The Strong City

by Taylor Caldwell

  Hans, grunting, read the two letters, slowly and carefully. Then he laid them down. He scowled again. “Blackmail!” he said. “Do we go into blackmail now, with your schemes?”

  Franz laughed indulgently. “Most certainly not. Trusley is a gentleman, and a close friend of Andrews. He has only to warn him, regretfully. But we shall leave the mode of procedure in Trusley’s competent hands. Well? Are you not going to congratulate me?”

  Hans shifted gloomily on his seat, and fixed Franz with truculent eyes.

  “I have built up this mill with these two hands,” he said, and lifted fat clenched fists. “I have made iron and steel. I have done it all myself. I do not understand, nor like, these new schemes, where men plot against each other in offices. With pictures on the walls, and velvet curtains at the windows, and flowers,” he added, scathingly. “Steel is steel, and mills are mills. Plottings are for rascals and diplomats.”

  Dietrich murmured a discreet approbation.

  Franz laughed again. “But these are new times, father! It is no longer a time of mills merely competing with each other. There is finesse, now, not bludgeoning. There are politicians now, to be placated, to be induced to fight one’s growing battles in Washington. There is high finance now, and not mere sweat and labor.”

  Hans grunted contemptuously: “You mean that industry is no longer a matter of direct control?”

  “Exactly. Few seem to realize it, but America is passing through a transition. The pioneer industrial civilization, the little individual controller of a small number of workmen, are both doomed, old-fashioned, unwieldy. We are entering the first phase of capitalistic civilization, and monopoly, and manipulation.”

  Dietrich, who hated Franz virulently, and who plotted continually for his disfavor in the eyes of Hans, coughed gently, and said:

  “Herr Schmidt has done very well, in the past, with his hard work and direct control and self-management and close contact with the industry he has built.”

  Franz turned a bland eye upon him. “‘In the past,’ yes. But not now. Do you realize, Dietrich, that the builder of the future, the great capitalistic industrialist, will expand and become rich and powerful? He will plot more and sweat less. This is no pioneer land any longer. I see a vision of America,” and he leaned back in his chair and stared mockingly and elaborately as at some splendid sight: “I see a few mighty monopolies headed by gentlemen of intelligence and craft and statesmanship, not petty little industrialists with the stench of their own insignificant mills in their nostrils. I see these gentlemen in close touch with great bankers, great railroad builders, great politicians, great statesmen. The future of America is in the hands of a few, who know how to manipulate, not merely build.”

  Hans grunted, rubbed cigar ashes off his satin waistcoat. He flicked a meaning and surly glance at Dietrich, looking for comfort in a bewildering world.

  “A lovely idea! And I suppose that fantastic thought of yours, hiring young dreamer chemists and metallurgists, is part of the scheme? What have they done?” he asked irately. “They have taken from my tills, and buzz busily in a little hive of their own. But that is all.”

  “But one of these days they will discover something tremendous,” urged Franz, with his charming smile. “I know this. Just as I know that the day of crucible steel is passing. There was Bessemer, with his ‘fantastic thought.’ Where would steel be today without Bessemer? Nowhere. We would still be making it in teaspoonfuls. We would still have puddlers patiently pushing about a tiny little red ball for hours. Now we have Bessemer Steel. What we have not thought of yet are new ways to use steel. Replace wooden railway coaches, for instance, with steel ones. I can think of a thousand things—”

  “All more foolish than the last,” grunted Hans. But he eyed Franz with secret fondness. He was very tired. He no longer yearned for new worlds. But the thought that Franz could still envision these new worlds dimly excited him.

  But Franz was becoming more and more excited with his idea.

  “In one direction, I agree with you about actual work in the mills. We are still, in spite of moderate successes, a small mill. We must learn the necessary way to increase volume and reduce cost. We must learn mass production. Yes. But that will come with organization, integration and consolidation.”

  “Words!” cried Hans. “Mere words! How shall we go about this?”

  “How?” murmured Dietrich, with a faint malignant smile of superiority.

