“Labor’s victory will be not to labor when modern machines work for them. Until then, they’ll accept their place in God’s estate, if I have anything to do with it. And I do. After machines replace them, God knows how they’ll spend their time.” He whirled abruptly to his desk, moving with startling speed for a man his age, and wrote a note in a flowing hand:
There will be great profit in providing them games.
Congdon’s visitor nodded obsequiously.
Clay focused his spyglass on the mineowner’s face and took pleasure in watching him squirm. “Black Jack Gleason,” he whispered. “Not such a big man here in Wall Street, are you?”
Gleason was standing in Congdon’s office, literally hat in hand, worrying the brim of his homburg with anxious fingers, while James Congdon bullied him. Even lip-reading only parts of their conversation, as Congdon occasionally turned his face from the window, it was clear to Clay that the financier was calling the tune. The biggest coal baron in West Virginia was no match for a Wall Street titan hell-bent on consolidating the industry. Congdon’s money controlled the steel mills, and the coking plants that bought coal, and the railroads that not only burned it in their locomotives but also set the rates to ship it.
“Have you read Darwin?” Congdon asked contemptuously.
“I don’t believe so, Mr. Congdon.”
“The weak perish, the fittest survive.”
“Oh yes, sir. I know who you mean.”
“Mr. Darwin knows his business. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes. The weak die — perish. We’ll always have the poor. It’s the way of the world.”
“The way of the world,” said Congdon, “brings us to the business of digging coal less expensively than the next man. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Henry Clay, a painter like his mother though not as gifted, likened Congdon’s craggy face to a sunless, cold north slope gullied by storm water. It was no surprise, looking at that face, that Judge Congdon was the most powerful man in Wall Street, and Henry Clay’s chest filled with hope in the knowledge that he was about to hitch his wagon to an element as mighty as fire.
* * *
Judge James Congdon listened with a cold smile as the now thoroughly cowed Black Jack Gleason turned to flattery to try to shift the subject from the price of coal.
“Some members of the Duquesne Club were wondering out loud at lunch the other day whether you would consider a run at public office?”
“The ‘people’ won’t elect a banker president,” Congdon replied.
“I’ll bet you could
change their minds.”
“No, they won’t vote for a Wall Street man. I know. I ran for governor and I lost. They beat the pants off me.”
“There’s always a next time.”
Congdon shrugged his broad and bony shoulders. “Who knows what the future holds?” he asked modestly while thinking to himself, I do. Next time, I know how to win.
“First thing you ought to do,” said Gleason, “is get the damned newspapers to stop complaining about your senators.”
“If only it were that simple, Gleason. The papers can howl their heads off about bribing congressmen and buying senators. People don’t give a hang. Oh no. People expect it. People admire a president who controls Congress.”
“So you would consider running for president?”
“Who knows what the future holds?” Congdon repeated. “Other than that in the immediate future, starting this afternoon, my mills will pay twenty cents a ton less than you’ve gotten used to, and my roads and barges will increase our shipping rates by five percent.”
Gleason turned pale.
“How am I to make a profit?”
“Rob Peter to pay Paul.”
“How do you mean?”