Nordenholt's Million

by J. J. Connington

  “I took very little interest in politics, though. I had no sympathy with the usual methods of the politicians; and at times I revolted against them effectually.”

  He was evidently thinking of the two episodes which had gained him the nickname of the Wrecker.

  “When I began, I think I told you that the element of risk enters largely into one’s pleasures; and I believe that holds good in politics. The work of a politician, and especially of a Cabinet Minister, is largely in the nature of a gamble. To most of them, politics is an empirical science; for they have little time to study the basis of it. I’ll do them the justice to say that I don’t think it is a mere matter of clinging to their salaries which keeps them in office; it’s mainly that they enjoy the feeling of swaying great events. With an Empire like ours, the stakes are tremendous; and there’s a certain sensation to be got out of gambling on that scale. Mind you, I doubt if they realise themselves that this is what they enjoy in the political game; but it is actually what does sway them to a great extent.

  “Now so long as it’s a mere question of some parochial point, I don’t mind their enjoying their sensations. It matters very little in the long run whether one Bill or another passes Parliament; and if they fight over minor questions, I don’t care. But twice in my political career I saw that the Party game was threatening trouble on bigger lines. The Anglo-Peruvian agreement and the Malotu Islands question were affairs that cut down to the bed-rock of things; and I couldn’t stand aside and see them muddled in the usual way. I had to assert myself there, whether I liked it or not. And when I did intervene, my mental equipment made the result a certainty. I knew the country and the country’s average opinion in a way that none of them did; and I had only to strike at the vital point. They call me the Wrecker; and I suppose I did bring down two Governments on these questions; but it wasn’t so difficult for me.

  “But, as I told you, I never had much interest in politics. I like real things; and the political game is more than half make-believe. I still have my seat in the House; but I think they are gladdest when I am not there.

  “Well, I am afraid I’m making a long story of it; but I think you will see the drift of it now. Politics failed to give me what I wanted. I had no turn for the routine of it; and I had no wish to be involved in all the petty manoeuvres upon which the nursing of a majority depends. Mind you, I could have done it better than any of them, with that peculiar bent of mine. They consult me whenever a crisis arises; and I can generally pull them through. After all, it’s a case of handling men, there as everywhere else.

  “However, I wanted something better to amuse me than the squaring of some nonentity with a knighthood or the pacification of some indignant office-seeker who had been passed over. I wanted to feel myself pitted against men who really were experts in their own line. And that was how I came to take up finance in earnest.”

  He paused again and lighted a fresh cigar. While he was doing so, I watched his face. In any other man, his autobiographic sketch would have seemed egotistical; and possibly I have raised that impression in my reproduction of it; for I can only give the sense of what he said. I cannot put on paper the tones of his voice—the faint tinge of contempt with which he spoke of his triumphs, as though they were child’s play. Nor can I do more than indicate here and there that peculiar sensation of duality which his talk took on more and more clearly as he proceeded. It was as though the Nordenholt whom I saw before me were telling his story whilst over behind him stood some greater personality, following the narrative and tracing out in it the clues which were to lead on to some events still in the distant future.

  “Finance, Flint,” he continued. “That was the field where I came into my own at last. Money in itself is nothing, nothing whatever. But the making of money, the duel of brain against brain with not even the counters on the table, that’s the great game. The higher branches of finance are simply a combination of mathematics and psychology. They’re divorced absolutely from any idea of material gain or loss. Railways, steamship lines, coal, oil, wheat, cotton or wool—do you imagine that one thinks of these concrete things while one plays the game? Not at all. They are the merest pawns. The whole affair is compressed into groups of figures and the glimpses of the other man’s brain which one gets here and there throughout the operations. And I played a straight game, Flint; no small investor was ever ruined through my manoeuvres. I doubt if any other financier can say as much. I went into the thing as a game, a big, risky game for my own hand; and I refused to gamble in the savings of little men. I took my gains from the big men who opposed me, not from the swarm of innocents.”

  It was true, I remembered. Nordenholt had played the game of finance in a way never seen before. He had made many men’s fortunes—a by-product, as he would have said, no doubt—but no one had ever gone into the arena unwarned by him. When he had laid his plans, carried out his preliminary moves and was ready to strike, a full-page advertisement had appeared in every newspaper in the country. “MR. NORDENHOLT ADVISES THE SMALL INVESTOR TO REFRAIN FROM OPERATING IN WHEAT,” or whatever it might be that he proposed to deal in himself. Then, after giving time for this to take effect, he struck his first blow. Wonderful struggles these were, fought out often far in the depths of that strange sea of finance, so that hardly a ripple came to the surface. Often, too, the agitation reached the upper waters and there would be glimpses of the two vast organisations convulsed by their efforts; here a mass of foam only, there some strange tentacle stretching out to reach its prey or to coil itself around a vantage-point which it could use as a fulcrum in further exertions. During this period, the Exchanges of the world would be shaken, there would be failures, hammerings, ruin for those who had ventured into the contest despite the warnings. Then, suddenly, the cascading waves would be stilled. One of the antagonists had gone under.

