The Battlesburg Blade was full of the big consolidation for a week following the providential visit of Mr. Lott. The Lewisville, Battlesburg and Elliston traction line was not merely an assured fact – it had always been that since the coming of Colonel Wallingford – but it was now even a bigger and better thing than ever, the key to a vast network of trolleys which, with this connecting link, would have its ramifications across more than the fourth part of a continent. The only drawback to all this good was that they were to lose as a permanent resident their esteemed fellow citizen, Colonel J. Rufus Wallingford – since he had sold his right of way, franchises, concessions and good will – and every issue of the Blade, from news columns to editorials, was a tribute to all that this noble, high-spirited gentleman had done for Battlesburg.

A score of impulsive women kissed Mrs. Wallingford good-by at the train, while the Honorable G. W. Battles strove against Billy Ricks and Judge Lampton and Clint Richards for the honor of the last handshake with her husband; and after Mrs. Wallingford had fluttered her handkerchief from the car window for the last time, she pressed it to her eyes.

"I'm going to keep my house there always," she said, when she had calmed, "and whenever we're tired of living at other places I want to come here – home! Why, just think, Jim, it's the only town you ever did business in that you can come back to!"

He agreed with her in this, but, by and by, she found his shoulders heaving with his usual elephantine mirth.

"What is it?" she asked him.

"The joke's on me," he laughed. "The biggest stunt I ever pulled off, and even the baa-baas satisfied. Why, Fanny," and the surprise in his face was almost ludicrous, "it turned out to be a legitimate deal, after all!"

That was the keynote of a startling new thought which came to him: that there might actually be more money in legitimate deals than in the dubious ones in which he had always engaged; and that thought he took to Europe with him. It dwelt with him in the fogs of London and the sunshine of Paris, at the roulette tables of Monte Carlo and on the canals of Venice. It was an ambition-rousing idea, and with perfect confidence in his own powers he saw himself rising to a commanding position in American financial affairs. Why, he already owned a round half million of dollars, and the mere momentum of this huge amount caused quite an alteration, not only in his mode of thought, but of life. Heretofore he had looked upon such gain as he wrested from his shady transactions as a mere medium of quick exchange, which was to be turned into pleasure and lavish display as rapidly as possible. When he secured money his only impulse had been to spend all of it and then get more; but a half million! It was a sum large enough to represent earning capacity, and his always creative mind was busy with the thought of how he might utilize its power. After all, it was only another new and expensive pleasure that he desired, the pleasure of swaying big affairs, of enrolling himself upon the roster of the pseudo-great, and to that end, during his entire European trip he devoured American newspapers wherever he could find them, seeking for means by which he could increase his fortune to one of truly commanding proportions. In the meantime he was as lavish as ever, scattering money with a prodigal hand; but now it was with a different motive. He used it freely to secure the best to be found in the way of luxury, but no longer spent it merely to get rid of it.

Mrs. Wallingford, content, viewed Europe with appreciative eyes, and no empress swathed in silk and diadem-crowned ever took more graciously to the pomp with which their royal progress was attended wherever they went. Wallingford's interest in foreign lands, however, had suddenly become a business one. Restless as ever, he moved from place to place with rapid speed, and covered in two months the ground that ordinary tourists above the financial standing of "trippers" would think they had slighted in six. Europe, as a matter of fact, did not please him at all. Its laws were too strict, and he found in nearly every country he visited, that a man, unless he happened to be an innkeeper, was expected to actually deliver value received for every coin that came into his possession! This was so vastly different from the financial and commercial system to which he had been used that he became eager to get back home, and finally, having been visited over night with the inspiration for a brilliant new enterprise, he cabled his bankers to throw open a portion of his account to Blackie Daw, and to the latter gentleman cabled instructions to buy him a good farm in the middle of the wheat belt and fit it for his residence regardless of cost. Then he started back for the land where the money grows.

