Satan's Bushel (17 page)

“Would we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots,” said Weaver; and asked for his bread and milk. Seeing they did not eat he added gently: “Empty sayings nourish old age. I am too fond of them. But all things are good, so ye eat not of darkness. Partake and mind not the lion who cheweth straw.”

But they never did it again.

There was no fault in his faculties. He became each day a little more unseeing, more indifferent to what went on around him, and his feet grew heavy and reluctant; but when he entered the pit his bodily vigor returned to him as from a draught of magic elixir; he recovered his full stature and with it his aggressive, saturnine manner; his mind was alert, sensitive and unerring. There his strength was. He used it up prodigally, exultingly, wasted it in excessive humors. And his power increased. He made no mistakes. Dreadwind and Cordelia watched him in silent wonder.

One day as they stood together in a corner of the room, looking on, a strange note rose out of the pit. It was nearly time for gambling to cease. Someone had called Weaver by name. Cordelia started. Then others began calling him by name, and presently many were intoning it rhythmically. The sound was boisterous and friendly, and one would have thought they were proud of him.

“What does it mean?” Cordelia asked.

“It’s a send-off,” said Dreadwind.

“Why that?” she asked.

“I’ve been on the point of telling you ever since I came in. I heard it outside and came around at once. This is his last day here. He has bought a membership on the Board of Trade. I suppose that was never heard of before—a man going to the Board of Trade from this place. And they are all a little excited about it.”

“He will go to the big wheat pit across the street—is that what you mean?” said Cordelia.

Dreadwind nodded. The closing gong had just sounded and they were giving the old man a regular hazing. All the reserve with which his manner had inspired them was broken down, now that he was leaving. They dragged him out of the pit, pulled his hat over his ears, tied his muffler in three hard knots, rumpled his garments, beat him, jostled him, and then all with one impulse they picked him up and carried him toward the door, cheering and shouting his name. He took it passively. Cordelia and Dreadwind rescued him at last. He walked off between them and never looked back.

One who had taken no part in the hazing and resembled a huge wading fowl stood in the doorway croaking: “He will be back.... He will be back.” Dreadwind looked at Cordelia to see if she heard. She was shaking her head.

That evening Dreadwind referred to the change. “May I introduce you to the wheat pit?” he asked.

“I washed my steps in butter and the rock poured me forth oil,” Weaver answered. From which Dreadwind understood that he wished to find his way alone.

He made his first appearance the next morning. Cordelia and Dreadwind watched from the gallery. He stood on the edge of the wheat pit and did nothing. Nobody noticed him overtly, and that was a kind of hazing. Generally a new member is tumbled about a bit just to develop the nature of his goat. Everyone knew who he was of course and eyed him surreptitiously. For three days he stood there on the edge of the maelstrom, doing nothing.

And it was a maelstrom really. Wheat was two dollars and fifty cents a bushel, and still rising.

Who dared to buy wheat at this great price?

None of the little gamblers. They were afraid. They sold it rather—sold it because they were afraid.

None of the big gamblers were buying it, either. They, too, were afraid, though for a different reason. The rise in the price of wheat was beginning to have an ominous social aspect. A public cry had been raised against the pit. It was widely believed that the principal Chicago gamblers, having bought the crop at much lower prices from the farmers, were now turning it into gold at the expense of the countries allied against Germany in a war which was about to become our war as well. This was wicked in itself and very repugnant to our sympathies; but at the same time the American bread eater was mulcted in a like manner. So the public believed. And it had been true. But all the big, respectable gamblers were now standing aside, fearful of an experience in the pillory of public opinion if the Government should act suddenly and catch them red-handed in the business of profiteering.

And yet the price of wheat kept rising. Who bought it? Who was the reckless customer that went on buying it, regardless of the price of political consequences. Answer: WAR.

War was that kind of customer. Price was no object. The agents of France and Great Britain added each day millions of bushels to what the wheat pit called “that Eastern account.” The orders originated in New York, where the Allied Buying Commission sat.

