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Joseph Bannigan, the "rubber king," of Providence, Rhode Island, for $360,000, with the guarantee of the First Presidency, the trustee of the Church, and myself. Similarly, the First Presidency led in building an electric power plant in Ogden, after Chas. K. Bannister, a great engineer, and myself had persuaded the members of the Presidency that the work would benefit the community.
Ordinarily he left the office with a thousand enjoyable fussy directions to the effect that there would undoubtedly be important tasks to-morrow, and Miss McGoun and Miss Bannigan would do well to be there early, and for heaven's sake remind him to call up Conrad Lyte soon 's he came in. To-night he departed with feigned and apologetic liveliness.
I single out these two enterprises because Joseph F. Smith has since sold the power plant to the "Harriman interests," and the control of the sugar factory to the sugar trust; and he has explained that in making the sales he merely followed my father's example and mine in selling the bonds to Mr. Bannigan.
He sprang up, rekindled by the thought of lunching with Paul Riesling. BABBITT'S preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the plans for a general European war. He fretted to Miss McGoun, "What time you going to lunch? Well, make sure Miss Bannigan is in then.
The nine were Stanley Graff, the outside salesman a youngish man given to cigarettes and the playing of pool; old Mat Penniman, general utility man, collector of rents and salesman of insurance broken, silent, gray; a mystery, reputed to have been a "crack" real-estate man with a firm of his own in haughty Brooklyn; Chester Kirby Laylock, resident salesman out at the Glen Oriole acreage development an enthusiastic person with a silky mustache and much family; Miss Theresa McGoun, the swift and rather pretty stenographer; Miss Wilberta Bannigan, the thick, slow, laborious accountant and file-clerk; and four freelance part-time commission salesmen.
The bonds of this company, too, were bought by Mr. Bannigan, with the guarantee of the trustee of the Church, the Presidency and myself. Both the power plant and the sugar factory were financially successful. They performed a large public service beneficently. The fact that Mr. Bannigan held their bonds was no detriment to their work and wrought no injury to the people.
The difference between selling the bonds of the sugar company to Bannigan, in order to raise money to support the factory, and selling half the stock to the sugar trust, in order to make a monopoly profit out of the Mormon consumers of sugar, has either not occurred to Smith or has been divinely waived by him. However, this is by the way and in advance of my story.
"You never hear me whining about my Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office Why, to-day I found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever." He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, "Got to go out.
He was as afraid of his still-faced clerks of the eyes focused on him, Miss McGoun staring with head lifted from her typing, Miss Bannigan looking over her ledger, Mat Penniman craning around at his desk in the dark alcove, Stanley Graff sullenly expressionless as a parvenu before the bleak propriety of his butler.
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