more concerned with the practical and decidedly unhistoric phases of the world about him. He had come into the world just when the luster and supremacy of mere title were not only being questioned but, in many instances, overshadowed by financial genius. At Cambridge he was an interested student of economics, politics, sociology, and inclined to give ear to the socialists of the Fabian school, without by any means losing consciousness of his prospective inheritance. Encountering Rider, himself interested almost solely in the immense companies which he was constantly being called upon to represent, Stane was easily converted to Rider’s view that the real lords of the future would be financiers. What the world needed was advanced material equipment, and the financier who devoted himself to supplying that need would be the greatest factor in society’s progression.
It was with such thoughts in his mind that Stane pursued the study of English company law in the office of Rider, Bullock, Johnson & Chance. And one of his chief intimacies was with Elverson Johnson. In Johnson he saw a shrewd commoner with a determination to rise to high places, while in Stane, Johnson recognized an inheritor of social and financial privilege who yet chose to inform and bestir himself in practical pursuits.
Both Johnson and Stane had from the first recognized the enormous possibilities of the London underground traction field, and their interest was by no means confined to the formation of the Traffic Electrical Company, of which, in its origin, they formed the nucleus. When the City and South London, with its up-to-date construction, was first proposed, they and their friends put money into it, with the understanding that a combination of the two old lines then threading the heart of London—the Metropolitan and the District—was to be considered. Like Demosthenes addressing the Athenians, Johnson persisted in his belief that whoever could find the money to pick up enough of the ordinary stock of these two lines to provide a 51 per cent control, could calmly announce himself in charge and thereafter do as he pleased with them.
After his father’s death, Stane and some of his friends, together with Johnson, sought to buy a control of the ordinary stock of the District, hoping in this way to gain control of both roads, but it had all proven too much for them. There was too much stock outstanding, and they could not get together enough money. Therefore, since the management was unprogressive and the stock did not pay well, they had resold a large part of what they had acquired.
And as for the still unconstructed Charing Cross line, to promote which they had formed the Traffic Electrical Company, they had never been able to raise enough money or resell enough of the printed shares to provide the lb1,660,000 needed to build it. At last, through Greaves and Henshaw, they had been seeking to find a financier, or group of financiers, who would either take this Charing Cross line off their hands or unite with them in their dream to take over the Metropolitan and the District.
But so far, nothing had come of this. Johnson by this time was forty-seven and Lord Stane forty, and both had become a little weary and more than slightly dubious of this great task.
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