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Title: The Lion and The Mouse

A Story Of American Life

Author: Charles Klein

Release Date: November 29, 2004 [EBook

#14204]

Language: English

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THE LION AND THE MOUSE ***

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“Go to Washington and save myfather's life.”—Act III.

Frontispiece.

THE LION AND THE MOUSE

BY CHARLES KLEIN

A Story of American Life

NOVELIZED FROM THE

PLAY BY ARTHUR HORNBLOW

“Judges and Senators have been

bought for gold;

Love and esteem have never been

sold.”—Pope

ILLUSTRATED BY

STUART TRAVIS

AND SCENES FROM THE PLAY

GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers—New York

G.W DILLINGHAM COMPANY

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London

Issued August, 1906

Pencil Drawing

of the MeetingPhotograph ofthe RyderHouseholdPencil Drawing

of Shirley andher Father

Photograph ofShirley and Mr.Ryder

Photograph ofJefferson,Shirley and Mr.Ryder

Photograph ofShirley and Mr.Ryder

The Lion and the Mouse

CHAPTER I

There was unwonted bustle in the usuallysleepy and dignified New York offices ofthe Southern and TranscontinentalRailroad Company in lower Broadway.The supercilious, well-groomed clerkswho, on ordinary days, are far toopreoccupied with their own personalaffairs to betray the slightest interest inanything not immediately concerning them,now condescended to bestir themselvesand, gathered in little groups, conversed insubdued, eager tones The slim, nervousfingers of half a dozen haughtystenographers, representing as manydifferent types of business femininity,

were busily rattling the keys of clickingtypewriters, each of their owners intent onreducing with all possible despatch themass of letters which lay piled up in front

of her Through the heavy plate-glassswinging doors, leading to the elevatorsand thence to the street, came and went anarmy of messengers and telegraph boys,noisy and insolent

Through the open windows the hoarseshouting of news-venders, the rushing ofelevated trains, the clanging of street cars,with the occasional feverish dash of anambulance—all these familiar noises of agreat city had the far-away sound peculiar

to top floors of the modern sky-scraper.The day was warm and sticky, as is notuncommon in early May, and the overcast

sky and a distant rumbling of thunderpromised rain before night.

The big express elevators, runningsmoothly and swiftly, unloaded every fewmoments a number of prosperous-lookingmen who, chatting volubly and affably,made their way immediately through theouter offices towards another and largerinner office on the glass door of whichwas the legend “Directors Room.Private.” Each comer gave a patronizingnod in recognition of the deferentialsalutation of the clerks Earlier arrivalshad preceded them, and as they opened thedoor there issued from the DirectorsRoom a confused murmur of voices, eachdifferent in pitch and tone, some deep anddeliberate, others shrill and nervous, but

all talking earnestly and with animation asmen do when the subject under discussion

is of common interest Now and again avoice was heard high above the others,denoting anger in the speaker, followed bythe pleading accents of the peace-maker,who was arguing his irate colleague intocalmness At intervals the door opened toadmit other arrivals, and through the crackwas caught a glimpse of a dozen directors,some seated, some standing near a longtable covered with green baize

It was the regular quarterly meeting of thedirectors of the Southern andTranscontinental Railroad Company, but itwas something more than mere routine thathad called out a quorum of such strengthand which made to-day's gathering one of

extraordinary importance in the history ofthe road That the business on hand was ofthe greatest significance was easily to beinferred from the concerned and anxiousexpression on the directors' faces and theeagerness of the employés as they pliedeach other with questions.

“Suppose the injunction is sustained?”asked a clerk in a whisper “Is not theroad rich enough to bear the loss?”

The man he addressed turned impatiently

to the questioner:

“That's all you know about railroading.Don't you understand that this suit we havelost will be the entering wedge forhundreds of others The very existence of

the road may be at stake And between youand me,” he added in a lower key, “withJudge Rossmore on the bench we neverstood much show It's Judge Rossmore thatscares 'em, not the injunction They'vefound it easy to corrupt most of theSupreme Court judges, but JudgeRossmore is one too many for them Youcould no more bribe him than you couldhave bribed Abraham Lincoln.”

“But the newspapers say that he, too, hasbeen caught accepting $50,000 worth ofstock for that decision he rendered in theGreat Northwestern case.”

“Lies! All those stories are lies,” repliedthe other emphatically Then lookingcautiously around to make sure no one

overheard he added contemptuously, “Thebig interests fear him, and they'reinventing these lies to try and injure him.They might as well try to blow upGibraltar The fact is the public isseriously aroused this time and therailroads are in a panic.”

