The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

head-quarters of the "Columbus River Slack-Water Navigation Company." He entered and gave a dressy porter his card, and was requested to wait a moment in a sort of ante-room. The porter returned in a minute; and asked whom he would like to see?

"The president of the company, of course."

"He is busy with some gentlemen, sir; says he will be done with them directly."

That a copper-plate card with "Engineer-in-Chief" on it should be received with such tranquility as this, annoyed Mr. Brierly not a little. But he had to submit. Indeed his annoyance had time to augment a good deal; for he was allowed to cool his heels a frill half hour in the ante-room before those gentlemen emerged and he was ushered into the presence. He found a stately dignitary occupying a very official chair behind a long green morocco-covered table, in a room with sumptuously carpeted and furnished, and well garnished with pictures.

"Good morning, sir; take a seattake a seat."

"Thank you sir," said Harry, throwing as much chill into his manner as his ruffled dignity prompted.

"We perceive by your reports and the reports of the Chief Superintendent, that you have been making gratifying progress with the work.We are all very much pleased."

"Indeed? We did not discover it from your letterswhich we have not received; nor by the treatment our drafts have met withwhich were not honored; nor by the reception of any part of the appropriation, no part of it having come to hand."

"Why, my dear Mr. Brierly, there must be some mistake, I am sure we wrote you and also Mr. Sellers, recentlywhen my clerk comes he will show copiesletters informing you of the ten per cent. assessment."

"Oh, certainly, we got those letters. But what we wanted was money to carry on the workmoney to pay the men."

"Certainly, certainlytrue enoughbut we credited you both for a large part of your assessmentsI am sure that was in our letters."

"Of course that was inI remember that."

"Ah, very well then. Now we begin to understand each other."

"Well, I don't see that we do. There's two months' wages due the men, and"

"How? Haven't you paid the men?"

"Paid them! How are we going to pay them when you don't honor our drafts?"

"Why, my dear sir, I cannot see how you can find any fault with us. I am sure we have acted in a perfectly straight forward business way.Now let us look at the thing a moment. You subscribed for 100 shares of the capital stock, at $1,000 a share, I believe?"

"Yes, sir, I did."

"And Mr. Sellers took a like amount?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. No concern can get along without money. We levied a ten per cent. assessment. It was the original understanding that you and Mr. Sellers were to have the positions you now hold, with salaries of $600 a month each, while in active service. You were duly elected to these places, and you accepted them. Am I right?"

"Certainly."

"Very well. You were given your instructions and put to work. By your reports it appears that you have expended the sum of $9,610 upon the said work. Two months salary to you two officers amounts altogether to $2,400about one-eighth of your ten per cent. assessment, you see; which leaves you in debt to the company for the other seven-eighths of the assessmentviz, something over $8,000 apiece. Now instead of requiring you to forward this aggregate of $16,000 or $17,000 to New York, the company voted unanimously to let you pay it over to the contractors, laborers from time to time, and give you credit on the books for it. And they did it without a murmur, too, for they were pleased with the progress you had made, and were glad to pay you that little compliment and a very neat one it was, too, I am sure. The work you did fell short of $10,000, a trifle. Let me see$9,640 from $20,000 salary $2;400 addedah yes, the balance due the company from yourself and Mr. Sellers is $7,960, which I will take the responsibility of allowing to stand for the present, unless you prefer to draw a check now, and thus"

"Confound it, do you mean to say that instead of the company owing us $2,400, we owe the company $7,960?"

"Well, yes."

"And that we owe the men and the contractors nearly ten thousand dollars besides?"

"Owe them! Oh bless my soul, you can't mean that you have not paid these people?"

"But I do mean it!"

The president rose and walked the floor like a man in bodily pain. His brows contracted, he put his hand up and clasped his forehead, and kept saying, "Oh, it is, too bad, too bad, too bad! Oh, it is bound to be found outnothing can prevent itnothing!"

Then he threw himself into his chair and said:

"My dear Mr. Brierson, this is dreadfulperfectly dreadful. It will be found out. It is bound to tarnish the good name of the company; our credit will be seriously, most seriously impaired. How could you be so thoughtlessthe men ought to have been paid though it beggared us all!"

"They ought, ought they? Then why the devilmy name is not Bryerson, by the waywhy the mischief didn't the compawhy what in the nation ever became of the appropriation? Where is that appropriation?if a stockholder may make so bold as to ask."

"The appropriation?that paltry $200,000, do you mean?"

"Of coursebut I didn't know that $200,000 was so very paltry. Though I grant, of course, that it is not a large sum, strictly speaking. But where is it?"

