On the whole the town of Bidwell agreed with young Hall. The excitement did not die, but grew every day more intense. Steve Hunter had a carpenter come to his father’s store and build in the show window facing Main Street, a long shallow box formed in the shape of a field. This he filled with pulverized earth and then by an arrangement of strings and pulleys connected with a clockwork device the machine was pulled across the field. In a receptacle at the top of the machine had been placed some dozens of tiny plants no larger than pins. When the clockwork was started and the strings pulled to imitate applied horse power, the machine crept slowly forward, an arm came down and made a hole in the ground, the plant dropped into the hole and spoon-like hands appeared and packed the earth about the plant roots. At the top of the machine there was a tank filled with water, and when the plant was set, a portion of water, nicely calculated as to quantity, ran down a pipe and was deposited at the plant roots.
Evening after evening the machine crawled forward across the tiny field, setting the plants in perfect order. Steve Hunter busied himself with it; he did nothing else; and rumors of a great company to be formed in Bidwell to manufacture the device were whispered about. Every evening a new tale was told. Steve went to Cleveland for a day and it was said that Bidwell was to lose its chance, that big moneyed men had induced Steve to take his factory project to the city. Hearing Ed Hall berate a farmer who doubted the practicability of the machine, Steve took him aside and talked to him. “We’re going to need live young men who know how to handle other men for jobs as superintendent and things like that,” he said. “I make no promises. I only want to tell you that I like live young fellows who can see the hole in a bushel basket. I like that kind. I like to see them get up in the world.”
Steve heard the farmers continually expressing their skepticism about making the plants that had been set by the machine grow into maturity, and had the carpenter build another tiny field in a side window of the store. He had the machine moved and plants set in the new field. He let these grow. When some of the plants showed signs of dying he came secretly at night and replaced them with sturdier shoots so that the miniature field showed always a brave, vigorous front to the world.
Bidwell became convinced that the most rigorous of all forms of human labor practiced by its people was at an end. Steve made and had hung in the store window a large sheet showing the relative cost of planting an acre of cabbage with the machine, and by what was already called “the old way,” by hand. Then he formally announced that a stock company would be formed in Bidwell and that every one would have a chance to get into it. He printed an article in the weekly paper in which he said that many offers had come to him to take his project to the city or to other and larger towns. “Mr. McVey, the celebrated inventor, and I both want to stick to our own people,” he said, regardless of the fact that Hugh knew nothing of the article and had never been taken into the lives of the people addressed. A day was set for the beginning of the taking of stock subscriptions, and in private conversations Steve whispered of huge profits to be made. The matter was talked over in every household and plans were made for raising money to buy stock. John Clark agreed to lend a certain percentage on the value of the town property and Steve secured a long-time option on all the land facing Turner’s Pike clear down to Pickleville. When the town heard of this it was filled with wonder. “Gee,” the loiterers before the store exclaimed, “old Bidwell is going to grow up. Now look at that, will you? There are going to be houses clear down to Pickleville.” Hugh went to Cleveland to see about having one of his new machines made in steel and wood and in a size that would permit its actual use in the field. He returned, a hero in the town’s eyes. His silence made it possible for the people, who could not entirely forget their former lack of faith in Steve, to let their minds take hold of something they thought was truly heroic.
In the evening, after going again to see the machine in the window of the jewelry store, crowds of young and old men wandered down along Turner’s Pike to the Wheeling Station where a new man had come to replace Hugh. They hardly saw the evening train when it came in. Like devotees before a shrine they gazed with something like worship in their eyes at the old pickle factory, and when by chance Hugh came among them, unconscious of the sensation he was creating, they became embarrassed as he was always embarrassed by their presence. Every one dreamed of becoming suddenly rich by the power of the man’s mind. They thought of him as thinking always great thoughts. To be sure, Steve Hunter might be more than half bluff and blow and pretense, but there was no bluff and blow about Hugh. He didn’t waste his time in words. He thought, and out of his thought sprang almost unbelievable wonders.
In every part of the town of Bidwell, the new impulse toward progress was felt. Old men, who had become settled in their ways and who had begun to pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected places. Rumors flew from lip to lip. It was said that within a year Bidwell was to have a brick factory covering acres of ground, that there would be paved streets and electric lights.
Oddly enough the most persistent decrier of the new spirit in Bidwell was the man who, if the machine turned out to be a success, would profit most from its use. Ezra French, the profane, refused to be convinced. When pressed by Ed Hall, Dr. Robinson, and other enthusiasts, he fell back upon the word of that God whose name had been so much upon his lips. The decrier of God became the defender of God. “The thing, you see, can’t be done. It ain’t all right. Something awful’ll happen. The rains won’t come and the plants’ll dry up and die. It’ll be like it was in Egypt in the Bible times,” he declared. The old farmer with the twisted leg stood before the crowd in the drug-store and proclaimed the truth of God’s word. “Don’t it say in the Bible men shall work and labor by the sweat of their brows?” he asked sharply. “Can a machine like that sweat? You know it can’t. And it can’t do the work either. No, siree. Men’ve got to do it. That’s the way things have been since Cain killed Abel in the Garden of Eden. God intended it so and there can’t no telegraph operator or no smart young squirt like Steve Hunter — fellows in a town like this — set themselves up before me to change the workings of God’s laws. It can’t be done, and if it could be done it would be wicked and ungodly to try. I’ll have nothing to do with it. It ain’t right. That’s what I say and all your smart talk ain’t a-going to change me.”
