By 1928 all the inside outsiders were outside looking in, and the Bendigos owned all the shares in the parent company, which now had six immense plants in operation...
October 29, 1929, was the turning point. On the ruins of the stock market Kane Bendigo built his fabulous fortune. He had sold out all his holdings early in October, at the peak highs, after buying everything in sight on dangerous margin at the lows. The crash made him a multimillionaire. Just how much he made cannot be determined; there is reason to believe his profits ran to hundreds of millions of dollars. This was the effective beginning of the Bendigo empire. Kane was 32. Abel was 25!!!!!...
They began expanding immediately. Bought out a very large munitions company. In rapid succession several smaller ones. These plus what they already had became the nucleus of the gigantic overall organization, of which The Bodigen Arms Company today is only a part...
In the summer of 1930 the Bendigos left Wrightsville. It had become like a whale trying to maneuver in a pond. They had to get to where they could move around. They built a whole city in southern Illinois, an industrial city of 100,000 population. Their main offices were in New York. They began to open branches in foreign countries...
Some of the original Bendigo plants are still operating in Wrightsville, although the ownership is so tangled up it would take an army of experts to work its way through...
There is no evidence that either Kane or Abel Bendigo has set foot in Wrightsville since that day. Dr. Minikin, who recalls the old days with far greater clarity than the recent past, “thinks” Judah was back during the mid-thirties for a few days, alone, but I have found no one who remembers having seen him, and a search of the register records of the Hollis, Upham House, and the Kelton for that period has not turned up his name... William M. Bendigo’s grave in the little Fidelity cemetery is untended, overgrown, and almost obliterated. Ellen Wentworth Bendigo is buried in the Wentworth family plot in the Wrightsville cemetery...
June 22, 1930; Government of Bolivia overthrown.
Aug. 22–27, 1930; Peruvian government ditto.
Sept. 6, 1930; Argentine government ditto.
Oct. 24, 1930; Brazilian government ditto.
ITEM: Between January and June of 1930 all plants of The Bodigen Arms Co. (year name-change effected) worked on double shift. Sales almost exclusively South American.
NOTE: It is clear, in the light of this and certain other evidence, that Bendigo provided the explosive force which blew up four South American governments within five months...
NOTE: Bendigo did not cause the revolutions. He merely made them possible...
NOTE: Obviously, these were King Bendigo’s practice sessions, trying out his muscles. Small stuff — in one of the insurrections there were a mere 3000 casualties...
Jan. 2, 1931; Panama Republic overthrown.
Mar. 1, 1931; A second overthrow of the Peru government.
July 24, 1931; Bye-bye existing régime of Chile.
Oct. 26, 1931; Ditto Paraguay.
Dec. 3, 1931; Ditto Salvador.
NOTE: Five more tests of power. What might be called the build-up of the body beautiful, with biceps and chest expanding rapidly. But this is mere gym work, with set-ups; he’s about ready to step out into the big time...
In 1932 we find peaceful consolidation, improvement, and further expansion. The organization is unwieldy. There is weeding out of personnel all along the line. Companies are merged, finances consolidated and redistributed, soft spots strengthened, production streamlined, new industries absorbed. The speed of K.B.’s empire building is stupendous; there is only one precedent in modern times, and it stumbles by comparison. This is the kind of industrial story that could never be invented in fiction. No one would believe it...
June 4, 1932; Another revolution in Chile.
This was apparently the result of an error in calculation, or overzealousness on the part of some Company super salesman. It was immediately remedied by...
Jan. 30, 1933; Adolf Hitler named Chancellor of Germany.
The global phase, to which the other was the merest preliminary, begins here.
Finding Capt. Mike Bellodgia has been a stroke of greatest good luck. The famous round-the-world flyer was put under contract by K.B. toward the end of 1932. He had one job — to fly King Bendigo. He was King’s personal chief pilot for almost thirteen years — until, in fact, a bit after the end of World War II, when Bendigo was persuaded that Bellodgia was getting too old to be trusted with his precious passenger.
Bellodgia is still bitter about it, probably the real reason why he allowed me to take a look at his diaries, although we both pretended he believed my story that I was there in the interests of posterity. I flew up to Maine, where he now lives, and spent several days with him. He lives very handsomely, I must say — Bendigo was generous with him to the point of prodigality, and Bellodgia is financially secure for the remainder of his days. Bellodgia remarks dryly that he earned it; he says that never once in thirteen years of flying Bendigo all over the world did he have to make a forced landing or develop serious engine trouble.
Capt. Bellodgia’s diaries are really not diaries at all but personal logs. He doesn’t seem to realize what he has, and I have not enlightened him.
By juxtaposing Bellodgia’s record of King Bendigo’s flights, destinations, dates, and lengths of stay with historical events, it has been possible to place Bendigo pretty accurately in his true perspective between Hitler’s ascension to power in Germany and the end of World War II...
In 1933 the Reichstag voted absolute power to Hitler. The following day a German newspaper which had been the most powerful pro-Nazi propaganda organ was sold to a German. It had been owned by Kane Bendigo for two years. The conclusion is evident: With Hitler’s position secure, Bendigo no longer needed the newspaper...
On Oct. 14, 1933, Germany quit the League of Nations and withdrew from the Disarmament Conference. On Oct. 12, 13, and 14 of that year Bendigo was in Berlin, spending most of his time at the Chancellery. He flew back to his New York headquarters on the night of Oct. 14...
On Apr. 27, 1934, an anti-war pact — previously agreed on at the Pan-American Conference in Montevideo — was signed in Buenos Aires by the U.S. and certain Central and South American countries; Mexico and others had signed on Oct. 10, 1933. The record of Bendigo’s air trips at this time is illuminating; they tripled in number. The Bendigo munitions works now spread to South America and Europe, were working around the clock. The Bodigen Arms Company, then, in the midst of peace talks and pacts was playing the world short...
On June 15, 1934, the U.S. Senate ratified the Geneva Convention for the supervision of international trade in arms, ammunition, and implements of war. Bendigo was not in Washington, D.C. at any time during June 1934...
On Aug. 1, 1934, he flew back to Berlin. He remained there for nearly three weeks, until Aug. 20. During those three weeks President von Hindenburg died and the offices of President and Chancellor were consolidated in the single office of Leader-Chancellor. One of Der Fuehrer’s first acts in his new official capacity was to decorate Herr Kane Bendigo in a strictly private ceremony. The next day Bendigo left Berlin...