Sam felt that another chapter of his life was closed. Webster, Edwards,
Prince, and the eastern men met and elected him chairman of the board of
directors of the new company and the public bought eagerly the river of
common stock he turned upon the market, Prince and Morrison doing
masterful work in the moulding of public opinion through the press. The
first board meeting ended with a dinner at which wine flowed in rivulets
and Edwards, getting drunk, stood up at his place and boasted of the
beauty of his young wife. And Sam, at his desk in his new offices in the
Rookery, settled down grimly to the playing of his role as one of the new
kings of American business.
CHAPTER IX
The story of Sam's life there in Chicago for the next several years ceases
to be the story of a man and becomes the story of a type, a crowd, a gang.
What he and the group of men surrounding him and making money with him did
in Chicago, other men and other groups of men have done in New York, in
Paris, in London. Coming into power with the great expansive wave of
prosperity that attended the first McKinley administration, these men went
mad of money making. They played with great industrial institutions and
railroad systems like excited children, and a man of Chicago won the
notice and something of the admiration of the world by his willingness to
bet a million dollars on the turn of the weather.
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