"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автораmachine and the work it was intended to do. "It's the most perfect thing
of its kind I've ever seen," he said with the air of one who has spent his life as an expert examiner of machinery. Then, to the amazement of every one, he produced sheets covered with figures estimating the cost of manufacturing the machine. To the men present it seemed as though the question as to the practicability of the machine had already been settled. The sheets covered with figures made the actual beginning of manufacturing seem near at hand. Without raising his voice and quite as a matter of course, Steve proposed that the men present subscribe each three thousand dollars to the stock of a promotion company, the money to be used to perfect the machine and put it actually to work in the fields, while a larger company for the building of a factory was being organized. For the three thousand dollars each of the men would receive later six thousand dollars in stock in the larger company. They would make one hundred per cent. on their first investment. As for himself he owned the invention and it was very valuable. He had already received many offers from other men in other places. He wanted to stick to his own town and to the men who had known him since he was a boy. He would retain a controlling interest in the larger company and that would enable him to take care of his friends. John Clark he proposed to make treasurer of the promotion company. Every one could see he would be the right man. Gordon Hart should be manager. Tom Butterworth could, if he could find time to give it, help him in the actual organization of the larger company. He did not propose to do anything in a small way. Much stock would have to be sold to farmers, as well as to townspeople, and he could see no reason why a certain commission for the The four men came out of the back room of the bank just as the storm that had all day been threatening broke on Main Street. They stood together by the front window and watched the people skurry along past the stores homeward-bound from the circus. Farmers jumping into their wagons started their horses away on the trot. The whole street was populous with people shouting and running. To an observing person standing at the bank window, Bidwell, Ohio, might have seemed no longer a quiet town filled with people who lived quiet lives and thought quiet thoughts, but a tiny section of some giant modern city. The sky was extraordinarily black as from the smoke of a mill. The hurrying people might have been workmen escaping from the mill at the end of the day. Clouds of dust swept through the street. Steve Hunter's imagination was aroused. For some reason the black clouds of dust and the running people gave him a tremendous sense of power. It almost seemed to him that he had filled the sky with clouds and that something latent in him had startled the people. He was anxious to get away from the men who had just agreed to join him in his first great industrial adventure. He felt that they were after all mere puppets, creatures he could use, men who were being swept along by him as the people running along the streets were being swept along by the storm. He and the storm were in a way akin to each other. He had an impulse to be alone with the storm, to walk dignified and upright in the face of it as he felt that in the future he would walk dignified and upright in the face of men. |
|
|