________________________________________________
_ When the ferry system began to run, and the time between Oakland
and San Francisco was demonstrated to be cut in half, the tide of
Daylight's terrific expenditure started to turn. Not that it
really did turn, for he promptly went into further investments.
Thousands of lots in his residence tracts were sold, and
thousands of homes were being built. Factory sites also were
selling, and business properties in the heart of Oakland. All
this tended to a steady appreciation in value of Daylight's huge
holdings. But, as of old, he had his hunch and was riding it.
Already he had begun borrowing from the banks. The magnificent
profits he made on the land he sold were turned into more land,
into more development; and instead of paying off old loans, he
contracted new ones. As he had pyramided in Dawson City, he now
pyramided in Oakland; but he did it with the knowledge that it
was a stable enterprise rather than a risky placer-mining boom.
In a small way, other men were following his lead, buying and
selling land and profiting by the improvement work he was doing.
But this was to be expected, and the small fortunes they were
making at his expense did not irritate him. There was an
exception, however. One Simon Dolliver, with money to go in
with, and with cunning and courage to back it up, bade fair to
become a several times millionaire at Daylight's expense.
Dolliver, too, pyramided, playing quickly and accurately, and
keeping his money turning over and over. More than once Daylight
found him in the way, as he himself had got in the way of the
Guggenhammers when they first set their eyes on Ophir Creek.
Work on Daylight's dock system went on apace, yet was one of
those enterprises that consumed money dreadfully and that could
not be accomplished as quickly as a ferry system. The
engineering difficulties were great, the dredging and filling a
cyclopean task. The mere item of piling was anything but small.
A good average pile, by the time it was delivered on the ground,
cost a twenty-dollar gold piece, and these piles were used in
unending thousands. All accessible groves of mature eucalyptus
were used, and as well, great rafts of pine piles were towed down
the coast from Peugeot Sound.
Not content with manufacturing the electricity for his street
railways in the old-fashioned way, in power-houses, Daylight
organized the Sierra and Salvador Power Company. This
immediately assumed large proportions. Crossing the San Joaquin
Valley on the way from the mountains, and plunging through the
Contra Costa hills, there were many towns, and even a robust
city, that could be supplied with power, also with light; and it
became a street- and house-lighting project as well. As soon as
the purchase of power sites in the Sierras was rushed through,
the survey parties were out and building operations begun.
And so it went. There were a thousand maws into which he poured
unceasing streams of money. But it was all so sound and
legitimate, that Daylight, born gambler that he was, and with his
clear, wide vision, could not play softly and safely. It was a
big opportunity, and to him there was only one way to play it,
and that was the big way. Nor did his one confidential adviser,
Larry Hegan, aid him to caution. On the contrary, it was
Daylight who was compelled to veto the wilder visions of that
able hasheesh dreamer. Not only did Daylight borrow heavily from
the banks and trust companies, but on several of his corporations
he was compelled to issue stock. He did this grudgingly however,
and retained most of his big enterprises of his own. Among the
companies in which he reluctantly allowed the investing public to
join were the Golden Gate Dock Company, and Recreation Parks
Company, the United Water Company, the Uncial Shipbuilding
Company, and the Sierra and Salvador Power Company.
Nevertheless, between himself and Hegan, he retained the
controlling share in each of these enterprises.
His affair with Dede Mason only seemed to languish. While
delaying to grapple with the strange problem it presented, his
desire for her continued to grow. In his gambling simile, his
conclusion was that Luck had dealt him the most remarkable card
in the deck, and that for years he had overlooked it. Love was
the card, and it beat them all. Love was the king card of
trumps, the fifth ace, the joker in a game of tenderfoot poker.
It was the card of cards, and play it he would, to the limit,
when the opening came. He could not see that opening yet. The
present game would have to play to some sort of a conclusion
first.
Yet he could not shake from his brain and vision the warm
recollection of those bronze slippers, that clinging gown, and
all the feminine softness and pliancy of Dede in her pretty
Berkeley rooms. Once again, on a rainy Sunday, he telephoned
that he was coming. And, as has happened ever since man first
looked upon woman and called her good, again he played the blind
force of male compulsion against the woman's secret weakness to
yield. Not that it was Daylight's way abjectly to beg and
entreat. On the contrary, he was masterful in whatever he did,
but he had a trick of whimsical wheedling that Dede found harder
to resist than the pleas of a suppliant lover. It was not a
happy scene in its outcome, for Dede, in the throes of her own
desire, desperate with weakness and at the same time with her
better judgment hating her weakness cried out:--
"You urge me to try a chance, to marry you now and trust to luck
for it to come out right. And life is a gamble say. Very well,
let us gamble. Take a coin and toss it in the air. If it comes
heads, I'll marry you. If it doesn't, you are forever to leave
me alone and never mention marriage again."
A fire of mingled love and the passion of gambling came into
Daylight's eyes. Involuntarily his hand started for his pocket
for the coin. Then it stopped, and the light in his eyes was
troubled.
