only thing that threatens it is child-labor legislation in the South, the tariff, and the control of the supply of cotton. Pretty big hindrances, you say. That‚Äôs so, but look here: we‚Äôve got the stock so placed that nothing short of a popular upheaval can send any Child Labor bill through Congress in six years. See? After that we don‚Äôt care. Same thing applies to the tariff. The last bill ran ten years. The present bill will last longer, or I lose my guess‚ÅÝ‚Äî‚Äòspecially if Smith is in the Senate.
“Well, then, there remains raw cotton. The connection of cotton-raising and its raw material is too close to risk a manufacturing trust that does not include practical control of the raw material. For that reason we’re planning a trust to include the raising and manufacturing of cotton in America. Then, too, cornering the cotton market here means the whip-hand of the industrial world. Gentlemen, it’s the biggest idea of the century. It beats steel.”
Colonel Cresswell chuckled.
“How do you spell that?” he asked.
But John Taylor was not to be diverted; his thin face was pale, but his gray eyes burned with the fire of a zealot. Harry Cresswell only smiled dimly and looked interested.
“Now, again,” continued John Taylor. “There are a million cotton farms in the South, half run by colored people and half by whites. Leave the colored out of account