The United States Treasury had survived two runs upon its gold fund, but its condition was chronically perilous, and began at length to be despaired of. Gold was leaving the country by every steamer. The feud between the gold and silver people grew steadily more insane and preoccupied Congress to such a degree that it neglected to consider ways and means of keeping the government in current funds. Labor, which had been clamorous and denunciatory, now became militant. Reports of troops being used to quell riots of the unemployed were incessant in the daily news. Wheat fell to a very low price and the farmers embraced Populism, a hot-eyed political movement in which every form of radicalism this side of anarchy was represented. Then came the disastrous American Railway Union strike, bringing organized labor into direct conflict with the authority of the Federal Government. The nation was in a fit of jumps. Public opinion was hysterical.
As I understood more and more the bearing of such events I marvelled at Galt’s solitary serenity. He was still buying Great Midwestern stock, as we all knew. Each time another lot of it passed into his name word of it came up surreptitiously from the transfer office. Some of the directors at the same time were selling out. This fact Harbinger confided to me in a burst of gloom; he thought it very ominous, nothing less than an augury of bankruptcy. I felt that Galt ought to know, yet I hesitated a long time about telling him. My decision finally to do so was sentimental. I had by this time conceived a deep liking for him, and the thought that he was putting his money into Great Midwestern stock,—his own, Gram’ma’s and Vera’s,—while the directors were getting theirs out bothered me in my sleep. But when I told him he grinned at me.
“I know it, Coxey. They didn’t know enough to sell when the price was high, and they don’t know any better now.”
That was all he said. The ethical aspect of the matter, if there was one, apparently did not interest him.
Now befell a magnificent disaster. One of the furnace doors came unfastened in the Heavens, and a scorching wind, a regular sirocco, began to blow in the Missouri Valley. More than half the rich, wealth-making American corn crop was ruined. This was a body-blow for the Great Midwestern. It meant a slump in traffic which nothing could repair. On the third day the news was complete. We received it in the form of private telegraph reports from the Chicago office. They were on my desk when Galt came in. I called his attention to them, but he looked away, saying:
“The Lord is ferninst us, Coxey. Maybe ... he ... is.”
v
That night I went home with him to dinner. He was in one of his absent moods and very tired. Natalie overwhelmed him as usual in the hallway, and when he neither grumbled nor resisted she put off her boisterous manner and began to look at him anxiously. At dinner everyone was silent. He communicated his mood. Vera was there at her mother’s left. Efforts to make conversation were listless, Galt participating in none of them. There was a sense of something that was expected to happen; that was Gram’ma’s remorseless evening question.
“What is the price of Great Midwestern stock today?” she asked, speaking very distinctly.
“Five and a half,” said Galt, in a petulant voice.