Francisco. Your nephew, and everybody else on your pay-roll, can
do as I say right now or quit. Savvee? If any of them get
stuck, you go around yourself and guarantee their credit with the
butchers and grocers. And you trim down that pay-roll
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accordingly. I’ve been carrying a few thousand folks that’ll
have to carry themselves for a while now, that’s all.”
“You say this filter’s got to be replaced,” he told his chief of
the water-works. “We’ll see about it. Let the people of Oakland
drink mud for a change. It’ll teach them to appreciate good
water. Stop work at once. Get those men off the pay-roll.
Cancel all orders for material. The contractors will sue? Let
’em sue and be damned. We’ll be busted higher’n a kite or on
easy street before they can get judgment.”
And to Wilkinson:
“Take off that owl boat. Let the public roar and come home early
to its wife. And there’s that last car that connects with the
12:45 boat at Twenty-second and Hastings. Cut it out. I can’t
run it for two or three passengers. Let them take an earlier
boat home or walk. This is no time for philanthropy. And you
might as well take off a few more cars in the rush hours. Let
the strap-hangers pay. It’s the strap-hangers that’ll keep us
from
going under.”
And to another chief, who broke down under the excessive strain
of retrenchment:-
“You say I can’t do that and can’t do this. I’ll just show you a
few of the latest patterns in the can-and-can’t line. You’ll be
compelled to resign? All right, if you think so I never saw the
man yet that I was hard up for. And when any man thinks I can’t
get along without him, I just show him the latest pattern in that
line of goods and give him his walking-papers.”
And so he fought and drove and bullied and even wheedled his way
along. It was fight, fight, fight, and no let-up, from the first
thing in the morning till nightfall. His private office saw
throngs every day. All men came to see him, or were ordered to
come. Now it was an optimistic opinion on the panic, a funny
story, a serious business talk, or a straight take-it-or-leave-it
blow from the shoulder. And there was nobody to relieve him. It
was a case of drive, drive, drive, and he alone could do the
driving. And this went on day after day, while the whole
business world rocked around him and house after house crashed to
the ground.
“It’s all right, old man,” he told Hegan every morning; and it
was the same cheerful word that he passed out all day long,
except at such times when he was in the thick of fighting to have
his will with persons and things.
Eight o’clock saw him at his desk each morning. By ten o’clock,
it was into the machine and away for a round of the banks. And
usually in the machine with him was the ten thousand and more
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dollars that had been earned by his ferries and railways the day
before. This was for the weakest spot in the financial dike.
And with one bank president after another similar scenes were
enacted. They were paralyzed with fear, and first of all he
played his role of the big vital optimist. Times were improving.
Of course they were. The signs were already in the air. All
that anybody had to do was to sit tight a little longer and hold
on. That was all. Money was already more active in the East.
Look at the trading on Wall Street of the last twenty-four hours.
That was the straw that showed the wind. Hadn’t Ryan said so and
so? and wasn’t it reported that Morgan was preparing to do this
and that?
As for himself, weren’t the street-railway earnings increasing
steadily? In spite of the panic, more and more people were
coming to Oakland right along. Movements were already beginning
in real estate. He was dickering even then to sell over a
thousand of his suburban acres. Of course it was at a sacrifice,
but it would ease the strain on all of them and bolster up the
faint-hearted. That was the trouble–the faint-hearts. Had
there
been no faint-hearts there would have been no panic. There was
that Eastern syndicate, negotiating with him now to take the
majority of the stock in the Sierra and Salvador Power Company
off his hands. That showed confidence that better times were at
hand.
And if it was not cheery discourse, but prayer and entreaty or
show down and fight on the part of the banks, Daylight had to
counter in kind. If they could bully, he could bully. If the
favor he asked were refused, it became the thing he demanded.
And when it came down to raw and naked fighting, with the last
veil of sentiment or illusion torn off, he could take their
breaths away.
But he knew, also, how and when to give in. When he saw the wall
shaking and crumbling irretrievably at a particular place, he
patched it up with sops of cash from his three cash-earning
companies. If the banks went, he went too. It was a case of
their having to hold out. If they smashed and all the collateral
they held of his was thrown on the chaotic market, it would be
the end. And so it was, as the time passed, that on occasion his
red motor-car carried, in addition to the daily cash, the most
gilt-edged securities he possessed; namely, the Ferry Company,
United Water and Consolidated Railways. But he did this
reluctantly, fighting inch by inch.
As he told the president of the Merchants San Antonio who made
the plea of carrying so many others:–
“They’re small fry. Let them smash. I’m the king pin here.
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You’ve got more money to make out of me than them. Of course,
you’re carrying too much, and you’ve got to choose, that’s all.
It’s root hog or die for you or them. I’m too strong to smash.
You could only embarrass me and get yourself tangled up. Your
way out is to let the small fry go, and I’ll lend you a hand to
do it.”
And it was Daylight, also, in this time of financial anarchy, who
sized up Simon Dolliver’s affairs and lent the hand that sent
that rival down in utter failure. The Golden Gate National was
the keystone of Dolliver’s strength, and to the president of that
institution Daylight said:–
“Here I’ve been lending you a hand, and you now in the last
ditch, with Dolliver riding on you and me all the time. It don’t
go. You hear me, it don’t go. Dolliver couldn’t cough up eleven
dollars to save you. Let him get off and walk, and I’ll tell you
what I’ll do. I’ll give you the railway nickels for four
days–that’s forty thousand cash. And on the sixth of the month
you can count on twenty thousand more from the Water Company.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Take it or leave it. Them’s my
terms.”
“It’s dog eat dog, and I ain’t overlooking any meat that’s
floating around,” Daylight proclaimed that afternoon to Hegan;
and Simon Dolliver went the way of the unfortunate in the Great
Panic who were caught with plenty of paper and no money.
Daylight’s shifts and devices were amazing. Nothing however
large or small, passed his keen sight unobserved. The strain he
was under was terrific. He no longer ate lunch. The days were
too short, and his noon hours and his office were as crowded as
at any other time. By the end of the day he was exhausted, and,
as never before, he sought relief behind his wall of alcoholic
inhibition. Straight to his hotel he was driven, and straight to
his rooms he went, where immediately was mixed for him the first
of a series of double Martinis. By dinner, his brain was well
clouded and the panic forgotten. By bedtime, with the assistance
of Scotch whiskey, he was full–not violently nor uproariously
full, nor stupefied, but merely well under the influence of a
pleasant and mild anesthetic.
Next morning he awoke with parched lips and mouth, and with
sensations of heaviness in his head which quickly passed away.
By eight o’clock he was at his desk, buckled down to the fight,
by ten o’clock on his personal round of the banks, and after
that, without a moment’s cessation, till nightfall, he was
handling the knotty tangles of industry, finance, and human
nature that crowded upon him. And with nightfall it was back to
the hotel, the double Martinis and the Scotch; and this was his
program day after day until the days ran into weeks.
CHAPTER XXI
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Though Daylight appeared among his fellows hearty voiced,