It was in the year 1892 that Steve Hunter organized the first industrial enterprise that came to Bidwell. It was called the Bidwell Plant-Setting Machine Company, and in the end it turned out to be a failure. A large factory was built on the river bank facing the New York Central tracks. It is now occupied by an enterprise called the Hunter Bicycle Company and is what in industrial parlance is called a live, going concern.
For two years Hugh worked faithfully trying to perfect the first of his inventions. After the working models of the plant-setter were brought from Cleveland, two trained mechanics were employed to come to Bidwell and work with him. In the old pickle factory an engine was installed and lathes and other tool-making machines were set up. For a long time Steve, John Clark, Tom Butterworth, and the other enthusiastic promoters of the enterprise had no doubt as to the final outcome. Hugh wanted to perfect the machine, had his heart set on doing the job he had set out to do, but he had then and, for that matter, he continued during his whole life to have but little conception of the import in the lives of the people about him of the things he did. Day after day, with two city mechanics and Allie Mulberry to drive the team of horses Steve had provided, he went into a rented field north of the factory. Weak places developed in the complicated mechanism, and new and stronger parts were made. For a time the
machine worked perfectly. Then other defects appeared and other parts had to be strengthened and changed. The machine became too heavy to be handled by one team. It would not work when the soil was either too wet or too dry. It worked perfectly in both wet and dry sand but would do nothing in clay. During the second year and when the factory was nearing completion and much machinery had been installed, Hugh went to Steve and told him of what he thought were the limitations of the machine. He was depressed by his failure, but in working with the machine, he felt he had succeeded in educating himself as he never could have done by studying books. Steve decided that the factory should be started and some of the machines made and sold. “You keep the two men you have and don’t talk,” he said. “The machine may yet turn out to be better than you think. One can never tell. I have made it worth their while to keep still.” On the afternoon of the day on which he had his talk with Hugh, Steve called the four men who were associated with him in the promotion of the enterprise into the back room of the bank and told them of the situation. “We’re up against something here,” he said. “If we let word of the failure of this machine get out, where’ll we be? It is a case of the survival of the fittest.”
Steve explained his plan to the men in the room. After all, he said, there was no occasion for any of them to get excited. He had taken them into the thing and he proposed to get them out. “I’m that kind of a man,” he said pompously. In a way, he declared, he was glad things had turned out as they had. The four men had little actual money invested. They had all tried honestly to do something for the town and he would see to it that everything came out all right. “We’ll be honest with every one,” he said. “The stock in the company has all been sold. We’ll make some of the machines and sell them. If they’re failures, as this inventor thinks, it will not be our fault. The plant, you see, will have to be sold cheap. When that times comes we five will have to save ourselves and the future of the town. The machinery we have bought, is, you see, iron and wood working machinery, the very latest kind. It can be used to make some other thing. If the plant-setting machine is a failure we’ll simply buy up the plant at a low price and make something else. Perhaps it’ll be better for the town to have the entire stock control in our hands. You see we few men have got to run things here. It’s going to be on our shoulders to see that labor is employed. A lot of small stock-holders are a nuisance. As man to man I’m going to ask each of you not to sell his stock, but if any one comes to you and asks about its value, I expect you to be loyal to our enterprise. I’ll begin looking about for something to replace the plant-setting machine, and when the shop closes we’ll start right up again. It isn’t every day men get a chance to sell themselves a fine plant full of new machinery as we can do in a year or so now.”
Steve went out of the bank and left the four men staring at each other. Then his father got up and went out. The other men, all connected with the bank, arose and wandered out. “Well,” said John Clark, somewhat heavily, “he’s a smart man. I suppose after all it is up to us to stick with him and with the town. As he says, labor has got to be employed. I can’t see that it does a carpenter or a farmer any good to own a little stock in a factory. It only takes their minds off their work. They have foolish dreams of getting rich and don’t attend to their own affairs. It would be an actual benefit to the town if a few men owned the factory.” The banker lighted a cigar and going to a window stared out into the main street of Bidwell. Already the town had changed. Three new brick buildings were being erected on Main Street within sight of the bank window. Workmen employed in the building of the factory had come to town to live, and many new houses were being built. Everywhere things were astir. The stock of the company had been oversubscribed, and almost every day men came into the bank and spoke of wanting to buy more. Only the day before a farmer had come in with two thousand dollars. The banker’s mind began to secrete the poison of his age. “After all, it’s men like Steve Hunter, Tom Butterworth, Gordon Hart, and myself that have to take care of things, and to be in shape to do it we have to look out for ourselves,” he soliloquized. Again he stared into Main Street. Tom Butterworth went out at the front door. He wanted to be by himself and think his own thoughts. Gordon Hart returned to the empty back room and standing by a window looked out into an alleyway. His thoughts ran in the same channel as those that played through the mind of the bank president. He also thought of men who wanted to buy stock in the company that was doomed to failure. He began to doubt the judgment of Hugh McVey in the matter of failure. “Such fellows are always pessimists,” he told himself. From the window at the back of the bank, he could see over the roofs of a row of small sheds and down a residence street to where two new workingmen’s houses were being built. His thoughts only differed from the thoughts of John Clark because he was a younger man. “A few men of the younger generation, like Steve and myself will have to take hold of things,” he muttered aloud. “We’ll have to have money to work with. We’ll have to take the responsibility of the ownership of money.”