  A fresh advertisement would appear: “MR. NORDENHOLT HAS CEASED HIS OPERATIONS.” It was a strange requiem over the grave of some king of finance. Nordenholt was always victorious. And with the collapse of his opponent, the small speculators flocked into the markets of the world and completed the downfall.

  Finally, after the gains had been counted, he advertised again asking all those who had involuntarily suffered by his contest to submit their claims to him; and every genuine case was paid in full. He could afford it, no doubt; but how many would have done it? I knew from that move of his that he really spoke the truth when he said that money in itself was nothing to him. And it perhaps illustrates as well as anything the impression he produced upon my mind that afternoon. On the one side he was cold, calculating, pitiless to those whom he regarded as his enemies and the enemies of the smaller investor; on the other, he was full of understanding and compassion for those whom he had maimed in the course of his gigantic operations. The Wheat Trust, the Cotton Combine, Consolidated Industries, the Steel Magnates, and the Associated Railways, all had gone down before him; and he had ground their leaders into the very dust. And in every case, he had opened his campaign as soon as they had shown signs of using their power to oppress the common people. It may have been merely a move in his psychological strategy; he may have waited until the man in the street had begun to be uneasy for the future, so that this great intangible mass of opinion was enlisted on his side. But I prefer to think otherwise and I was associated with Nordenholt in the end as closely as any man. No one ever knew him, no one ever fathomed that personality—of that I am certain. He was always a riddle. But I believe that his cool intelligence, his merciless tactics, all had behind them a depth of understanding and a sympathy with the helpless minority. I know this is almost incredible in face of his record; but I am convinced of its truth.

  “At the end of it all,” he went on, “I can look back and say that my theories were justified. I knew nothing of finance; but I chose my advisers well. I knew what my opponents relied upon and what they regarded as points which could be given up without affecting their general position. The rest was simply a matter of psycholog
y. How could I bring the breaking-strain to bear?

  “Well, when I left it, the financial world had handed over to me a fortune which, I suppose, has seldom been equalled. There was nothing in it, you know, Flint, nothing whatever. It merely happened that I was trained in a way different from everyone else. They were plotting and scheming with shares and stocks and debentures, skying this one, depressing that one, and keeping their attention fixed on the Exchanges. I came to the thing from a different angle. The movements of the markets meant little to me in comparison with the workings of the brains behind those markets. I could foresee the line of their advance; and I knew how to take them in the flank at the right moment. I fought them on ground they could not understand. They knew the mind of the small investor thoroughly, for they had fleeced him again and again. I began by clearing the small speculator off the board; and thus they were deprived of their trump card. They had to fight me instead of ruining him; and they had no idea what I was. It was incredibly simple, when you think of it. That is why you never found anything about my personality in the newspapers. I paid them to leave me alone. No one knew me; and I was able to fight in the dark.

  “But when I grew tired of it at last, I had an enormous fortune. What was I to do with it? Money in itself one can do nothing with. If I were put to it, I doubt if I could spend £5,000 a year and honestly say that I had got value for it—I mean direct personal enjoyment. I cast about for some use to which I could turn this enormous mass of wealth. You may smile, Flint, but it is one of the most difficult problems I ever took up. I hate waste; and I wanted to see some direct, practical value for all these accumulated millions. What was I to do?

  “I looked back on the work of some of my predecessors. Carnegie used to spend his money on libraries; but do libraries yield one any intimate satisfaction? Can one really say that they would give one a feeling that one’s money had been spent to a good purpose? Apparently they did to him; but that sort of thing wouldn’t appeal to me. Then there is art. Pierpont Morgan amassed a huge collection; but there again I don’t feel on safe ground. Is one’s money merely to go in accumulating painted canvas for the elect to pore over? The man in the street cannot appreciate these things even if he could see them. I gave up that idea.

  “Then I came across a life of Cecil Rhodes and he seemed to be more akin to me in some ways. Empire building is a big thing and, if you believe in Empires, it’s a good thing. There is something satisfactory in knowing that you are preparing the way for future generations, laying the foundations in the desert and awaiting the tramp of those far-off generations which will throng the streets of the unbuilt cities. A great dream, Flint. One needs a prospicience and a fund of hope to deal in things like that. But I want to see results in my own day; I want to be sure that I’m on the right lines and not merely rearing a dream-fabric which will fade out and pass away long before it has its chance of materialisation. I want something which I can see in action now and yet something which will go down from generation to generation.

  “I thought long over it, Flint. Time and again I seemed to glimpse what I wanted; and yet it eluded me. Then, suddenly, I realised that I had the very thing at my gates. Youth.