The task he had set Blackie Daw was very much to that gentleman's liking. There had arisen a sudden crisis in his "business affairs," that very morning, which demanded his immediate absence, not only from his office, but from any other spot in which the authorities might be able to find him, and, relieved of his dilemma in the nick of time by Wallingford's money, he immediately put an enormous number of miles between himself and New York. A week he spent in search, and when he found the location which suited him, he set about his task of constructing a Wallingford estate in great glee. He built a big new barn, the finest in the county; he put a new front to the house, bigger than the house itself had been; he brought on load after load of fine furniture; he stocked the big cellar with beer and wines and liquors of all kinds; he piped natural gas from twelve miles away and installed a gas furnace in the cellar and a gas engine in a workshop near the barn; he had electricians wire the place from cellar to attic, including the barn and the front porch and the trees in the front yard, and had a dynamo put in to be run by the gas engine and to illuminate the entire estate; he installed both line and house telephone systems, with extension phones wherever they would be handy, and, his work finished, surveyed it with much satisfaction. With the mail carrier stopping every day, with the traction line running right past the door, and with plenty of money, he decided that J. Rufus would be able to get along, through the winter, at least.

It was in the early part of September when J. Rufus, clad according to his notions of what a gentleman farmer should look like – a rich brown velvet corduroy suit with the trousers neatly tucked into an eighteen-dollar pair of seal leather boots; a twenty-dollar broad-brimmed felt hat upon his head; a brown silk negligé shirt and a scarf of a little deeper shade in the "V" of his broad vest; an immense diamond gleaming from the scarf – arrived at the Wallingford estate in a splendid equipage drawn by a pair of sleek bays.

Marching in time to the ringing "Soldiers' Chorus" from Faust, Blackie Daw came down the walk from the wide Colonial porch, carrying in his arms the huge phonograph from which the music proceeded, and greeted the laughing new master and mistress of the house with extravagant ceremony, while three country girls, a red-cheeked one, a thin one, and a mortally ugly one, stood giggling upon the porch.

"Welcome to Wallingford Villa!" exclaimed Blackie, setting the blaring phonograph on the gate post, and, with his left hand tucked into his coat bosom, extending his right hand dramatically toward the porch. "Welcome to your ancestral estates and adoring tenantry!"

"Fine business!" approved J. Rufus, shaking hands with Mr. Daw. "Invite the band in to have a drink, Blackie."

"Hush!" admonished Mr. Daw in a hoarse stage whisper. "Not Blackie. Here, in hiding from the minions of Uncle Sam, I am Horatio Raven. Remember the name."

"What's the matter?" asked Wallingford, detecting something real beneath all this absurdity. "I called at your place in Boston, and found a corn doctor's sign on the door. I didn't mean to plant you out here."

"Plant is the word," responded Mr. Daw, "and I've rooted fast in the soil. I'm going to take out naturalization papers and grow a chin beard. You're harboring a fugitive, Jim. The very day I got your letter from dear old Lunnon, throwing open a section of your bank account and telling me to buy a farm, the postal authorities took it into their heads to stop all traffic in the Yellow Streak gold mine; also they wanted to mark one Horace G. Daw 'Exhibit A,' and slam him in a cold cage for future reference; so I put on my green whiskers and snuck here to the far, far prairies."

A certain amount of reserve had been quite noticeable in Mrs. Wallingford, and it was still apparent as she asked courteously:

"Where is Mrs. Daw?"

"Raven, if you please," he corrected her, and, in spite of his general air of flippancy, his face lengthened a trifle. "Mrs. Violet Bonnie D.," he replied, "has returned to the original lemon box of which she was so perfect a product, and is now delighting a palpitating public in 'The Jolly Divorcée,' with a string of waiting Johnnies from the stage door two blocks down Broadway every night. Let us mention the lady no more lest I use language."

"What a pretty place you have made of this!" exclaimed Mrs. Wallingford, thawing into instant amiability. She had her own reasons for being highly pleased with the absence of Violet Bonnie Daw.

"Pretty good," agreed the pseudo Raven. "Step inside and imagine you're in Peacock Alley at the Waldorf."

With considerable pride he led them inside. Knowing Wallingford as he did, he had spared no expense to make this house as luxurious as fine furnishings would render it, and, having considerable taste in Wallingford's own bizarre way, he had accomplished rather flaming results.

"And this," said he, throwing open a door upstairs, "is my own room; number twenty-three. Upon the walls you will observe the mournful relics of a glorious past."

