It was at the end of his visit that Thorpe asked about the sulphur plant.
Clark glanced at him curiously. The sulphur plant was so small a fraction of the whole.
"There's a certain step in the process we have not perfected—that's all. You don't believe in economic waste, do you?"
"No, certainly not—if avoidable."
"Well, I'm satisfied that this is avoidable. It is just as much a mistake to allow water to run away when it might be grinding pulp, as it is to drive sulphur into the air instead of catching and selling it. You pollute the air, you kill the trees, you spend a lot of money, and you waste the sulphur. Nature has a lot of processes up her sleeve we've not realized as yet. This is one of them."
"Then this plant is a mistake?" Thorpe got it out with some hesitation.
Clark laughed. "Some of it—so far. I make plenty of mistakes, don't you? It seems to me it's the proportion his mistakes bear to the things that succeed which determines a man's usefulness. I don't believe in the one who doesn't make them."
Thorpe grinned in spite of himself. "Perhaps you're right—but I'll be glad to know as soon as you're rolling rails. When do you expect that?"
"In six months at the latest. I'll send you a section of the first one."
The banker drove toward the station in unaccustomed silence. Presently he turned to Brewster. "You were right and, by George! Clark is right too, but we must not get our mutual rectitude mixed up. He's got to go ahead, come what may, and we've got to help him all we reasonably can, but with us our shareholders come before his. That's the point. He may turn out to be a private liability, but in any case he's a national asset. I want a bit of that first rail. Good-by!"