consider to be unwarranted
is a recognized business method in other corporations."

"Why do you tell me this?" Gorham demanded, suddenly.

"Because I feared that you had overlooked it, in the heat of the
argument, and some sort of a compromise is of course necessary."

"Compromise?" repeated Gorham, questioningly. "I don't follow you."

"Why, you've carried your point, and proved your strength, but you have
divided the Companies into two camps. Of course something must be done
to conciliate. By Jove! that was an arraignment you gave them!"

"There can be no conciliation, Covington," was the firm response; "there
can be no compromise. The Consolidated Companies either is what it is,
or it is nothing. The pledges which I have made from the beginning shall
be lived up to in spirit and in letter, or the final exercise of the
strength which they all are forced to admit shall be again to separate
it into its integral parts, and prevent it from undoing that which I
have already accomplished through its agency."

"That is a large contract for any one man to undertake," Covington
remarked. "No individual has yet been able to disintegrate a successful
going corporation when the stockholders and the directors were opposed
to it."

"We are talking of unusual things," Gorham replied. "No individual
before has been able to found so mammoth or so successful a corporation
as the Consolidated Companies. No individual before this has found
himself strong enough to force the immediate capitulation, against their
wills, of so powerful an Executive Committee. With these precedents
before me, I state my determination not as a threat, or as a boast, but
as a fact."

"Are you counting on the stockholders for support?"

"Absolutely."

"You will find them as unanimously against you as you have just found
the committee."

"Do you know this?"

"They all know it; they would not have taken their position otherwise.
Next time, the stockholders will be put in evidence."

Gorham again became silent. This second shock, following so soon after
the first, for a moment paralyzed his power to think, but he quickly
recovered his optimism.

"I do not believe it--I will not believe it. But why do you tell me
this?" he again asked. "There must be some purpose behind it all."

"There is. It is necessary for you to realize the exact position we are
in. Your work has been with those about to become stockholders, or with
the consolidations; I ha