If that wild
Scotchman butts into this plan he's inviting trouble, and we've got to see
that he gets it. He's got to be choked now or never! Don't have any mercy!
Just look at it this way! Talk it this way! He's turning on his own, if he
does what he threatens! He played the sneak, he, a mill-owner, getting on
to that commission! And he proposes to shove in a report that will smother
development by outside capital. Play up the reason for his interest in the
thing along that line! A hog for himself! It's easy to turn public
sentiment by the right kind of talk! If I really start out to go the limit
I can have him tarred and feathered as a chief conspirator, rigging a
scheme to have our big industries knocked in the head."
Despeaux spoke low, but his tone conveyed the malice and the menace of a
man who had been nursing a grudge for a long time. "Two years ago his
newspaper letters and his rant killed that Consolidated project, and I had
a contingent fee of fifty thousand dollars at stake; as it was, I got only
a little old regular lobby fee and my expense money. And the power hasn't
been developed by the infernal, dear, protected people, has it?" he
sneered. "If the Consolidated folks had been let alone and given their
franchise, we'd now be marketing over our high-tension wires two millions
of horse-power in big centers two or three hundred miles from this state.
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