Chapter XIV

Thatcher and Cosden chartered one of the hotel carriages the next morning and started on a tour of inspection over the route plotted out by Duncan for the proposed trolley-line. After passing beyond the town limits, and with the long stretch of superb coral road ahead of them, Thatcher turned to his companion.

"Why can't we get together on the Consolidated Machinery?" he asked pointedly.

"The public demands that your nefarious trust be compelled to recognize its rights," Cosden replied smiling.

"Good!" Thatcher smiled in response. "Now that you have that piffle off your chest, please go on."

"This time we have the goods," Cosden added significantly.

"If you are so sure of it, why don't you show them to us? Then we can tell whether it's a real hold-up or merely an attempt."

"That's just the point, and the sooner your crowd realizes it the less time you will waste. This is not a hold-up game; we have the goods, and we can make a better thing by operating than by selling out."

"You have courage to buck up against an organization as strong as ours."

"Not only courage but capital enough to see us through."

The antiquated stage-coach, plying between St. George's and Hamilton, lumbered past them. Cosden smiled as he turned to his companion.

"There's a perfect illustration of the situation," he said. "Your machines belong to the same vintage as that old coach, yet by maintaining a monopoly, as you have been able to do until now, you have succeeded in forcing manufacturers to employ antique methods, and to pay you a whacking big royalty for the privilege of remaining twenty years behind the times. That stage-coach will stand as much chance of continuing on its beat, if our trolley scheme goes through, as your machines have of keeping out of the scrap-heap when ours once get on the market. This isn't any news to you, Thatcher, and that's what makes your whole crowd so anxious."

"If what Duncan tells us is correct," Thatcher retorted quickly, "we have just about as much show of pulling off the trolley scheme as you fellows have of putting this machinery game over on us. Somebody has been going to do this to us for twenty years, but somehow the manufacturers keep coming back to renew their contracts."

"Of course they do," Cosden admitted; "they haven't dared to do anything else. Look at the terms in your leases! Any manufacturer would have to be absolutely sure that the new machines were backed strongly enough to keep you from punishing him for his temerity. That can now be guaranteed, and with the element of fear eliminated they will flock to us, rejoicing that they have the opportunity to leave their shackles of bondage behind them."

"Another Emancipation Proclamation!" laughed Thatcher; but Cosden found the moment to impress the enemy with the strength of his position too opportune to allow himself to be diverted.

"Think of it, Thatcher," he cried with characteristic enthusiasm. "In less than two years they can save enough, through the economies of production, to buy their machines outright, instead of continuing year after year to pay you tribute with nothing at the end to show for it. We give them methods as well as machines, and show them how an ordinary workman can produce the high-grade output of a skilled operative by means of the improved automatic features of our machinery. The makers of medium-quality goods can now turn out work equal to that heretofore produced only by high-grade manufacturers."

"You're a grand salesman, Cosden," Thatcher said lightly. "Your company ought to put you on the road! Our people would pay you a big salary to handle the sales end of our organization."

"I shouldn't be worth ten dollars a week to them. There are three kinds of salesmen, Thatcher: one sells his concern, another sells his customers, and the third sells his goods. A man can't belong in the third class unless he himself believes in what he's selling. I've been making these machines for our crowd for five years, including the experimental period, and I know what I'm talking about. Four big plants are now being equipped, and when they once begin running you'll see your royalties dropping away from you like friends after a failure. The fact that you have had a monopoly has encouraged your people to keep their eyes on the stock-market instead of on the improvement of their machines, and our biggest asset is the fact that every manufacturer who is leasing from you to-day is sore over his treatment."

"That goes without saying," Thatcher admitted; "they would be sore if we gave them the machines outright. But if you are so sure your improvements are valuable, why go to the expense of duplicating our selling and manufacturing equipment when we stand ready to make a fair trade?"

"The new machines wouldn't be worth as much to you as they are to us."

"Why not?"

"Because you would never use them. The improved models would simply be side-tracked to keep them from competing against your antiques. You would be paying whatever it cost to get hold of them for hush money, just as you have done a hundred times before."

