Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

"That's what they say," Stubby went on. "It's common talk. He sold his place in town a short while ago. He has the cannery on the market. And there are no takers. Folly Bay used to be a little gold mine. But Gower rode the fishermen too hard. And you balled things up last season. He lost his grip. I suppose he was involved other ways, too. Lots of these old-timers are, you know. Anyway, he seems to be trying to get out from under. But nobody wants to take over a plant that has a black eye among the men who catch the fish, in a territory where you appear to have a pretty strong hold."

"At the same time, if I can pay so much for salmon, haul them up the coast and make a profit on that, and if you can pay this advanced price and pack them at a still bigger profit, why in blazes can't a plant right there on the grounds pay top price and still make money?" MacRae asked impatiently.

"Could," Stubby declared. "Certainly. But most men in the salmon canning business aren't like you and me, Jack. They are used to big returns on a three months' season. They simply can't stand the idea of paying out big gobs of money to a sulky, un-shaven bohunk whose whole equipment isn't worth a thousand dollars. They think any man in sea boots ought to be damn well satisfied if he makes a living. They say high wages, or returns, spoil fishermen. On top of these new regulations nobody hankers to buy a plant where they might have to indulge in a price war with a couple of crazy young fools like you and me—that's what they call us, you know. That is why no experienced cannery man will touch Folly Bay the way things stand now. It's a fairly good plant, too. I don't know how Gower has managed to get in a hole. I don't believe one poor season could do that to him. But he sure wants to get rid of Folly Bay. It is a forty-thousand-dollar plant, including the gas boats. He has been nibbling at an offer of twenty-five thousand. I know, because I made it myself."

"What'll you do with it if you get it?" MacRae asked curiously. "It's no good unless you get the fish. You'd have to put me out of business."

"Well, I wasn't exactly figuring on that," Stubby grinned. "In the first place, the machinery and equipment is worth that much in the open market. And if I get it, we'll either make a deal for collecting the fish, or you can take a half-interest in the plant at the ground-floor price. Either way, we can make it a profitable investment for both of us."

"You really think Gower is in a bad way?" Jack asked reflectively.

"I know it," Stubby replied emphatically. "Oh, I don't mean to say that abject poverty is staring him in the face, or anything like that. But it looks to me as if he had lost a barrel of money somehow and was anxious to get Folly Bay off his hands before it sets him further in the hole. You could make Folly Bay pay big dividends. So could I. But so long as you cover his ground with carriers, every day he operates is a dead loss. I haven't much sympathy for him. He has made a fortune out of that place and those fishermen and spent it making a big splurge in town. Anyway, his wife has all kinds of kale, so we should worry about old Horace A."

MacRae lit a cigarette and listened to the flow of Stubby's talk, with part of his mind mulling over this information about Horace Gower. He wondered if that was why Robbin-Steele was so keen on getting a contract for those Squitty bluebacks, why Hurley of the Northwest wanted to make a deal for salmon; if they reckoned that Gower had ceased to be a factor and that Jack MacRae held the Squitty Island business in the hollow of his hand. MacRae smiled to himself. If that were true it was an advantage he meant to hold for his own good and the good of all those hard-driven men who labored at the fishing. In a time that was economically awry MacRae's sympathy turned more to those whose struggle was to make a living, or a little more if they could, than to men who already had more than they needed, men who had no use for more money except to pile it up, to keep piling it up. MacRae was neither an idealist nor a philanthropic dreamer. But he knew the under dog of the great industrial scramble. In his own business he would go out of his way to add another hundred dollars a year to a fisherman's earnings. He did not know quite clearly why he felt like that. It was more or less instinctive. He expected to make money out of his business, he was eager to make money, but he saw very clearly that it was only in and through the tireless labor of the fishermen that he could reap a profit. And he was young enough to be generous in his impulses. He was not afraid, like the older men, that if those who worked with their hands got a little more than sufficient to live on from season to season they would grow fat and lazy and arrogant, and refuse to produce.

Money was a necessity. Without it, without at least a reasonable amount of money, a man could not secure any of the things essential to well-being of either body or mind. The moneyless man was a slave so long as he was moneyless. MacRae smiled at those who spoke slightingly of the power of money. He knew they were mistaken. Money was king. No amount of it, cash in hand, would purchase happiness, perhaps, but lack of it made a man fall an easy victim to dire misfortunes. Without money a man was less than the dirt beneath the feet of such as Robbin-Steele and Hurley and Gower, because their criterion of another man's worth was his ability to get money, to beat the game they all played.

MacRae put himself and Stubby Abbott in a different category. They wanted to get on. They were determined to get on. But their programme of getting on, MacRae felt, was a better one for themselves and for other men than the mere instinct to grab everything in sight. MacRae was not exactly a student of economics or sociology, but he had an idea that the world, and particularly his group-world, was suffering from the grab-instinct functioning without control. He had a theory that society would have to modify that grab-instinct by legislation and custom before the world was rid of a lot of its present ills. And both his reason and his instinct was to modify it himself, in his dealings with his fellows, more particularly when those he dealt with were simple, uneducated men who worked as hard and complained as little as salmon fishermen.