University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

“SPECIAL legislation is the great field for
what I call Congressional usefulness,” pursued
Mr. Sharp, again bringing down a violent
emphasis on the word, as if he were trying to
drive it into his listener's head.

“Ah! is it?” stared John Vane. “That's
news to me. I thought general legislation was
the big thing,—reform, foreign relations, sectional
questions, constitutional points, and so on;
I thought those were the diggings to get a reputation
out of.”

“All exploded, my dear sir!” answered Mr.
Sharp. “All gone out with Calhoun and Webster,
or at the latest, with Lincoln and Stanton.
All dead issues, as dead as the war. Special
legislation—or, as some people prefer to call it,
finance—is the sum and substance of Congressional
business in our day. It is the great field,

and it pays for the working. It pays every way.
Your vote helps people, and they are grateful
and help you. Your vote brings something to
pass, and the public sees that it does, and
respects you. Work into finance, Mr. Vane,”
exhorted Mr. Sharp, gently moving his hand in
a spiral, as if to signify the insinuation of a corkscrew,
“work slow - ly into—finance—so to call
it. Take up some great national enterprise, and
engineer it through. Get your name associated
with a navigation scheme, or a railroad scheme, to
advance commerce, you understand, or to move
the crops.” And as he alluded to these noble
purposes, his voice became little less than reverential.
“The millions yet unborn—you understand,”
here he seemed to be suggesting hints for
a speech in advocacy of said scheme,—“millions
yet unborn will have reason to remember you.
Capital will become your friend. And capital—
ah, Mr. Vane, there's a word! My very blood
curdles when I think of the power and majesty
of capital. This land, sir, this whole gigantic
Republic, with its population of forty millions,
its incomparably productive and energetic industry,
and its vast network of continental communications,
is the servant, and I had almost said the
creature, of capital. Capital guides it by its wisdom
and sustains it by its beneficence. Capital
is to be, and already is, its ruler. Make capital
your friend. Do something for it, and secure its
gratitude. Link your fortunes and your name
with some gigantic financial enterprise. Then,
when you have won the reputation of advancing
the industrial interests of the country, and gathered
around you hosts of admirers and friends,
you can return to your pet measure. Now, there
is my advice—the advice of an old hand. Doesn't
it strike you as worth considering? My maxim,
as you see, is slow and sure. I also have my
little reform at heart, but I keep it waiting until
I can get strong enough to push it, and meantime
I strengthen myself by helping other people.
Never mind now what that reform is,” he
added, noting a gleam of inquiry in Vane's eye;
“you will hear of it some day. Let us come
to the immediate and the practical. While I
make my humble little project bide its time, I
am busy with a scheme which combines capital
and industry, a scheme of national importance
and magnitude. I don't mind mentioning it to
you. It is the great Subfluvial Tunnel Road,
meant to run through our country from north to
south, under the Mississippi River, uniting Lake
Superior with the Gulf of Mexico. It is a gigantic
idea: you must admit it. Of course, the
business minutiæ and prospects of it are beyond
me,” he conceded, with an air of innocence and
simplicity which seemed to relieve him of all
responsibility as to those points. “There I have
to trust to the judgment of business men. But
where my information fails, Mr. Dorman here
can fill the gap. Dorman, suppose you let our
friend into this if he wants to come in.”

John Vane, being quite beyond his honest
depth by this time, had nothing to say to the
Great Subfluvial either in condemnation or praise,
but merely stared in expectant silence.

“It is the job I gave you a hint about in Slowburgh,”
began Darius Dorman, turning upon his
member a pair of sombre, lurid, smoky eyes,
which were at once utterly unearthly and utterly
worldly. “We have just got it well under way.”

“What! stock taken?” exclaimed Vane, amazed
that he had not heard of such a huge financial
success.

Darius smiled, as a slave-trader might smile
upon a stalwart, unsuspicious negro who should
express a curiosity to see the interior of his
schooner.

