None But Lucifer

Chapter XXV

HALE must have been blinded by his hatred for Lucifer, his revulsion at the philosophy of torment, and anxiety over his own plans. Otherwise, being an observant man, he would have noticed the change.

He was thinking: he could let the business run itself, and devote all his time to making speeches. Of course, he couldn't hope to address everybody, and he would have to learn Spanish and Portuguese. But at least it was a half-way workable plan.

The telephone bell broke into his speculations. An excited voice cried into his ear, through an orchestration of yells: "Hello, Mr. Hale? Titus ... Titus, Farnsworth and Quinn. What are you going to do about the market? Aren't you getting in on it?"

"I don't know," replied Hale absently. "What's going on?"

"What's going on? Holy smoke! Hear that shouting? Haven't you read the papers! Take a fast look at them and tell me what to do!"

Hale slid the newspaper on his desk around. It wasn't necessary to turn to the financial page:

BEARS IN HIBERNATION AS BULLS RUN MARKET TO SKY

During the first hour of a day that promises to set Stock Exchange records for trading, the entire list of shares jumped ten to fifteen points, with wild bidding and almost no selling, except from foreign investors, jamming the ticker until it was left hopelessly behind.

The Curb Exchange reports even greater gains and makes no secret of the fact that there is no limit to the prices stocks may eventually reach.

Informed sources highly influential in Wall Street refuse to credit statements from abroad that the situation is headed for unavoidable collapse because there had been, until now, no discernible corresponding gains in employment, national income, carloadings, production, foreign trade, or retail sales.

The consensus of investing opinion is that awakened confidence in the future of the nation ...

... substantiating this claim, stock exchanges in all major cities throughout the Americas report gains as great as Wall Street's ...

... in view of these facts, all reliable sources assert that a vast surge of public confidence has been responsible ...

"Well, what'll it be?" demanded Titus. "Rails, utilities, heavy industry, mining, novelties?"

"I don't know —"

"Better get in fast, Mr. Hale! Everybody's buying and holding. While there's still foreign investors willing to sell —" He broke into a loud, harsh laugh, like the sound of a loaded cafeteria tray being dropped. "They think we're riding for a fall! Why, damn them, there's no limit to what we can do! This is the biggest, richest, brainiest, nerviest damned country in the whole damned gutless world! We'll show them a house for every family, a car in every garage, a chicken for every damned pot in every damned house, ten suits of clothing and fifty dresses for every man, woman, and child, hundred — million — dollar movies, hundred — billion — dollar industries, every man worth a fortune —"

"Hey! Wait a minute!" cried Hale. "What's the —"

"Not a thing, Mr. Hale. Nothing's wrong! Everybody's buying! What'll yours be? I've got a hot tip on a couple of million shares some damn fool foreign syndicate's holding. They're scared to hang on and scared to sell. I'll scare the pants off them and buy out for a measly couple of hundred million. You in on it?"

"I —"

"Of course, you are! We'll split it three ways; you, Johnson, and us!"

Hale yelled: "Where are you going to get a couple of hundred million?"

"From the banks, Mr. Hale. From the banks. They're practically giving money away. Sorry I can't go on talking; got to get started on this deal before prices double or triple. So long!"

Through the open window, Hale heard for the first time the street clamor of laughing voices; voices not dull and defeated as before, but somehow buoyant, eager — confident.

It didn't take Hale long to find the answer. Of course, it seemed absurd, the idea of casting a spell on the whole hemisphere by shouting through an open window. But he couldn't very well ignore the evidence.

He snatched Gloria's knitting away and dragged her up. "Come on!" he snapped. "We're going out."

"CAN y' imagine the guy's noive? A lousy hundred a week! I says, `Zimmerman,' I says, `you don't want a cutter,' I says, `you want a butcher.' He says, `Louie, I kept you when things was slow,' he says. I says, `Zimmerman, things has changed. I'm going in business for myself,' I says —"

"Hunnid a week! I laughs at my boss when he offas me a hunnid and a quawta. I sure tol' him wheh to put his lousy job. Me — I'm gonna cawna cloaks and suits, see if I don't!"

