Oh, yes, you'll run a corner in wheat, will you? Well, here's a point for your consideration Mr.Curtis Jadwin, 'Don't get so big that all the other fellows can see you--they throw bricks.'"He sat down in his chair, and passed a thin and delicate hand across his lean mouth.
"No," he muttered, "I won't try to kill you any more.
You've cornered wheat, have you? All right....Your own wheat, my smart Aleck, will do all the killing Iwant."
Then at last the news of the great corner, authoritative, definite, went out over all the country, and promptly the figure and name of Curtis Jadwin loomed suddenly huge and formidable in the eye of the public.There was no wheat on the Chicago market.He, the great man, the " Napoleon of La Salle Street," had it all.He sold it or hoarded it, as suited his pleasure.He dictated the price to those men who must buy it of him to fill their contracts.His hand was upon the indicator of the wheat dial of the Board of Trade, and he moved it through as many or as few of the degrees of the circle as he chose.
The newspapers, not only of Chicago, but of every city in the Union, exploited him for "stories." The history of his corner, how he had effected it, its chronology, its results, were told and retold, till his name was familiar in the homes and at the firesides of uncounted thousands."Anecdotes" were circulated concerning him, interviews--concocted for the most part in the editorial rooms--were printed.His picture appeared.
He was described as a cool, calm man of steel, with a cold and calculating grey eye, "piercing as an eagle's"; as a desperate gambler, bold as a buccaneer, his eye black and fiery--a veritable pirate; as a mild, small man with a weak chin and a deprecatory demeanour;as a jolly and roistering "high roller," addicted to actresses, suppers, and to bathing in champagne.
In the Democratic press he was assailed as little better than a thief, vituperated as an oppressor of the people, who ground the faces of the poor, and battened in the luxury wrung from the toiling millions.The Republican papers spoke solemnly of the new era of prosperity upon which the country was entering, referred to the stimulating effect of the higher prices upon capitalised industry, and distorted the situation to an augury of a sweeping Republican victory in the next Presidential campaign.
Day in and day out Gretry's office, where Jadwin now fixed his headquarters, was besieged.Reporters waited in the anteroom for whole half days to get but a nod and a word from the great man.Promoters, inventors, small financiers, agents, manufacturers, even "crayon artists" and horse dealers, even tailors and yacht builders rubbed shoulders with one another outside the door marked "Private."Farmers from Iowa or Kansas come to town to sell their little quotas of wheat at the prices they once had deemed impossible, shook his hand on the street, and urged him to come out and see "God's own country."But once, however, an entire deputation of these wheat growers found their way into the sanctum.They came bearing a presentation cup of silver, and their spokesman, stammering and horribly embarrassed in unwonted broadcloth and varnished boots, delivered a short address.He explained that all through the Middle West, all through the wheat belts, a great wave of prosperity was rolling because of Jadwin's corner.
Mortgages were being paid off, new and improved farming implements were being bought, new areas seeded new live stock acquired.The men were buying buggies again, the women parlor melodeons, houses and homes were going up;in short, the entire farming population of the Middle West was being daily enriched.In a letter that Jadwin received about this time from an old fellow living in "Bates Corners," Kansas, occurred the words:
"--and, sir, you must know that not a night passes that my little girl, now going on seven, sir, and the brightest of her class in the county seat grammar school, does not pray to have God bless Mister Jadwin, who helped papa save the farm."If there was another side, if the brilliancy of his triumph yet threw a shadow behind it, Jadwin could ignore it.It was far from him, he could not see it.
Yet for all this a story came to him about this time that for long would not be quite forgotten.It came through Corthell, but very indirectly, passed on by a dozen mouths before it reached his ears.
It told of an American, an art student, who at the moment was on a tramping tour through the north of Italy.It was an ugly story.Jadwin pished and pshawed, refusing to believe it, condemning it as ridiculous exaggeration, but somehow it appealed to an uncompromising sense of the probable; it rang true.
"And I met this boy," the student had said, "on the high road, about a kilometre outside of Arezzo.He was a fine fellow of twenty or twenty-two.He knew nothing of the world.England he supposed to be part of the mainland of Europe.For him Cavour and Mazzini were still alive.But when I announced myself American, he roused at once.
"'Ah, American,' he said.'We know of your compatriot, then, here in Italy--this Jadwin of Chicago, who has bought all the wheat.We have no more bread.The loaf is small as the fist, and costly.We cannot buy it, we have no money.For myself, I do not care.I am young.
I can eat lentils and cress.But' and here his voice was a whisper--'but my mother--my mother!'""It's a lie!" Jadwin cried."Of course it's a lie.
