“The prize isn’t big enough,” pronounced W. T. Chisholm, as if he had decided for them all. As befitted his calling, he was slower minded than the rest. There are few quick turns in banking.
“Not big enough?” repeated Allison. “Not big enough, when the Union Fuel Company already supplies every candle which goes into the Soudan, runs the pumps on the Nile and the motor boats on the Yang-Tse-Kyang, supplies the oil for the lubrication of the car of Juggernaut, and works the propeller of every aeroplane? Not big enough, when already the organisations represented here have driven their industries into every quarter of the earth? What shall you say when we join to our nucleus the great steamship lines and the foreign railroads? Not big enough? Gentlemen, look here!” He strode over to the big globe. From New York to San Francisco a red line had already been traced. Now he took a pencil in his hand, and placing the point at New York, gave the globe a whirl, girding it completely. “Gentlemen, there is your empire!”
Again the nasal voice of old Joseph G. Clark drawled into the silence.
“I suggest that we discuss in detail the conditions of the consolidation,” he remarked.
The bell of Allison’s house phone rang.
“Mr. Dalrymple, sir,” said the voice of Ephraim.
“Very well,” replied Allison. “Show him into the study. Babbitt, will you read to the gentlemen this skeleton plan of organisation? If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Dalrymple?” inquired Taylor.
“Yes,” answered Allison abstractedly, and went into the study.
He and Dalrymple looked at each other silently for a moment, with the old enmity shining between them. Dalrymple, a man five years Allison’s senior, a brisk speaking man with a protruding jaw and deep-set grey eyes, had done more than any other one human being to develop the transportation systems of New York, but his gift had been in construction, in creation, whereas Allison’s had been in combination; and Dalrymple had gone into the railroad business.