i
Life in this financial limbo would have exactly suited the placid temperament of our organization but for the distracting activities of Galt. With Valentine’s permission he took that old vice-president’s desk in Harbinger’s office and began to keep hours. Such hours! He was always there when Harbinger arrived. At ten he went to the Stock Exchange; at three he returned. He was still there when Harbinger went home. The scrubwomen complained of him, that he kept them waiting until late at night. Sometimes for that reason they left the room unswept. Insatiably he called for records, data, unheard of compilations of statistics. He wrangled with John Harrier, the treasurer, for hours on end over the nature of assets and past accounting. Their voices might often be heard in adjacent rooms, pitched in the key of a fish wives’ quarrel.
Harrier was an autocratic person whose ancient way of accounting had never before been challenged nor very deeply analyzed. With so much laxity at the top of the organization he had been able to do as he pleased, and being a pessimist his tendency was to undervalue potential assets, such as lands, undeveloped oil and mining rights and deferred claims. Gradually he wrote them off, a little each year, until in his financial statements they appeared as nominal items. His judgments were arbitrary and passed without question. This had been going on for many years. The result was that a great deal of tangible property, immediately unproductive yet in fact very valuable, had been almost lost sight of. The Great Midwestern, like the country, was richer than anybody would believe. And nobody cared. Live working assets were in general so unprofitable, especially in the case of railroads, that dormant assets were treated with contempt. Galt valued them. He knew how Harrier had sunk them in his figures and forced him step by step to disclose them.
“They are at it again,” Harbinger said, coming in one evening to sit for a while in my room, bringing some papers with him.
“Who?”
“Galt and Harrier. I can’t think for their incessant caterwauling.”
“How do you get along with him?” I asked.
“With Galt? He makes me very uncomfortable. There’s no concealing anything from him.”
“Do you still dislike him?”
“Oh, no. That wears off. I’ve been watching his mind work. It’s a marvellous piece of mechanism.” He went on with his work. “I know at last what he’s doing,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“He’s developing a plan of reorganization.”
That was true. I had known it for some time. He accumulated his data by day in the office and worked it up by night in his room at home. He showed it to me as it progressed. There was a good deal of writing in it. The facts required interpretation. He was awkward at writing and I helped him with it, phrasing his ideas. The financial exposition was one part only. There was then the physical aspect of the property to be dealt with. When it came to that he spent six weeks out on the road. Three days after he set out on this errand we began to receive messages by telegraph from our operating officials, traffic managers, agents and division superintendents, to this effect:
“Who is Henry M. Galt?”
At Valentine’s direction I answered all of them, saying: “Treat Henry M. Galt with every courtesy.”
He went over every mile of the right of way, inspected every shop and yard, talked with the agents and work masters and finally scandalized the department of traffic by going through all the contracts in force with large shippers. He studied traffic conditions throughout the territory, had a look at competing lines and conferred with bankers, merchants and chamber of commerce presidents about improving the Great Midwestern’s service.
He returned with a mass of material which we worked on every night feverishly, for he was beginning to be very impatient. The physical aspect of the property having been treated from an original point of view, there followed an illuminating discussion of business policy. Good will had been leaving the Great Midwestern, owing to the unaccommodating nature of its service. This fact he emphasized brutally and then outlined the means whereby the road’s former prestige might be regained.
Never had a railroad been so intelligently surveyed before. The work as it lay finished one midnight on Galt’s table represented an incredible amount of labor. More than that, it represented creative imagination in three areas,—finance, physical development and business policy. The financial thesis was that the Great Midwestern should be reorganized without assessing the stockholders in the usual way. All that was necessary was to sell them new securities on the basis of dormant assets. This was a new idea.
“Have you done all this in collaboration with the bankers?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “They have a plan of their own. My next job is to make them accept this in place of theirs. That’s why I’ve been in such a sweat to get it done.”
“What inducement can you offer them?”
“Mine is the better plan,” he said. “It stands on its merits.”
“What will you get out of it?” I asked.
He looked very wise.
“That’s the crow in the pie, Coxey.” He got up, stretched, walked about a bit, and stood in front of me, saying: “I’ll get a place on the board of directors. I’ll be one of ten men in a Board Room. Everything else follows from that.”