Authors: Garet Garrett
Man is the only animal that whistles in the dark. Being so long in a dogged minority, so much discouraged, so sore in their hope, the protagonists of steel were boastful. They could not boast of their product. It was bad. Nor of their success. It was worse. They had to boast of things which one could believe without proof. The Bessemer steel process, they said, was the enemy of privilege. It was for the many against the few. It would transform and liberate society and cast down all barriers to progress.
They were the radicals, the visionaries, the theorists, the yes-sayers of their time. Many a sound, conservative, no-saying iron man was seduced by their faith to exchange his money for experience.
And all the time, bad as it was, steel kept coming more and more into use, especially,—that is to say, almost exclusively in the form of rails. And the reason the steel rail kept coming into use was that an amazing human society yet unborn, one that should have shapes, aspects, wants, powers and pastimes then undreamed of, was calling for it,—calling especially for the steel rail.
The steel men heard it. That was what kept them in hope. The iron men heard it and were struck with fear.
Why was it calling for steel rails instead of iron rails?—steel rails that broke like clay pipes against iron rails that could be tied in knots? Did it care nothing for its unborn life and limb? It cared only a little for life and limb. Much more it cared about bringing its existence to pass, and that was impossible with iron rails, with anything but steel rails, for reasons that we already know, having passed them. They require only to be focused at this point.
It was true of the iron rail that it was unbreakable and therefore safe and superior to the steel rail for all uses of human society in the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century. That was still the iron age. But human society as it would be in the twentieth century was calling for a rail that would meet the needs of a steel age. This was a society that was going to require a ton of freight to be moved 2,500 miles annually for each man, woman and child in the country! Transportation on that scale of waste and grandeur had never been imagined in the world. Iron rails simply could not stand the strain. They would not break under it. They would be smashed flat. They would wear out almost as fast as they could be spiked down.
It was true of the steel rail, as the iron people said, that it was very breakable, of tricky temper, dangerous to life and limb. Society in 1870 ran much more safely on iron rails. But the unborn society of the steel age was making rail specifications beforehand. It was a society for which a quarter of a million miles of railway would have to be laid in one generation. That simply could not be done with iron rails. There would not be enough fuel, labor and time by the old wrought iron process to make or replace iron rails on any such scale. Shoeing that society with iron rails would be like shoeing an army with eiderdown slippers.
The iron people of course could make a steel in their own way from wrought iron, melted again and carbonized,—fine, cutlery steel, very hard and trustworthy,—but you could not dream of making rails by the millions of tons from that kind of steel. The making of it was too slow and the cost prohibitive.
The three primary desiderata in the oncoming society’s rail problem were
hardness, cheapness, quantity.
The new process produced a rail within these three requirements. It was hard because it was steel. It was cheap because the steel was got direct from the ore at an enormous saving of time and fuel. And it could be made in practically unlimited quantities.
The Bessemer method made possible at once an increase of one hundred fold in metallic production. That was miraculous.
The iron age took three thousand years.
The steel age developed in thirty.
Enoch Gib stood with his face to it. He fought it with his eyes closed. His strength crystallized against it. When it passed him by with a rush and uproar it passed New Damascus. Never was a pound of steel fabricated at New Damascus. It was an iron town. Steel towns grew up around it. That made no difference so long as he lived, and when he was gone, then it was too late. Opportunity had forsaken that spot.
The meaning of events is swift. Yet events are spaced with days and days are of equal length, lived one at a time. Historically you see that the iron rail was suddenly and hopelessly doomed. But from a contemporary point of view one might have been for a long time in doubt. It was not until 1883, thirteen years after John’s arrival in New Damascus, that the steel rail definitely superseded the iron rail.
E
NOCH GIB’S knowledge of human nature in the uses of business was deep and exact. He was not mistaken in Aaron’s son. John Breakspeare could sell iron rails. He could sell anything.
Selling ability in its highest development is a strange gift. There is no accounting for it. One has it or one has it not. He had it in that all-plus-X degree, which is the indefinite part of genius. The final irony was that Gib should have discovered it, for it belonged to the steel age and was destined to be turned against him. In this young man who could sell iron rails he prepared a weapon for his invincible adversary.
