more than $18, 000, 000—and as for the stock—” for a moment the little man’s swarthy face was touched with a faint complacent smile, he said smugly, “I don’t know exactly how much stock you gentlemen may hold among you, but if any of you wants to sell what he has, I will pay you $1000 a share—here and now,” he slapped a fat small hand down upon a fat small knee—“here and now! for every share you own.”
And he looked at them steadily for a moment with an air of challenge.
“Not for mine!” the florid heavy man cried heartily. “No, sir! I’ve only got ten shares, Emmet, but you can’t buy it from me at any price! I won’t sell!”
And the swarthy little man, pleased by the answer, smiled complacently about him before he spoke again.
“Yes, sir!” he said. “That’s the way it is. And the thing that’s begun to happen at home already is going to happen everywhere—all over the country. From now on you’re going to see a period of rising prices and high wages—increased production, a boom in real estate, stocks, investments, business of all kinds—rising values everywhere such as you never saw before and never hoped to see.”
“And where is it going to stop?”
“Stop!” the swarthy little man spoke almost curtly, and then barked, “It’s not going to stop! Not during our lifetime, anyway! I tell you, man, we’re just beginning! How can there be any talk of stopping when we haven’t started yet?… There’s been nothing like it before,” he cried with passionate earnestness—“nothing to match it in the history of the world. We’ve had wars, booms, good times, hard times, slumps, periods of prosperity—but, I tell you, gentlemen!” and here he smote himself sharply on the knee and his voice rose with the strength of an unshakable conviction—“this thing is different! We have reached a stage in our development that no other country in the world has ever known—that was never dreamed of before—a stage that is beyond booms, depressions, good times, hard times—anything—”
“You mean that after this we shall never be affected by those things?”
“Yes, sir!” he cried emphatically. “I mean just that! I mean that we have learned the causes for each of those conditions. I mean that we have learned how to check them, how to control them. I mean that so far as we are concerned they don’t exist any more!” His voice had become almost shrill with the force of his persuasive argument, and suddenly whipping
