Platt, who had said nothing, walked away with Bobby.
“You were speaking about following the plans exactly, Mr. Burnit,” he said when they were alone upon the street. “I find on an examination of the subsoil that there will be a few minor changes required. The runway, for instance, which goes down to the river northward from the power-house for the purpose of unloading coal barges, would be much better placed on the south side, away from the intake. There is practically no difference in expense, except that in running to the southward the riprap work will need to be carried about three feet deeper and with concreted walls, in place of being thrown loosely in the trenches as originally planned.”
“All those things are up to you, Jimmy,” said Bobby indifferently. “You must use your own judgment. Any changes of the sort that you deem necessary just bring before the city council, and I am quite sure that you can secure permission to make them.”
“Very well,” said Platt, and he left Bobby at the corner with a curious smile.
He was a different looking Jimmy Platt from the one Bobby had found in his office a week before. He was clean-shaven now, and his clothing was quite prosperous looking. Bobby, surmising the condition of affairs, had delicately insisted on making Platt a loan, to be repaid from his salary at a conveniently distant period, and the world looked very bright indeed to him.
The next day work on the new waterworks was resumed. In bitter consultation the Middle West Construction Company had discovered that they would lose less by fulfilling their contract than by forfeiting their twenty per cent., and they dispiritedly turned in again, kept constantly whipped up to the mark by Platt and by the knowledge that every day’s non-completion of the work meant a heavy additional forfeit, which they had counted on being able to evade so long as the complaisant Mr. Scales was in charge.
CHAPTER XXIX
JIMMY PLATT ENJOYS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE
The straightening out of the waterworks matter left Bobby free to turn his attention to the local gas and electric situation. The Bulletin, since Bobby had defeated his political enemies, had been put upon a paying basis and was rapidly earning its way out of the debt that he had been compelled to incur for it; but the Brightlight Electric Company was a thorn in his side. Its only business now was the street illumination of twelve blocks, under a municipal contract which lost him money every month, and it had been a terrific task to keep it going.
The Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company, however, Bobby discovered by careful inquiry, was in even worse financial straits than the Brightlight. To its thirty millions of stock, mostly water, twenty more millions of water had been added, making a total organization of fifty million dollars; and the twenty million dollars’ stock had been sold to the public for ten million dollars, each purchaser of one share of preferred being given one share of common. As the preferred was to draw five per cent., this meant that two and one-half million dollars a year must be paid out in dividends. The salary roll of the company was enormous, and the number of non-working officers who drew extravagant stipends would have swamped any company. Comparing the two concerns, Bobby felt that in the Brightlight he had vastly the better property of the two, in that there was no water in it at its present, half-million-dollar capitalization.