“The subscription is to be started by the
government,” he proceeded. “That is, the government
will loan the capital necessary to build
the tunnel, and then secure itself by a mortgage
on the same. No particular risk, you see, to
capitalists, especially as they will get the first
issue of stock cheap, and won't be called on to
pay in a heavy percentage. What they don't
want to keep they can sell to the outside public,
—the raft of small investors. Now, bankers and

financiers won't neglect such a chance as that;
they will pile in as fast and as plenty as need be.
With a government loan to start on, the stock is
sure to be floated and the thing finished; and
after that is done, why, it will go on pretty much
as railroads do,—gradually increase its business,
and in the end pay well, like railroads.”

Just here there was a malicious twinkle in his
charcoal-pits of eyes, as though he were thinking
of the numberless widows and orphans and other
unprotected creatures whose little all had gone
into railroads without ever bringing out a dividend.
At the same time, he glanced suddenly
at his grimy hands and rubbed them uneasily
against each other, as if he would have been
glad to get them clean for once in his existence,
or as if the maculations on them itched and
scalded quite intolerably.

“O, there's nothing unusual or extra smart
about the enterprise!” he resumed, perhaps detecting
in honest John Vane's countenance a
gleam of suspicion. “It's about the way railroads

in general are got up, except the one
notion of a government loan to start the thing.
That is new and patented. Don't mention that
for the Devil's sake!” he implored, with an outburst
of his characteristically eccentric profanity.
“Keep as dark as hell about the whole thing.
All we want of you is to bear the job in mind,
and when the House comes to the question of
the loan, give us your voice and vote.”

“It will be a grand thing for the country,” put
in Mr. Sharp, seeing that Vane pondered.

“O, magnificent!” exclaimed Dorman. “Give
us another New York at New Orleans. Double
the value of land in the Mississippi Valley.”

“Unite the North and South,” continued Sharp.
“Close up the bloody chasm. Bind together the
national unity in chains of cast-iron.”

“Pour the wild rice of Green Bay upon the
dinner-tables of our working-men,” responded
Dorman.

“Bring the Menomonie Indians within easy
reach of Christian missionaries,” was Sharp's
next word in this litany.

“Providing the whole tribe hasn't already got
to the happy hunting-grounds,” suggested Dorman.

The Whetstone statesman glanced at the business
man, and the business man glanced at the
Whetstone statesman. Apparently (only John
Vane did not perceive it) the two came very near
laughing in each other's faces.

“Besides, it will pay well, at least to first investors,”
resumed Dorman.

“Yes, I should think it might pay them well,”
answered John Vane, with just a suspicion of
satire in his tone.

“If you should ever care to invest, by the way,”
suggested the business man, as though that were
a thing which he had just thought of, and which
would of course not influence his representative's
decision, “if you should ever fancy putting something
of your own in, we can promise you a sure
return for it. You shall have your pick,—stock
at the opening figure,—corner lots cheap around

the stations,—something paying and safe, you
know, something salable if you don't want it.”

“Well, I'll think of it,” nodded Vane, who had
already made up his honest mind to have nothing
to do with the Great Subfluvial, judging it to be
a scheme for swindling the government and the
general public.

“Do so,” begged Mr. Simon Sharp, his broad
array of yellow teeth showing in a manner which
vaguely reminded one of the phrase, “dead men's
bones and all uncleanness.” The member from
the old Whetstone State seemed at the moment
to be as full of teeth as ever a freshly opened
tomb was of skeletons. It was an error in him
to make exhibition of those ravening tushes and
grinders; they neutralized abominably the expression
of integrity and piety which gleamed
from the Puritanic lacker of his venerable mug.
“Do, Mr. Vane,” he continued, “give the project
your intelligent consideration, and see if it is not
worthy of your highly reputable and valuable support.
And now, sir, I am compelled, very much

against my wishes, to bid you a good morning
Delighted to have made your acquaintance, and
to welcome you as a brother Congressman.
Don't go to the door with me, don't! You are
altogether too urbane. I thank you kindly.”