The ceiling was papered with silver stock certificates of the late Los Pocos Lead Development Company, the walls with dark green shares of the late Mexican and Rio Grande Rubber Company, and dark red ones of the late St. John's Blood Orange Plantation Company, while walls and ceiling were divided by a frieze of the beautiful orange-colored stock certificates of the late Yellow Streak Gold Mining Company.

"My own little idea," he explained, as Mrs. Wallingford smiled her appreciation of the grim humor and went to her own dainty apartment to remove the stains of travel. "A reminder of the happy times that once were but that shall be no more. I have now to figure out another stunt for skinning the beloved public, and it's hard work. I wish I had your ability to dope up gaudy new boob-stringers. What are you going to do with the farm, anyhow?"

"Save the farmers," replied J. Rufus Wallingford solemnly. "The farmers of the United States are the most downtrodden people in the world. The real producers of the wealth of our great nation hold the bag, and the non-producers reap the golden riches of the soil. Who rises in his might and comes to their rescue? Who overturns the old order of things, puts the farmer upon a pinnacle of prosperity and places his well-deserved earnings beyond the reach of avarice and greed? Who, I ask? J. Rufus Wallingford, the friend of the oppressed and the protector of the poor!"

"Good!" responded Mr. Daw, "and the way you say it it's worse than ever. I'm in on the play, but please give me a tip before the blow-off comes so I can leave the county."

"The county is safe," responded Mr. Wallingford. "It's nailed down. You know me, Blackie. The law and I are old college chums and we never go back on each other. I'm going to lift my money out of the Chicago wheat pit, and when I get through that pit will be nothing but an empty hole. By this time next fall I'll have a clean, cool million, and then I can buy a stack of blue chips and sit in the big game. I'll never rest easy till I can hold a royal flush against Morgan and Rockefeller, and when I skin them all will be forgiven."

"Jump right in, Jim; the water's fine for you just now. I'm not wised up yet to this new game of yours, but I've got a bet on you. Go to it and win."

"It's my day to break the bank," asserted J. Rufus. "Your bet's safe. Go soak your watch and play me across the board."

The telephone bell rang and Blackie answered it.

"Come right over," he told the man at the other end of the wire. "Mr. Wallingford has arrived."

He hung up the receiver and conducted Wallingford downstairs into a well-lighted room that jutted out in an "L" from the house, with a separate outside entrance toward the rear.

"Observe the center of a modern agriculturist's web," he declaimed. "Sit at your desk, farmer, for your working superintendent is about to call on you."

J. Rufus looked around him with vast appreciation.

"I thought I had my own ideas about looking the part," he observed, "but you have me skinned four ways from the Jack."

In the center of the room was a large, flat-top desk, and upon it was an extension 'phone from the country line. On the other side was the desk 'phone and call board of a private line which connected the house, the barn, the granary and a dozen fields throughout the farm. On one side was a roll-top desk, and this was Mr. Daw's. Opposite was another roll-top desk, for the "working superintendent."

"At least one real farmer will have to be on the job," Blackie explained, "and I nabbed Hamlet Tinkle, the prize of the neighborhood. He is a graduate of an agricultural college and all the farmers think he's a joke; but I have him doped out as being able to coax more fodder from unwilling mud than any soil tickler in these parts. He helped me select the farm library."

With a grin at his own completeness of detail, Mr. Daw indicated the sectional bookcases, where stood, in neat rows, the Government reports on everything agricultural, and treatises on every farm subject under the sun from the pip to the boll weevil. Filing cases there were, and card indexes, and every luxury that has been devised for modern office work. With an amused air the up-to-date farmer was leafing through one after the other of the conglomeration of strange books, when Hamlet Tinkle was ushered in by the ever-grinning Nellie. He was a tall, big-boned fellow, who had divided his time at the agricultural college between playing center rush and studying the chemical capabilities of various soils. Just now, though the weather was bracing, he wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with the front turned up, and a flannel shirt with no coat or vest; and he had walked two miles, from the place at which he had telephoned, in twenty-two minutes.

"Mr. Tinkle – Mr. Wallingford," said Mr. Daw. "Mr. Wallingford, this is the gentleman whom I recommend as your working superintendent."

Both Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Tinkle accepted this title with perfect gravity.

