Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/74

66 Thereupon the combination turned the screws a little closer. Brown's clerks were bribed, and other "competitive" methods resorted to. But Brown was inflexible and serene. The prospect of great wealth did not tempt but rather repelled him. Indeed this whole warehouse business, successful and important as it had hitherto been, was drawing him away from his plans of larger usefulness. It took his time and thought, and his surroundings more and more made it mere money-getting. The manufacturers were after dollars, of course; his clients were waiting simply for returns, and his partner was ever anxiously scanning the balance-sheet. This whole aspect of things more and more disquieted Brown. He therefore writes soberly in December, 1847: "Our business seems to be going on middling well and will not probably be any the worse for the pinch in the money concerns. I trust that getting or losing money does not entirely engross our attention; but I am sensible that it quite occupies too large a share in it. To get a little property together to leave, as the world would have done, is really a low mark to be firing at through life.

The next year, however, came a severe money pressure, "one of the severest known for many