Making Money Part 7

"Time to do what?"

"To get out and see the world, to meet men who are doing things, to get a chance to develop, to get my ideas straightened out a bit."

"Is that all?"

"No, that's not quite honest," said Bojo suddenly. "The truth is, sir, I don't see why I should begin all over again, the drudgery and the isolation and all. If you wanted me to do only that why did you send me to college? I've made friends and it's only right I should have the opportunity to lead as big a life as they. Money isn't everything, it's what you get out of life, and besides I've got opportunities, unusual opportunities to get ahead here."

"Have you made up your mind, Tom?" said the father slowly.

"I'm afraid I have, sir."

"Let me talk to you. You may see it in a different light. First you speak of opportunities--what opportunities?"

"Mr. Drake has been kind enough--"

"That means Wall Street."

"Yes, sir."

The father thought a moment.

"What is the situation between you and Miss Drake?"

"We are very good friends."

"Would you marry her if you didn't have a cent?"

"I would not."

"I am glad to hear you say that. Very glad. So you re going into Wall Street," he said, after a moment. "Are you going into the banking business?"

"Why, no."

"Or into railroads or any creative industry?"

"Not exactly."

"You're going into Wall Street," said Crocker, "like a great many young men, who've been having an easy, luxurious time at college and who want to go on with it. You're going there as a gambler, hoping to get the inside track through some influence and make a hundred thousand dollars of other people's money in a lucky year."

"That's rather a hard way to put it, sir."

"You don't pretend to be able to earn a hundred thousand dollars in one year or in five, do you, Tom?"

"Let me put it in another way," said Bojo after a moment's indecision.

"What you have made and what you have been able to give me have put me in the way of acquiring friends that others can't make, and friends are a.s.sets. The higher up you go in society the easier it is to make money; isn't it so? Opportunities are a.s.sets also. If I have the opportunity to make a lot of money in a short time, what is the sense of turning my back on the easiest way and taking up the hardest?"

"Tom, do you young fellows ever stop to think that there is such a thing as your own country, and that if you've got advantages you've also got responsibilities?" said Crocker, senior, shaking his head. "You want money like all the rest. What good do you want to do in return? What usefulness do you accomplish in the scheme of things here? You talk of opportunity--you don't know what a real opportunity and a privilege is.

Now let me say my say."

Richardson came sliding into the room at this moment and he paused to deny the card, with a curt order against further interruptions. When he resumed it was on a quieter note, with a touch of sadness.

"The trouble is, our points of view are too far apart for us to come together at present. You want something that isn't going to satisfy you and I know isn't going to satisfy you. But I can't make you see it, there's the pity of it. You've got to get your hard knocks yourself.

You've got real ambition in you. Now let me tell you something about the mills and you think it over. There's some bigger things in this world than you think, and the biggest is to create something, something useful to the community; to make a monument of it and to pa.s.s it down for your son to carry on--family pride. You think there's only drudgery in it.

Did you ever think there were thousands and thousands of people depending on how you run your business? Do you realize that every great business to-day means the protection of those thousands; that you've got to study out how to protect them at every point in order to make them efficient; that there's nothing unimportant? You've got to watch over their health and their happiness, see that they get amus.e.m.e.nt, relaxation; that they're encouraged to buy homes and taught to save money. You've got to see that they get education to keep them out of the hands of ignorant agitators. You've got to make them self-respecting and able intelligently to understand your own business, so that they'll perceive they're getting their just share. Add to that the other side, the compet.i.tion, the watching of every new invention, the calculating to the last cent, the study of local and foreign conditions of supply and demand, the habits and tastes of different communities. Add also the biggest thing that you've got, a mixed population, that's got to be turned into intelligent, useful American citizens, and you've got as big an opportunity and responsibility as you can place before any young fellow I know. What do you say?"

Bojo had nothing to say--not that he had surrendered, but that his own arguments seemed petty besides these.

The father rose and laid his hands on his son's shoulders.