"Haw! Haw! You? How you gonna buck me?"

A short, puffing, harried man waddled toward the knot of boastful gabblers, crying plaintively: "Boys! Boys! I'm renting a whole flaw, maybe the whole building yet, but woikas I got to have. Name ya prices! I'll meet any offer in the city!"

"You can't pay what we're asking —"

The businessman wrung his hands in agony. "I don't care what you're asking! Woikas I got to have! I'm telling you, I'm going to be the biggest clothing manufacturer in the woild! Only, woikas I got to have!"

"Listen to him!" said a meek-looking runt sarcastically. "He's gonna be the biggest manufacturer! What about me? Soon's I get down to the bank and borrow a few hundred thousand, I'll buy him out. I'll buy out everybody in the block; then I'll start working on the rest of the city."

Hale didn't know whether to follow the unhappily confident employer or the derisively confident employees. Watching either of them solve their problems would be interesting. Still — hallucinations? He was pretty sure he was sane; but sometimes under great strain minds crack. He asked Gloria: "Did you hear what I heard?"

"What is it, a strike? Everybody's walking out of the buildings."

"Did you hear them refuse a hundred and a quarter a week?" he insisted.

"Yes. Then it's a strike, isn't it?"

Hale knew he hadn't imagined the crowds pouring into the streets, with screaming employers chasing after them. But a strike? If this was happening all over his hemisphere, it was the biggest, most universal walkout in history! And not a simple walkout either, but a unanimous desire to become employers!

Hale was satisfied to follow along with the crowd. Gloria clung to his arm and shrank against him for protection from the jabbering throng who, she probably thought, weren't quite clean. He listened.

"Sure I come to work this morning, same as always. I see this ad in the paper —"

"The bank ad? Yeah, I saw it, too. So what'd you do?"

"I go in and show the boss this ad and he says he'll give me a raise if I don't quit and then the rest of the gang pile in with the same story about quitting and —"

IT WAS a repetition of the stories being told all around him. Hale drew Gloria over to a newsstand that was being closed. Every newspaper had been sold, but for half a dollar the agent offered him a soiled, torn copy of the Socialist Appeal. He got behind the stand and looked through the paper. The first of six full-page advertisements cried out:

THE BANKERS' TRUST COMPANY BELIEVES:

1) In the future of America! No other single country in the world possesses the lavish resources that lie under our feet and everywhere around us, begging to be developed.

2) In the ability of Americans! Single-handed, starting with nothing whatever, our ancestors raised America from a wilderness to the greatest industrial power on earth!

3) In ourselves! We have aided, with money and sound advice, in the birth and expansion of a staggering number of American industries, the names and histories of which strike pride in the heart of every true patriotic American!

WE GLADLY ASSUME THE RESPONSIBILITY:

Of assisting to full growth the most amazing national rebirth in the history of humanity! We are, therefore, prepared to extend every aid: financial, managerial if necessary, advisory under all circumstances, since we base our advice on the experience of ninety-seven years of successful finance:

TO EVERY MAN WHO CAN SHOW PROOF, FINANCIAL OR OTHERWISE, THAT HE HAS A SOUND, WORKABLE, CONCRETE BUSINESS IDEA AND LACKS ONLY SUFFICIENT FUNDS FOR ITS PROPER DEVELOPMENT OR EXPANSION!

In order to remove all obstacles in the path of national confidence in our great and glorious future, the Bankers' Trust Company:

REDUCES INTEREST TO 1/2 OF 1%! NO COLLATERAL! NO CO-SIGNERS! ONLY A ROUTINE CHECKUP OF YOUR PLAN! WE BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE OF THIS COUNTRY!

