It
was held in contempt. It had prevailed when men were open robbers and
filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what
they wanted, making force their god. It had triumphed over the violence
and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century and the
young years of a new century. Then the day of the trickster came--and men
laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give an illusive value
for a thing of real value--the remorseless sleight of hand which the law
could not reach. The desire to get profit by honest toiling was dying
down to ashes.
Against such men had Ingolby worked--the tricksters, the manipulators. At
the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy which
concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit. He
had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift; and it
was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the
confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every step
of the way. He had worked for profit out of legitimate product and
industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste. It was his
theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no
scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines
could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that was
why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou.
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