"Why, Tom, don't you know it's been the dream of my life to hand you down this thing that I've built myself? Don't you know there's a sentiment about it? Why, it isn't dollars and cents: I've got ten times what I want; it's pride. I'm proud of every bit of it. There isn't a new turn, mechanical or social, has come up over the world but what I've adopted it there. I haven't had a strike in fifteen years. I've done things there would open your eyes. You'd be proud. Well, what are you thinking?"

"You make it very hard, sir," he said slowly. He had not expected this sort of appeal. "If I were older, I don't know--but it's hard now." He could not tell him all the surrender would mean, and though his deeper nature had been reached he still fought on. "I'm not starting where you started, sir; that's the trouble. You went to work when you were twelve.

It would be easier if I had, and, if you'll forgive me, it's your fault too that I want what I want now. I suppose I do want to begin on top, but I've been on top all these years, that's all. I couldn't do it now; perhaps later--I don't know. If I went up to the mills now I should eat my heart out. I'm sorry to have to say this to you, but it's the truth."

The father left him abruptly and seated himself at his desk without speaking.

"If I insisted you would refuse," he said slowly.

"I'm afraid I'd have to, sir," said Bojo, with a feeling of dread.

There was another silence, at the end of which Mr. Crocker drew out his check-book and looked at it solemnly.

"Good! Now he's figuring how much he'll give me and cut me off!" thought the son.

"Tom, I don't want to lose you too," said the father slowly. "I'm going to try a different way with you. You're sound and you ring true. The only trouble is you don't know; you've got to learn your lesson. So you think if you had a start you'd clean up a fortune, don't you?--and you believe--" he paused--"in Wall Street friends. Very well; I'm going to give you an opportunity to get your eyes open."

He dipped his pen in the ink and wrote a check with deliberation, while Bojo, puzzled, thought to himself: "What the deuce is he up to now?"

"I'm not going to make a bargain with you. I'm going to trust to experience and to the Crocker in you. I know the stuff you're made of.

You'll never make an idler, you'll never stand that life, but you want to try it. Very well. I'm going to give you a check. It's yours. Play with it all you want. You'll get it taken away from you in two years at the most. When that happens come back to me, do you understand, where you belong! Blood's thicker than water, my boy; there's something in father and son sticking together, doing something that counts! Here, take this."

And he placed in his hand a check which read:

Pay to the order of Thomas Beauchamp Crocker Fifty thousand dollars JOTHAM B. CROCKER.

CHAPTER V

DANIEL DRAKE, THE MULTI-MILLIONAIRE

A week after his interview with his father, Tom Crocker entered the great shadowy library of the Drakes in response to an invitation from the father. At this time, when Wall Street was approaching that dramatic phase which is inevitable in social transformations, when dominant and outstanding individualities succ.u.mb to the obliterating rise of bureaucracies, there was no more picturesque personality than Daniel Drake. He had come to New York several years before, awaited as a vaulting spirit who played the game recklessly and who would never cease to aspire until he had forced his way to the top or been utterly broken in the attempt.

His career had bordered on the fantastic. As a boy the _Wanderl.u.s.t_ had driven him over the face of the globe. A shrewd capacity for making money of anything to which he put his hand had carried him through strange professions. He had been a pedler on the Mississippi, cook on a tramp steamer to Australia, boxed in minor professional encounters, exhibited as a trick bicycle rider, served as a soldier of fortune up and down Central America, and returned to his native country to establish a small fortune in the field of the country fairs.

With the acquisition of capital, he became conservative and industrious. Reconciled with his family, he had secured the necessary funds to attempt an operation in the wheat market which, conducted on a reasonable scale, netted him a handsome profit and enlarged his activities. His genius for manipulation and trading, which was soon recognized, brought him into the services of big industries. He made money rapidly, and married impulsively against the advice of his friends a woman of social prominence who cared absolutely nothing about him--a fact which he was the last to perceive.