thane became vice-president also of the american steel company. its capacity was greater than the need was for wire to make nails. for this reason the n. a. m. co. enlarged its scope and began to make steel wire for all purposes, especially for that distinctively american product called barbed wire which ran the first year into thousands of miles of farm fencing. it was cheaper than the rude, picturesque rail fence which it immediately superseded and at the same time appealed in an unaccountable manner to the yankee sense of humor.

steel wire was indispensable to the steel age. there were bridges to be cast in the air like cobwebs, chasms to be spanned, a thousand giants to be snared in their sleep with threads of steel wire, single, double, or twisted by hundreds into cables. enough of them would make a rope strong enough to halt the world in its flight if one end could be made fast in space. there could never have been a steel age without steel wire. but the steel age required first of all steel rails to run on. john saw this clearly. iron rails wore out too fast under the increasing weight of trains; besides, the time had almost come when they simply couldn’t be made in quantities sufficient to meet the uncontrollable expansion of the railroad system. the importation of steel[245] rails over the high tariff wall was increasing. american steel rails had been made experimentally, were still being made, but they were variable and much distrusted. when they were good they were excellent. they were just as likely to be very bad. they could not be guaranteed, owing to the variableness of steel obtained in this country by the bessemer process.

this factor of variability was now eliminated by thane’s celebrated mixer. for the first time there was the certainty of being able to produce american steel rails that would not only outwear iron as iron outwears oak, that would not only not break, that would not only be satisfactory when they were good, but rails that would be always the same and always good. it was natural that the american steel company should turn to rails. john knew the rail business upside down. he believed in railroads. when other people were thinking railroad building had been overdone he said it had not really begun. he imagined the possibility that the locomotive would double in size.

it did. then it doubled again. it could not have done so without steel rails under its feet, and if it had not doubled and then doubled again this now would be a german world. democracy even then was shaping its weapons for armageddon through men who knew nothing about it. they were free egoists, seeking profit, power, personal success, everyone attending to his own greatness. never before in the world had the practise of individualism been so reckless, so purely dynamic, so heedless of the devil’s harvest. yet it happened,—it precisely happened,—that they forged[246] the right weapons. it seems sometimes to matter very little what men think. they very often do the right thing for wrong reasons. it seems to matter even less why they work. all that the great law of becoming requires is that men shall work. they cannot go wrong really. they cannot make wrong things. the pattern is foreordained.

knowing what difficulties lay in the path of the steel rail,—knowing them very well indeed, since many of them were of his own work,—john executed a brilliant preliminary maneuver. the point of it was to create his market beforehand. with that in view he persuaded the officials of several large railroads to take ground floor shares in the north american steel company. its capitalization was increased for that purpose. thus not only was capital provided toward the building of a great rail making addition to the plant but powerful railroad men now had a participating interest in the success of the steel rail.

meanwhile others also had discovered true steel formulas. as usual in such cases many hands were pressing against the door. once the latch is lifted the door flies open for everyone. and then it appears that all the time there were several ways to have done it. thane’s way was not the only way. he had been the one to see where the cause of variableness lay. after that there could be several methods of casting it out. so the american steel company had competition almost from the start. however, as its rails were all bespoken by the railroads whose officials were stockholders, and as in any case the demand for rails was[247] increasing very fast, there would have been prosperity for everyone if enoch gib had not been mad.

no sooner had the american steel company begun to produce rails than enoch did with iron rails as he had done before with iron nails. he began to sell the famous damascus iron rail at a ruinous price. the steel rail makers had to meet him. then he lowered his price again, and again, and still again, all the time increasing his output, until there was no profit in rails for anybody.

john knew what it cost to make damascus rails. enoch was selling them actually at a loss.

the fact that puissant railroad officials were stockholders in the american steel company counted for less and less. though they might prefer steel rails for both personal and intrinsic reasons, still they could not spend their railroad’s money for steel rails with the famous damascus rail selling at a price that made it a preposterous bargain. there was a panic in pittsburgh.

john’s emotions were those of jonah riding the storm with an innocent face and a sense of guilt at his heart. he made no doubt that enoch had set out deliberately to ruin the steel rail industry and would if need be commit financial suicide to accomplish that end. nobody else knew or suspected the truth. john could not publish it.