Hale pursed his dried lips and tried to whistle in amazement. The Socialist Appeal taking a bank's advertisement! A quick glance at the other bank's ads in the paper had shown him only a remarkable similarity to the Bankers' Trust effusion. But on the next page, in big block letters, he found:

WORKERS! THE SOCIALIST APPEAL, ON BEHALF OF THE PARTY IT REPRESENTS, STRESSES THE IMPORTANCE OF TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE BANKS' OFFERS! BY DEVELOPING THE RESOURCES AND MEANS OF PRODUCTION OF OUR COUNTRY YOU WILL BE ABLE TO INHERIT THE RICHEST FRUITS OF CAPITALISTIC CIVILIZATION! THE GREATER OUR INDUSTRIES, THE GREATER OUR EVENTUAL PROSPERITY! IF WE ARE TO SEIZE POWER, LET US BE SURE THAT CAPITALIST EFFICIENCY AND ORGANIZATION HAVE CREATED THE WORLD'S RICHEST COUNTRY FOR US! WORKERS OF AMERICA, WE ARE CONFIDENT OF THE FUTURE THAT WILL MAKE US MASTERS OF OUR FATE!

Hale put the paper in a trashbasket and drew Gloria back in the crowd. They were on Seventh Avenue, moving uptown through halted, honking traffic and cops, afoot and on horseback, who seemed more anxious to join them than to keep them orderly swarms of men and women, boys and girls, streaming out of side streets and buildings to join the river of people, yet somehow not losing their identities. Mobs are generally homogenous in mood and object. This mob outwardly resembled others; its aim was one spot; its one emotion was cheerfully belligerent self-confidence. But each atom of the mass had a strictly individualistic goal.

AT Fortieth Street they jammed to a stop, and stood packed and clamored good-naturedly at the top of their lungs.

"Let's get away from this," Gloria begged in a small, timid voice.

But Hale was fascinated. He balanced on his toes and peered over heads. On the outer fringe of the crowd a sound truck managed to get fairly close to a bank building on the east side of the avenue. By pressure from the front, Hale knew that people were forming a path for it. Presently he saw the truck door swing open with difficulty. The loud-speakers crackled and burst into a roar:

"Friends, the directors of the City Bank take this opportunity to thank you for this splendid response to their offer. We must admit frankly, however, that your response has swamped us. We must ask your co-operation in giving us time to analyze the situation and modernize our credit apparatus. In this request we are not alone. Every bank and credit organization in the Western Hemisphere" — Hale began trembling with anticipation —"has been unable to meet the demands put upon it. Therefore a new, highly efficient Pan-American credit organization, embracing every bank, investment house, trust fund, loan society, in either of the American continents, all co-ordinated to the last degree, is swiftly being put into operation.

"You can readily see, my friends, that the financiers of America — of Greater, More Prosperous America, the America of both continents — believe implicitly in the magnificent future of our half of the world!"

The crowd cheered. Hale felt thrilled, and listening to the suave voice calmed Gloria, though she still vainly tried to avoid bodily contact.

"There are certain limitations we have temporarily agreed to impose," the speaker roared on. "While we are unconditionally prepared to finance any and all sound, practical business ideas, we must insist on a certain amount of capital on the part of the borrower —"

The mob began to mutter resentfully.

"In that decision," the speaker added hastily, "We do not show lack of confidence. The amount is arbitrary ... nothing at all if the idea shows exceptional promise. But in most cases we must ask equal confidence on the part of the borrower, in that he should demonstrate his business ability by acquiring a certain amount of his own capital. With wages skyrocketing" — the voice became humorously depreciating — "that should prove no major obstacle to any really industrious, self-confident worker, should it?"

The crowd laughed, cheerfully cocksure.

"In return for your co-operation, the Pan-American Credit Corporation and all its constituent units will extend unlimited credit — in accordance with its very simple conditions, which will be determined very shortly — unlimited credit, I repeat ... with not the slightest charge for interest! All we ask is the opportunity of purchasing shares in the companies we finance!"