The steel age always knew in advance what it needed. Salesmanship was its very breath. Why? Because when it came suddenly, like a natural event, men found themselves in command of means for producing wealth,—that is to say, goods, enormously beyond any scale of human wants previously imaginable. Production attended to itself. It ran utterly wild. There was a chronic excess of producing capacity because the supply of steel had been magically increased one hundred fold and steel was the basis of an endless profusion of new goods.
The dilemma that presented itself was unique. Its name was over-production. It occurred simultaneously in Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States. They all had the same goods to sell, the very same goods, rising from steel, and they sold them to each other in mad competition. Prices fell steadily for many years, continuously, until goods were preposterously cheap, and always there was a surplus still. Rails fell from $125 to $18 a ton, and the face of two continents was netted with railways. Yet there was a surplus of rails.
Never before in the history of mankind did goods increase faster than wants. It is not likely ever to happen again.
In a way that becomes clear with a little reflection, a surplus of steel caused a surplus of nearly everything else—food to begin with. There was a great surplus of food because steel rails opened suddenly to the world the virgin lands of the American west. The iron age had foreshortened time and distance. The steel age annihilated them.
It made no difference how far a thing was hauled. Transportation was cheap because steel was cheap. Kansas wheat was sold in Minneapolis, Chicago and in Liverpool. Minneapolis made flour and sent it to New York, Europe and back to Kansas.
The great availability of food released people from agriculture. They went to the industrial centers to make more steel and things rising of steel, so that there were more of such goods to sell.
More, more, more
of everything.
Sell! Sell! Sell!
That was the voice of the steel age.
But we overrun the thread of the story. It lies still in the iron age.
How did John Breakspeare sell iron rails for Enoch?
It is to be mentioned that he founded the art of Messianic advertising. He took the message of iron rails to the people. He dramatized the subject.
After four weeks of study and reflection, going to and fro in the mill, absorbing all the technical literature there was, acquainting himself with the way of the trade,—Gib watching and letting him alone,—he outlined a plan of campaign. It involved a considerable outlay of money. Gib approved it nevertheless and the young evangel set forth.
At Philadelphia he arranged an exhibit the first feature of which was a pair of New Damascus iron rails that had bridged a perilous gap twelve feet wide and twelve feet deep washed out under a railway track at night. A locomotive and six passenger cars passed safely over those rails in the dark. The miracle was discovered the next morning. Steel rails under that strain would have snapped. This was very effective. He reproduced in public the breaking tests applied to steel and iron rails alternately in the New Damascus mill yard. He collected data on railway accidents, which were then numerous and terrifying, and published regularly in the newspapers a cumulative record of those that were caused by the failure of imported steel rails, at the same time offering $10,000 for proof of the failure of a New Damascus iron rail under any conditions. He handled his facts in a sensational manner. Public sentiment was aroused. In several state legislatures bills were introduced requiring all new railway mileage to be laid with iron rails and all steel rails in use to be replaced with iron. None of these bills was passed. Still, they were useful for purposes of propaganda. A Committee of Congress made an extensive inquiry at which the young Elias from New Damascus appeared and made a worthy impression. This was the beginning of his familiarity with the lawmaking mentality. Without asking for it directly he got what the iron people had prayed for in vain. That was a punitive tariff against foreign steel rails. He had moved public opinion; the rest was automatic.
Thus he sold first the idea of iron rails. Next he proceeded to sell the rails.
Railway building at that time was the enchanted field of creative speculation. Railways were made in hope, rejoicing and sheer abandon of wilful energy. Once they were made they served economic ends, as a navigable waterway will, no matter where or how it goes, but for one that was intelligently planned for the greatest good of the greatest need four or five others derived their existence fantastically from motives of emulation, spite, greed, combat and civic vaingloriousness. When in the course of events all these separate translations of the ungoverned imagination were linked up the result was that incomprehensible crazy quilt which the great American railway system was and is in the geographical sense. It was more exciting and more profitable to build railways than wagon roads. That is how we came to have the finest railways and the worst highways of any country in the civilized world.