"Suppose we did: what difference would it make to you, so long as you get a good thing out of it? I don't understand that your company was organized for philanthropic purposes."

"No; business and philanthropy usually work better when they're given allowances for separate maintenance, but in this particular case the two seem to be walking along hand in hand. Self-interest, Thatcher, is the strongest motive in the world, and when you find a proposition which offers self-interest to the buyer as well as to the seller you have an irresistible argument."

"This is a great road-bed for a trolley-line," Thatcher remarked, leaning over the side of the carriage. "The construction problem ought to be a simple one."

"The proposition to have a line of cars run here is so obvious that there must have been powerful objections to obstruct it all these years," Cosden answered, quite content to await Thatcher's pleasure in resuming the main topic of their conversation.

It was a beautiful clear, cool morning, and the sea at their left sparkled brilliantly in its sapphire splendor. To the right of the carriage road were attractive cottages, overgrown with blooming _bougainvillea_ or other less spectacular foliage. Every now and then a more pretentious mansion appeared, built on some elevation which commanded a view of the water on either side, and surrounded by heavy clumps of cedar and fan-leaved palmettos. Frequently the road passed between high walls of solid coral limestone, from the crevices of which the ever-decorative Bermuda vegetation showed scarlet, orange and purple blooms against the green.

"There must be something more than sentiment," Thatcher commented. "I suspect that we shall uncover some large personal interests here which have been strong enough to protect themselves--"

"And find concealment behind the convenient screen of sentimentality," completed Cosden.

"Exactly. I wouldn't spend any time on it at all except that it seems so important to the people themselves."

Cosden laughed so spontaneously that Thatcher looked up quickly, trying to grasp the unintended humor in his last remark. His companion was hugely amused and made no effort to conceal it.

"Well?" Thatcher interrogated good-naturedly; "aren't you going to let me in on it?"

"It's funny, that's all," Cosden replied; "but it's perfectly good business either way you work it. Simply a question of how you sit when you have your picture taken."

Thatcher's face demanded further explanation, but before Cosden spoke again by way of enlightenment his amused expression disappeared, and he became serious.

"I don't know as it is so funny, after all," he said. "When you spoke of being interested in this trolley scheme principally because it was so important to the people, I couldn't help thinking how inconsistent you were."

"Inconsistent?" Thatcher echoed.

"Suppose you owned that line of stage-coaches, and leased it out just as you do these machines. Then some men came along and proposed to build a trolley-line which would push the stage-coaches off the map. That's what our new machines will do to your old ones. In one case you're interested in the improved method because it is so important to the people; in the other you say, 'The people be damned.' But you're no different from the rest of us. Our so-called consistency is as full of holes as a sieve; but it's always the other fellow who sees it. We're too close to ourselves to get the perspective."

"I am relieved," Thatcher said. "If it is only a question of inconsistency I'll take a chance on holding my own. But sometimes we are not so inconsistent as we seem. The 'other fellow' thinks he has a joke on us when in reality he only sees part of the situation. This 'nefarious trust,' for example which you cite as a hideous illustration of grinding monopoly, took hold of an industry, twenty years ago, and brought system out of chaos, shouldered all the risk, taught manufacturers how to make money out of their business, and enabled small factories to become big ones by leasing them machines which they could not afford to buy. The trust has prospered, but so have the manufacturers. Who shall say that those who took the risks are not entitled to the rewards, or that the system introduced and developed by the trust was not as much in the interests of the people as this trolley-line we are proposing?"

"There isn't much of anything we can't prove if we argue long enough, is there?" Cosden retorted. "If I hadn't heard all that before, and if I hadn't seen the way the 'system' worked out, I should be almost persuaded. Some one told me once that there were two sides to every story except that of Cain and Abel, but I came across an Icelandic myth a while ago in which Abel was the murderer, and since then I've refused to believe anything until I know the other side. Probably the only way for you and me to agree on this question is for each of us to buy some stock in the other fellow's company."

* * * * *