"My dear sir, you surprise me. You surely cannot have had a large acquaintance with this sort of thing. Otherwise you would not have expected much of a result from a mere INITIAL appropriation like that. It was never intended for anything but a mere nest egg for the future and real appropriations to cluster around."

"Indeed? Well, was it a myth, or was it a reality? Whatever become of it?"

"Why thematter is simple enough. A Congressional appropriation costs money. Just reflect, for instancea majority of the House Committee, say $10,000 apiece$40,000; a majority of the Senate Committee, the same eachsay $40,000; a little extra to one or two chairman of one or two such committees, say $10,000 each$20,000; and there's $100,000 of the money gone, to begin with. Then, seven male lobbyists, at $3,000 each $21,000; one female lobbyist, $10,000; a high moral Congressman or Senator here and therethe high moral ones cost more, because they. give tone to a measuresay ten of these at $3,000 each, is $30,000; then a lot of small-fry country members who won't vote for anything whatever without paysay twenty at $500 apiece, is $10,000; a lot of dinners to memberssay $10,000 altogether; lot of jimcracks for Congressmen's wives and childrenthose go a long wayyou can't sped too much money in that linewell, those things cost in a lump, say $10,000along there somewhere; and then comes your printed documentsyour maps, your tinted engravings, your pamphlets, your illuminated show cards, your advertisements in a hundred and fifty papers at ever so much a line because you've got to keep the papers all light or you are gone up, you know. Oh, my dear sir, printing bills are destruction itself. Ours so far amount tolet me see10; 52; 22; 13;and then there's 11; 14; 33 well, never mind the details, the total in clean numbers foots up $118,254.42 thus far!"

"What!"

"Oh, yes indeed. Printing's no bagatelle, I can tell you. And then there's your contributions, as a company, to Chicago fires and Boston fires, and orphan asylums and all that sort of thinghead the list, you see, with the company's full name and a thousand dollars set opposite great card, sirone of the finest advertisements in the worldthe preachers mention it in the pulpit when it's a religious charityone of the happiest advertisements in the world is your benevolent donation. Ours have amounted to sixteen thousand dollars and some cents up to this time."

"Good heavens!"

"Oh, yes. Perhaps the biggest thing we've done in the advertising line was to get an officer of the U. S. government, of perfectly Himmalayan official altitude, to write up our little internal improvement for a religious paper of enormous circulationI tell you that makes our bonds go handsomely among the pious poor. Your religious paper is by far the best vehicle for a thing of this kind, because they'll 'lead' your article and put it right in the midst of the reading matter; and if it's got a few Scripture quotations in it, and some temperance platitudes and a bit of gush here and there about Sunday Schools, and a sentimental snuffle now and then about 'God's precious ones, the honest hard-handed poor,' it works the nation like a charm, my dear sir, and never a man suspects that it is an advertisement; but your secular paper sticks you right into the advertising columns and of course you don't take a trick. Give me a religious paper to advertise in, every time; and if you'll just look at their advertising pages, you'll observe that other people think a good deal as I doespecially people who have got little financial schemes to make everybody rich with. Of course I mean your great big metropolitan religious papers that know how to serve God and make money at the same timethat's your sort, sir, that's your sorta religious paper that isn't run to make money is no use to us, sir, as an advertising mediumno use to anybodyin our line of business. I guess our next best dodge was sending a pleasure trip of newspaper reporters out to Napoleon. Never paid them a cent; just filled them up with champagne and the fat of the land, put pen, ink and paper before them while they were red-hot, and bless your soul when you come to read their letters you'd have supposed they'd been to heaven. And if a sentimental squeamishness held one or two of them back from taking a less rosy view of Napoleon, our hospitalities tied his tongue, at least, and he said nothing at all and so did us no harm. Let me seehave I stated all the expenses I've been at? No, I was near forgetting one or two items. There's your official salariesyou can't get good men for nothing. Salaries cost pretty lively. And then there's your big high-sounding millionaire names stuck into your advertisements as stockholdersanother card, thatand they are stockholders, too, but you have to give them the stock and non-assessable at thatso they're an expensive lot. Very, very expensive thing, take it all around, is a big internal improvement concernbut you see that yourself, Mr. Bryermanyou see that, yourself, sir."

"But look here. I think you are a little mistaken about it's ever having cost anything for Congressional votes. I happen to know something about that. I've let you say your saynow let me say mine. I don't wish to seem to throw any suspicion on anybody's statements, because we are all liable to be mistaken. But how would it strike you if I were to say that I was in Washington all the time this bill was pending? and what if