IV
“Gildersleeve woke up too late. His first cold realisation that he had a dangerous rival came when the North Star secured a huge government contract for harbour dredging and improvements, for which an appropriation of two million dollars had been placed in the parliamentary estimates. With the money credit established by the acquisition of this contract, the North Star was enabled to invest in a formidable fleet of tugs and the most modern dredging equipment.
“There was no stopping now—the North Star’s only salvation lay in continuous expansion to the last shred of money credit and the gobbling up of every worthwhile contract. High capitalisation and enormous daily overhead had to be met with tremendous production and what the newspapers call profiteering on a large scale. There is an advanced stage of development of a commercial enterprise when its directing head must chloroform his conscience. The North Star had reached that stage. It was a case of destroying or being destroyed. The war between the North Star and the Gildersleeve interests was on in deadly earnest, and I saw to it that the North Star was continuously the aggressor.
“Gildersleeve was no fool as a business man, and under his smug cloak of respectability he knew no scruples save where the law might halt him. But, as his potential destroyer, I had made a thorough, patient study of his weaknesses rather than his strength. He had so long been used to easy, safe stages of progress that he had lost the initiative of a plunger. He considered too long and was over-cautious; while Gildersleeve was holding long-winded conferences with his associates and executives, the North Star was striking hard where it was least expected to strike.
“Through a thoroughly organised private intelligence department, I knew the Gildersleeve plans before they were put into operation. The North Star too held conferences; but they were merely ‘blinds,’ the plans of the company being devised by none but myself, and none knew what they were until orders went out to the president over the signature of ‘J.C.X.’
“I picked my men for their ability to carry out instructions quickly and thoroughly. I had no need for generals or advisors; except that their recommendations regarding campaign plans gave me an idea what other people, including our competitors, would be liable to conceive we were about to do. If such recommendations tallied with the plans already formulated, I promptly discarded the latter and set about devising entirely different methods. The North Star never did the obvious thing, and the element of surprise invariably helped carry the day.
“The North Star took a controlling interest in powerful newspapers it could use, and it used their news columns and editorials in a subtle manner that never gave them the appearance of mere organs. To be a power in the land and so many stuffed clubs to drive the politicians to do the North Star’s bidding, they had to be papers of the people and with the people.
“The general conception that a mysterious outside personality directed the affairs of the North Star had become a fixed make-believe with myself. I actually used to come here to the cabin in the Cup to ‘consult’ the fictitious J.C.X., playing upon the violin the music that was en rapport with my mood. And with the music would come flashes of inspiration from what I held to myself was the unseen agency of J.C.X. It was whimsical, childish, if you like, but one must so pamper the sub-conscious if he would have it function.
“The North Star’s great smash was the capture of the government ice-breaking contracts for spring and fall, which the Gildersleeve interests held until we had J. J. Slack elected to the Commons, elevated to the cabinet and made him our president.
“The North Star gave Gildersleeve no quarter. A series of other swiftly-succeeding coups broke the back of Gildersleeve’s control on the upper Lakes. Soon his boats were lying idle at their docks, and when in a tight year they were offered for sale at what would be little better than their value as junk, the North Star secretly financed other small companies to buy up the best of them, in order to make sure there would not even be crumbs left for its rival.
“The North Star had gained undisputed monopoly of the Upper Lakes, and it now turned its attention to inland activities, seeking where it could strike Gildersleeve most vitally. It became a byword that the unknown clique who guided the North Star could make and break other men and businesses at its pleasure. Politicians and the so-called rulers of the land came seeking the North Star ready to do its pleasure. It seems to be a fact that the mob respect and fear only that which remains a profound mystery to them. The unsolved riddle of the North Star’s ownership and direction inspired a morale among its executives and workers that familiarity with the master mind of the enterprise would have negatived. Its operations and swift expansion to the exclusion of others came to be looked upon with a sort of numbed fatalism by its rivals and enemies. It seemed to appropriate with ease what it willed on land and water; but none knew the continuous drudgery of one man’s imagination to bring about those very things. And the North Star fostered and preserved an element of colour that distinguished it from the drab grind of most big business undertakings—it was picturesque as well as successful.
“Before the year 1914, when the Great War broke out, the North Star had driven Norman T. Gildersleeve from every holding he had originally usurped in the estate of John Carlstone, and from other enterprises he held stock in in Canada. He fled to the States, a bankrupt.
“I have given you a cold-blooded story of how the North Star succeeded. Its operations were on a plane with those of nearly every big enterprise in Canada to-day. Big business is war, always war—smash or be smashed. But the North Star hid behind no smug cloak of hypocrisy; it gave no quarter and it asked for none. On the other hand, the North Star lived up to its contracts to the letter; it never swindled a legitimate customer nor took advantage of a weak or struggling competitor. Its sole prey was the Gildersleeve interests and those who stood in the way of its becoming great and powerful.”