Annie Proulx - Barkskins

She nodded. She interpreted these suggestions to mean “pay as little as you can in wages and sell your goods to the workers for as much as they can stand.” Shanty men in remote locations would think it a benefit to have a camp store. Ideas were boiling in her mind. She said, “I have read of a Pennsylvania logging company with a short-line railroad from the cut to the mill, a small steam engine hauling the cars. We could look into doing the same. It would be an escape from the tyranny of rivers, for we now cut only trees close to waterways. Some of the most desirable timber is distant from water and deemed too much trouble to cut. Though of course a railroad would be frightfully expensive.”

“You have to spend money to make money. Do not fear innovation — that is where money grows.” Flense had demolished the lemon cookies and was starting on the molasses drops.

“I read also that same company milled on site and then sent the seasoned lumber to market by rail. We need to build our own railroads.” She hesitated a little then said, “Mentioning Maine made me think. I believe we still need someone reliable in Maine to handle our interests. My father planned to dispose of our forestland there since the white pine is almost completely cut, but he died before it could be sold and now I wonder if there might be a market for other kinds of wood than pine? There is spruce, hemlock, but also much hardwood — beech, maple, walnut, oak. These might have values we do not yet recognize. I think we should hold on to it and look into possible markets for other woods. The Michigan land also has many more kinds of trees than pine.”

“Miss Duke,” said Lawyer Flense. “You have business acumen beyond that of most men.”

“I learned from my father. And Uncle Lennart.”

“But one more suggestion.” He whisked crumbs from his vest. He squinted at her with great seriousness. She felt it — this was not a game, not fancy nor whim; he took her as an equal intelligence.

“Yes?”

“Buy as much Chicago city property as you can and sit on it. You need do nothing with it and as time passes it will swell and double, triple, turn pennies into thousands. When first I came here you could buy a central acre for a dollar or two. Now a quarter acre of downtown urban land goes for fifteen hundred dollars. This happened in New York and it is happening here in Chicago. It will be the source of tremendous wealth to those who have land and sit on it, hold it. Yes, yes, I know what you are going to say, that you have most of the company’s money tied up in forestland. Very well. When the wood is off, sell that land to settlers. But the big money, made with no effort nor outlay beyond the original purchase price, is right under your feet. City land. Mark my words.”

“I mark them well.”

Mr. Pye straightened up from his notes and suggested that after so much talk they go to the Tremont for a dinner. On the way out Lawyer Flense stopped at Annag Duncan’s desk. “You are a wonderful woman, Mrs. Duncan,” he said. “A remarkable office manager and a fine pastry cook.” Annag blushed and put her head down. Lavinia thought she was a bit of a fool to be flattered by the lawyer’s attentions.

Over chops and roasted potatoes they talked of properties, city lots and blocks, and Flense said he would introduce Lavinia to a knowing and shrewd real estate agent. She nodded, but her mind was still swarming with ideas for extending her kingdom and she said musingly, “We may look abroad as well — oh, I do not mean Europe with its worn-out old lands — Europe is not our source but our market — yet there are other countries, places we do not know about. Not now, but in future years. What fabulous kinds of wood may not grow in distant places?” Far to the east, deep under leaf mold and black forest soil, the bones of Charles Duquet relaxed.

• • •

She knew something now; the only true safety was money. Very well, Lavinia Duke, a wealthy and able businesswoman, would build a protective wall of money. And within ten years Duke Logging and Lumber had a general manager and assistants, a sales manager, dozens of landlookers, thirty logging camps, a few miles of forest rail and a steam locomotive named James; it had barges and ships and their crews, sawmills and finishing mills, two furniture mills that used hardwoods, as well as blocks and lots of choice downtown Chicago land; it had Flense’s roster of lawyers, who played legislatures, senators and congressmen like they were banjos. Chicago’s ten railroads covered the city like the spread-out fingers of two hands. Two lots Lavinia had bought in the summer for twelve thousand dollars each were valued at more than twenty thousand six months later. She bought as much land as she could. She knew Lawyer Flense was buying whatever he could for himself. The Chicago population exploded from twenty thousand to almost one hundred thousand in those few years.

She often watched the ship traffic on Lake Michigan, noticed fewer sails each month and more steamboats. She cultivated newspapermen who praised Duke Logging and Lumber as a philanthropic, job-giving business of impeccable moral distinction and Lavinia as a rare and progressive businesswoman. An occasional small municipal gift such as a bandstand or a contribution to Fourth of July fireworks set off yards of enthusiastic prose. She urged editors to praise the manliness and toughness of shanty men, inculcating axmen with the belief that they could take extreme risks and withstand the most desperate conditions because they were heroic rugged fellows; the same sauce served settlers unto the third generation, who believed they were “pioneers” and could outlast perils and adversities. Loggers and frontier settlers, she thought, would live on pride and belief in their own invulnerability instead of money. She learned that small gestures secured tremendous goodwill. When she heard that the shanty boys at one camp had played three old cat on a Sunday she decreed that work should stop at Saturday noon in Duke camps and the afternoon be given over to pastimes such as baseball, but that no amusements would occur on Sunday, the holy day of rest. For this she was held up as a devout but modern sportswoman and invited to Hoboken to attend a Knickerbockers’ game.

After these dinners she often sat at her rosewood desk and, in a habit she had taken from Posey, wrote down as much of the conversation as she could remember in a book bound in green leather. She outlined her plan to cheaply buy up schooners, strip them of masts and rigging and make them into lumber barges.

But dinners with political men and lawyers were even more interesting and the hot questions of the day — slavery, “free soil” and territorial expansion — never burned more fiercely. A well-known senator, a champion of democracy much inclined to oratory, used her table as a platform. “The people who live in whatever states or territories they live in have the right to make their own decisions. It is none of the government’s business to decide if a territory may permit slavery inside its borders or no.” He did not mention that his wife owned a cotton plantation with a hundred slaves and he himself received income as its manager. The phrase “will of the people” was always in his mouth; he meant the will of white people, for another of his banners was that “the Constitution was made by whites for whites.” After all, who else was there?

“Hear, hear,” echoed down the table.

• • •

People streamed into the country — almost a million Irish in twenty years, half a million Germans. They came from all over the world, Germans, Canadians, English, Irish, French, Norwegians, Swedes. The world had heard of the rich continent with its inexhaustible coverlet of forests, its earth streaked as a moldy cheese with veins of valuable metals, fish and game in numbers too great to be compassed, hundreds of millions of acres of empty land waiting to be taken and a beckoning, generous government too enchanted with its own democratic image to deal with shrewd men whose people had lived by their wits for centuries. Everything was there for the taking — it was the chance of a lifetime and it would never come again.