"On Tuesday next," Gorham continued, "the Senate Committee will consider a bill which is in reality an amendment to the Sherman Act, and is intended to give the Government the power to discriminate between good and bad trusts. The Consolidated Companies is to be cited as a case in point, and they are depending upon me to advance the principal arguments for the passage of the bill. All the other big interests are naturally against it, and they are forcing the issue, hoping to compel the Government to act against the Consolidated Companies, and thus call down the wrath of the people upon trust legislation as a whole. If the masses find that the one agency which has reduced their cost of living is prevented from continuing its co-operative work, they will effectually put a stop to further interference, and the other interests will be the gainers."
"A clever game," Sanford exclaimed.
"But now I am convinced there are no 'good' trusts, as I have been pleased to call them. Those combinations, like the Consolidated Companies, which are really a benefit to the people to-day, may, as again in the case of the Consolidated Companies, become their greatest enemy to-morrow. I am prepared to say that all this talk—much of which I have made myself—to the effect that combination effects economies of which the public receives the benefit, is true only for a time. Just so soon as the combinations become monopolies, amounts saved by the economies simply go to swell the profits for the stockholders. Competition must not be eliminated—it is the vital spark which keeps alive the welfare of the country."
"You are going to say all this before the Senate Committee?"
"Yes, and more. I am going to use the Consolidated Companies as an example, and urge immediate active enforcement of the Sherman Act against all consolidations which aim at monopolies or the restraint of trade. The Attorney-General said that this would mean an industrial reign of terror. So be it. Even that is better than this gradual strangling of the people's rights, which is now being carried on with legislative approval. I shall at least have the satisfaction of performing this one act in the interests of the people, even though I must forego the continued administration of a corporation honestly devoted to their welfare. This statement from me, and the position I take regarding my own corporation, will go far toward defeating those other malign interests which hope to gain by their attack upon me."
Allen's face had been a study while Mr. Gorham was speaking, and Alice had particularly noted the varying emotions it expressed. She saw there first the astonished incredulity at her father's determination to dissolve the Companies; then the wonder as he heard Gorham state conclusions which coincided with those he had arrived at earlier; and finally the radiant joy as the realization came, not fully but in part, that his own understanding of the situation had not been all at fault. It needed only the words which Gorham added to make the world look bright again. But it was to his father rather than to Allen that Gorham addressed himself.
"And now, Stephen, as to this boy. You and I have done our best to make him think the world is wrong side up; but I am more to blame because I had the better opportunity to study his development, beneath my own eyes. I taught him that imagination was an essential ingredient of a successful business man, to enable him to grasp each situation as a whole, and to conceive its dangers and its possibilities. Yet, when he exercised that very quality, and came to me frankly with the results of his efforts, I refused to recognize my own handiwork. I taught him my altruistic creed, and then blamed him when he used it as his standard, and was unhappy that those around him failed to measure up to it. Never has a man been more blind than I. Never has a man settled back, so self-satisfied, with so determined a conviction that because he willed things to be so, then they were so. I have merged the white thread of my new creed with the black one of the old business morals I first learned; his pattern has been wholly woven from the white.
"My boy," he added, turning to Allen, "for the first time in my life I ask a man's forgiveness. In the face of the greatest discouragements, you have shown yourself true, and I congratulate you and your father upon the future which you have before you. I want you to stay with me until the Consolidated Companies has been placed in a position of safety to itself and to its stockholders, then you may choose your own career."
"No Sanford ever made a failure yet," Stephen proudly repeated.
"But, Mr. Gorham—" Allen began, surprised into confusion by the unstinted praise; but Alice interrupted him.