Part 20

Well, Alibi had never gotten one of these five-dollar bills, because he was usually in just before Saint Peter closed the gate. Several times he had been reproved, and once Mr. Armour had said, "Tom, be late once more and you are a has-wazzer." Shortly after this, one night, Alibi Tom had a half-dozen stockmen to entertain. They had gone to Hooley's and Sam T. Jack's, then to the Athletic Club and then they called on Hinky Dink and "Bath-House John," the famous Cook County literary light. Where else they had gone they could not remember. It was about three o'clock in the morning, when it came over Tom like a pall that if he started for home now and went to bed he would surely be late again and it might cost him his job. He proposed that they make a night of it. The stockmen were quite willing. They headed for the Stockyards, stopping along the way to make little visits on certain celebrities. At five o'clock they reached the Armour plant, and Tom stowed his friends away with the help of a friendly watchman. Then he made for the shower-bath, rubbed down, drank two cups of coffee and went to his desk. It was just six-thirty, and being Winter, was yet dark. He hadn't any more than yawned twice and stretched himself, wondering if he could hold out until noon, when he heard the quick step of "the old man." Tom crouched over his pretended work like a devilfish devouring its prey. He never looked up, he was that busy. Mr. Armour stopped, stared, came closer--yes, it was Tom, the late Alibi Tom, the chronic delinquent. "Well, well, well, Tom, the Lord be praised! You have given yourself a hunch at last--keep this!" And Armour handed out a brand-new, crisp, five-dollar bill. Tom had now set a stake for himself--and it was up to him to make good, die or hike. He decided to make good. The next month his pay was raised twenty-five dollars, and it has been climbing a little every year since. * * * * * Philip D. Armour was a man of big mental and physical resources--big in brain, rich in vital power, bold in initiative, yet cautious. He had two peculiar characteristics--he refused to own more land than he could use. His second peculiarity was that his only stimulant was tea. If he had an unusually big problem to pass upon, he cut down his food and increased his tea. Tea was his tipple. It opened up his mental pores and gave him cosmic consciousness. Armour had so much personality--so much magnetism--that he had but few competitors in his business. One of these was Nelson Morris. Now, Morris was a type of man that Armour had never met. Morris was a Jew, a Bavarian, who affected music, art and philosophy. Nelson Morris, small, smooth of face, humming bars from Bach and quoting Schopenhauer, buying hogs at the Chicago Stockyards and then killing these hogs for the gastronomical delectation of Christians, was a sort of all-round Judaic genius. The Mosaic Law forbids the Jews eating pork, but it places no ban or bar on their dealing in it. Nelson Morris bought hogs at four A. M., or as soon as it was light. Armour found him at it when he arrived, and Philip Armour was usually the earliest bird on the job. Yet Armour wasn't afraid of Morris--the Jew merely perplexed him. One day Armour said to MacDowell, his secretary, "I say, Mac, Nelson doesn't need a guardian!" The Jew was getting on the Armour nerves--just a little. Armour was always on friendly terms with his competitors. As a matter of fact, he was on friendly terms with everybody--he had no grouch and never got in a grump. Socially he was irresistible. He got up close--invited confidence--made friends and held them. There was never a man he wouldn't speak to. He was above jealousy and beyond hate; yet, of course, when it came to a show-down, he might hit awfully hard and quick, but he always passed out his commercial wallop with a smile. When Sullivan met Corbett at New Orleans, Gentleman Jim landed the champion a terrific jolt with his right, smiled sweetly and said, "To think, John, of your coming all the way from Boston to get that--also this"; then he gave him another with his left. One morning, at daylight, when Morris got to the Stockyards, he found all the pens empty. Armour and his pig-buyers had been around with lanterns all night hunting up the owners and bulling the market. "To think," said Armour to Morris, "to think of your coming all the way from Bavaria hoping to get the start of me!" Both men smiled serenely. The next week whole train-loads of pigs were coming to Chicago consigned to Nelson Morris. He had sent his agents out and was buying of the farmers, direct. Soon after, Armour casually met Morris and suggested that they lunch together that day. The Jew smiled assent. He had scored a point--Armour had come to him. So they lunched together. The Jew ate very little. Both men talked, but said nothing. They were waiting. The Jew ate little, but he drank three cups of tea. Armour insisted on paying the check, excused himself somewhat abruptly, and hurried to his office. He sent for his lieutenants. They came quickly, and Armour said: "Boys, I've just lunched with Nelson Morris. I think we'd better come to an understanding with him as to a few things we shall do and a few we shall not do--he drinks nothing but tea." * * * * * Prior to the invention of the refrigerator-car, the business of the packer was to cure salt meats and pack them for transportation. Besides this, he supplied the local market with fresh meats. Up to the early Eighties fresh meat was not shipped any distance except in midwinter, and then as frozen meat. Surplus Western cattle were shipped East alive--and subject to heavy risks, shrinkage and expense. About fifty per cent of the live weight was dressed beef--balance non-edible--so double freight was paid on the edible portion. Could this