“You forgot Chisholm,” Babbitt reminded him, and Banker Chisholm’s white mutton chops turned pink from the appreciation which glowed in his ruddy-veined face.
“Allison was quite right,” returned big Haverman with a dry smile. “The freightage income on money is an item scarcely worth considering.”
“Give the Atlantic-Pacific this freight, and, inside of two years, the entire business of the United States, with all its ramifications, will be merged in one management, and that management ours. We shall not need to absorb, nor purchase, a single railroad until it is bankrupt.”
“Sensible idea, Allison,” approved Clark, of the Standard Cereal Company. “It’s a logical proposition which I had in mind years ago.”
“Allison’s stroke of genius, it seems to me, consists in getting us together,” smiled big Haverman, hanging his arm over the back of his chair.
Banker Chisholm leaned forward on the table, and stroked his round chin reflectively. “There would be some disorganisation, and perhaps financial disorder, in the first two years,” he considered; “but the railroads are already harassed too much by the government to thrive under competition, and, in the end, I believe this proposed centralisation would be the best thing for the interests of the country”; wherein Chisholm displayed that he was a vestryman of Market Square Church wherever he went.
“What is your proposition?” asked Grandin, who, because of the self-assertion necessitated by his diminutive size, seemed pompous, but was not. No pompous man could have merged the wood, coal, and oil interests, and, having merged them, swung them over his own shoulder.
Allison’s answer consisted of one word.
“Consolidation,” he said.
There was a moment of silence, while these men absorbed that simple idea, and glanced speculatively, not at Allison, but at each other. They were kings, these heads of mighty corporations, whose emissaries carried their sovereignties into the furthest corners of the earth. Like friendly kings, they had helped each other in the protection of their several domains; but this was another matter.