  But Franz was momentarily silent, still smiling into the near distance. He played with his watch-chain; he passed his hands over his thick yellow hair, which was assiduously polished by much careful brushing. Hans exchanged an irate and puzzled glance with Dietrich, then puffed out his cheeks in mingled indignation and indulgent derision of Franz.

  “Your dreams, I presume, come from your fifteen-dollar-a-week dreamers?” he asked.

  Franz nodded quickly and amiably. “Most certainly! They know what I want, and I have not the sufficient imagination to do it myself. They know I want money. So they bend their heads and think, and some day they will get it for me. I have the cash for their shabby pockets. They have the brains for me.”

  He looked at Dietrich, now, without amiability, but with opaque blandness. “I should like to speak to Herr Schmidt alone,” he said politely.

  Dietrich, his fox-like face darkening, looked at Hans, silently pleading that he not be dismissed. But Hans made a brusque gesture with his hand, and Dietrich, flushing, rose and left the room.

  “A fox in a pen thinks the world is filled only with little chickens,” remarked Franz, and got up deftly to close the door which Dietrich had purposely left open a crack. Then he returned to Hans, who sat, bulky, with whitening hair and thickening body, in his chair under the portrait of that aristocrat, his wife’s father. He did not stir when Franz seated himself again, but his little eyes were full of sulky and confused sparks.

  “Now,” said Franz, “we shall proceed with our discussion.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Hans was acutely uneasy, and even frightened. During the three years Franz had been his son-in-law, he had alternated between periods of elation, satisfaction, affection, bewilderment, anger, confusion and fury. It is true that the mills had become quite compact and had secured considerable prosperity under Franz’s “imbecile schemes,” and that for the first time in many years they were actually making a lot of money. The schemes were, one and all, violently and apoplectically opposed by Hans, with a tremendous amount of screamings, oaths and epithets, but each time Franz had amicably had his way. And each time they were successful, to Hans’s bewilderment, and even dismay, as well as delight. Sometimes he felt himself in a grotesque new world, where old values were no longer valid, and the wildest dreams suddenly became concrete. He felt menace in the dreams, and disorientation. But, they had succeeded. He could not understand this. He was not reconciled to the new world, even when the Schmidt Mills had been dragged back from the very verge of bankruptcy. The imminence of bankruptcy seemed to him to be more reassuring and familiar than a world in which fantasies become successful realities.

  He was proud of Franz. At times, he could scarcely conceal his exultation when complimented by such as Jules Bouchard of the Sessions Steel Company for securing such a progressive and imaginative son-in-law and general manager. Jules Bouchard had, himself, written a most gracious letter to this effect, and though Hans had obscenely cursed that “scheming, lying, thieving Frenchman,” he carried the letter with him always, in an upper waistcoat pocket. Once he even said: “Someday the Sessions Mills will come to us with hat in hand,” and beamed upon Franz with fierce affection. Too, Franz had rescued Ernestine from old virginity. When she became pregnant, Hans was prepared, for a little while at least, to let Franz do anything he wished with his beloved mills.

  Nevertheless, he was afraid of Franz, for all his affection, and prophesied ruin. “We shall go down in a great blitz of bankruptcy some day,” he gloomily remarked. He was hardly placated by the
growing accounts in the banks. When bank presidents in Philadelphia actually came to Nazareth to visit him, his bewilderment was greater than ever, as was also his pride, and egotism. He began to develop sick headaches, which were becoming more and more frequent. Franz’s presence comforted and infuriated him. He felt his familiar world flaking away under his feet, and his hands wildly and blindly fumbling for support. Franz, in one moment, gave him support, the next lightly removed it, leaving him dangling.

  He knew, by now, that when Franz came easily and smilingly into his office like this, that he had some new “scheme” under that mane of carefully tended yellow hair. His heart began to thud with apprehension, and dull terror. I have had enough, he thought to himself. My flesh is old and heavy. I cannot endure new high winds and perilous places. This time, I shall resist.

  “You have a new madness,” he accused Franz. “I am tired of your madnesses.”

  “Even though they have been successful?” asked Franz, with gentle affection, and reproachful smile.

  Hans struck his fist savagely on the desk. “Ja! It is a lunatic’s success! I am tired of it. What do you want? Are you never to be satisfied?”

