ii
A railroad has its own bankers, just as you have your own dentist or doctor. They sit on the board of directors as financial experts. They carry out the company’s fiscal policies, they sell its securities to the public for a commission, they lend it money while it is solvent, and when it is insolvent they constitute themselves a protective committee for the security holders and get all the stocks and bonds deposited in their hands under a trust agreement. Then in due time they announce a plan of reorganization.
Mordecai & Co. were the Great Midwestern’s bankers. They would naturally control the reorganization. In fact, they had already evolved a plan and were waiting only for a propitious moment to bring it forth. To offer them a new plan in place of their own,—for an outsider to do this,—would be like selling a song to Solomon. I marvelled not so much at Galt’s audacity as at his self-confidence. It seemed an utterly impossible thing to do.
He stopped the next morning at the Great Midwestern office to verify three figures and to have me fasten the sheets neatly between stiff cardboards. Then he marched off with it under his arm, his hat slammed down in front, a slouching, pugnacious figure, blind to obstacles, dreaming of empire.
“Good luck!” I called after him.
He did not hear me.
The profession of dynamic man is arms. It has never been otherwise. Only the rules and weapons change. He makes a tilting field of business. The blood weapon is put away, killing is taboo, but the struggle is there, if you look, essentially unchanged. Men are the same as always.
Wall Street is a modern jousting place. The gates stand open. Anyone may compete. There is no caste. The prizes are unlimited; the tournament is continuous. Capital is not essential. One may borrow that, as the stranger knight of ancient time, bringing only his skill and daring, might have borrowed lance, horse and armor for a trial of prowess.
To this field of combat you must bring courage, subtlety, nerve, endurance of mind and swift imagination. Given these qualities, then to gain more wealth and power than any feudal lord you need only one inch more than the next longest lance of thought. You have only to outreach the vision of the champions to unhorse them. There is no mercy for the fallen, no more than ever. The new hero is acclaimed. He may build him a castle on any hill and with his wealth command the labor of tens of thousands. But he must still defend his own against all comers in the market place. In time he will meet one greater than himself. He may have the consolation of knowing, if it is a consolation, that defeat is never fatal, or seldom ever.
Now through these gates went Galt. He had a vision of the future longer than the lance of any knight defending. He needed horse and armor. I did not see him again that day.