I had not asked him to; my request was for a loan, but his answer was all-sufficient.
Despondency followed. Where is the use? I asked myself. "To succeed is to win fame; to fail, a crime." "The world has no use for an unsuccessful man." Thus I gave up the attempt to raise a sum of money that, before I made the effort, seemed but a trifle, "light as air."
During the summer two of our Connecticut friends, who had been members of the syndicate, between them made me a loan of six thousand dollars, and this gave me a capital of eighty-five hundred dollars. With this I attempted to save what I could of the enormous business I had built up. How absurd it seemed, and yet my courage was far from gone.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE STRUGGLE COMMENCED
By midsummer of 1896 the liquidation of the affairs of the old firm was practically completed; that is, in so far as related to the conversion of our assets into cash and payment of the proceeds to our creditors. These payments were very large, but there was still a heavy deficiency, which I hoped in time to pay in full with interest, gigantic as the burden seemed.
Every business day found me at my office working early and late as I had never worked before. With but one clerk and an office-boy, a vast amount of detail had to be undertaken by myself. Night after night my thoughts were almost constantly on plans to keep together the business I had established.
I was fighting an octopus. My competitors all were arrayed against me with a force I had never before experienced. They spared no effort to crush the man who had beaten them over and over again in battles for commercial supremacy. It was their turn now and they showed no mercy.
But how different was the warfare waged on me! In the days gone by I had struck them powerful blows, straight from the shoulder; but a foul blow?—never! No man, living or dead, can or could say I did not fight fair. Nor did I ever press an advantage unduly or profit by the necessities of a competitor.
Here was one enemy, sneaking through the trade with his lying tongue, always under cover, doing his utmost to injure me. Had that man forgotten the day in 1888 when he came to my office and told me he would be ruined unless our London friends would accept a compromise from him and asked me to cable urging them to do so? Had he forgotten how on the following day, when I showed him the reply reading, "Risk of buyers does not concern us. Cannot assist," he raised his hands, and shouting, "My God! what shall I do"? almost collapsed? Surely he must have forgotten how I told him that I would stand between him and ruin, allowed him to settle on his own terms, and carried him along for years.