The boy did not return for ten minutes. I knew then that my message was working its leaven, and in time the moment of victory would arrive. At the end of ten minutes the boy returned and requested that I follow him into Miss Tescheron's office. There I found that charming young lady struggling to maintain an air of disinterested dignity behind a desk which I could not approach within three feet, because a railing had been planted as an outpost to guard against the bore emergency. But three feet was near enough for me that day. I could have done the work anywhere within range of my voice or pen, it was such an easy matter; at least, I thought so when I gained admission to the judge who was to be moved by my plea in behalf of the defendant, Hosley.
As I drew near, making my most dignified bow, I beheld the form of a gray-haired man, who was advancing in years beyond the middle period of life. He was seated near Miss Tescheron, whom I now faced for the first time. I knew he must be John MacDonald, the famous lawyer. Miss Tescheron, I imagined, had called him in to be a witness to all I might have to say. Two judges, therefore, were to hear the presentation I was about to make in behalf of the outcast. In my capacity as middleman, I had always relied on the pen; but it was up to me now to make good the claims of my client with a verbal argument before two of the most discriminating lawyers.
I relied more, however, on the woman's heart.
CHAPTER XXIII
How fortunate I was in my judges or my jury of two—a fond woman and a plain man of common-sense! As our lives have been so bound with theirs, I must reveal the man more fully here.
Mr. MacDonald was widely known among that class of corporations that sought knowledge of the law and not opinions as to how it might be corrupted. They came to him to carry their cases through the courts, and not through the legislatures via the lobby. Therefore, he was not what is commonly called a corporation lawyer. He never drew bills designed to conceal franchise grabs or tax evasions, or crooked contracts with dummies in subsidiary corporations organized to bleed a mother concern of its profits. Some laws not on the books governed him in such matters, so that he never became an accomplice in these forms of thievery. He did more than pray "lead us not into temptation"; he kept both of his keen eyes open to make sure that he did not fall into it, and when he found that he had fallen, he quickly made every effort to extricate himself. This meant that he turned away volumes of business which would have brought large returns, but he would not have his office fouled by this stream of corruption any more than he would seek health in a sewer. When these degenerate concerns were admitted to his office, they came as penitents seeking reformation. His regular clients were the corporations who had come to take his view, that a big business must be laid on broad and deep foundations of integrity all-around; that all compromises with blackmailing legislatures are but makeshifts; that the thing to seek is justice, not only for themselves, but with a greater zeal for the people whose resources they use. The whole solution of our economic problems, in the mind of this simple student of the law—including its ninety per cent. of human nature—lay in the corporations training their lawyers upon themselves as their most unmerciful critics—as conscience, the censor, lays down the laws which every strong individual must follow or meet his doom in ruin. The underlying principles of the thing involving millions were as simple in his mind as the obligation to pay his washerwoman, if he were to maintain his self-respect. The officers and directors of a corporation, he believed, could no more successfully cheat the State of its just taxes, or rob the stockholders by paying them a small profit on their holdings while draining the earnings of the concern with their subsidiary National Packing & Transportation Companies, United States Terminal Companies and American Warehouse & Bonding Corporations, without in the end reaping the reward of their crimes. Mr. MacDonald would no more give his consent to the swindling of innocent stockholders by their trustees, than he would rob an apple-stand. He had that rare discernment so seldom found now among big business men and their lawyer followers—he could see the wrong involved in the stealing of a million dollars and would gladly have aided in a movement to amend the penal code so as to prevent it, for he believed it possible for law to bring within the scope of its crushing penalties the audacity of these modern Captain Kidds. When he read the formal advertisement of a great industrial monopoly declaring a dividend of a few per cent, per annum basis on a lake of water owned by "outsiders," he thought of the beautifully worded contracts made between the officers of the concern, the "insiders," and their dummies, in the dozen or so parasitic companies whose stock was nearly all in their own hands, and paid from twenty to forty and even a hundred per cent, on the investment in unadvertised dividends. He thought of this and hundreds of other forms of legalized theft practiced by these men of church standing, who made it a point never to engage in petit larceny. They preferred to steal millions and keep on the safe side. They divided up the "swag" in the office of the American Transportation and Terminal Company, organized solely for that respectable purpose. It had a fine name, but the Bowery thieves would recognize it as a "fence." John MacDonald used to say: "A corporation is not known by the companies it keeps."
For five years Gabrielle Tescheron had advanced under the guidance of this simple, wise and good man, so that at the time of our story she had been well grounded in her profession, in its philosophy, in the routine of its office practice, and to some extent in the knowledge of human nature its successful followers must command. The long rows of sheepskin-bound books in the office library were less formidable; the grind of detail was no longer an obstacle to her ambition, which nerved her onward to the higher slopes of professional occupation, for she now had reliable subordinates trained according to the MacDonald system of thoroughness to complete for her the irksome tasks. Mixed up as the business was in corporation matters, it had much to look after that had fallen to it through legal processes, but which, of itself was pure business management and far away from the law. There were receiverships, and fortunate was the weak-kneed concern that fell into John MacDonald's hands; it generally meant new life and success for a dying venture. He worked no magic, but he applied a lot of common-sense where it had been scarce before, so that the results seemed much as if a fairy in finance had touched the difficult problems with a mystic wand. It was, however, the effect of truth entering where promotors had held sway before, or where addle-pated sons of constructive fathers, now departed, had been trying to make the business go on what they knew of actresses and automobiles. These concerns did so well under the receivership that when they began business anew, John MacDonald was generally engaged to remain in control of the management. If he found the right man in the shop—the fellow who might have saved it—or could put his finger on such a man elsewhere, he would assume the task with that man in charge under him. Concerns that were tottering to a fall through bad management naturally drifted into his office before the worst happened, and engaged him to save their corporate lives by his superior executive ability. This he would do also if he could find his man. As a lawyer, he had less regard for the law's power to effect transformations than a layman, and a higher conception of the value of good men. While the ignoramuses at the head of the capital and labor trusts were for leveling all the men in our big business concerns, MacDonald continued to have faith in strong individuals.
The effect of close relationship with this man was to gain strength. Gabrielle had studied his methods until they became her own. As I stood there before them, I did not know them as I do now. MacDonald's fame I knew, and that tended to frighten me. It should have given me confidence, for John MacDonald was what I call an "elemental man." He kept close to the earth—the simples of the world, he dealt in. It may appear from what I have said that he was loaded down with responsibilities and care; then I have not made it clear that the exercise of these executive gifts was chiefly to secure leisure and the opportunity for relaxation—a most important thing in the MacDonald philosophy. He and his staff worked hard that they might have time to play, and with short hours and good pay they came near to having the right proportions of labor and leisure to keep men and women sound in health and contented with the world. Therefore, there were not many employed in his office. Why, down in one of the city departments so familiar to Jim and me, the same volume of business would have required ten times as many employes, and at least thirty different systems.