  “No,” said Franz, quietly.

  Hans threw up his hands in a sudden gesture of despair and fear.

  “It is enough for me! Why is it not enough for you?”

  “Nothing is enough for me,” said Franz, and now the hard line of his jaw showed through his flesh, and his whole face took on a ruthless and rapacious look. Then, instantly, this look was gone, and he was bland and amiable again. “I ask you only to listen, father,” he added.

  But Hans was obsessed by his fear, and became excited. “What more can a man wish than a success which brings him comfort and security for himself and his children, and peace, and a garden? Once, when I was young, I, too, had dreams. But they were ridiculous. It is enough, when a man is old, that he has not failed.”

  “There is no failure except the fear of failure. No defeat except that of accepting too little, and compromising,” said Franz. He regarded Hans with cold curiosity. “What is one man’s success is another’s failure. I have my visions. They are not only for myself, but my children. A man must remember that his children’s dreams might be larger than his own. He owes them the duty of accomplishing all that he can accomplish, and showing them greater horizons. He must not build a smug pigpen and tell them that this is the world. At the end, they will know him as a liar. At the worst, they will believe him.” He paused, then with merciless shrewdness, he went on: “I owe my children a duty. I intend to give them all that is in my power to give them.”

  Hans’s fat and purplish face, with the bushy white mustaches and eyebrows, faltered, became uncertain, fearful, and confused. He thought of his two twin grandsons, Sigmund and Joseph, and his heart swelled with emotion. Perhaps Franz was right. Perhaps, he, Hans, was a doddering old man too fearful of change, too afraid of losing what he had already secured. But such a small success!

  Franz, seeing his advantage, went on quickly:

  “I intend that the Schmidt Steel Company shall become the greatest single company of its kind in America.”

  Hans was suddenly again frenzied, and again struck his desk a thudding and frantic blow. “But how? How? We are so small, even today. You are a fool!”

  But Franz, triumphing, was not offended. He smiled easily.

  “We will have to expand this mill. We will beg, borrow or steal the money. Take a mortgage on the mill, if necessary. Buy new machinery. I have heard of excellent new machinery, which trebles production. Sessions has patents on it. We will get permission, on a royalty basis, to use this machinery. When we are able to increase production, we will go out, secure new and larger accounts: the railroad companies, ship-building concerns, bridge companies. One of the men, in our name, is to patent his idea for steel-frame buildings. As yet, this is impracticable, but the day will come when steel will be used for this purpose. We must create a greater demand for steel products, in different forms. The possibilities are endless! We can present these ideas, upon which my metallurgists are already working, to financiers. I will go to New York, myself—!”

  Hans’s dusky forehead wrinkled and knotted like the forehead of an ape as he tried to follow these monstrous dreams. He was speechless. Franz’s smooth voice went on, as gently flowing as thick rich cream:

  “As soon as we can convince the financiers that we have a market for our products they will be only too glad to invest their money with us. Once we have opened their coffers, we will be able to buy up small competitors, bringing into their small mills our advanced methods, and they will be able to distribute our products to the localities where needed. Once we have eliminated the small and nagging competition—who knows?—we may even combine with Sessions Steel, or reach an understanding with them to divide the market, not only in America, but Canada and South America!”

  “Are these your fine ideas?” demanded Hans, in a stifled voice in which he tried to inject contempt and ridicule.

  Franz laughed deprecatingly, and said with great candor: “No. Not at all. For fifteen or twenty dollars a week, each, my despised metallurgists and inventors produce the most brilliant ideas! But let me go on, please.

  “How we have neglected South America! Our thoughts, the thoughts of America, still turn homeward to Europe. Yet, to the south of us are the world’s most stupendous virgin markets. Do you know who realizes this? The new Germany of Bismarck, of the Franco-Prussian War. Unless we are careful, within two decades Germany will have secured these markets. We must prevent her. We can prevent her, if we can convince South America that we can serve her better.”

  In Hans’s stupefied silence (for Hans was blinking like a man forced to look directly at the dazzling noon-day sun), Franz withdrew a little black book from his pocket and elegantly thumbed through it. “For instance, large coal fields have recently been discovered around the Great Lakes. I have taken an option on them—”

  “What!” roared Hans, coming violently to life. “With what?”