"Sit down," said Wallingford cordially, and himself took his place at the flat-top desk in the midst of the telephones and push buttons. Already he began to feel the exhilaration of his new rôle and loomed broadly above his desk, from the waist line up a most satisfying revelation to Mr. Tinkle of what the farmer of the future ought to be like. "Mr. Raven tells me," observed Wallingford, "that you are prepared to conduct this farm on scientific principles."

"Yes, sir," admitted Mr. Tinkle. "I shall be very glad to show to Truscot County what can be done with advanced methods. Father doesn't seem to care to have me try it on his farm. He says he made enough out of his own methods to send me to college, and I ought to be satisfied with that."

"Your father's all right, but maybe we can teach even him some new tricks. The first question, Mr. Tinkle, is how much money you want."

"Fifteen a week and board," responded Mr. Tinkle promptly. "The seasons through."

"Fine!" responded Wallingford with a wave of the hand which indicated that fifty a week and board would have been no bar, as, indeed, it would not have been. "Consider yourself engaged from the present moment. Now let's get down to brass tacks, Mr. Tinkle. I don't know enough about farming to stuff up the middle of a cipher; I don't know which end down you plant the grains of wheat; but wheat is what I want, and nothing but wheat!"

Mr. Tinkle shook his head.

"With Mr. Raven's permission I have been making tests of your soil," he observed. "Your northeast forty is still good for wheat and will make a good yield, possibly thirty bushels, but the southwest forty will do well if it gives you eight to ten bushels without thorough fertilization; and this will be much more expensive than planting it in some other crop for a couple of years."

"Jolly it any old way to get wheat," directed Wallingford. "Wheat is what I want; all you can get."

Mr. Tinkle hesitated. He made two or three false starts, during which his auditors waited with the patience born to those who lie in crouch for incautious money, and then displayed his altruistic youth.

"I have to tell you," he blurted. "You have here one hundred and sixty acres. Suppose that you could get the high average of thirty bushels per acre from it. Suppose you got a dollar a bushel for that wheat, your total income would still be less than five thousand dollars. You are hiring me as manager, and you will need other hands; you have a machinist, who is also to be your chauffeur, I understand; you have three house servants, and upon the scale you evidently intend to conduct this farm and your residence I judge that you cannot get along for less than eight to ten thousand a year. I am bound to tell you that I cannot see a profit for you."

"Which of these buttons calls one of the girls?" asked Wallingford.

"The third button is Nellie," replied Mr. Daw gravely, and touched it.

The rosy-cheeked girl appeared instantly, on the point of giggling, as she had been from the moment Mr. Daw first engaged her.

"Bring in my grip from the hall," Mr. Wallingford directed; "the one with the labels on it."

This brought in, Mr. Wallingford extracted from it a huge bundle of documents bound with rubber bands. Unfolded, they proved to be United States Government bonds, shares of railroad stocks and of particularly stable industrials, thousands of dollars worth of them. For Mr. Tinkle's inspection he passed over his bank book, showing a balance of one hundred and fifty thousand.

"Wheat," cheerfully lied Mr. Wallingford, with a wave of his hand; "all wheat! Half a million dollars!"

"Speculation?" charged Mr. Tinkle, a trace of sternness in his voice.

"Investment," protested Wallingford. "I never sold; I bought, operating always upon margin sufficient for ample protection, and always upon absolute information gathered directly from the centers of production. This farm is for the purpose of bringing me more thoroughly in touch with the actual conditions that make prices. So, as you see, Mr. Tinkle, the trifling profit or loss of this venture in a business way is a mere bagatelle."

Both Mr. Daw and Mr. Tinkle were regarding Mr. Wallingford with awe and admiration, but for somewhat different reasons. Mr. Tinkle, elated, went home to get his clothes and books, and on the way he put into breathless circulation the fact that the new proprietor of the old Spicer place was the greatest man on earth, with the possible exception of Theodore Roosevelt, and that he had already made half a million dollars in wheat! He had seen the money!

"I pass," observed Mr. Daw to Mr. Wallingford. "I'm in the kindergarten class, and I take off my lid to you as being the most valuable combination known to the history of plain or fancy robbery. You have them all beat twice around the track. You make an amateur of Ananias and a piker of Judas Iscariot."

