The Genius (53 page)

"If I were you, Mrs. Witla, I would see a doctor," she suggested
one day. "He can tell you. I'm sure you can if you want to. They
have so many ways of dieting and exercising you which make all the
difference in the world. I'd like to have you come some day and see
my doctor, if you will."

Angela decided that she would, for curiosity's sake, and in case
she wished to act in the matter some time; and was informed by the
wiseacre who examined her that in his opinion there was no doubt
that she could. She would have to subject herself to a strict
regimen. Her muscles would have to be softened by some form of
manipulation. Otherwise, she was apparently in a healthy, normal
condition and would suffer no intolerable hardship. This pleased
and soothed Angela greatly. It gave her a club wherewith to strike
her lord—a chain wherewith to bind him. She did not want to act at
once. It was too serious a matter. She wanted time to think. But it
was pleasant to know that she could do this. Unless Eugene sobered
down now——

During the time in which he had been working for the Summerfield
Company and since then for the Kalvin Company here in Philadelphia,
Eugene, in spite of the large salary he was receiving—more each
year—really had not saved so much money. Angela had seen to it that
some of his earnings were invested in Pennsylvania Railroad stock,
which seemed to her safe enough, and in a plot of ground two
hundred by two hundred feet at Upper Montclair, New Jersey, near
New York, where she and Eugene might some day want to live. His
business engagements had necessitated considerable personal
expenditures, his opportunity to enter the Baltusrol Golf Club, the
Yere Tennis Club, the Philadelphia Country Club, and similar
organizations had taken annual sums not previously contemplated,
and the need of having a modest automobile, not a touring car, was
obvious. His short experience with that served as a lesson,
however, for it was found to be a terrific expense, entirely
disproportionate to his income. After paying for endless repairs,
salarying a chauffeur wearisomely, and meeting with an accident
which permanently damaged the looks of his machine, he decided to
give it up. They could rent autos for all the uses they would have.
And so that luxury ended there.

It was curious, too, how during this time their Western home
relations fell rather shadowily into the background. Eugene had not
been home now for nearly two years, and Angela had seen only David
of all her family since she had been in Philadelphia. In the fall
of their third year there Angela's mother died and she returned to
Blackwood for a short time. The following spring Eugene's father
died. Myrtle moved to New York; her husband, Frank Bangs, was
connected with a western furniture company which was maintaining
important show rooms in New York. Myrtle had broken down nervously
and taken up Christian Science, Eugene heard. Henry Burgess,
Sylvia's husband, had become president of the bank with which he
had been so long connected, and had sold his father's paper, the
Alexandria
Appeal
, when the latter suddenly died. Marietta
was promising to come to Philadelphia next year, in order, as she
said, that Eugene might get her a rich husband; but Angela informed
him privately that Marietta was now irrevocably engaged and would,
the next year, marry a wealthy Wisconsin lumber man. Everyone was
delighted to hear that Eugene was doing so well, though all
regretted the lapse of his career as an artist. His fame as an
advertising man was growing, and he was thought to have
considerable weight in the editorial direction of the
North
American Weekly
. So he flourished.

It was in the fall of the third year that the most flattering
offer of any was made him, and that without any seeking on his
part, for he was convinced that he had found a fairly permanent
berth and was happy among his associates. Publishing and other
trade conditions were at this time in a peculiar condition, in
which lieutenants of any importance in any field might well be
called to positions of apparently extraordinary prominence and
trust. Most of the great organizations of Eugene's day were already
reaching a point where they were no longer controlled by the
individuals who had founded and constructed them, but had passed
into the hands of sons or holding companies, or groups of
stockholders, few of whom knew much, if anything, of the businesses
which they were called to engineer and protect.

Hiram C. Colfax was not a publisher at all at heart. He had come
into control of the Swinton-Scudder-Davis Company by one of those
curious manipulations of finance which sometimes give the care of
sheep into the hands of anything but competent or interested
shepherds. Colfax was sufficiently alert to handle anything in such
a way that it would eventually make money for him, even if that
result were finally attained by parting with it. In other words, he
was a financier. His father had been a New England soap
manufacturer, and having accumulated more or less radical ideas
along with his wealth, had decided to propagandize in favor of
various causes, the Single Tax theory of Henry George for one,
Socialism for another, the promotion of reform ideas in politics
generally. He had tried in various ways to get his ideas before the
public, but had not succeeded very well. He was not a good speaker,
not a good writer, simply a good money maker and fairly capable
thinker, and this irritated him. He thought once of buying or
starting a newspaper in Boston, but investigation soon showed him
that this was a rather hazardous undertaking. He next began
subsidizing small weeklies which should advocate his reforms, but
this resulted in little. His interest in pamphleteering did bring
his name to the attention of Martin W. Davis of the
Swinton-Scudder-Davis Company, whose imprint on books, magazines
and weeklies was as common throughout the length and breadth of the
land as that of Oxford is upon the English bible.

