“Those pines would bring a good dollar,” Jinks said.
“Oh yes, but it is good to leave a few to remind us of our early days of fortune. No one wishes to live next to a stump field.” Cowes had an elevated way of saying such things that made Jinks shuffle his feet and curse under his breath. “Except agriculturists,” he said lamely. It was no use; Lavinia and Cowes only tolerated him. He found ease in the knowledge that one day those pines would come down as all pines must.
Pye, Flense and Lavinia made up the inner circle of Duke Logging and Lumber. None of them had any small talk; conversation was always business. The arrival of the telegraph some years earlier had been like a kettle of water dashed into a cauldron of boiling oil for the business world and the railroads. Giveaway Congress guaranteed the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads sixteen thousand dollars for every mile of track laid on level ground, and double that through mountainous terrain and included a forty-mile-wide corridor across the entire continent. Now there was real money, great great fortunes of which the Dukes could not even dream. But there were consolations. The center of the country exploded in hysterical expansion. Duke’s lumber shipments quadrupled as the Union Army hammered up forts and prison camps. Chicago businessmen joyously mulcted the government with shoddy war goods from canned beef to forage caps at high prices, and not Lavinia, Cowes nor Jinks scrupled to hold back warped and knotty lumber billed at the price of clear.
“Why pay more when you can get it for less?” said Flense, who cared little for archaic idealism and who despised James Duke’s timberland purchases when he could have got the same land for nothing. “The government can’t prove land claims weren’t made in good faith.” They used the General Land Office’s preemption acts, which allowed settlers to take up and then purchase land at the giveaway price of $1.25 for a quarter section—180 acres. Duke sent out its landlookers, chose the best woods tracts and used dummy men who went through the motions of settling and then handed over the deeds to Flense. An army of preemption brokers greased the nefarious skids. Nor was it any great feat to bribe the federal land agents. The Homestead Acts of the 1860s were sweet gifts to Duke, which hired perjurous “settlers,” who camped on the land for a few days, nailed up a feeble shack of a few boards — the “house”—shoved two empty whiskey bottles between the boards for windows, ground a heel in the dirt to indicate a well and claimed a homestead. Others toted around a dollhouse with windows, roof and floors, put it on the site and at the Land Office declared a house “fourteen by sixteen,” not mentioning that the measurements were in inches rather than feet. Still others had the smallest allowable “house” on skids that was hauled around to the various claims and designated a livable shanty. Duke bought up huge blocks of land in these ways, rushed in, cut the timber and then gave up the homestead rights. No one objected; they were smart American businessmen going ahead, doing what businessmen did. No one got rich by walking seven miles to return a penny. And there were hundreds of small loggers anxious to sell out to Duke after a few hard lessons — being shot at by unknown persons, suffering frequent sawmill fires and large-scale log stealage that made the game not worth the candle.
None of these affairs were discussed at Board meetings — it was business. Tappan’s Mercantile report had called James Duke “A-one. Wealthy family, sound business practices. Good as gold.” Duke’s Board was more concerned with such nagging subjects as continuing to outfit all their mills with steam-powered circular saws and what to do with encroaching piles of sawdust. Noah Ludlum, smooth-shaven except for a pointy little goatee, said, “Them big circle saws cut damn fast — beg pardon — but they don’t stay firm. There is a wobble. You can’t hardly see it but that jeezly wobble costs the comp’ny money as it makes a big wide kerf. I know for a fact every thousand board feet cut we lose more than three hundred in sawdust. Thing is, the steel in them saws is not good. So much steel goes into rails and guns we can’t git good saws. And you got sawdust piles higher than Katahdin. Course we burn it to power the boilers but—”
Lavinia interrupted. “Lose no sleep over the sawdust, Mr. Ludlum. There is nothing we can do about it at the moment except burn it or throw it in the rivers. The trees of Michigan are so plentiful we need not be frugal.”
“Wal,” said Mr. Ludlum, who was determined to have the last word, “we have to leave the biggest trees out in the woods. Them saws can’t cut nothin a hair more than half their diameter. Bigger saws needed, but the bigger they are the more they wobble.”
Lavinia looked down at her papers, glanced at Annag Duncan, who had compiled the figures, and said, “All the same, our Avery Mill alone will cut three million board feet this year, well ahead of last year. We still have a few old water-powered mills with up-and-down saws and the sooner we get circular saws and steam engines into them the better. That is our goal right now, whatever the wobble. And I would suggest we look at the new double circular saws that can accommodate larger logs.”
“Good work, Annag,” said Lawyer Flense in his stage whisper voice, smiling at the office manager.
There was no wobble in the government’s need for lumber and Duke Logging profited through the rich years of the war. Mr. Pye seemed almost sad when it ended in the spring, followed by Lincoln’s assassination. But the south needed to rebuild, and the cry for lumber had never been louder.
“There are rich forests in the south,” said Theodore Jinks, “closer to the need. I suggest we buy up some southern woodland and get our cutting crews to work. If the Board agrees, I can make a reconnaissance.” The idea was good and Jinks and Mr. Ludlum, their clothes neatly packed in carpetbags, left a week later to assess the southern trees.
Fires of invention blazed through the country; new ideas and opportunities for innovation crammed the mail basket that Annag Duncan lugged in every morning. There were so many of them and it took so long to understand the complex explanations and diagrams that Mr. Pye suggested that Duke hire an educated man to assess the proposals and even that the Board arrange a meeting of these inventors. At such a meeting men who had worked out logging industry improvements or new machines might show scale models or drawings and diagrams. The Board would talk with the inventors.
“This could be promising,” said Lavinia. “If something of value emerges Duke Logging can offer a fair price for the rights and then patent it. Let us set a date for the summer, when travel is less onerous. The company will put the inventors up, gratis, in the Hotel Great Lakes — a limit of twenty men. I believe it has a ballroom that may be ideal for exhibits. We will certainly find it interesting.”
• • •
The next spring in Detroit, more than 250 miles east, Dieter Breitsprecher scissored out the half-page ad in the Chicago Progress calling for inventors to apply for Duke Logging’s summer exhibit. The chance to mix with a collection of men whose brains buzzed with mechanics and machines was irresistible. Inventors did not write to Breitsprechers. He had a certain respect for Lavinia and remembered how quickly in the long-ago years she had learned the basics of scaling; he doubted she had ever used the knowledge — why should she? — she had competent employees, several lured away from the Breitsprechers. He wrote, asking if he might attend the exhibit, not as an inventor, not as a competitor, but as an interested friend. He offered to help defray the expenses of the gathering. He did not think she would refuse him; indeed, she wrote back cordially, refused his monetary offer and asked him to dine with her the Friday evening before the meeting.