But do you remember? This pit stuff is phantom wheat. Armies do not subsist upon imaginary food. Why did they buy that?

For this reason: That to a certain extent and under certain conditions phantom wheat bought in the pit may be converted into actual grain on the railroad track. If the seller of phantom wheat cannot, when called upon, deliver the actual grain he must settle in cash. So the buyer will get either the wheat itself or a profit in money. The Allied Commission was buying both phantom wheat and actual grain at the same time. This is to be remembered. It was running a corner such as had never been dreamed of in the world before—a corner in wheat at Chicago with the Bank of England behind it

There was yet one other heedless buyer.

On the fourth day Weaver went one step down into the pit and began to buy. On the fifth day he went another step down, still buying. On the sixth day he stood in the center and bought heavily. That was his regular place thereafter; and it came to be that he had a clear space around him, at the very core of the swirl, as it had been in the little wheat pit across the street, a figure for the eye to dwell upon. It came also that he was treated with awe and foreboding, like an event with no place in the probability of things.

Never here, as in that other pit, did he taunt the sellers or appear exulting. Why this was nobody knew. He was grim and silent. He would stand for sometimes an hour, motionless, gazing at the floor, at a distant object, or at Cordelia sitting always in the gallery with her regard upon him. Then of a sudden, with a sweeping look at the faces in the howling ring above him, he would lift his hands in signal and take all of that weighless, impalpable wheat they were willing to hurl down at him. No one ever saw him make a selling gesture. He never sold. And his profits were running wild, for the price knew not how to fall. Always he bought. Always it rose.

A few weeks after Weaver’s advent on the Board of Trade America put her fist in the war.

The price of wheat was then approaching three dollars a bushel. The public cry against the pit increased, and not without reason in morals, for of course if gamblers were manipulating the price of wheat for private greed that now was both unpatriotic and abominable. Dreadwind spoke to Weaver. How could he reconcile what he was doing with any sense of common duty? The old man took thought and answered slowly:

“The pit cannot grow one blade of grass. Neither can it destroy one grain of wheat. There is so much wheat. No more, no less. It is only the price.”

“But what of profiteering?” Dreadwind asked.

“So,” said Weaver. “What of it? Tell me of it. I have seen war before. I know what it’s lined and stuffed with. For once... you shall see... this time, I say... the spoils of war shall gild the wheat and nothing else. This is justice and I am its instrument. Its path shall be as a shining light.”

Came now the month of May. All the gambling was in May wheat. And on the eleventh day, which was Friday, the price touched three dollars and a quarter a bushel!

Minds were tense with dread. Men could not say what it was they dreaded; but something was about to happen. It was written in the air. The emeritus honorable J. P., guardian elephant of the wheat pit, walked round and round it saying, exhortively: “Boys, don’t touch it. For everybody’s sake let that May wheat alone.”

And there in the center stood Weaver, from time to time lifting his hands and taking all the wheat above him. Almost no gambler would touch wheat to buy it. Many were still willing to sell it.

That was the day the two British members of the Allied Buying Commission who had been buying wheat with the Bank of England behind them arrived in Chicago to look things over.

I happened myself to know the illuminating particulars. Dreadwind did not. He knew only the outcome; I told him what is here to be set down.

This is what happened: When J. P. with his head wagging returned to his desk from walking round and round the wheat pit his telephone was ringing. The two British members of the Allied Buying Commission were invited to lunch at the Union League Club. Would J. P. come? Yes, he would come, he said, on two conditions. One was that the Federal District Attorney should be asked; the other was that he himself should be permitted to speak. Both conditions were accepted.

At the lunch, besides the two English wheat buyers, the Federal District Attorney and J. P., were seated all the great men of La Salle Street and all the lords of speculation in meat products and breadstuffs, including the bankers who kept unlimited credit at the disposal of Moberly’s Dearborn Grain Corporation, who owned it in fact, but who would not suffer themselves to be called speculators. Anything else.

When the amenities were amiably exhausted J. P. rose.