Into this field of sunshine and quicksand marched the young man from New Damascus. He could scent a new railway project from afar, up or down wind, and then he stalked it day and night. He sold it the rails. Without fail he furnished the rails. He sold them for cash when he could, and when he couldn’t get cash he took promissory notes, I O U’s, post-dated checks, bonds and stocks. He took all he could get of what he could find, but whatever it was he sold the rails.
Enoch Gib, greatly startled at first, was willing to see how merchandising by this principle would work out. But as he was unused to excursions in finance and as the notes and stocks and bonds of railways in the gristle piled up in his safe he called in his banker for consultation. John was present.
“It’s not so much of a gamble if you go far enough,” said John. “There’s a principle of insurance in it. It would be risky to sell insurance on one ship. Nobody does that. It is perfectly safe to sell insurance on a thousand ships. This is the same thing. Some of these railways will bust of course. But if we sell rails to all of them we can afford to lose on the few that go down. The whole question is: do you believe in railways?”
The two old men looked at their youthful instructor with anxious wonder.
“Is that your own idea?” the banker asked.
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” John answered.
“When you mention it, yes,” said the banker. “I should never have thought of it that way.”
Later the banker spoke privately with Gib.
“That’s a very dangerous young man.”
“Very,” said Gib.
Yet it worked out rather well, owing partly to the principle and partly to John’s uncanny instinct for making a safe leap. He could smell bankruptcy before it happened. Moving about as he did continually in the surge of the railway excitement he had access to much private information. He knew pretty well how it fared with the companies that owed the mill for rails. If one were verging toward trouble he knew how and where to get rid of its paper at a discount. There were losses; but the losses were balanced by profits in those cases where a company that had been charged a very high price for rails because it was short of cash and nobody else would take its notes was able at length to redeem its paper in full.
In John’s mind was no thought of either loyalty to iron or disloyalty to steel. It was a question of American rails against foreign rails. Steel rails were entirely of foreign origin. The steel age had not crossed the ocean. His work justified itself. It was immediately creative and greatly assisted railway building. It was speculative also, and this is to be remembered. A collateral and very important result was that it hastened the advent of the American steel rail, since the punitive tariff against foreign rails gave the American steel people the incentive of greater profit. That presently changed the problem.
Meanwhile, never had the New Damascus mill been so active. Never had its profits been greater. Yet Enoch Gib was uneasy. He had offered the young man a partnership. John had flatly declined it.
What did that mean?
F
OR twenty years the social life of New Damascus had been as an untended orchard,—shapeless, perfunctory and reminiscent. Its estate was a memory running back to the old Woolwine Mansion and the days of Aaron. It had no rallying point. There was youth as a biological fact without gaiety, sparkle or sweet daring. Quality Street lived on its income. Young men succeeded their fathers in business. The girls, after music and finishing at Philadelphia, returned to New Damascus and married them.
The Gib Mansion might as well have been a mausoleum. Life was never entertained there. It did not expect to be. Jonet was nobody until Gib married her. After that she was the community’s commiseration. She died when Agnes, their only child, was ten. The obsequies were private. At the grave, besides the sexton and the minister, and Gib holding Agnes by the hand, there was one other person. That was Gearhard, the father of Jonet, who stood with his feet crossed and his left forearm resting on the sexton’s shoulder as on the bellows-sweep, in a contemplative attitude. People spoke of it literally. There, they said, was another thing Enoch had broken and cast away. No wonder he wished to bury it privately. Agnes was sent off to school. She had lately returned and was now living at the Gib Mansion alone with her father. Nobody knew her. There was some mystery about her. A story of unknown origin, and unverified, was that she had been found out at school in an unchaperoned escapade, which so enraged old Enoch that he brought her home and deprived her of liberty. It would be like him to do that. Moreover, in the iron age such discipline was feasible. Youth had not yet delivered itself from parental tyranny. That was reserved to be one of the marvels of the steel age.;! In 1870 any girl of seventeen was dependent, and one in the situation of Agnes Gib was helpless.