other steel rail makers quit. they could not stand the loss. and there it lay between enoch and john. enoch’s mind was governed by two passions. one was his hatred of steel. the other was his hatred of john,[248] who symbolized aaron. he had the advantage of a fixed daemonic purpose. his strength was unknown. how long he might last even john could not guess.

in the fight over nails john’s rule had been defensive. it had to be. but here there was choice. his resources now were so much greater that a policy of reprisals might be considered. if enoch were determined to find his own breaking point the sooner the end the better for everyone else. the american steel company could slaughter rails, too, increasing both its own loss and enoch’s, and thus foreshorten the agony. but when it came to the point of adopting an offensive course john wavered. he could not bring himself to do it. never had he hated enoch. so far from that, his feeling for him was one of unreasoning pity. the old man probably would not survive bankruptcy. it would kill him. “therefore,” said john, “let him bring it about in his own time.”

and so it was that a lone and dreadful man, stalking day and night through the new damascus iron mill like a tormented apparition, goading his men to the point of frenzy, using them up and casting them off, yet holding them to it by force of contempt for fibre that snapped,—that one man in a spirit of madness frustrated the steel age and made it to limp on iron rails long after the true steel to shoe it with had been available. in all the histories of iron and steel you read men’s blank amazement at the fact that it took so many years for the steel rail, once perfected, to supersede the iron rail. they cannot account for it.

at about this time a committee of new damascus[249] business men went forth to investigate the subject of steel. enoch caused this to be done. his mood was one of exulting. many had begun to believe that steel might overthrow iron. he was resolved to put that heresy down. he chose the right time. the committee going to and fro saw steel rail plants lying idle; it found the steel people in despair, terrorized by enoch. it returned to new damascus and saw with its own eyes on enoch’s books how the output of iron rails was increasing. who would go behind such evidence? the committee reported that steel would never supersede iron. except perhaps in some special uses, iron was forever paramount. it adopted a resolution in praise of enoch, who had made new damascus the iron town it was, and disbanded.

the sun of new damascus was then at its zenith and the days of enoch were few to run. he lived them out consistently. no man saw him but in his strength. his weakness was invisible like his nakedness. his end was as that of the oak that once more flings back the storm, then suddenly falls of its own weight. never had his power seemed so immeasurable as at its breaking point.

for all that john could or could not do, the american steel company came itself to the brink. it could not forever go on making steel rails at a loss. how far short of bankruptcy would it give up the struggle and stop? the rocks were already in sight. seeing them clearly, john did not act. he stood still and waited as if fascinated. the longer he waited the more desperate was the chance of saving the company.[250] its credit was sinking. all of this he saw. “then what am i waiting for?” he would ask himself, and postpone the answer. twice he had called the directors together to lay before them a plan of salvage, which was the abandon rail making and convert the plant to other uses; and each time at the last minute he changed his mind.

one morning at breakfast he was electrified by a single black line in his newspaper.

“damascus mill closes.”

beneath it was this dispatch:

“new damascus, june 11.—the damascus mill closed down last night in all departments for the first time in its history. there is no explanation. enoch gib is understood to be ill.”

john knew what this meant. the end had come. having verified the news by telegraph he went to slaymaker and told him for the first time enough of the history of new damascus and its people to illuminate what had been going on.

“why do you tell me this now?” slaymaker asked.

“isn’t it a great relief?” said john. “the ghastly game that’s nearly ruined us is at an end.”

“there’s some other reason,” slaymaker insisted.

“you have lost a lot of money with me in american steel,” john said. “now of course it will all come back. still, you might be able to turn this information to special advantage. there are two or three idle rail mills that could be picked up for nothing.”

[251]

slaymaker took time to reflect.

“go ahead,” he said. “i’ll help.”

john shook his head.

“it’s an apple i don’t like the taste of. if i were in your place i’d know what to do. that’s why i have told you. but leave me out of it entirely.”

“i can’t for the life of me see why you shouldn’t,” said slaymaker.

“neither can i,” said john. “there’s no reason. say i’m superstitious and let it drop.”

“there’s nothing the matter with the apple though?” asked slaymaker.

“not for you,” said john.

he left the banker on the edge of his chair. when he arrived at his own office thane was there waiting.

“we’ve got a telegram enoch is dying. thought maybe as you would go along with us.”

“how does mrs. thane take it?”

“cold and still,” said thane. “but you can’t tell.”

“does she want me to go?”

“she knows i’m asking you,” said thane. “there’s just time. she’s at the depot.”

john turned and went with him.