The Big Idea/Chapter 2

T was some minutes before Jimmy’s excitement had abated enough for him to tell Anne his plan; or indeed to be able to formulate in his own mind just what this wonderful new idea that had so suddenly come to him would mean. He could understand now how James Watt must have felt as he planned the first steam-engine—a sort of exaltation which Jimmy could feel now in his own heart plainly.

The idea had come to him abruptly, almost full-born, as Jimmy had read such big ideas often do come. He had seized upon it at once with the feeling that it was his big idea, believing in it blindly, without stopping to reason it out.

Now with Anne sitting adoringly beside him, imploring him to explain it to her, he felt suddenly self-conscious and embarrassed. The real reason was that he had no knowledge of the subject, no technical information upon which to base an opinion of whether the idea was feasible or not.

But Jimmy did not know that. He only knew, now that he thought it over, that what he had already said was almost all he could say—all that was in his mind, in fact.

“Tell me about it, Jimmy,” Anne entreated. “How would it work?” Anne looked up to Jimmy as to a vastly superior intellect. But she had herself an acquisitive mind—untrained, immature, but naturally keenly alert. Now that the first thrill of Jimmy’s announcement had passed, she was interested in the subject not only because of Jimmy, but because of the idea itself. And so, just a little with the air of one who demanded to be convinced, Anne wanted to know how it would work.

“Why—why, you see, Anne, it’s like this,” Jimmy explained. “The way they do it now is to mine the coal—and you know all the expense and time and hell that is—then when it is mined it has to be shipped away hundreds of miles to the factories to be used. Now, if you don’t do any of that, but just burn it in the ground where it is, you save all that. Don’t you see?”

“There ain’t any factories over coal-mines,” said Anne.

“No, but there could be just as easy as not. It don’t make so much difference where a factory is, so long as it’s got a railroad. That’s the idea—I’m going to build a factory where the coal is instead of taking the coal to where the factory is.”

“How you going to burn the coal in the ground?” Anne wanted to know.

Jimmy thought a moment.

“Why, just—just burn it,” he answered finally. “You see, Anne,” he hastened to add, “the heat will come up in pipes to the factory boilers at the top—just like the heat comes up.” Jimmy pointed to the smoking crevice at their feet.

Why won’t it just get to be a big fire like this?” Anne objected. “This is burning underground—”

“It won’t.”

“Why won’t it?”

“Well, it won't because, you see, Anne”—Jimmy was thinking fast now—“because, don’t you see, a fire can’t burn without air. I won’t give it only just so much air. This one got started and ran away with itself before they could stop it. Mine will be ’way down very deep, where there ain’t any air, only just what I pump down to it.

“If I give it lots of air, it will burn hard, and there'll be lots of heat come up. Then if I don’t want so much heat, I won’t give it so much air. And if I shut the air all off, it’ll go out altogether. Don't you see?”

“Yes,” said Anne, convinced. “It’s wonderful, Jimmy.” She put her hand with a sudden timidity on his shoulder. “You're—you’re wonderful, too, Jimmy.”

The boy kissed her abstractedly, his mind still busily groping with the flood of ideas that were surging into it. “I can control it easy, Anne, if I start it right, by the air I give it. Why, it’s just like when we have a fire here in the mine. You remember the fire started in C tunnel last fall—your father was working there. He found it when it was only in that one room. All we did was wall up that room from the main tunnel, and it went right out when it couldn’t get any air, didn’t it?”

Anne nodded.

“Besides, over in Coatesville, didn’t a whole mine get away from them a few years ago?” Jimmy continued earnestly. “The fire got to the mine-bottom before they could shut it off, and the white-damp began exploding, so they had to get out of the whole mine. All they did then was seal up the shafts at the top to right off all the air in the whole mine. The fire went out of itself when all the air was used up.”

Again the girl nodded; his arguments seemed sound and quite unanswerable.

“Well, that’s just the way I’m going to do it. It ’ll work, Anne—I know it will,” said Jimmy.

“Yes,” said Anne. “So do I, Jimmy.”

It would work. The more Jimmy thought about it, the more sure he was that it would work. For a long time he sat silent, holding Anne’s hand tightly clasped in his, planning in his mind the things he was going to do. His ideas in detail were vague, absurd almost, from a practical standpoint; but Jimmy did not realize that. They looked concise enough to him.

He would go to New York to live for a time while he was putting the idea over. All the big business men that he would have to see and convince were there. Jimmy had saved several hundred dollars from his earnings in the Fallon Brothers Mine during the last few years, so that lack of money Offered no obstacle. Then, too, he realized with satisfaction, his mother and aster were not dependent on his wages. The large insurance that his father had scrupulously kept up, and the money that he had saved and carefully invited, had left Mrs. Rand, while not rich, at least comfortably independent. That made Jimmy think of his mother’s farm property; and the fact that it might be made to play a part in his big idea came to him at once.

