Sam felt that another chapter of his life was closed.
Webster, Edwards, Prince, and the eastern men met
and elected him chairman of the board of directors
of the new company and the public bought eagerly the
river of common stock he turned upon the market, Prince
and Morrison doing masterful work in the moulding
of public opinion through the press. The first
board meeting ended with a dinner at which wine flowed
in rivulets and Edwards, getting drunk, stood up at
his place and boasted of the beauty of his young wife.
And Sam, at his desk in his new offices in the Rookery,
settled down grimly to the playing of his role as one
of the new kings of American business.
CHAPTER IX
The story of Sam’s life there in Chicago for
the next several years ceases to be the story of a
man and becomes the story of a type, a crowd, a gang.
What he and the group of men surrounding him and making
money with him did in Chicago, other men and other
groups of men have done in New York, in Paris, in
London. Coming into power with the great expansive
wave of prosperity that attended the first McKinley
administration, these men went mad of money making.
They played with great industrial institutions and
railroad systems like excited children, and a man of
Chicago won the notice and something of the admiration
of the world by his willingness to bet a million dollars
on the turn of the weather. In the years of criticism
and readjustment that followed this period of sporadic
growth, writers have told with great clearness how
the thing was done, and some of the participants,
captains of industry turned penmen, Caesars become
ink-slingers, have bruited the story to an admiring
world.
Given the time, the inclination, the power of the
press, and the unscrupulousness, the thing that Sam
McPherson and his followers did in Chicago in not
difficult. Advised by Webster and the talented
Prince and Morrison to handle his publicity work,
he rapidly unloaded his huge holdings of common stock
upon an eager public, keeping for himself the bonds
which he hypothecated at the banks to increase his
working capital while continuing to control the company.
When the common stock was unloaded, he, with a group
of fellow spirits, began an attack upon it through
the stock market and in the press, and bought it again
at a low figure, holding it ready to unload when the
public should have forgotten.
The annual advertising expenditure of the firearms
trust ran into millions and Sam’s hold upon
the press of the country was almost unbelievably strong.
Morrison rapidly developed unusual daring and audacity
in using this instrument and making it serve Sam’s
ends. He suppressed facts, created illusions,
and used the newspapers as a whip to crack at the heels
of congressmen, senators, and legislators, of the various
states, when such matters as appropriation for firearms
came before them.
Copyrights
Windy McPherson's Son from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