At the front of the bank John Clark puffed at his cigar. He felt like a soldier weighing the chances of battle. Vaguely he thought of himself as a general, a kind of U. S. Grant of industry. The lives and happiness of many people, he told himself, depended on the clear working of his brain. “Well,” he thought, “when factories start coming to a town and it begins to grow as this town is growing no man can stop it. The fellow who thinks of individual men, little fellows with their savings invested, who may be hurt by an industrial failure, is just a weakling. Men have to face the duties life brings. The few men who see clearly have to think first of themselves. They have to save themselves in order that they may save others.”
Things kept on the stir in Bidwell and the gods of chance played into the hands of Steve Hunter. Hugh invented an apparatus for lifting a loaded coal-car off the railroad tracks, carrying it high up into the air and dumping its contents into a chute. By its use an entire car of coal could be emptied with a roaring rush into the hold of a ship or the engine room of a factory. A model of the new invention was made and a patent secured. Then Steve Hunter carried it off to New York. He received two hundred thousand dollars in cash for it, half of which went to Hugh. Steve’s faith in the inventive genius of the Missourian was renewed and strengthened. He looked forward with a feeling almost approaching pleasure to the time when the town would be forced to face the fact that the plant-setting machine was a failure, and the factory with its new machinery would have to be thrown on the market. He knew that his associates in the promotion of the enterprise were secretly selling their stock. One day he went to Cleveland and had a long talk with a banker there. Hugh was at work on a corn-cutting machine and already he had secured an option on it. “Perhaps when the time comes to sell the factory there’ll be more than one bidder,” he told Ernestine, the soap maker’s daughter, who had married him within a month after the sale of the car-unloading device. He grew indignant when he told her of the disloyalty of the two men in the bank, and the rich farmer, Tom Butterworth. “They’re selling their shares and letting the small stock-holders lose their money,” he declared. “I told ’em not to do it. Now if anything happens to spoil their plans they’ll not have me to blame.”
Nearly a year had been spent in stirring up the people of Bidwell to the point of becoming investors. Then things began to stir. The ground was broken for the erection of the factory. No one knew of the difficulties that had been encountered in attempting to perfect the machine and word was passed about that in actual tests in the fields it had proven itself entirely practical. The skeptical farmers who came into town on Saturdays were laughed at by the town enthusiasts. A field, that had been planted during one of the brief periods when the machine finding ideal soil conditions had worked perfectly, was left to grow. As when he operated the tiny model in the store window, Steve took no chances. He engaged Ed Hall to go at night and replace the plants that did not live. “It’s fair enough,” he explained to Ed. “A hundred things can c
ause the plants to die, but if they die it’ll be blamed on the machine. What will become of the town if we don’t believe in the thing we’re going to manufacture here?”
The crowds of people, who in the evenings walked out along Turner’s Pike to look at the field with its long rows of sturdy young cabbages, moved restlessly about and talked of the new days. From the field they went along the railroad tracks to the site of the factory. The brick walls began to mount up into the sky. Machinery began to arrive and was housed under temporary sheds against the time when it could be installed. An advance horde of workmen came to town and new faces appeared on Main Street in the evening. The thing that was happening in Bidwell happened in towns all over the Middle West. Out through the coal and iron regions of Pennsylvania, into Ohio and Indiana, and on westward into the States bordering on the Mississippi River, industry crept. Gas and oil were discovered in Ohio and Indiana. Over night, towns grew into cities. A madness took hold of the minds of the people. Villages like Lima and Findlay, Ohio, and like Muncie and Anderson in Indiana, became small cities within a few weeks. To some of these places, so anxious were the people to get to them and to invest their money, excursion trains were run. Town lots that a few weeks before the discovery of oil or gas could have been bought for a few dollars sold for thousands. Wealth seemed to be spurting out of the very earth. On farms in Indiana and Ohio giant gas wells blew the drilling machinery out of the ground, and the fuel so essential to modern industrial development rushed into the open. A wit, standing in the presence of one of the roaring gas wells exclaimed, “Papa, Earth has indigestion; he has gas on his stomach. His face will be covered with pimples.”
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 62