Butler Ellis Parker
The Great American Pie Company

“I want to do what’s right, too,” he said at last. “You can be president. I’ll be treasurer.”

“I guess mebby we’d better take turns bein’ treasurer,” suggested Phineas.

“All right,” said Eph; “I want my turn first.”

CHAPTER FOUR

When the two men had settled the treasurer question, they smoked awhile in silence, each lost in thought; and as they thought their brows clouded.

“Say, Eph,” said Phineas at length, “what be you thinkin’ that makes you look so glum?” Eph shook his head sadly.

“I been lookin’ ahead, Phin,” he said – “‘way ahead. An’ I see a snag. I don’t hold it ag’in’ you, Phin; but the thing won’t pan out.” “What – what you run up ag’in’, Eph?” asked Phineas, solicitously.

“Fruit,” said Eph, dolefully. “Loads of it. Phin, what if we do gather in all the fruit that comes to town? Ain’t there just dead loads an’ loads o’ fruit in these here United States? An’ the minute we git to puttin’ up the price, it’ll git noised about, an’ Dagos an’ Guinnies’ll pile in here with fruit an’ cut under us.” He sighed. “‘Twas a good business while it lasted, Phin; but it didn’t last long.” Phineas lay back on the grass and laughed long and squeakily.

“Is that all the farther ahead you looked, Eph Deacon?” he asked when he had recovered his breath. “Any old fool ought to know that the second year we was in business we’d buy up all the fruit in the United States.”

Eph’s face cleared and he smiled again, but Phineas’s face clouded.

“What worried me, Eph,” he said, “was ‘bout payin’ sich high prices for fruit as them blame farmers would likely ask. Ner I won’t stand it, neither. Will you?”

“Not by a blame sight, Phin,” said Eph. “I won’t let nobody downtrod me. But,” he asked anxiously, “how you goin’ to stop it?”

Phineas dug his heel in the soft turf.

“We got to buy out the farms,” he announced decisively, “an’ hire the farmers to run ‘em.”

“Think we can afford it, Phin?” asked Eph. “We don’t want to go puttin’ our money into nothin’ losing?”

“We got to afford it,” said Phin. “We’re in this thing so deep now we can’t go back. An’ we’ll need part o’ the farms, anyhow, fer our wheat.”

“Our wheat?” said Eph, puzzled. “Be we goin’ to sell wheat, Phin?”

“Sell wheat?” said Phin, with disgust. “No such fools. Won’t we need all the wheat this country can grow to keep our big flourmills rannin’? When we own all the flour-mills in the country, it stands to reason we’ll have to own all the wheat, don’t it?”

Eph looked at his companion with open mouth.

“Mills!” he ejaculated. “What fer do we want to own all the mills?”

Phineas waved his hand in the air.

“‘Tain’t ‘want to,’” he said decisively, “it’s ‘have to.’ I didn’t say we’d buy all the mills, because I thought you’d surely see fer yourself that we’d have to buy them.”

“Now, I ain’t kickin’, Phin,” said Eph, in a conciliating tone; “if you say buy the mills, we’ll buy ‘em. I’m ready an’ willin’ any time you are. All I ask is, Why? That’s all I ask – Why?”

“Well, sir,” explained Phineas, “if our bakery here puts up the price of bread, the outside bakeries will ship in bread, if we don’t buy out the outside bakeries. An’ once we start, we’ve got to buy out every bakery in the country. An’ when we do that we’ve got to own all the mills, so no one else can get any flour to start bakin’. An’ to keep anybody else from startin’ mills, we’ve got to own all the wheat-belt. It’s only right to be on the safe side, Eph.” Eph crossed his knees and smoked silently, nodding his head slowly the while.

“I dassay you’re right, Phin,” he admitted at length; “but you ain’t far-seein’ enough. S’pose – just s’pose, fer instance – it come time to ship a lot o’ flour from our mills to our bakeries, an’ them lumber fellers up North wouldn’t furnish timber to supply our barrel-factories.”

Phineas laughed.

“We’d use sacks,” he said shortly.

“Well,” said Eph, “s’pose – just s’pose, fer instance – that ‘bout the time we needed cotton to run our cloth-mills to make sacks fer our flour – ” He paused. “We would run our own cloth-mills, wouldn’t we, Phin?” he asked.