The Swinton-Scudder-Davis Company was in sad financial straits.
Intellectually, for various reasons, it had run to seed. John Jacob
Swinton and Owen V. Scudder, the men with book, magazine and true
literary instincts, were long since dead. Mr. Davis had tried for
the various heirs and assigns involved to run it intelligently and
honestly, but intelligence and honesty were of little value in this
instance without great critical judgment. This he had not. The
house had become filled with editors, readers, critics, foremen of
manufacturing and printing departments, business managers, art
directors, traveling salesmen and so on without end, each of whom
might be reasonably efficient if left alone, but none of whom
worked well together and all of whom used up a great deal of
money.

The principal literary publication, a magazine of great
prestige, was in the hands of an old man who had been editor for
nearly forty years. A weekly was being run by a boy, comparatively,
a youth of twenty-nine. A second magazine, devoted to adventure
fiction, was in the hands of another young man of twenty-six, a
national critical monthly was in the hands of salaried critics of
great repute and uncompromising attitude. The book department was
divided into the hands of a juvenile editor, a fiction editor, a
scientific and educational editor and so on. It was Mr. Davis' task
to see that competent overseers were in charge of all departments
so that they might flourish and work harmoniously under him, but he
was neither sufficiently wise or forceful to fill the rôle. He was
old and was veered about first by one theory and then by another,
and within the house were rings and cliques. One of the most
influential of these—the most influential, in fact—was one which
was captained and led by Florence J. White, an Irish-American, who
as business manager (and really more than that, general manager
under Davis) was in charge of the manufacturing and printing
departments, and who because of his immense budgets for paper, ink,
printing, mailing and distribution generally, was in practical
control of the business.

He it was who with Davis' approval said how much was to be paid
for paper, ink, composition, press work, and salaries generally. He
it was who through his henchman, the head of the printing
department, arranged the working schedules by which the magazines
and books were to reach the presses, with the practical power to
say whether they were to be on time or not. He it was who through
another superintendent supervised the mailing and the stock room,
and by reason of his great executive ability was coming to have a
threatening control over the advertising and circulation
departments.

The one trouble with White, and this was something which would
affect any man who should come in through Davis' auspices, was that
he knew nothing of art, literature, or science, and cared less, his
only interest being in manufacture. He had risen so rapidly on the
executive side that his power had outrun his financial means.
Davis, the present head above him, had no means beyond his own
depreciated share. Because of poor editorial judgment, the books
and magazines were tottering through a serious loss of prestige to
eventual failure. Something had to be done, for at that time the
expenditure for three years past had been much greater than the
receipts.

So Marshall P. Colfax, the father of Hiram Colfax, had been
appealed to, because of his interest in reform ideas which might be
to a certain extent looked upon as related to literature, and
because he was reported to be a man of great wealth. Rumor reported
his fortune as being anywhere between six and eight millions. The
proposition which Davis had to put before him was this: that he buy
from the various heirs and assigns the whole of the stock outside
his (Davis') own, which amounted to somewhere about sixty-five per
cent, and then come in as managing director and reorganize the
company to suit himself. Davis was old. He did not want to trouble
himself about the future of this company or risk his own
independent property. He realized as well as anyone that what the
company needed was new blood. A receivership at this juncture would
injure the value of the house imprint very much indeed. White had
no money, and besides he was so new and different that Davis
scarcely understood what his ambitions or his true importance might
be. There was no real intellectual sympathy between them. In the
main, he did not like White's temperament, and so in considering
what might be done for the company he passed him by.

Various consultations were held. Colfax was greatly flattered to
think that this proposition should be brought to his attention at
all. He had three sons, only one of whom was interested in the soap
business. Edward and Hiram, the two youngest, wanted nothing to do
with it. He thought this might be an outlet for the energies of one
or both of them, preferably Hiram, who was more of an intellectual
and scientific turn than the others, though his chief interests
were financial; and besides these books and publications would give
him the opportunity which he had long been seeking. His personal
prestige might be immensely heightened thereby. He examined
carefully into the financial phases of the situation, using his son
Hiram, whose financial judgment he had faith in, as an accountant
and mouthpiece, and finally, after seeing that he could secure the
stock on a long-time consideration for a very moderate
valuation—$1,500,000, while it was worth $3,000,000—he had his son
Hiram elected director and president and proceeded to see what
could be done with the company.

In this approaching transaction Florence J. White had seen his
opportunity and seized it. He had realized on sight that Hiram
would need and possibly appreciate all the information and
assistance he could get, and being in a position to know he had
laid all the facts in connection with the house plainly before him.
He saw clearly where the trouble lay, the warring factions, the
lack of editorial judgment, the poor financial manipulations. He
knew exactly where the stock was and by what representations it
could be best frightened and made to release itself cheaply. He
worked vigorously for Hiram because he liked him and the latter
reciprocated his regard.

