“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 out — nothing can prevent it — nothing!”
Then he threw himself into his chair and said:
“My dear Mr. Brierson, this is dreadful — perfectly 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 thoughtless — the men ought to have been paid though it beggared us all!”
“They ought, ought they? Then why the devil — my name is not Bryerson, by the way — why the mischief didn’t the compa — why 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 course — but 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 the — matter is simple enough. A Congressional appropriation costs money. Just reflect, for instance — a majority of the House Committee, say $10,000 apiece — $40,000; a majority of the Senate Committee, the same each — say $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 there — the high moral ones cost more, because they. give tone to a measure — say 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 pay — say twenty at $500 apiece, is $10,000; a lot of dinners to members — say $10,000 altogether; lot of jimcracks for Congressmen’s wives and children — those go a long way — you can’t spend too much money in that line — well, those things cost in a lump, say $10,000 — along there somewhere; and then comes your printed documents — your 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 right or you are gone up, you know. Oh, my dear sir, printing bills are destruction itself. Ours so far amount to — let me see — 10; 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 thing — head the list, you see, with the company’s full name and a thousand dollars set opposite — great card, sir — one of the finest advertisements in the world — the preachers mention it in the pulpit when it’s a religious charity — one 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 circulation — I 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 do — especially 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 time — that’s your sort, sir, that’s your sort — a religious paper that isn’t run to make money is no use to us, sir, as an advertising medium — no use to anybody — in 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 see — have I stated all the expenses I’ve been at? No, I was near forgetting one or two items. There’s your official salaries — you 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 stockholders — another card, that — and they are stockholders, too, but you have to give them the stock and non-assessable at that — so they’re an expensive lot. Very, very expensive thing, take it all around, is a big internal improvement concern — but you see that yourself, Mr. Bryerman — you 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 say — now 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 I added that I put the measure through myself? Yes, sir, I did that little thing. And moreover, I never paid a dollar for any man’s vote and never promised one. There are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as others which other people don’t happen to think about, or don’t have the knack of succeeding in, if they do happen to think of them. My dear sir, I am obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head — for never a cent was paid a Congressman or Senator on the part of this Navigation Company.”
The president smiled blandly, even sweetly, all through this harangue, and then said:
“Is that so?”
“Every word of it.”
“Well it does seem to alter the complexion of things a little. You are acquainted with the members down there, of course, else you could not have worked to such advantage?”
“I know them all, sir. I know their wives, their children, their babies — I even made it a point to be on good terms with their lackeys. I know every Congressman well — even familiarly.”
“Very good. Do you know any of their signatures? Do you know their handwriting?”