freight be saved? About this time Hammond, of Detroit, mounted a refrigerator on car-wheels, loaded it with dressed beef and headed it for New York, where the condition of the meat on arrival satisfied every one in the trade except the local slaughterer. The car was crude--but it turned the trick--a new era had arrived. The corn-belt came into its own. "Corn was King"--the steer, the heir apparent. Phil Armour saw the point. Pay freight on edible portions only. Save the waste. Make more out of the critter than the competitor can. Pay more for him--get him. Sell the meat for less. Get the business--grow. And he got busy perfecting the refrigerator-car. Armour called together railroadmen and laid the project before them. They objected that a car, for instance, sent from Chicago to New York would require to be iced several times during the journey, otherwise there might be the loss of the entire load. A car of beef was worth fifteen hundred dollars. The freight was two hundred dollars or less. The railroadmen raised their hands in horror. Besides transporting goods they would have to turn insurance company. Armour still insisted that they could and should provide suitable cars for their patrons. The railroadmen then came back with this rejoinder: "You make your own cars and we will haul them, provided you will ask us to incur only the ordinary risks of transportation." Armour accepted the challenge--it was the only thing to do. He made one car, and then twenty. Fresh beef was shipped from Chicago to New York, and arrived in perfect order. To ship live cattle long distances, he knew was unwise. And he then declared that Omaha, Kansas City, Saint Paul and various other cities of the West would yet have great slaughter-houses, where livestock could be received after a very short haul. The product could then be passed along in refrigerator-cars, and the expense of ice would not be so much as to unload and feed the stock. But better than all, the product would be more wholesome. Armour began to manufacture refrigerator-cars. He offered to sell these to railroad-companies. A few railroads bought cars, and after a few months proposed to sell them back to Armour--the expense and work of operating them required too much care and attention. Shippers would not ship unless it was guaranteed that the car would be re-iced, and that it would arrive at its destination within a certain time. In the Fall, fresh peaches were being shipped across the lake to Chicago from Michigan. If the peaches were one night on the way they arrived in good order. This gave Armour an idea--he sent a couple of refrigerator-cars around to Saint Joseph, loaded them with fresh peaches, and shipped them to Boston. He sent a man with the cars who personally attended to icing the cars, just as we used to travel in the caboose to look after the livestock. The peaches reached Boston, cool and fresh, and were sold in an hour at a good profit. At once there was a demand for refrigerator-cars from Michigan: the new way opened the markets of America to the producer of fruits and vegetables. There was a clamorous demand for refrigerator-cars. The reason a railroad can not afford to have its own refrigerator-cars is because the fruit or berry season in any one place is short. For instance, six weeks covers the grape period of the Lake Erie grape-belt; one month is about the limit on Michigan peaches; strawberries from Southern Illinois are gone in two or three weeks. Therefore, to handle the cars advantageously, the railroads find it much better to rent them, or simply to haul them on a mileage. The business is a specialty in itself, and requires most astute generalship to make it pay. Cars have to be sent to Alabama in February and March; North Carolina a little later; then West Virginia. These same cars then do service in the Fall in Michigan. It naturally follows that much of the time cars have to be hauled empty, and this is a fact that few people figure on when computing receipts from tonnage. Now, instead of the good old way of sending a man in charge, there are icing-stations, where the car is looked for, thoroughly examined and cared for as a woman would look after a baby. In order to bring apples from Utah to Colorado, and oranges from California to Arizona, icehouses have to be built on the desert at vast expense. And this in a climate where frost is unknown. To work the miracle of modern industrialism requires the help of bespectacled scientists from Germany, and a fine army of artists, poets, painters, plumbers, doctors, lawyers, beside the workers in wood and metals. The whole business is a creation, and a beneficent one. It has opened up vast territories to the farmer, gardener and stock-raiser, where before cactus and sagebrush were supreme; and the prairie-dog and his chum, the rattlesnake, held undisputed sway. To the wealth of the world it has added untold millions, not to mention the matters of health, hygiene and happiness for the people. * * * * * The Scotch-Irish blood carries a mighty persistent corpuscle. It is the blood that made the Duke of Wellington, Lord "Bobs," Robert Fulton, James Oliver, James J. Hill, Cyrus Hall McCormick and Thomas A. Edison. It makes fighters, inventors and creators--stubborn men who never know when they are licked. They can live on nothing and follow an idea to its lair. They laugh at difficulties, grow fat on opposition, and obstacle only inspires them to renewed efforts. Yet their fight is fair, and in the true type there is a delicate sense of personal honor which only the strong possess. Philip D. Armour's word was his bond. He never welched, and even his most persistent enemies never accused him of double-dealing. When he fought, it was in the open, and he fought to a finish. Then when his adversary cried, "Enough!" he w