It was true The railroad, which heretoforehad considered itself superior to law, hadfound itself checked in its career ofoutlawry and oppression The railroad,this modern octopus of steam and steelwhich stretches its greedy tentacles outover the land, had at last been brought tobook

At first, when the country was in theearlier stages of its development, the

railroad appeared in the guise of a publicbenefactor It brought to the markets of theEast the produce of the South and West Itopened up new and inaccessible territoryand made oases of waste places Itbrought to the city coal, lumber, food andother prime necessaries of life, takingback to the farmer and the woodsman inexchange, clothes and other manufacturedgoods Thus, little by little, the railroadwormed itself into the affections of thepeople and gradually became anindispensable part of the life it had itselfcreated Tear up the railroad and life itself

is extinguished

So when the railroad found it could not bedispensed with, it grew dissatisfied withthe size of its earnings Legitimate profits

were not enough Its directors cried outfor bigger dividends, and from then on therailroad became a conscienceless tyrant,fawning on those it feared and crushingwithout mercy those who weredefenceless It raised its rates for haulingfreight, discriminating against certainlocalities without reason or justice, andfavouring other points where its owninterests lay By corrupting governmentofficials and other unlawful methods itappropriated lands, and there was noescape from its exactions and brigandage.Other roads were built, and for a briefperiod there was held out the hope ofrelief that invariably comes from honestcompetition But the railroad eitherabsorbed its rivals or pooled interests

w i t h them, and thereafter there were

several masters instead of one.

Soon the railroads began to war amongthemselves, and in a mad scramble tosecure business at any price they cut eachother's rates and unlawfully entered intosecret compacts with certain big shippers,permitting the latter to enjoy lower freightrates than their competitors The smallershippers were soon crushed out ofexistence in this way Competition wasthrottled and prices went up, making therailroad barons richer and the peoplepoorer That was the beginning of the giantTrusts, the greatest evil Americancivilization has yet produced, and onewhich, unless checked, will inevitablydrag this country into the throes of civilstrife

From out this quagmire of corruption andrascality emerged the Colossus, a man sostupendously rich and with such unlimitedpowers for evil that the world has neverlooked upon his like The famous Crœsus,whose fortune was estimated at only eightmillions in our money, was a paupercompared with John Burkett Ryder, whoseholdings no man could count, but whichwere approximately estimated at athousand millions of dollars Therailroads had created the Trust, the ogre ofcorporate greed, of which Ryder was theincarnation, and in time the Trust becamemaster of the railroads, which after allseemed but retributive justice.

John Burkett Ryder, the richest man in theworld—the man whose name had spread

to the farthest corners of the earth because

of his wealth, and whose money, instead

of being a blessing, promised to becomenot only a curse to himself but a source ofdire peril to all mankind—was a geniusborn of the railroad age No other agecould have brought him forth; his peculiartalents fitted exactly the conditions of histime Attracted early in life to the newlydiscovered oil fields of Pennsylvania, hebecame a dealer in the raw product andlater a refiner, acquiring with capital,laboriously saved, first one refinery, thenanother The railroads were cutting eachother's throats to secure the freightbusiness of the oil men, and John BurkettRyder saw his opportunity He madesecret overtures to the road, guaranteeing

a vast amount of business if he could get

exceptionally low rates, and the illegalcompact was made His competitors,undersold in the market, stood no chance,and one by one they were crushed out ofexistence Ryder called these manœuvres

“business”; the world called thembrigandage But the Colossus prosperedand slowly built up the foundations of theextraordinary fortune which is the talk andthe wonder of the world to-day Masternow of the oil situation, Ryder succeeded

in his ambition of organizing the EmpireTrading Company, the most powerful, themost secretive, and the most wealthybusiness institution the commercial worldhas yet known

Yet with all this success John BurkettRyder was still not content He was now a

rich man, richer by many millions that hehad dreamed he could ever be, but still hewas unsatisfied He became money mad.

He wanted to be richer still, to be therichest man in the world, the richest manthe world had ever known And the richer

he got the stronger the idea grew upon himwith all the force of a morbid obsession

He thought of money by day, he dreamt of

it at night No matter by what questionabledevice it was to be procured, more goldand more must flow into his alreadyoverflowing coffers So each day, instead

of spending the rest of his years in peace,

in the enjoyment of the wealth he hadaccumulated, he went downtown like anytwenty-dollar-a-week clerk to the tallbuilding in lower Broadway and, closetedwith his associates, toiled and plotted to

make more money.

