Thus was brought about the curious situation wherein the North Star Company, with a mill of their own practically completed except for the installation of machinery, were forced to cut and deliver wood from the Nannabijou for their rival. On the other hand, the Kam City Company had also to accept this system for the time being whether they liked it or not. It was obvious that they did so because they could not help themselves; they had to have millions of poles ready for immediate delivery at their city docks in time to live up to their agreement, and the North Star Company owned all the available tugs and machinery so necessary to rush the poles to the mill site.
For once it was believed that a coup had been put over on the wily North Star Company, but they took their medicine without murmur, and not only went on with the cutting and booming of poles at the limits as before, but rushed the completion of their huge pulp mill building. People wondered what they hoped to do with it, because the Nannabijou Limits now secured by the Kam City Company would give the latter the full advantage in paper-making competition, not only because they were by far the largest limits in the North, but because they were drained by the mighty Nannabijou River and its tributaries, simplifying the matter of transporting the poles to the lake-front from far inland. It was true that three other limits on the North Shore were controlled by companies believed to be subsidiaries of the North Star, but they were infinitely small in area compared with the Nannabijou forests.
At any rate, the two big pulp and paper mills were on their way and Kam City was getting the benefit of construction work that would total somewhere in the neighbourhood of six or seven million dollars, and the public, as usual, was mostly concerned with the wealth immediately in sight.
II
Hammond incidentally gathered from what he heard here and there that Hon. J. J. Slack, M.P., president of the North Star Company, was a big man in Kam City, but he also discovered a general impression abroad that he was really a figure-head—that his every move in the commercial world was dictated by a power behind, mysterious as it was ingenious and powerful. Even the policies which he espoused in the House of Commons were attributed to master minds somewhere back of the scenes. No one had ever been able to place a finger on the source of his inspiration, but wiseacre socialist leaders maintained it was that much-abused, vague quantity known as “the big interests,” and the mob were contented to accept it as a good enough theory.
Hon. J. J. Slack, M.P., who held a place in the cabinet at Ottawa without portfolio, it seemed, was a tricky politician, a hail fellow and well met—and nothing more. Before his election to the Commons he was a struggling barrister whose battle for a mere existence was a case of Greek meet Greek; afterwards, he suddenly blossomed forth as president of the North Star Towing and Contracting Company, which those on the inside claimed was the parent of some twenty-seven flourishing subsidiary enterprises, including a fleet of grain-carrying freighters on the upper lakes, a grain storage trust operating elevators half way across the continent, a fur-trading company that had gradually dominated the adjacent districts to the exclusion of all rivals and a string of powerful newspapers in various cities and towns all the way from the head of the great lakes to the Pacific coast.
The North Star Towing and Contracting Company and its leading subsidiaries had at one time and another been accused of the boldest commercial piracies, gigantic briberies and glaring steals. If there was a big campaign “barrel” in evidence during an election it was usually set down as North Star money—and always, it seemed, the men the North Star backed had the most votes when the ballot counting was over. But never did the North Star Company or its satellites appear in the courts of law as defendants or face a commission of inquiry. There were settlements of a quiet nature—if there had to be. They wielded a long arm of retribution when their self-appropriated privileges were interfered with—wielded it with such cunning and far-reaching effect that even powerful rival corporations and high government officials learned, not without cost to themselves at times, it was the better part of wisdom not to stand in their way.
Whose money financed this sinister business only the company’s bankers knew, and what they knew they did not tell. The business seemed in some mysterious manner to run itself—so successfully that it reached out and dominated what it pleased, with an uncanny penchant for stamping out rivals and smashing all opposition in its path. Its progress and expansion had a certainty and a swiftness of a thing on the tables of destiny. Its sub-managers were all reputed to be clever rogues, deliberately chosen because past performances had given proof that a working conscience was the least of their moral burdens. Strange to say, none of them had even been known to double-cross the North Star subsidiary for which he worked. Perhaps this, in a sense, was due to a knowledge that nowhere else could they secure positions so lucrative or power of a kind such as they wielded under Slack. But more likely there was a deeper reason; a sense of an unseen guiding mind whom none could name but all felt—a power in the background that could make and unmake, could create and destroy at its pleasure.
Slack’s sudden ascension to command of all the varied industries dominated by the North Star interests was at first lightly taken. Merely a figurehead president appointed for political strategy, every one said. All of which feazed the Hon. J. J. Slack not the least. He went smilingly on his way accumulating millions, quite contented to be under-rated in the matter of personal ability. The executives of the North Star and its subsidiaries soon learned in a quiet but effective manner that Slack’s word was law; that, wherever his counsels might come from, he was at all times clothed with absolute executive authority.
The thing that puzzled the gossiping public was why the North Star Company had been so willing to cut and deliver the poles from the Nannabijou Limits for their hated rival, the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills. With an almost exclusive monopoly on towing and loading equipment, they could have been almost certain of tying up delivery to the Kam City Company for an indefinite period by simply ceasing operations on the Nannabijou till long-drawn-out action in the courts forced them to abide by what was in a legal sense unprecedented action on the part of the government. Instead, the North Star carried on their cutting and booming as before. By many this was looked on as portentous; the North Star’s quiet submission was too obvious to be natural and without deeper designs, as was also the fact that, though they had not even yet received their machinery, they were going on with the completion of their pulp and paper mill building. But more ominous than any was the editorial silence of the North Star newspapers on this particular question. From the day that the North Star changed its tactics before the government, the newspapers currently believed to be under control of the North Star never again so much as mentioned the matter of the cutting rights on the Nannabijou Limits.