CHAPTER XXIII
A CORNER IN FARMERS IS FORMED AND IT BEHOLDS A MOST WONDERFUL VISION

It was already high time for fall planting operations on the Wallingford estate, and Truscot County was a-quiver with what might be the result of the new-fangled test-tube farming that Ham Tinkle was to inaugurate. From the first moment of his hiring that young enthusiast plunged into his work with a fervor that left him a scant six hours of sleep a night.

In the meantime J. Rufus took a flying trip to Chicago, where he visited one broker's office after another. Those places with fine polished woodwork and brass trimmings and expensive leather furniture he left without even introducing himself – such stage settings were too much in his own line of business for him not to be suspicious of them – but, finally, he wandered into the office of Fox & Fleecer, a dingy, poorly lighted place, where gas was kept burning on old-fashioned fixtures all day long, where the woodwork was battered and blackened, where the furniture was scratched and hacked and bound together with wires to keep it intact, and where, on a cracked and splintered blackboard, one small and lazy boy posted, for a score or so of rusty men past middle age, the fluctuating figures of the Great Gamble. Mr. Fox, a slow-spoken and absolutely placid gentleman of benevolent appearance and silvery mutton-chop whiskers, delicately blended the impressions that while he was indeed flattered by this visit from so distinguished a gentleman, his habitual conservatism would not allow him to express his delight.

"How much money can you be trusted with?" asked Wallingford bluntly.

"I would not say, sir," rejoined Mr. Fox with no resentment whatever. "We have been thirty years in these same offices, and we never yet have had enough in our hands to make it worth while for us to quit business. Permit me to show you our books."

His ledger displayed accounts running as high as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that had been intrusted to their care by single individuals. But thirty years in business at the same old stand! He insisted gently upon this point, and Wallingford nodded his head.

"Before I'm through I'll make all these bets look like cigar money," he asserted, "but just now I'm going to put fifty thousand in your hands, and I want it placed in exactly this way: Monday morning, with ten thousand dollars buy me one hundred thousand bushels of December wheat on a ten-cent margin. No more money will be put up on this deal, so place a stop-loss order against it. If wheat drops enough to wipe out the ten thousand dollars, all right; say nothing and report the finish of the transaction to me. I'll do my own grinning. If wheat goes up enough to leave me five cents a bushel profit, clear of commissions, close the deal and remit. On the following Monday, if wheat has gone up from the quotations of to-day, sell one hundred thousand bushels more at ten cents margin and close at a sufficient drop to net me five cents clear. If it has gone down, buy. Do this on five successive Mondays and handle each deal separately. Get me one winning out of five. That's all I want."

Mr. Fox considered thoughtfully for a moment, carefully polishing his bald, pink scalp around and around with the palm of his hand. He gave the curious impression of being always engaged with some blandly interesting secret problem along with the business under consideration.

"Very well, sir," he observed. "Fox & Fleecer never makes any promises, but if you will put your instructions into writing I will place them in the hands of our Mr. Fleecer, who conducts our board operations. He will do the best he can for you."

Mr. Wallingford looked about him for a stenographer. There was none employed here, and, sitting down to the little writing table which was pointed out to him, he made out the instructions in long hand, while Mr. Fox polished away at his already glistening pate, still working at that blandly interesting secret problem.

Ten days later, at the test-tube farm, arrived a report from Messrs. Fox & Fleecer, inclosing their check for fifteen thousand dollars. Wheat, in the week following Wallingford's purchase, had fortunately gone up nearly six cents. This check, and the accompanying statement of the transaction which had brought it forth, Wallingford showed to Ham Tinkle, quite incidentally, of course, and Ham, in awe and enthusiasm, confided the five-thousand-dollar winning to Hiram Hines, who spread the report through Truscot County that Judge Wallingford had already made fifteen thousand dollars in wheat since he had come among them. The savings of an ordinary lifetime! The amount was fifty thousand when it reached Mapes County. Two weeks later Messrs. Fox & Fleecer reported on the second of Wallingford's deals. Wheat sold at ninety-four had dropped to eighty-eight. Luck was distinctly with J. Rufus Wallingford.

"Why, oh, why, do cheap skates sell gold bricks and good come-on men waste their talents on Broadway!" wailed Blackie Daw. "But what's the joke, J. Rufus? I see your luck, but where do the surrounding farmers get in? Or where do you get in on the surrounding farmers? Show me. I'm an infant."

