For two years he was out of the house at dawn for a long
bracing walk in the fresh morning air, to be followed by eight, ten and
even fifteen hours in the office and shops; hours in which he drove the
Rainey Arms Company's organisation mercilessly and, taking openly every
vestige of the management out of the hands of Colonel Tom, began the plans
for the consolidation of the American firearms companies that later put
his name on the front pages of the newspapers and got him the title of a
Captain of Finance.
There is a widespread misunderstanding abroad regarding the motives of
many of the American millionaires who sprang into prominence and affluence
in the days of change and sudden bewildering growth that followed the
close of the Spanish War. They were, many of them, not of the brute trader
type, but were, instead, men who thought and acted quickly and with a
daring and audacity impossible to the average mind. They wanted power and
were, many of them, entirely unscrupulous, but for the most part they were
men with a fire burning within them, men who became what they were because
the world offered them no better outlet for their vast energies.
Sam McPherson had been untiring and without scruples in the first hard,
quick struggle to get his head above the great unknown body of men there
in the city.
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