He acquired vast copper mines andsecured control of this and that railroad

He had invested heavily in the Southernand Transcontinental road and waschairman of its board of directors Then

he and his fellow-conspirators planned agreat financial coup The millions werenot coming in fast enough They must make

a hundred millions at one stroke Theyfloated a great mining company to whichthe public was invited to subscribe Thescheme having the endorsement of theEmpire Trading Company no onesuspected a snare, and such was the magic

of John Ryder's name that gold flowed infrom every point of the compass Thestock sold away above par the day it was

issued Men deemed themselves fortunate

if they were even granted an allotment.What matter if, a few days later, the house

of cards came tumbling down, and a dozensuicides were strewn along Wall Street,that sinister thoroughfare which, as a withas said, has a graveyard at one end andthe river at the other! Had Ryder anytwinges of conscience? Hardly Had henot made a cool twenty millions by thedeal?

Yet this commercial pirate, this Napoleon

of finance, was not a wholly bad man Hehad his redeeming qualities, like most badmen His most pronounced weakness, andthe one that had made him the mostconspicuous man of his time, was anentire lack of moral principle No honest

or honourable man could have amassedsuch stupendous wealth In other words,John Ryder had not been equipped byNatur e with a conscience He had nosense of right, or wrong, or justice wherehis own interests were concerned He wasthe prince of egoists On the other hand, hepossessed qualities which, with somepeople, count as virtues He was piousand regular in his attendance at churchand, while he had done but little forcharity, he was known to have encouragedthe giving of alms by the members of hisfamily, which consisted of a wife, whosetimid voice was rarely heard, and a sonJefferson, who was the destined successor

to his gigantic estate

Such was the man who was the real power

behind the Southern and TranscontinentalRailroad More than anyone else Ryderhad been aroused by the present legalaction, not so much for the money interest

at stake as that any one should dare tothwart his will It had been a pet scheme

of his, this purchase for a song, when theland was cheap, of some thousand acresalong the line, and it is true that at the time

of the purchase there had been some idea

of laying the land out as a park But realestate values had increased in astonishingfashion, the road could no longer afford tocarry out the original scheme, and hadattempted to dispose of the property forbuilding purposes, including a right ofway for a branch road The news, madepublic in the newspapers, had raised astorm of protest The people in the vicinity

claimed that the railroad secured the land

on the express condition of a park beinglaid out, and in order to make a legal testthey had secured an injunction, which hadbeen sustained by Judge Rossmore of theUnited States Circuit Court

These details were hastily told and re-told

by one clerk to another as the babel ofvoices in the inner room grew louder, andmore directors kept arriving from theever-busy elevators The meeting wascalled for three o'clock Another fiveminutes and the chairman would rap fororder A tall, strongly built man withwhite moustache and kindly smileemerged from the directors room and,addressing one of the clerks, asked:

“Has Mr Ryder arrived yet?”

The alacrity with which the employéhastened forward to reply would indicatethat his interlocutor was a person of morethan ordinary importance

“No, Senator, not yet We expect him anyminute.” Then with a deferential smile headded: “Mr Ryder usually arrives on thestroke, sir.”

The senator gave a nod of acquiescenceand, turning on his heel, greeted with agrasp of the hand and affable smile hisfellow-directors as they passed in by twosand threes

Senator Roberts was in the world of

politics what his friend John BurkettRyder was in the world of finance—aleader of men He started life inWisconsin as an errand boy, was educated

in the public schools, and later becameclerk in a dry-goods store, finally goinginto business for his own account on alarge scale He was elected to theLegislature, where his ability as anorganizer soon gained the friendship of themen in power, and later was sent toCongress, where he was quickly initiated

in the game of corrupt politics In 1885 heentered the United States Senate He soonbecame the acknowledged leader of aconsiderable majority of the Republicansenators, and from then on he was a figure

to be reckoned with A very ambitiousman, with a great love of power and few

scruples, it is little wonder that only thepractical or dishonest side of politicsappealed to him He was in politics for allthere was in it, and he saw in his loftyposition only a splendid opportunity foreasy graft.

He did not hesitate to make such allianceswith corporate interests seeking influence

at Washington as would enable him toaccomplish this purpose, and in this way

he had met and formed a strong friendshipwith John Burkett Ryder Each being amaster in his own field was useful to theother Neither was troubled with qualms

of conscience, so they never quarrelled Ifthe Ryder interests needed anything in theSenate, Roberts and his followers werethere to attend to it Just now the cohort

was marshalled in defence of the railroadsagainst the attacks of the new Rebate bill.

