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 fêtes. 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 fête; 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 fête, 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,