  “All over the world there are youngsters growing up who will be stifled in their development by mere financial troubles. They have the brains and the character to make good in time; but at what a cost! All their best energy goes in fulfilling the requirements of our social system, getting a roof over their heads, climbing the ladder step by step, waiting for dead men’s shoes. Then, when they come to their own, more often than not their heart’s desire has withered. I don’t mean that they are failures; but they have used up their powers in overcoming those minor difficulties which beset us all. It was an essay of Huxley’s that brought the thing clearly before me. ‘If the nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of £100,000 down,’ he said, ‘he would be dirt-cheap at the money.’ And with that, in a flash, I saw my way clear. I would go about in search of these potential leaders among our youth. My peculiar insight would suffice to keep me on the right lines there. I would make the way easy for them, but not too easy. I would test and re-test them till I was sure of them. And then I would give them all that they desired and open up the world to them to work out their destinies.

  “I did it in time. Even now I’m only at the beginning of the experiment, but already I feel that I have spent my money well. I have given a push to things; and although I can see no further than this generation, I know that I have opened a road for the next. Each of them is a centre for others to congregate around and so the thing spreads like the circles in a pool. I have thrown in the stone; but long after I am gone the waves will be beating outward and breaking upon unknown shores . . .”

  He paused and seemed to fall into a day-dream for a few moments. Then he spoke again.

  “That was the origin of my young men, Flint; the Nordenholt gang”—he sneered perceptibly at the words. “Many of them have gone down in the race. One cannot foresee everything, you know, try as one may. But the residuum are a picked lot. They are scattered throughout all the industries and professions of the Empire; and all of them are far up in their own pursuits. I often wondered whether anything would come of it in my day beyond individual successes; but now I see a culmination before me. We shall all go up side by side to Armageddon and my own men will be with me in this struggle against the darkness. Man never put his hand to a bigger task than this in front of us; and I shall need my young men to help me. If we fail, the Earth falls back beyond the Eolithic Age once more and Man has lived in vain.”

  His voice had risen with pride as he spoke of his helpers; but at the close I heard again the sub-current of sadness come into the deep tones. I had been jarred by his exposition at the meeting, by his apparent callousness in outlook; but now I thought I saw behind the mask.

  Again he sat pondering for some moments; but at last he threw off his preoccupation; and when he spoke it was more directly to me than hitherto.

  “Possibly you may wonder, Flint, why it is that with all these resources in my hands I have come to you for help; and why I have never approached you before. The fact is, I watched you from your start and stood by to help you if you needed me; but you made good alone, and I never interfere with a man unless it is absolutely necessary. You made good without my assistance; and I thought too well of you to offer any. But I watched you, as I said—I have my own ways of getting information—and I knew that you were just the man I required for a particular section of the work in front of us. Your factory organisation showed me that. There will be an enormous task before you; but I know that you’ll be the right man in the right place. I never make a mistake, when it is a case of this kind. You aren’t an untried man.”

  From anyone else, I would have regarded this as clumsy flattery; but so great an influence had Nordenholt acquired over me even in that single afternoon that I never looked at the matter in that light at all. His manner showed no patronage or admiration; it seemed merely that he was stating facts as he knew them, without caring much about my opinion.

  “But it seems to me,” he went on, “that I’ve talked enough about personal affairs already. I want to try to give you some views on the main thing in front of us. You and I, Flint, have been born and grown up in the midst of this civilisation; and I expect that you, like most other people, have been oblivious of the changes which have come about; for they have been so gradual that very few of us have noticed them at all.

  “When you begin low down in the scale of Creation, you find creatures without any specialised organs. The simplest living things are just spots of protoplasm, mere aggregations of cells, each of which performs functions common to them all. Then, step by step as you rise in the scale, specialisation sets in: the cells become differentiated from one another; and each performs a function of its own. You get the cells of the nerves receiving and transmitting sensation; you get cells engaged in nutrition processes; there are other ce
lls devoted to producing motion. And with this specialisation you get the dawn of something which apparently did not exist before: the structure as a whole acquires a personality of its own, distinct from the individualities of the cells which go to build it up.

  “But the inverse process is also possible. When the body as a whole suffers death, you still have a certain period during which the cells have an existence.

  “Now if you look at the trend of civilisation, you will see that we are passing into a stage of specialisation. In the Middle Ages, a man might be a celebrated artist and yet be in the forefront of the science of his day—like Leonardo da Vinci; but in our time you seldom find a man who is first-class in more than one line. In the national body, each individual citizen is a specialised cell; and if he diverged from his normal functions he would disorganise the machine, just as a cancer cell disorganises the body in which it grows.

  “But this civilisation of ours has come to the edge of its grave. It is going to die. There is no help for it. What I fear is that in its death-throe it may destroy even the hope of a newer and perhaps better civilisation in the future. It is going to starve to death; and a starving organism is desperate. So long as it retains its present organised and coherent life, it will be a danger to us; and for our own safety—I mean the safety of the future generations—we must disorganise it as soon as possible. We must throw it back at a step, if we can, to the old unspecialised conditions; for then it will lose its most formidable powers and break up of itself. Did you ever read Hobbes? He thought of the State as a great Leviathan, an artificial man of greater strength and stature than the natural man, for whose protection and defence it was contrived; and the soul of this artificial creature he found in sovereignty. How can we bring about the debacle of this huge organism? That is the problem I have been facing this afternoon.