AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But Kenny, who had been hitting the whiskey before dinner, didn’t hear him. He was boasting instead to everyone at their end of the table about events in the anthracite fields. “So we mounted a Gatling gun on the back of a Mercedes Simplex and welded on steel plates to protect the driver.”
“Did it work?”
“Did it work? I’ll say it worked,” Kenny snickered. “The strikers call it the Death Special.”
At the top of the table, Bloom Sr. was addressing the strikers’ demands.
“The eight-hour workday will be the ruination of the coal business.”
“Hear! Hear!”
“And I’ve heard more than enough nonsense about safety. The miner has only himself to blame if he doesn’t keep his workplace in safe condition.”
Another baron agreed. “It’s not my fault if he refuses to mine his coal properly, scrape down dangerous slate, and install proper timbering.”
“Risk is naturally attached to the trade. Fact is, with prices tumbling, we’ll be lucky to stay in business.”
Bell noticed a perplexed expression on the face of an older mine operator, who called up table, “The iniquitous price we’re paying to ship coal isn’t helping either.”
Bloom Sr. returned a tight smile. “The railroad’s hands are tied, Mr. Morrison.”
“By whom, sir? Surely not the government?”
“Them, too, but it’s not like we don’t report to our investors.”
“There you go blaming Wall Street again. Didn’t used to, in my day. We called our own tune. If the banks wanted to make money, they were welcome to invest with us. But they did not presume to tell us how to dig coal or how to ship it.”
“Well, sir, these are different days.”
Isaac Bell noticed Kenny observing his father with a thoughtful, if not troubled, expression. “Sounds like you’ll have your work cut out for you when it’s your turn to run the railroad.”
“What makes you think I will run the railroad?”
“You’re his son, his only son, and you’ve been working with him since you left Brown.”
“I’d like nothing better,” said Kenny. “And I’m trying my darnedest to learn as fast as I can. But it may not be my choice.”
“Surely your father prefers you.”
“Of course he does. That was settled the day I graduated. But what if they don’t?”
“They?” asked Bell, though he suspected the answer already.
“The banks.”
Bell glanced up the table at Mr. Bloom. Behind the boasts and the bluster, even the rich and powerful railroad president R. Kenneth Bloom, Sr., was not in command of coal.
“Which banks?” he asked.
“The New York banks.”
“Which ones?”
Kenny shrugged.
“You don’t know?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
