Tom had now set a stake for himself—and it was up to him to make good, die or hike. He decided to make good. The next month his pay was raised twenty-five dollars, and it has been climbing a little every year since.
Philip D. Armour was a man of big mental and physical resources—big in brain, rich in vital power, bold in initiative, yet cautious.
He had two peculiar characteristics—he refused to own more land than he could use.
His second peculiarity was that his only stimulant was tea. If he had an unusually big problem to pass upon, he cut down his food and increased his tea. Tea was his tipple. It opened up his mental pores and gave him cosmic consciousness. Armour had so much personality—so much magnetism—that he had but few competitors in his business. One of these was Nelson Morris.
Now, Morris was a type of man that Armour had never met. Morris was a Jew, a Bavarian, who affected music, art and philosophy. Nelson Morris, small, smooth of face, humming bars from Bach and quoting Schopenhauer, buying hogs at the Chicago Stockyards and then killing these hogs for the gastronomical delectation of Christians, was a sort of all-round Judaic genius.
The Mosaic Law forbids the Jews eating pork, but it places no ban or bar on their dealing in it. Nelson Morris bought hogs at four A. M., or as soon as it was light. Armour found him at it when he arrived, and Philip Armour was usually the earliest bird on the job. Yet Armour wasn't afraid of Morris—the Jew merely perplexed him. One day Armour said to MacDowell, his secretary, "I say, Mac, Nelson doesn't need a guardian!"
The Jew was getting on the Armour nerves—just a little. Armour was always on friendly terms with his competitors. As a matter of fact, he was on friendly terms with everybody—he had no grouch and never got in a grump. Socially he was irresistible. He got up close—invited confidence—made friends and held them. There was never a man he wouldn't speak to. He was above jealousy and beyond hate; yet, of course, when it came to a show-down, he might hit awfully hard and quick, but he always passed out his commercial wallop with a smile.
When Sullivan met Corbett at New Orleans, Gentleman Jim landed the champion a terrific jolt with his right, smiled sweetly and said, "To think, John, of your coming all the way from Boston to get that—also this"; then he gave him another with his left. One morning, at daylight, when Morris got to the Stockyards, he found all the pens empty.
Armour and his pig-buyers had been around with lanterns all night hunting up the owners and bulling the market. "To think," said Armour to Morris, "to think of your coming all the way from Bavaria hoping to get the start of me!" Both men smiled serenely. The next week whole train-loads of pigs were coming to Chicago consigned to Nelson Morris. He had sent his agents out and was buying of the farmers, direct.