are a thousand cotton-mills in this country, half of
them in the South, one-fourth in New England, and one-fourth in the
Middle States. They are capitalized at six hundred million dollars. Now
let me tell you: we control three hundred and fifty millions of that
capitalization. The trust is going through capitalization at a billion.
The only thing that threatens it is child-labor legislation in the
South, the tariff, and the control of the supply of cotton. Pretty big
hindrances, you say. That's so, but look here: we've got the stock so
placed that nothing short of a popular upheaval can send any Child Labor
bill through Congress in six years. See? After that we don't care. Same
thing applies to the tariff. The last bill ran ten years. The present
bill will last longer, or I lose my guess--'specially if Smith is in the
Senate.

"Well, then, there remains raw cotton. The connection of cotton-raising
and its raw material is too close to risk a manufacturing trust that
does not include practical control of the raw material. For that reason
we're planning a trust to include the raising and manufacturing of
cotton in America. Then, too, cornering the cotton market here means the
whip-hand of the industrial world. Gentlemen, it's the biggest idea of
the century. It beats steel."

Colonel Cresswell chuckled.

"How do you spell that?" he asked.

But John Taylor was not to be diverted; his thin face was pale, but his
gray eyes burned with the fire of a zealot. Harry Cresswell only smiled
dimly and looked interested.

"Now, again," continued John Taylor. "There are a million cotton farms
in the South, half run by colored people and half by whites. Leave the
colored out of account as long as they are disfranchised. The half
million white farms are owned or controlled by five thousand wholesale
merchants and three thousand big landowners, of whom you, Colonel
Cresswell, are among the biggest with your fifty thousand acres. Ten
banks control these eight thousand people--one of these is the Jefferson
National of Montgomery, of which you are a silent director."

Colonel Cresswell started; this man evidently had inside information.
Did he know of the mortgage, too?

"Don't be alarmed. I'm safe," Taylor assured him. "Now, then, if we can
get the banks, wholesale merchants, and biggest planters into line we
can control the cotton crop."

"But," objected Harry Cresswell, "while the banks and the large
merchants may be possibilit