The Octopus, Frank Norris [books you need to read txt] 📗

At the club, when the four men were seated at a small table in the round window of the main room, Lyman’s popularity with all classes was very apparent. Hardly a man entered that did not call out a salutation to him, some even coming over to shake his hand. He seemed to be every man’s friend, and to all he seemed equally genial. His affability, even to those whom he disliked, was unfailing.

“See that fellow yonder,” he said to Magnus, indicating a certain middle-aged man, flamboyantly dressed, who wore his hair long, who was afflicted with sore eyes, and the collar of whose velvet coat was sprinkled with dandruff, “that’s Hartrath, the artist, a man absolutely devoid of even the commonest decency. How he got in here is a mystery to me.”

Yet, when this Hartrath came across to say “How do you do” to Lyman, Lyman was as eager in his cordiality as his warmest friend could have expected.

“Why the devil are you so chummy with him, then?” observed Harran when Hartrath had gone away.

Lyman’s explanation was vague. The truth of the matter was, that Magnus’s oldest son was consumed by inordinate ambition. Political preferment was his dream, and to the realisation of this dream popularity was an essential. Every man who could vote, blackguard or gentleman, was to be conciliated, if possible. He made it his study to become known throughout the entire community—to put influential men under obligations to himself. He never forgot a name or a face. With everybody he was the hail-fellow-well-met. His ambition was not trivial. In his disregard for small things, he resembled his father. Municipal office had no attraction for him. His goal was higher. He had planned his life twenty years ahead. Already Sheriff’s Attorney, Assistant District Attorney and Railroad Commissioner, he could, if he desired, attain the office of District Attorney itself. Just now, it was a question with him whether or not it would be politic to fill this office. Would it advance or sidetrack him in the career he had outlined for himself? Lyman wanted to be something better than District Attorney, better than Mayor, than State Senator, or even than member of the United States Congress. He wanted to be, in fact, what his father was only in name—to succeed where Magnus had failed. He wanted to be governor of the State. He had put his teeth together, and, deaf to all other considerations, blind to all other issues, he worked with the infinite slowness, the unshakable tenacity of the coral insect to this one end.

After luncheon was over, Lyman ordered cigars and liqueurs, and with the three others returned to the main room of the club. However, their former place in the round window was occupied. A middle-aged man, with iron grey hair and moustache, who wore a frock coat and a white waistcoat, and in some indefinable manner suggested a retired naval officer, was sitting at their table smoking a long, thin cigar. At sight of him, Presley became animated. He uttered a mild exclamation:

“Why, isn’t that Mr. Cedarquist?”

“Cedarquist?” repeated Lyman Derrick. “I know him well. Yes, of course, it is,” he continued. “Governor, you must know him. He is one of our representative men. You would enjoy talking to him. He was the head of the big Atlas Iron Works. They have shut down recently, you know. Not failed exactly, but just ceased to be a paying investment, and Cedarquist closed them out. He has other interests, though. He’s a rich man—a capitalist.”

Lyman brought the group up to the gentleman in question and introduced them. “Mr. Magnus Derrick, of course,” observed Cedarquist, as he took the Governor’s hand. “I’ve known you by repute for some time, sir. This is a great pleasure, I assure you.” Then, turning to Presley, he added: “Hello, Pres, my boy. How is the great, the very great Poem getting on?”

“It’s not getting on at all, sir,” answered Presley, in some embarrassment, as they all sat down. “In fact, I’ve about given up the idea. There’s so much interest in what you might call ‘living issues’ down at Los Muertos now, that I’m getting further and further from it every day.”

“I should say as much,” remarked the manufacturer, turning towards Magnus. “I’m watching your fight with Shelgrim, Mr. Derrick, with every degree of interest.” He raised his drink of whiskey and soda. “Here’s success to you.”

As he replaced his glass, the artist Hartrath joined the group uninvited. As a pretext, he engaged Lyman in conversation. Lyman, he believed, was a man with a “pull” at the City Hall. In connection with a projected Million-Dollar Fair and Flower Festival, which at that moment was the talk of the city, certain statues were to be erected, and Hartrath bespoke Lyman’s influence to further the pretensions of a sculptor friend of his, who wished to be Art Director of the affair. In the matter of this Fair and Flower Festival, Hartrath was not lacking in enthusiasm. He addressed the others with extravagant gestures, blinking his inflamed eyelids.

“A million dollars,” he exclaimed. “Hey! think of that. Why, do you know that we have five hundred thousand practically pledged already? Talk about public spirit, gentlemen, this is the most public-spirited city on the continent. And the money is not thrown away. We will have Eastern visitors here by the thousands—capitalists—men with money to invest. The million we spend on our fair will be money in our pockets. Ah, you should see how the women of this city are taking hold of the matter. They are giving all kinds of little entertainments, teas, ‘Olde Tyme Singing Skules,’ amateur theatricals, gingerbread fetes, all for the benefit of the fund, and the business men, too—pouring out their money like water. It is splendid, splendid, to see a community so patriotic.”