The crowd screamed approval. Hale searched his mind for a trick.

"Now please return to work and concentrate on saving capital!"

The mob broke up leaving Hale wondering. He caught the sleeve of a well-dressed, professional-looking man. Hale guessed him to be a lawyer. He asked: "Do you think that's on the level ... no interest on loans?"

"Certainly," replied the stranger with disdain. "Why shouldn't it be on the level?"

"Well, I don't know. How will the banks make money?"

"Evidently you don't understand economics. With the enormous potential earning capacity of this country, merely taking shares will bring in far more than the old obsolete method of asking repayment of loans plus a fixed rate of interest. In companies with exceptionally bright futures, the banks ask the opportunity of buying additional shares."

"Oh," Hale breathed and turned to find a taxi willing to sell him a ride. He thought, if he'd gone to the bank the day before, and offered merely an idea and the option of buying stock in a non-existent company, in return for a loan — well, who was loony now?

HALE AND GLORIA stood on the rim of a huge excavated lot. In his absorption in what was going on there, Hale ignored his discomfort. But Gloria wailed: "Oh, Billie-willie, it's so hot! Why can't we go swimming?"

"Later, darling," he said abstractedly.

"But you always say the same thing. You don't have any consideration for me any more. You don't love me!"

"Oh, hell," he said irritably, and gave her a sweaty kiss.

When he turned back, a quarrel was starting in the center of the half-completed foundations. Hale wavered; he couldn't leave Gloria, nor could he heartlessly ask her to climb down the dusty embankment. He waited impatiently until it was over. Then he called the contractor, who came over, angry and red. "What's the trouble, Reading?" he asked.

The contractor stopped smearing his handkerchief across his forehead. "Trouble?" he shouted. "It is and it ain't. A year ago I'd have fired every damned one of 'em, only now I can't replace them."

"What do you mean — it is and it ain't?"

"I mean trouble. I guess I'm getting used to it, so it ain't really trouble. See those guys down there?" He pointed.

"Of course. What about them?"

"I'm the contractor on this damn job. That's supposed to mean I get contracts, buy materials, get blueprints, and hire all the men. Ain't that so? Well, it ain't ... not any more!"

Hale murmured uncomprehending sympathy.

"Don't feel sorry for me," Reading bristled. "I can lick them. They're only the guys who lay the foundations. After them come the steel workers and the carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, plasterers, and so on. Well, they make me divide up the contract so each man's working for himself. You know, like a ... uh —"

"Co-operative?"

"Yeah." Reading flapped his soaked handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket. "Every man for himself. They made me tell how much dough there was in the contract, and then they figured out what everybody should get. Damn it, I tell you they're a bunch of communists!"

Reading spun around in the grip of a heavy, cement-whitened hand. "None o' that, mister!" a cement porter threatened. "Everybody on the job figures out what it costs him to work. All we want is a profit over our expenses. We're in business, same as you."

Reading snarled: "Yeah; but you're asking a hell of a big cut!"

"You bet!" the worker grinned and ambled away with his wheelbarrow. "There's plenty o' dough for everybody, and more coming!"

The contractor glowered. "See what I mean? They pay me a commission for getting the contract and buying materials. But I got the whip hand, bud! I'm the guy who has the blueprints and contracts! Just let them keep on getting funny —"

Tactfully, Hale didn't mention the possibility of their refusing to work. Reading would have been as confident as before of his ability to break his workers —"his" no longer. And the workers would have been confident, even had they known of his threat to refuse access to the blueprints, that they could get along splendidly without him.

It was all very confusing. Hale had never thought that some day workers might hire their bosses, which was what it amounted to. Who could have imagined that banks would be distributing money almost without asking questions? Unlimited credit for unlimited expansion! He stopped there. His mind, battered by so many previous improbabilities, refused to go as far as the question: they'll all get capital; and then?