"Go on," she ordered sharply. "Don't delay, or I may change my
mind, and you will lose the chance."
"Little woman." His similes were humorous, but there was no
humor in their meaning. His thought was as solemn as his voice.
"Little woman, I'd gamble all the way from Creation to the Day of
Judgment; I'd gamble a golden harp against another man's halo;
I'd toss for pennies on the front steps of the New Jerusalem or
set up a faro layout just outside the Pearly Gates; but I'll be
everlastingly damned if I'll gamble on love. Love's too big to
me to take a chance on. Love's got to be a sure thing, and
between you and me it is a sure thing. If the odds was a hundred
to one on my winning this flip, just the same, nary a flip."
In the spring of the year the Great Panic came on. The first
warning was when the banks began calling in their unprotected
loans. Daylight promptly paid the first several of his personal
notes that were presented; then he divined that these demands but
indicated the way the wind was going to blow, and that one of
those terrific financial storms he had heard about was soon to
sweep over the United States. How terrific this particular storm
was to be he did not anticipate. Nevertheless, he took every
precaution in his power, and had no anxiety about his weathering
it out.
Money grew tighter. Beginning with the crash of several of the
greatest Eastern banking houses, the tightness spread, until
every bank in the country was calling in its credits. Daylight
was caught, and caught because of the fact that for the first
time he had been playing the legitimate business game. In the
old days, such a panic, with the accompanying extreme shrinkage
of values, would have been a golden harvest time for him. As it
was, he watched the gamblers, who had ridden the wave of
prosperity and made preparation for the slump, getting out from
under and safely scurrying to cover or proceeding to reap a
double harvest. Nothing remained for him but to stand fast and
hold up.
He saw the situation clearly. When the banks demanded that he
pay his loans, he knew that the banks were in sore need of the
money. But he was in sorer need. And he knew that the banks did
not want his collateral which they held. It would do them no
good. In such a tumbling of values was no time to sell. His
collateral was good, all of it, eminently sound and worth while;
yet it was worthless at such a moment, when the one unceasing cry
was money, money, money. Finding him obdurate, the banks
demanded more collateral, and as the money pinch tightened they
asked for two and even three times as much as had been originally
accepted. Sometimes Daylight yielded to these demands, but more
often not, and always battling fiercely.
He fought as with clay behind a crumbling wall. All portions of
the wall were menaced, and he went around constantly
strengthening the weakest parts with clay. This clay was money,
and was applied, a sop here and a sop there, as fast as it was
needed, but only when it was directly needed. The strength of
his position lay in the Yerba Buena Ferry Company, the
Consolidated Street Railways, and the United Water Company.
Though people were no longer buying residence lots and factory
and business sites, they were compelled to ride on his cars and
ferry-boats and to consume his water. When all the financial
world was clamoring for money and perishing through lack of it,
the first of each month many thousands of dollars poured into his
coffers from the water-rates, and each day ten thousand dollars,
in dime and nickels, came in from his street railways and
ferries.
Cash was what was wanted, and had he had the use of all this
steady river of cash, all would have been well with him. As it
was, he had to fight continually for a portion of it.
Improvement work ceased, and only absolutely essential repairs
were made. His fiercest fight was with the operating expenses,
and this was a fight that never ended. There was never any
let-up in his turning the thumb-screws of extended credit and
economy. From the big wholesale suppliers down through the
salary list to office stationery and postage stamps, he kept the
thumb-screws turning. When his superintendents and heads of
departments performed prodigies of cutting down, he patted them
on the back and demanded more. When they threw down their hands
in despair, he showed them how more could be accomplished.
"You are getting eight thousand dollars a year," he told
Matthewson. "It's better pay than you ever got in your life
before. Your fortune is in the same sack with mine. You've got
to stand for some of the strain and risk. You've got personal
credit in this town. Use it. Stand off butcher and baker and
all the rest. Savvee? You're drawing down something like six
hundred and sixty dollars a month. I want that cash. From now
on, stand everybody off and draw down a hundred. I'll pay you
interest on the rest till this blows over."
Two weeks later, with the pay-roll before them, it was:--
"Matthewson, who's this bookkeeper, Rogers? Your nephew? I
thought so. He's pulling down eighty-five a month. After--this
let him draw thirty-five. The forty can ride with me at
interest."
"Impossible! " Matthewson cried. "He can't make ends meet on
his salary as it is, and he has a wife and two kids--"
Daylight was upon him with a mighty oath.
"Can't! Impossible! What in hell do you think I'm running? A
home for feeble-minded? Feeding and dressing and wiping the
little noses of a lot of idiots that can't take care of
themselves? Not on your life. I'm hustling, and now's the time
that everybody that works for me has got to hustle. I want no
fair-weather birds holding down my office chairs or anything
else. This is nasty weather, damn nasty weather, and they've got
to buck into it just like me. There are ten thousand men out of
work in Oakland right now, and sixty thousand more in San
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
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
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.
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. _
Read next: PART II: CHAPTER XXI
Read previous: PART II: CHAPTER XIX
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