None But Lucifer

Chapter XXIII

Hale's first concern was to learn from his subjects how to fight their common enemy. With Gloria he visited the Stock Exchange, and was appalled by the hysterical defeatism of the traders. At a meeting between the administration and key figures in finance, industry, and labor, he and Gloria were inconspicuous observers. He had learned to use his connections to get himself into places where a mere clipping-bureau manager has no business being.

"It was enough to take the heart out of anyone," he told Banner afterward in New York. "A lot of cockeyed proposals came up, and a lot of sound ones, too — but everybody was scared stiff. All these big shots just sat around humming through their teeth. The whole thing's too big. Nobody really knows how to tackle it."

Banner rubbed his chin pensively. "Well, it is one hell of a big problem. Take the banks. They've got billions of dollars just lying around doing nothing; and let me tell you, it's a headache. You hear a lot about unemployed men, but unemployed capital is just as much of a problem. Why don't the banks extend credit? Well, industrialists don't want to draw too heavily on a future they're afraid of.

"And what are they afraid of? Taxes are high, though not as high as in a lot of countries. But there's the danger that they might become confiscatory. Reforms keep hamstringing expansion. The idea's supposed to be so business can't drive blindly into a boom that might get out of hand, like in '29. Everybody's scared of a boom, because it ends in collapse. I guess nobody's scared of the opposite — that maybe the whole system'll stall to a dead stop and just naturally fall apart."

If problems had only one side, Hale thought regretfully, reaching a conclusion would be so much simpler. Banner had given the orthodox financial explanation. That his analysis was entirely correct, from his point of view, only made the answer more elusive.

WHEN Hale had, with much effort, succeeded in making Gloria dress poorly, he took her through the slums. The sight of families hanging onto food and shelter by the most precarious of holds infuriated him, but he could only grit his teeth, curse Johnson and himself, and divorce sentiment from reason until he could find the solution.

Defiantly but convincingly, a union official explained: "Sure, we stick with the administration. We'd be suckers if we didn't. Industry wants to expand, put in labor-saving inventions, cut down unit costs to meet competition. Sounds swell, doesn't it? But what happens to us? For a while we're sitting pretty, making all the stuff the machines can turn out, and without much work, either. Then what happens? We produce faster than the stuff can be sold. Goods pile up, and business gets slack, and we're laid off. Then when we've been on relief for a while, things pick up, which means the stocks are low enough to start work again producing more than we've got the money to buy, and the whole damned thing goes over the whole damned circle again.

"The administration wants to keep things going at a pretty even pace, so we don't produce too much or too little. And that suits us fine. Why not? Think we like to sit around waiting for inventories to drop so we can rush out goods and wait around again?"

"THE way I see it," Hale said to Banner, "this hemi — this country was getting along pretty well until we had to make a decision on isolation or intervention. Then the government and the economy lobby fought each other to a standstill —"

Gloria had seated herself on his chair arm and was running her fingers through his hair. He tolerated the sensation until she whispered in his ear: "Billie-willie, can't you talk about something else? That's all I've been hearing for weeks, and it makes me dreadfully tired."

"Please, darling, this is very important."

Banner, ignoring the scene, declared: "Offhand, it looks like that might be the reason. I don't know, though. Wish I did."

"Why?" asked Hale.

"Well, take each one by itself. Those of us who are interventionists feel the country isn't strong enough to fight alone. We think we should jump on the aggressors before we're isolated and attacked. But those of us who are isolationists have the same idea, only the other way around. They don't want us to weaken ourselves by getting into a war that doesn't touch us at the moment. So they're for staying home and preparing until we can take on all comers."

While Banner filled a pipe, Hale pondered. Banner's reasoning seemed solid, so far.

"In other words," Hale said tentatively, "both sides are afraid."

Banner blew out a match. "Right! One side's afraid to let the enemy get too strong, and the other's really afraid to fight at all.

"I wasn't a kid when the last war started. We weren't anxious to get into it; but we felt that, once we did, the thing was as good as settled. Understand what I'm driving at? We had an idea we could take on the whole world single-handed. We don't feel that way now.

"Normally though — I mean when business is good — we'd all be isolationists. Not the cringing kind who mumble about putting our own back yard in shape. I mean a real stalwart kind of isolation, that says to aggressors, we're not going to pick on you, but just step over here and you'll get the hell knocked out of you."

Hale thought he saw the answer; it was what everybody had been preaching, but from conflicting points of view. "You mean?" he asked, to leave nothing unexplained.

Banner slapped his chair arm. "Confidence!" he roared. He went on to particularize, but Hale wasn't paying attention. He thought: of course that was the answer. But what could he do about it? He could have remedied a purely material cause. But the cause had nothing to do with lack of money, raw materials, labor, transportation, or management. It was purely psychological. And how do you go about remedying a psychological disturbance through an entire hemisphere? He explained his bewilderment to Banner.

"I guess you're right," Banner acknowledged. "It all depends on your angle, though. Taking a long view, you get that conception. But living in the present, seeing how things collapse when they get too good, and so on, sort of changes your idea. I don't know."

Hale jerked away from Gloria's exploratory hand and said vehemently: "But look here: if everybody felt the way we do — that this hemi-country has the most terrific future in the history of the world — we'd all feel confident, wouldn't we? And then we'd blast our way out of the depression by sheer confidence!"

"We certainly could!"

How, wondered Hale, do you give people confidence? By example? Well, if enough men expanded their business— Nonsense. The government had spent millions of dollars trying to revive trade, and had only made investors more fearful. Propaganda? The silly optimism that the country's leaders had gone around radiating in the early part of the depression had been totally ineffectual. Laws? There were thousands of laws, periodically enforced and ignored, with no result but the creation of more fear and uncertainty.

Then the obvious thought struck him. He pushed Gloria's hand away and jumped up. He pointed a finger at his father-in-law. "You feel confident! Don't you?"

"I ... I d-don't know —"

"You can't help feeling confident! Just look at what we've done and can do, and you'll —"

"Don't have to continue," said Banner, getting up and resolutely squaring his plump shoulders. "I guess I've felt that way all along, only I didn't have the guts to believe it." He slapped Hale's back. "I'm running along home. Got some plans for an expansion I've been carrying around in my head for years. All it needed was courage. Got plenty of that now ... somehow!"

He marched away with his massive head erect, as if drums were beating. Hale fell back into his chair, his head in a whirl. In no time at all Banner had changed from a timid, depressed businessman to a confident, pugnacious, practically swashbuckling businessman. Hale couldn't get used to the prompt and drastic action of his spells.

He scarcely heard Gloria's: "Billie-willie, I've been a good girl, haven't I? I've listened to you and daddy talking about such awfully dull things, and I haven't even bothered you much. Can't I have the gang over tomorrow night for a party? A cute little party ... just a tiny one."

Hale knew he had the cure, and it scared the wits out of him.