped for all along: to distribute the plow and Cyrus’s reaper through the Sanger Catalog.
As Jack was boarding his train, he turned to Cyrus and asked, “Why didn’t you bargain harder on the price of the combine? After all, as you said, my case with Deere is still in court.”
Cyrus laughed. “Litigation is quickly becoming my favorite pastime. The case has been over since Friday. You won—or should I say, with these new designs, I won. News can travel slowly at times, I suppose. A deal is a deal, though.”
“Mr. McCormick, I’m going to be sending you some more stuff soon.”
“Stuff?”
“Designs, plans. I’m going to need your help in the future and I think it can be mutually profitable. It might even help to save the country.”
“Mr. Riggs, it was a pleasure doing business with you.” Jack left the man chuckling to himself at the station. He’d gotten what he’d come for, though, and in the process made an important ally in the Windy City. What Cyrus McCormick didn’t know was that Jack had made a stop two days earlier in Moline, Illinois and had met with John Deere and his son Andrus, and things were chugging along right on track.
CHAPTER 31
July 1856
New York Boat Ride
Jack hadn’t seen Frances since the twelfth of June when she suddenly made a surprise five-day visit to New York. Jack had been in Chicago working with a supplier until the morning of the fifteenth. He got back to New York to find that Frances was supposed to leave on the morning of the seventeenth. He practically begged her to extend her visit but she said that she had to leave for a business meeting and couldn’t reschedule. Jack gave in and they spent the morning in meetings with her father and Andrew Sanger before quitting for the day at noon. After an afternoon lunch, Jack and Frances headed for the East River and Pier 25 where Jack had his new sailboat moored. The fall day was absolutely splendid.
Passing by Fulton’s Fish Market, they saw the bowsprits of three cargo schooners almost touching the wooden warehouses on the pier. They watched fearless young boys splash and play in the lapping waves on the pier as they carefully avoided the grunts and men complaining as they unloaded fish from the ships.
Finally they came upon a forty-foot schooner docked at the end of the workboats named “The Frances.” Her hull was planked in silver balli and angelique—South American hardwoods from Suriname. She was framed in sawn black locust and angelique, with an angelique backbone. The spars were spruce and Douglas fir and the deck was teak. It was Jack’s extravagance that he would use as his main transport vehicle.
“It’s sleek and beautiful—and so big. I hope you can sail it alone, because I don’t think I’ll be much help.”
“This is currently the fastest boat in the world, and with the modifications I’ve made it will be for a while. I should be able to make the trip to Norfolk in a day-and-a-half. It should top out at twenty-five knots.”
“The best time I’ve ever made was five days, Frances said, amazed.
“I’ve stripped everything out below and there’s a giant conference table to seat ten, with six bunks and a head. I hired the captain that set the trans-Atlantic record with her. So, this should be an office on the water. We can also carry a pretty decent load with just a little loss in speed.”
“Why have you taken this to such an extreme?”
“I had fun doing this, but more than that, I want you to have this at your disposal. I don’t want you ever to regret staying in Virginia. You can come visit or do business here in New York whenever you want.”
“We’re going to take her out?” Frances asked, her voice sounding excited.
“I’ll give it my best shot,” Jack said untying the lines.
“Am I just supposed to ignore the name, The Frances?”
“By the way, the old name of this boat was the ‘Mad Hen’ so I didn’t feel like the new name was that much of a departure.”
That earned him a playful spank.
Jack handled the boat with ease, sailing into the bright sunshine passing Roosevelt, Ward’s, and Riker’s Islands. The fat lazy breeze blew off the rippled water. Jack pointed out a huge estate on College
Point that looked like a Scottish castle. Delicate white wisps of cloud seemed to converge on the horizon like silken filaments falling from the otherwise pristine sky. He wanted this boat ride to never end.
She looked off at the big house and grounds and just smiled; the wind cascaded through her long blonde hair, and she closed her eyes to the summer breeze. He watched her soak in the sun and soak in the moment. He thought she was beautiful.
They rounded Powell Cove, passed Throg’s Point and the little village of King’s Point, and made for the end of the Great Neck Peninsula.
“This is the first time I’ve seen the family property from the water. It looks perfect. This is a good location?”
“One day all this property your father and Uncle purchased will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.” The Sangers had purchased the entire end of the peninsula.
“I’m sorry we keep missing each other. Daddy and Uncle Andrew want to open up catalog stores in Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Des Moines. That’s what my business meetings were all about recently. The same man owns multiple locations in each city.”
“As long as you’re not trying to avoid me.”
“We have an opportunity to move in Atlanta and Birmingham. You said both those cities were heavily damaged in the war. Do we do it?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, do it. I’ll use that as added incentive to make sure the war doesn’t happen.”
She searched his face for his conviction and felt the resolve roll off him.
CHAPTER 32
August 1856
Trespassers at the Complex
They pulled Jack’s sailboat, ‘The Frances’, into the entrance of Broad Creek that night at seven o’clock. Frances had been out of town for nearly a month. Her ship from Baltimore docked earlier that morning and Jack was waiting for her at the pier. He saw her waving from the rail. There was a giant smile on her face to greet him.