"You've been a prince in this transaction, White," he said to
that individual one day. "You've put things practically in my
hands. I'm not going to forget it."

"Don't mention it," said White. "It's to my interest to see a
real live man come in here."

"When I become president, you become vice-president, and that
means twenty-five thousand a year." White was then getting
twelve.

"When I become vice-president nothing will ever happen to your
interests," returned the other man grimly. White was six feet tall,
lean, savage, only semi-articulate. Colfax was small, wiry,
excitable, with enough energy to explode a cartridge by yelling at
it. He was eager, vainglorious, in many respects brilliant. He
wanted to shine in the world, and he did not know how to do it as
yet exactly.

The two shook hands firmly.

Some three months later Colfax was duly elected director and
president, and the same meeting that elected him president elected
Florence J. White vice-president. The latter was for clearing out
all the old elements and letting in new blood. Colfax was for going
slow, until he could see for himself what he wanted to do. One or
two men were eliminated at once, an old circulation man and an old
advertising man. In six months, while they were still contemplating
additional changes and looking for new men, Colfax senior died, and
the Swinton-Scudder-Davis Company, or at least Mr. Colfax's control
of it, was willed to Hiram. So he sat there, accidentally
president, and in full charge, wondering how he should make it a
great success, and Florence J. White was his henchman and sworn
ally.

At the time that Colfax first heard of Eugene he had been in
charge of the Swinton-Scudder-Davis Company (which he was planning
to reincorporate as "The United Magazines Corporation") for three
years. He had made a number of changes, some radical, some
conservative. He had put in an advertising man whom he was now
finding unsatisfactory, and had made changes in the art and
editorial departments which were more the result of the suggestions
of others, principally of White, than the thoughts of his own
brain. Martin W. Davis had retired. He was old and sick, and
unwilling to ruminate in a back-room position. Such men as the
editor of the
National Review
,
Swinton's
Magazine
, and
Scudder's Weekly
were the only figures
of importance about the place, and they were now of course
immensely subsidiary to Hiram Colfax and Florence White.

The latter had introduced a rather hard, bitter atmosphere into
the place. He had been raised under difficult conditions himself in
a back street in Brooklyn, and had no sympathy with the airs and
intellectual insipidities which characterized the editorial and
literary element which filled the place. He had an Irishman's love
of organization and politics, but far and away above that he had an
Irishman's love of power. Because of the trick he had scored in
winning the favor of Hiram Colfax at the time when the tremendous
affairs of the concern were in a state of transition, he had become
immensely ambitious. He wanted to be not nominally but actually
director of the affairs of this house under Colfax, and he saw his
way clear to do it by getting editors, art directors, department
heads and assistants generally who were agreeable to him. But
unfortunately he could not do this directly, for while Colfax cared
little about the details of the business his hobby was just this
one thing—men. Like Obadiah Kalvin, of the Kalvin Publishing
Company, who, by the way, was now his one great rival, Colfax
prided himself on his ability to select men. His general idea was
that if he could find one more man as good as Florence White to
take charge of the art, editorial and book end of the business, not
from the manufacturing and commercial, but from the intellectual
and spiritual ends—a man with ideas who would draw to him authors,
editors, scientific writers and capable assistants generally—the
fortune of the house would be made. He thought, sanely enough from
some points of view, that this publishing world could be divided in
this way. White bringing the inside manufacturing, purchasing and
selling interests to a state of perfection; the new man, whoever he
might be, bringing the ideas of the house and their literary and
artistic representation up to such a state of efficiency that the
whole country would know that it was once more powerful and
successful. He wanted to be called the foremost publisher of his
day, and then he could retire gracefully or devote himself to other
financial matters as he pleased.

He really did not understand Florence J. White as well as he did
himself. White was a past master at dissembling. He had no desire
to see any such thing as Colfax was now planning come to pass. He
could not do the things intellectually and spiritually which Colfax
wanted done, nevertheless he wanted to be king under this emperor,
the real power behind the throne, and he did not propose to brook
any interference if he could help it. It was in his power, having
the printing and composing room in his hands, to cause any man whom
he greatly disliked to suffer severely. Forms could be delayed,
material lost, complaints lodged as to dilatoriness in the matter
of meeting schedules, and so on, ad infinitum. He had the
Irishman's love of chicanery in the matter of morals. If he could
get at an enemy's record and there was a flaw in it, the facts were
apt to become mysteriously known at the most inconvenient times. He
demanded the utmost loyalty of those who worked under him. If a man
did not know enough instinctively to work intelligently for his
interests, while at the same time appearing to serve the interests
of the house at large only, he was soon dismissed on one pretext or
another. Intelligent department heads, not sure of their own
strength and seeing which way the wind was blowing, soon lined up
in his course. Those whom he liked and who did his will prospered.
Those whom he disliked suffered greatly in their duties, and were
forever explaining or complaining to Colfax, who was not aware of
White's subtlety and who therefore thought them incompetent.