In fact, Ryder managed to keep the Senatebusy all the time When, on the other hand,the senators wanted anything—and theyoften did—Ryder saw that they got it,lower rates for this one, a fat job for thatone, not forgetting themselves SenatorRoberts was already a very rich man, andalthough the world often wondered where

he got it, no one had the courage to askhim

But the Republican leader was stirredwith an ambition greater than that ofcontrolling a majority in the Senate Hehad a daughter, a marriageable youngwoman who, at least in her father'sopinion, would make a desirable wife for

any man His friend Ryder had a son, andthis son was the only heir to the greatestfortune ever amassed by one man, afortune which, at its present rate ofincrease, by the time the father died andthe young couple were ready to inherit,

would probably amount to over six

billions of dollars Could the human mind

grasp the possibilities of such a colossalfortune? It staggered the imagination Itsowner, or the man who controlled it,would be master of the world! Was notthis a prize any man might well set himselfout to win? The senator was thinking of itnow as he stood exchanging banal remarkswith the men who accosted him If hecould only bring off that marriage hewould be content The ambition of his lifewould be attained There was no difficulty

as far as John Ryder was concerned Hefavoured the match and had often spoken

of it Indeed, Ryder desired it, for such analliance would naturally further hisbusiness interests in every way Robertsknew that his daughter Kate had more than

a liking for Ryder's handsome young son.Moreover, Kate was practical, like herfather, and had sense enough to realizewhat it would mean to be the mistress ofthe Ryder fortune No, Kate was all right,but there was young Ryder to reckon with

It would take two in this case to make abargain

Jefferson Ryder was, in truth, an entirelydifferent man from his father It wasdifficult to realize that both had sprungfrom the same stock A college-bred boy

with all the advantages his father's wealthcould give him, he had inherited from theparent only those characteristics whichwould have made him successful even ifborn poor—activity, pluck, application,dogged obstinacy, alert mentality Tothese qualities he added what his fathersorely lacked—a high notion of honour, akeen sense of right and wrong He had thehonest man's contempt for meanness of anydescription, and he had little patience withthe lax so-called business morals of theday For him a dishonourable or dishonestaction could have no apologist, and hecould see no difference between the crime

of the hungry wretch who stole a loaf ofbread and the coal baron whosystematically robbed both his employésand the public In fact, had he been on the

bench he would probably have acquittedthe human derelict who, in despair, hadappropriated the prime necessary of life,and sent the over-fed, conscienceless coalbaron to jail.

“Do unto others as you would have others

do unto you.” This simple and fundamentalaxiom Jefferson Ryder had adopted early

in life, and it had become his religion—the only one, in fact, that he had He wasnever pious like his father, a fact muchregretted by his mother, who could seenothing but eternal damnation in store forher son because he never went to churchand professed no orthodox creed Sheknew him to be a good lad, but to hersimple mind a conduct of life basedmerely on a system of moral philosophy

was the worst kind of paganism Therecould, she argued, be no religion, andassuredly no salvation, outside thedogmatic teachings of the Church Butotherwise Jefferson was a model son and,with the exception of this bad habit ofthinking for himself on religious matters,really gave her no anxiety When Jeffersonleft college, his father took him into theEmpire Trading Company with the idea ofhis eventually succeeding him as head ofthe concern, but the different views held

by father and son on almost every subjectsoon led to stormy scenes that made thecontinuation of the arrangementimpossible Senator Roberts was wellaware of these unfortunate independenttendencies in John Ryder's son, and while

he devoutly desired the consummation of

Jefferson's union with his daughter, hequite realized that the young man was a nutwhich was going to be exceedingly hard tocrack.

“Hello, senator, you're always on time!”

Disturbed in his reflections, SenatorRoberts looked up and saw the extendedhand of a red-faced, corpulent man, one ofthe directors He was no favourite withthe senator, but the latter was too keen aman of the world to make enemiesuselessly, so he condescended to placetwo fingers in the outstretched fat palm

“How are you, Mr Grimsby? Well, whatare we going to do about this injunction?The case has gone against us I knew

Judge Rossmore's decision would be forthe other side Public opinion is aroused.The press—”

Mr Grimsby's red face grew moreapoplectic as he blurted out:

“Public opinion and the press be d——d.Who cares for public opinion? What ispublic opinion, anyhow? This road canmanage its own affairs or it can't If it can't

I for one quit railroading The press!Pshaw! It's all graft, I tell you It's nothingbut a strike! I never knew one of thesevirtuous outbursts that wasn't First thenewspapers bark ferociously to advertisethemselves; then they crawl round andwhine like a cur And it usually costssomething to fix matters.”