Read Online Glorious by Jeff Guinn - Free Book Online Page A

Douglass. He suggestedthat they be arranged for the offspring of Douglass factory workers; he knew someone very capable who would be glad to help get them organized. The cost would be negligible compared to the goodwill gained with employees. But Douglass refused.
    â€œIf too many of the lower classes learn to read, it will give them ideas above their station,” he said. “My businesses need workers who are grateful for steady employment and have no ambition to be more than they already are.”
    For the first time McLendon dared to disagree with his patron. “Even working people need hope of opportunity, sir, or at least the belief that their children’s lives may prove better than their own.”
    Douglass snorted. “The reality of the world is that most are born into the working lives that they deserve, which is servitude to their betters. There are infrequent exceptions, you’re one of them. But don’t go softheaded on me. I raised you out of the gutter and could return you there anytime. I’ll hear no more about these reading classes.”
    McLendon never mentioned them to Mr. Douglass again. But he quietly arranged for some of the children of Douglass factory workers to attend Gabrielle’s Tuesday and Thursday night classes, and he used his own money to purchase additional McGuffey readers. He knew that Mr. Douglass would be angry if he found out, but the pleasure he took in watching the little ones learn made it seem worth the risk. Besides, he was already tempting fate by his ongoing, evolving relationship with Gabrielle.
    They understood themselves now to be a couple, and sometimes discussed a future together. On Sundays, Aunt Lidia took every opportunity to hint to McLendon that her niece would make a wonderful wife. Salvatore Tirrito warmed sufficiently to McLendon to offer him occasional glasses of homemade wine, which he’d previously shared only with blood relations. Gabrielle knew, of course, thatMcLendon worked for Rupert Douglass in a capacity he never clearly described for fear of disgusting her so much that she would have nothing more to do with him. Based on her own first encounter with McLendon, she was still able to guess the nature if not the extent of his questionable activities. Gabrielle began mentioning the satisfaction he might find in helping to operate a dry goods store. McLendon felt sure, though he didn’t say so to her, that if he ever left Rupert Douglass for Tirrito Dry Goods, his former boss would stop at nothing to put his smaller competitor out of business, just to teach his former employee a lesson. Besides, for all his certainty that he loved Gabrielle, McLendon still couldn’t help relishing the sense of power, of importance, that he felt working for Mr. Douglass. So he tried as best he could to live in both worlds.
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    O NE FALL NIGHT, Mr. Douglass summoned McLendon. They met in the book-lined study, and this time Mr. Douglass insisted that McLendon take some brandy.
    â€œYou’ve worked for me almost six years,” Mr. Douglass said. “I’ve gotten a good sense of your talent, and I mean to make fuller use of it.”
    McLendon had been his eyes and ears in the factory district of St. Louis. Now, Mr. Douglass said, it was time for him to become something more. There were other aspects to conducting successful business. It was critical to pick out the important elected officials and the key power brokers and gain their support, through campaign contributions and gifts to their favored charities and occasionally with what the unenlightened termed “bribes.” Mr. Douglass preferred the term “considerations,” which sounded more civilized.
    â€œSelf-interest drives our great land,” he said. “Why would anyoneever willingly do something for someone else if he himself doesn’t benefit?”
    As Mr. Douglass’s holdings continued to grow, he