The Ghost in the Tower: An Episode in Jacobia

by Earl H. Reed

Waters evidently had been a pirate, pure and unadorned—a type of the financial thimbleriggers and wild-cat operators who claw at everything and everybody they can reach. It seems quite natural that his spirit should mingle with the piratical wraithy flock on the steps of the sub-treasury, but I think if the phantom baron’s story is to go out into the world you ought to send some sort of an antidote with it.

While it is perfectly true that there is a lot of iniquity in New York just as there is everywhere else, it must not be forgotten that vast enterprises have originated there that have been of infinite value to mankind. I think the observations of the ghost might well be taken as a text, and I am tempted to express some of the thoughts that came to me while reading the story.

Of course we cannot argue with a ghost, any more than we can convince a deceased writer that he was wrong, but we may always combat what we believe to be fallacy, whether its author is in existence or not.

The old robber baron lived and died in a sphere of life that gave him an unhealthy and morbid point of view and it seems natural that such a mental attitude should be in some way reflected in his spiritual state. Through him we have a shadowy expression of archaic ideas and obsolete conceptions of the mission and ideals of mankind. He is a faint echo of a tumultuous past, ruled by the lust of gold and blood, when men recognized only the law of the jungle. In the light of our present day civilization we may well forgive him.

Whatever my private beliefs may be as to ghosts and the activities of departed spirits, I am assuming that this old party in the tower is in a spiritual state, and that you did have the visit with him that you have written about, for I have always considered you perfectly truthful.

This old ghost’s continued association with that renowned sea faring gang of phantoms, and his contact with the unholy shade of Waters, probably excluded him from the society of the departed spirits of those who helped to build up the world during the period of his story. Undoubtedly even in spirit realms the line must be drawn some where. Had he enjoyed the advantages of proper ghostly companionship in New York he might have learned that he was haunting a region where some of the great constructive problems of the age are being worked out—where, if he had been alive, he might have felt the financial pulsations of a continent. He would have learned that, outside of the tricky stock manipulators, iniquitous combinations, blue-sky schemers, and hosts of other parasites and pests that always flourish in centers of financial activity, great forces there have helped to lay the foundations upon which the prosperity of the nation rests. Many millions have gone forth from this great financial center that have webbed the map of our country with railway lines, encircled its sea borders with prosperous docks, established mammoth industrial enterprises, erected and endowed universities, libraries and benevolent institutions, founded innumerable charities and movements for the investigation and control of disease, and done hundreds of other things that humanity would never have done for itself without the initiative of individuals with power to give form and effect to ideas for the good of mankind.

The hue and cry against what is called “big business” is the turbulent protest of the untutored mob—the yelp of the Bolshevik. In our modern social structure certain concentrations of wealth are inevitable and seem necessary to our economic life. The physical expression and realization of great individual ideas are impossible without them. Such ideas have developed the potential and latent resources of this country so that it has become a world power. The savages, who at one time owned the entire continent, could not have done this, any more than Captains Teach, Morgan and Kidd, and the rest of that destructive crew would have done it if they could. They would never have made it possible to transport a ton of freight a mile for less than a cent and a quarter, which is now done in America as a result of intelligent organization, co-operation and cumulative effort. In the absence of such highly perfected co-ordination a Chinese coolie, working for twenty cents a day, with two baskets suspended from a yoke on his shoulders, with the greatest physical effort, transports commodities at a rate which would be the equivalent of one ton per mile per day, or twenty cents per ton.

There are so many factors that enter into the intelligent carrying out of large constructive ideas that it would be quite hopeless to attempt to enumerate them in a brief general reference to the subject. We might for illustration take certain enthusiastic promoters, who, with a vision of what transportation facilities might produce from some region with vast undeveloped resources, conceive the idea of the construction of a railroad. Through their optimism, persistent agitation and presentation of the commercial possibilities of the project they finally attract the requisite capital. First the funds are provided for preliminary surveys to determine the most feasible route. Reports are made by experts, money is furnished for grading, men in the forests are cutting timber for ties, cars, bridges, buildings, etc., others are toiling in distant mines extracting ore that long low steamers take over the Great Lakes to the steel mills, where it is swung out of the holds by huge cranes. In glowing furnaces it is metamorphosed into red streams that cool in the forms required for the infinite fabrications to follow. It enters into the construction of rails, locomotives, box cars, passenger coaches, telegraph wires, block signal devices, and all the countless other things that, in this age of steel and wheels, go into that great expression of the triumph of mind over matter—the modern railroad.

Perhaps several years elapse before the road is in running condition. It may have its vicissitudes, receivership, bankruptcy, and reorganization, but at last the dream of the promoters comes true. All of the manifold forces and influences that have had their part in the growth and realization of the original idea have found fruition. Cumulative effort has succeeded and a ton of freight is carried a mile for less than a cent and a quarter. Out of a turmoil of varied fortunes a virile factor has been born into the economic world that has made life easier for those within its environment, and figuratively, has made “two blades of grass grow where but one grew before.” This is one of the gradual processes of civilization.

Conservation, utility, efficiency and economy are the watchwords of the day, and, while the cry of Teach’s parrot from the bloody deck of his pirate ship—“Pieces-of-Eight!—Pieces-of-Eight!”—may be echoed now and then within the shadow of Trinity’s spire, we who are alive and in the enjoyment of rational mentality, know that there are a great many things in that neighborhood that are entitled to our profound admiration.