  Franz smiled casually. “A deposit on an option, shall I say? With my own funds, saved from the very, very generous salary you have given me. I had no doubt, you observe, that you would take up the option, when you realized the tremendous advantages of owning our own coal mines, instead of buying our coal from Barbour-Bouchard, the English-French robbers and murderers!”

  Hans ran a thick finger between his fat bull neck and his cravat. He appeared about to choke. He strove for sarcasm, and spoke hoarsely:

  “And where will we get this money, may I ask, mein Herr?”

  “I have told you. I will go to New York and see Joseph Bryan and Company, the bankers and investors. It would be useless to see Regan, who is involved with Barbour-Bouchard. But Bryan would like to cut Regan’s throat. He is our man. If the worst comes to the worst, there is always a mortgage—”

  “Mortgage!” screamed Hans, with real desperate fury this time. His eyes started from his head as though he was being throttled. He leaned across the desk towards him, as if to spring. “I owe no man anything, and never shall!”

  But Franz, dreaming pleasantly, tilted his chair, and went on: “Bryan will have to have some security, of course. I will tell him my plans for expansion, which are still somewhat nebulous at this moment, but will clear up eventually. We will have to form a corporation, and reorganize, and while you, father, retain control, we will give Bryan an interest in the mills, a certain number of shares.”

  “But this is my mill!” screamed Hans, the blood rushing thickly and darkly to his face. He beat his breast with his fists. “This is mine! No man shall have it, while I am alive, and no part of it! What is this mill to you? Have you given your blood and your sweat to it, as I have done? Have you built it piece by piece, with your raw hands, from a pile of rubbish, as I did? Every stone, every chimney, every furnace is mine. It belongs to me. Yet, you would dispose of it as though I were already in my grave, and rotting!”

&n
bsp; Suddenly his face changed, worked, became grotesque and crumpled as though with dissolving and childish grief and sorrow. He was overpowered with bewilderment at the vision of a threat of something greater than himself, which was to crush him and his era of small, sweat-stained and passionately devoted little industrialists. He was appalled at the thought of sleek alien men in distant New York offices manipulating the industry which had grown out of the hands and toil and blood of men such as himself. And then he knew that these men were reaching out for such as he, with insatiable appetites, devouring. They had no love for industry, for labor, for work and personal ingenuity and individualism. He was horrified at the vision of them, elegantly clad, cold, precise, inhuman, in their velvet chairs around mahogany conference tables. He regarded them with repulsion and frantic terror, this distant implacable and powerful foe, and he felt their ominous shadow falling over him, and saw their mighty and spectral hands reaching out for all that he loved. It was unendurable. It was a lunatic’s dementia coming true, but a giant dementia.

  There would no longer be independence, where a man ruled his small industrial kingdom like a prince, and knew his own pride, his own courage, his own success. Hans had never loved America, but now he loved her, with a bursting passion and a new understanding, and a wild patriotism. America of strong little men like himself, proud, hard-working, planning, conquering, owing no man anything, wresting success like marble from mountains with their own hands! This was passing. He was not given to dreams and visions, this fat old peasant from Bavarian fields, but now he saw the vast Armageddon of men like himself, wrestling with dark monsters who must invariably win, and devour him. In the end, there would not be industry, but only an attenuated if voracious capitalism, which would extend like livid veins, full of poison, into all of industry owned by rugged little men. What would become of America then, caught up in a gigantic and involved web of capitalism, in which small men were bound like flies, and devoured? America had not been built by golden hands, cold, lifeless but greedy. It had been built by living hands such as his, torn, bleeding, brown, strong and indomitable. He, and his kind, had given their blood to America. But now it was all useless. Those who knew nothing of mills, of industry, of plants and machinery and men and toil and sweat, would some day control everything, regarding industry as a huge winepress, the wine of which they would drink, but would never stamp out the grapes themselves. It was horrible. It was not to be borne! The face of America would change. It would no longer be a human face, but a grimacing mask with open mouth and deadly eyes.