“Why, Anne,” he exclaimed suddenly, “it’s all as clear as daylight to me now. You know mother’s old farm-land over near Coatesville? That’s where I’m going to put the first factory. There’s coal under it—don’t you remember they bored for it two or three years ago? Only it was so deep and the seam was so shallow nobody would work it.”

This piece of land—some two hundred acres—had been left Mrs. Rand by her father. It was poor farm-land, mostly sand, and of little value. Some three years before, a company in search of new coal measures around Coatesville had made borings; but the seam they located was not considered profitable to work, and the project which a time had promised to make the Rand family rich had been abandoned.

But now, with his new idea, this coal could be used. There was a railroad spur very near the, property, Jimmy remembered. It would be an ideal place for a factory. It was the only thing he needed to hook his plan together. Now he could talk convincingly to any big man.

Jimmy, with the optimism of youth, had a world of confidence in himself, and he saw no great obstacles in the way of what he wanted to do. A few weeks or months at the most in New York, and he would be back, with a big factory going up, and all the thousand details of a great enterprise under way. And he would have a part in it all—he would have been its originator. Then, when he was rich and famous, he and Anne would be married. He slipped his arm again about the girl’s shoulders and looked down into her sympathetic, eager little face.

“I love you, Anne,” he said.

“I love you, too, Jimmy,” she answered simply.

He waited a moment. “Yes, but—but this is different, Anne. We’ve always loved each other. But I’m a man now. And you’re a woman. Don’t you see that’s different?”

The girl met his glance squarely, and a little wave of color mounted to her cheeks; but she did not answer.

“I want to marry you, Anne. Some day—maybe soon—when I’ve put this idea over—when I amount to something. I want you for my wife—because—because I love you so much, and you love me. Will you, Anne—will you?”

The girl’s arms went up about his neck; her upturned face was tender with love; her eyes, glistening with tears of happiness, met his without a trace of coquetry.

“Yes, Jimmy, I will,” she whispered.

The New York offices of the Wentworth Glass Company occupied an entire floor of a large office-building on Broadway near Wall Street. At ten o’clock on the Tuesday morning following his momentous walk with Anne to the burning mines and the birth of his big idea, Jimmy entered the Wentworth Company’s offices. He passed through a door marked “Information,” and found himself in a little enclosure facing a low wooden railing and a girl at a telephone switchboard.

Behind her he could see a hundred other girls at typewriters, and the steady click of their machines filled the air with a low, confused hum. It seemed to Jimmy that all the business in the world was being transacted in that room at that moment. For an instant he stood appalled. Then he walked up to the switchboard and addressed the girl.

“I want to see Mr. Wentworth—Mr. Robert G. Wentworth,” he said. “He’s the president, isn’t he?”

The girl stared; then she smiled. Jimmy smiled, too—a frank, friendly smile, so ingenuous that it probably surprised the girl even more than his request.

“Have you got an appointment with Mr. Wentworth?”

Jimmy smiled again. “No,” he admitted. “But I’ve something to say to him—something important, that he’ll be glad to hear.”

“Whom do you represent?” If he had only known it, Jimmy was passing through a very critical moment in his business career.

“Why, I—why, just me.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jimmy—I mean, James Rand.”

The girl’s glance roved over his clothes appraisingly. “Where you from?”

“Menchon, Pennsylvania,” said Jimmy.

His engaging smile and the extraordinary mixture of diffidence and confidence in his manner won out. Besides, he was an extremely good-looking young man.

The telephone girl could not understand what he wanted, but she was on his side anyway.

“I’ll ask Mr. Cooper to see you. He’s the office manager,” she added confidentially.

Jimmy shook his head. “It’s too important for that,” he said positively. “I can’t tell it to anybody but Mr. Wentworth.”

The girl considered a moment. Then, with sudden decision, she made a connection and spoke a few rapid words into the telephone.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she turned back to Jimmy. “I thought maybe Mr. Wentworth’s secretary would see you.”

Jimmy looked blank. It had never occurred to him that any one he selected to tell his big idea to would be reluctant to see him. He had decided on the Wentworth Glass Company quite by accident—the name was engraved on the glassware of the big Broadway restaurant at which he had dined the evening before, and subsequent inquiries had convinced him it was just the sort of organization he wanted—and so he had planned to interview Robert G. Wentworth, its president, that morning. Yet now it seemed impossible for him to see Mr. Wentworth—the telephone girl seemed to think he was crazy to expect such a thing. And even the president’s secretary was too busy to bother with him! For an instant Jimmy felt his task hopeless.

“Can’t see you,” the telephone girl repeated.

“Wouldn’t Mr. Wentworth see me?”

“Certainly not,” said the girl, with some asperity. “You’d better see Mr. Cooper, if you can’t tell it to me. Maybe he would see you.”

“No,” said Jimmy. “It’s too important.”

“Then maybe if you’d come back to-morrow Mr. Wentworth’s secretary will see you. You might try, anyway—if it’s so important,” she added, at Jimmy’s helpless look of appeal.

“I will,” said Jimmy. “Thank you very much.”

And with sinking heart he turned, from the first business interview he had ever had in his life, and went down into the busy city street, below.