"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

machine 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
selling of stock should not be paid.

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.