The Son of his Father

by Ridgwell Cullum

However, for the time at least the joy of responsibility was considerable, and the greater joy of the companionship and trust of his new friends was something which inspired him to great efforts.

He studied the affairs of Buffalo Point with a care for detail and an assiduity which quickly became the surprise and delight of Silas Mallinsbee. He went over every foot of the new township as laid out by a well-known firm of town planners from New York under Mallinsbee's orders and under State supervision. He spent one entire day in studying the drawn plans, and, finally, having committed all the details to memory, he felt himself equipped to devote his whole attention to the cajoling of the railroad which was the sum and substance of their combined efforts.

In the first week of his occupation he learned many things which had been obscure. He took the story of Mallinsbee's operations and examined it closely, discovering in the process that he possessed a faculty for clear reasoning altogether surprising. Furthermore, he discovered that Mallinsbee, though possibly unpracticed in the work of a big financial undertaking, yet possessed all, and more, of the shrewdness he had vaguely suspected.

One of the first efforts of the old man had been to secure the interest of many of the chief traders in the old township of Snake's Fall. Also that of the Bude and Sideley Coal Company. This had been done very simply but effectively. After having marked off the town sites he required for himself he had then offered, and sold, to pretty well every landowner in Snake's Fall a certain allotment of sites at a merely nominal fee. This, as the man himself declared in the course of his story, left Snake's Fall pretty well "not carin' a whoop which way the old cat jumped." The "cat" in this instance being the railroad.

In this way direct and active opposition from the landholders of Snake's Fall was minimized. As he explained, it was "graft," but he felt that it was justifiable. This left him with the good will of the citizens and free to act on broader lines. Then he began to pull all the wires he could command with the coal people, who regarded him in the friendliest spirit. However, there was difficulty here, though the difficulty was not insurmountable. Their engineers were at work already on the plans to be put into almost immediate operation for the construction of a private track to link up the coalfields with Snake's Fall. With them it was a question of time. They could not afford delay, and the exploitation of the new township would mean delay for them, although they admitted they would be relieved of a great expense from its proximity to their workings.

Mallinsbee, after stupendous efforts, and careful negotiations of the right kind, finally effected a compromise. He was given three months, of which already one week had elapsed, in which to obtain the definite assurance that the railroad would accept Buffalo Point as the new city. In the meantime the coal people's construction would be held up, and they would assist him with all the influence they could command in persuading the railroad. This concession was not unaided by considerable graft, and the graft took the form of an agreement that Mallinsbee, out of his own pocket, would construct them a coal depot and yards in conjunction with the railroad, and hand them the titles of the land necessary for it.

He had just returned from the east, where he had been in consultation with the Bude and Sideley people, and with whom he had ratified this agreement, and, at the same time, the railroad had been induced to move in the matter. All along he had triumphed through the agency of graft, and the crowning point of his triumph had been demonstrated in the arrival at Snake's Fall of Mr. David Slosson.

Gordon's first impressions of all these things was that Silas Mallinsbee had contrived with considerable skill, and that all was more or less plain sailing. All that remained was to go on, with the grafting hand thrust ready into the pocket for all eventualities, and he found himself smiling at the thought of his father, and how surely his own theories of financial undertakings were working out.

That was his first impression. But it only lasted until he became aware of those subtleties of human nature lying behind human effort and intention. He had reckoned without David Slosson, and, more than all, he had reckoned without Silas Mallinsbee himself.

During that first week of his new work David Slosson had called at the office twice. Once he had encountered only Gordon, and Hazel had arrived during the visit. The second time he had had another interview with Silas Mallinsbee. It was immediately after that interview that Gordon gained some appreciation of the point where human psychology stepped into the arena of commercial competition.