“I want the Federal District Attorney to listen to this,” he said. “Wheat is three dollars and a quarter a bushel and going up. For this we are damned. The Board of Trade is damned. I am damned. Most of the eminent gentlemen sitting here are damned. Now I want to ask a few questions. You”—he pointed to the financier who was chairman of Moberly’s Dearborn Grain Corporation, calling his name—“have you got any May wheat?” The answer was no. One by one he called them, each in his name, and asked the same question, exhorting the Federal District Attorney to listen. The answer was invariably no. None of the great men of La Salle Street, none of the lords of speculation in meat products and breadstuffs, had any May wheat. They could not produce among them one kernel of it. “Now I ask myself,” said J. P., “I ask myself the same question. ‘Have you got any May wheat, J. P.?’ On my word I answer, ‘No, not a bushel.’ Now wait. I’m not through. I ask our English visitors, ‘Are you buying May wheat in the Chicago pit at this price?’ “

They denied it.

“Be that as it may,” said J. P. “I don’t believe all I hear. Just now as I was passing the pit a man took me aside to say he had bought another lot of May wheat for that Eastern account. Be that as it may—... What’s that?”

The English visitors interrupted him to say that if what he had heard were true it was merely the tail-end of some buying that had been ordered many days before.

“Be that as it may,” said J. P. again. “We haven’t come to the question yet. The question is: How much May wheat have you got?”

The Englishmen conferred aside and decided to react bluntly. They announced that they had nearly thirty millions of bushels.

“That’s as I thought it was,” said J. P. “Now then, I ask you all, what are we going to do? These gentlemen on their wheat-pit contracts are entitled to receive at the end of this month thirty million bushels of wheat in Chicago. Where is that wheat? The elevators are empty. We have only a handful or two. We cannot deliver this wheat. Why? Because it does not exist. If these gentlemen insist and we cannot deliver the wheat we shall have to pay them eight, nine, maybe ten dollars a bushel, anything they say, to let us off. We are sleeping on dynamite. Unless we can think of something to do we shall be blown up. The Board of Trade will blow up.”

It was the truth of arithmetic, and so very simple that no one realized it until J. P. had stated it in his naive way. The great men of La Salle Street and the lords of speculation were dazed. The English buyers, with the Bank of England behind them were politely sympathetic. What could they do? They had not been acting as individuals. They had nothing to win or lose. They had been buying wheat for the Allies. They wanted the wheat. If the people they had bought it from were unable to deliver it—well, that would be rather awkward, wouldn’t it? Yes, quite. That was to say, they had the wheat pit by what it sneezed with. When they were through there would be no wheat gamblers left in Chicago. Yes, one. His name would be Weaver.

But all the time the guardian elephant had a wicked light in his eye. He gathered together the great men of La Salle Street and all the lords of speculation in meat products and breadstuff, locked them into a room, and kept asking them one question: What were they going to do to save themselves? All the next day, which was Saturday, and all of the next, which was Sunday, they faced it; and they came at last, reluctantly, to the only answer there was.

They would shut the pit to May wheat. And anyone who had sold phantom wheat for May delivery and was unable on demand to produce it should be let off at a price to be determined by a special committee.

This had never been done before. In all the days of the Board of Trade, through panics and corners, it had never been done. Yet there was nothing else to do. “Unless you shut up,” said J. P., “you will blow up.” And that was true.

Dreadwind heard of this action before it was published.

He had been anxiously watching. After dinner Sunday evening he said to Cordelia: “Be not surprised at anything tomorrow.”

“Can you tell me?” she asked.

“I can tell you what will happen on the Board of Trade,” he said. “Nothing. A notice will be posted on the bulletin board. And that is what it will say. Nothing shall happen. How this will affect your father I cannot imagine.”

Five minutes before the opening of the pit on Monday morning Dreadwind joined Cordelia in the Board of Trade gallery. “I almost think it had been better to tell him,” he said. “There is still time.”

“No, wait,” she said.

They had decided the night before to let the event weave it own pattern.