The manufacturer, Cedarquist, fixed the artist with a glance of melancholy interest.

“And how much,” he remarked, “will they contribute—your gingerbread women and public-spirited capitalists, towards the blowing up of the ruins of the Atlas Iron Works?”

“Blowing up? I don’t understand,” murmured the artist, surprised. “When you get your Eastern capitalists out here with your Million-Dollar Fair,” continued Cedarquist, “you don’t propose, do you, to let them see a Million-Dollar Iron Foundry standing idle, because of the indifference of San Francisco business men? They might ask pertinent questions, your capitalists, and we should have to answer that our business men preferred to invest their money in corner lots and government bonds, rather than to back up a legitimate, industrial enterprise. We don’t want fairs. We want active furnaces. We don’t want public statues, and fountains, and park extensions and gingerbread fetes. We want business enterprise. Isn’t it like us? Isn’t it like us?” he exclaimed sadly. “What a melancholy comment! San Francisco! It is not a city—it is a Midway Plaisance. California likes to be fooled. Do you suppose Shelgrim could convert the whole San Joaquin Valley into his back yard otherwise? Indifference to public affairs—absolute indifference, it stamps us all. Our State is the very paradise of fakirs. You and your Million-Dollar Fair!” He turned to Hartrath with a quiet smile. “It is just such men as you, Mr. Hartrath, that are the ruin of us. You organise a sham of tinsel and pasteboard, put on fool’s cap and bells, beat a gong at a street corner, and the crowd cheers you and drops nickels into your hat. Your gingerbread fete; yes, I saw it in full blast the other night on the grounds of one of your women’s places on Sutter Street. I was on my way home from the last board meeting of the Atlas Company. A gingerbread fete, my God! and the Atlas plant shutting down for want of financial backing. A million dollars spent to attract the Eastern investor, in order to show him an abandoned rolling mill, wherein the only activity is the sale of remnant material and scrap steel.”

Lyman, however, interfered. The situation was becoming strained. He tried to conciliate the three men—the artist, the manufacturer, and the farmer, the warring elements. But Hartrath, unwilling to face the enmity that he felt accumulating against him, took himself away. A picture of his—“A Study of the Contra Costa Foothills”—was to be raffled in the club rooms for the benefit of the Fair. He, himself, was in charge of the matter. He disappeared.

Cedarquist looked after him with contemplative interest. Then, turning to Magnus, excused himself for the acridity of his words.

“He’s no worse than many others, and the people of this State and city are, after all, only a little more addle-headed than other Americans.” It was his favourite topic. Sure of the interest of his hearers, he unburdened himself.

“If I were to name the one crying evil of American life, Mr. Derrick,” he continued, “it would be the indifference of the better people to public affairs. It is so in all our great centres. There are other great trusts, God knows, in the United States besides our own dear P. and S. W. Railroad. Every State has its own grievance. If it is not a railroad trust, it is a sugar trust, or an oil trust, or an industrial trust, that exploits the People, BECAUSE THE PEOPLE ALLOW IT. The indifference of the People is the opportunity of the despot. It is as true as that the whole is greater than the part, and the maxim is so old that it is trite—it is laughable. It is neglected and disused for the sake of some new ingenious and complicated theory, some wonderful scheme of reorganisation, but the fact remains, nevertheless, simple, fundamental, everlasting. The People have but to say ‘No,’ and not the strongest tyranny, political, religious, or financial, that was ever organised, could survive one week.”

The others, absorbed, attentive, approved, nodding their heads in silence as the manufacturer finished.

“That’s one reason, Mr. Derrick,” the other resumed after a moment, “why I have been so glad to meet you. You and your League are trying to say ‘No’ to the trust. I hope you will succeed. If your example will rally the People to your cause, you will. Otherwise—” he shook his head.

“One stage of the fight is to be passed this very day,” observed Magnus. “My sons and myself are expecting hourly news from the City Hall, a decision in our case is pending.”

“We are both of us fighters, it seems, Mr. Derrick,” said Cedarquist. “Each with his particular enemy. We are well met, indeed, the farmer and the manufacturer, both in the same grist between the two millstones of the lethargy of the Public and the aggression of the Trust, the two great evils of modern America. Pres, my boy, there is your epic poem ready to hand.”

But Cedarquist was full of another idea. Rarely did so favourable an opportunity present itself for explaining his theories, his ambitions. Addressing himself to Magnus, he continued:

“Fortunately for myself, the Atlas Company was not my only investment. I have other interests. The building of ships— steel sailing ships—has been an ambition of mine,—for this purpose, Mr. Derrick, to carry American wheat. For years, I have studied this question of American wheat, and at last, I have arrived at a theory. Let me explain. At present, all our California wheat goes to Liverpool, and from that port is distributed over the world. But a change is coming. I am sure of it. You young men,” he turned to Presley, Lyman, and Harran, “will live to see it. Our century is about done. The great word of this nineteenth century has been Production. The great word of the twentieth century will be—listen to me, you youngsters— Markets. As a market for our Production—or let me take a concrete example—as a market for our WHEAT, Europe is played out.