"You couldn't understand it, Blackie," said J. Rufus with condescending kindness. "The mere fact that you look on these pocket-change winnings as real money lets you out. Wait till I spring the big game. To-morrow night you shall attend this winter's opening meeting of the Philomathean Literary Society at the Willow Creek schoolhouse, and observe the methods of a real bread winner."

For the memorable occasion that he had mentioned, Wallingford wore a fur-lined overcoat and quadruple-woven blue silk sweater, and, being welcomed with great acclaim, proposed for debate that burning question: "Resolved: That the farmer is a failure as a business man."

With much stamping and pawing of the air that subject was thrashed out by Abe Johnson and Dan Price for the affirmative, and Cal Whorley and Ed Wiggin for the negative. The farmer as a gold-brick purchaser, as prey for every class of tradesmen, as a producer who received less net profit than any other from the capital and labor invested, was presented to himself by men who knew their own grievances well, and the affirmative was carried almost unanimously. Flushed with pleasure, beaming with gratification, the most advanced farmer of them all arose in his place and requested of the worthy chairman the privilege to address the meeting, a privilege that was granted with pleasure and delight.

It was an eventful moment when J. Rufus Wallingford stalked up the middle aisle, passed around the red-hot, cannon-ball stove and ascended the rostrum which had been the scene of so many impassioned addresses; and, as he turned to face them from that historic elevation, he seemed to fill the entire end of the schoolroom, to blot out not only the teacher's desk but the judges' seats, the blackboard and the four-colored map of the United States that hung upon the wall behind him. He was a fine-looking man, a solid-looking man, a gentleman of wealth and culture, who, unspoiled by good fortune, was still a brother to all men. Already he had gained that enviable reputation among them.

Friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers, it was startling to reflect that the agriculturist was the only producer in all the world who had no voice in the price which was put upon his product! The manufacturer turned out his goods and set a price upon them and the consumer had to pay that price. And how was this done? By the throttling of competition. And how had competition been throttled? By consolidation of all the interests in any particular line of trade. Iron and steel were all controlled by one mighty corporation against which could stand no competitor except by sufferance; petroleum and all its by-products were in the hands of another, and each charged what it liked. The farmer alone, after months of weary, unending toil, of exposure in all sorts of weather, of struggle against the whims of nature and against an appalling list of possible disasters, himself hauled his output to market and meekly accepted whatever was offered him. Prices on every product of the soil were dictated by a clique of gamblers who, in all probability, had never seen wheat growing nor cattle grazing. Friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers, this woeful condition must end! They must coöperate! Once compacted the farmers could stand together as firm as a rock, could demand a fair and reasonable and just price for their output, and get it. To-day wheat was quoted at ninety-four cents on the Chicago Board of Trade. If the farmer, however, secured eighty-two at his delivery point in actual cash he was doing well. There was no reason why the farmers should not agree to establish a standing price of a dollar and a half a bushel for wheat; and that must be their slogan. Wheat at a dollar and a half!

He was vitally interested in this project, and he was willing to spend his life and fortune for it; and, in the furtherance of it, he invited his friends and neighbors and fellow-farmers to assemble at his house on the following Saturday night and discuss ways and means to bring this enormous movement to a practical working basis. Incidentally he might find a bite and a sup and a whiff of smoke to offer them. All those who would attend would please rise in their seats.

As one man they arose, and when J. Rufus Wallingford, glowing with the immensity of his noble project, stepped down from that platform, the walls of the Willow Creek schoolhouse echoed and reechoed with the cheers which followed his speech.

The Farmers' Commercial Association! There had been farmers' affiliations without number, with motives political, economical, educational; alliances for the purchasing of supplies at wholesale and for every other purpose under the sun, but nothing like this, for, to begin with, the Farmers' Commercial Association had no initiation fee and no dues, and it had for its sole and only object the securing of a flat, uniform rate of a dollar and a half a bushel for wheat. The first meeting, attended by every able-bodied tiller of the soil in Truscot County and some even from Mapes County, was so large that there was no place in the Wallingford homestead to house it, and it had to be taken out to the great new barn, where, in the spacious aisle between stalls and mows, enthusiasm had plenty of room to soar to the rafters. One feature had stilled all doubts: J. Rufus Wallingford alone was to pay!