C

OMMERCIALLY, the English are a failure in California. While English money is supplied to many of the great mining, citric fruit and irrigation projects, and the English dot the landscape all the way from San Diego to Mount Shasta, compared with the other nations of the world, representatives of which thrive numerously in California, the English are failures. Of the few hundred millionaires who have acquired immense riches in this south land one only, a large department store proprietor, is an Englishman and can be classed among them; and he is a Canadian, fighting once for the Queen in the Riel Rebellion. All the other millionaires of California, be they Gentile or Hebrew, had no particular interest in the coronation of England's king. The intelligent class of English residents in California are known as "remittance men"; those who toil not, neither do they spin, but are maintained in all their fragrance and beauty by remittances periodically sent from trustees of English estates, the original devisors now mouldering beneath the mossy grave stones in the quiet church yards of old England. Removed from the incentive of industrial occupation or invention these bask in the eternal sunshine of California or mingle in superior social happenings that to some extent remind them of the glorious occasions of festivity once familiar to them in their home land. A leading English attorney of Los Angeles in a post-prandial speech some time ago advised all his countrymen to shed all the mannerisms and noticeable habits of the English and adopt as much as possible, chameleon-like, the color of the rock upon which they reposed. The English, however, are a benefaction to the State. It is well known that the

little school marm of New England, trained by Puritanical ancestors, has settled all over the United States and elevated the moral and religious tone of communities. So with the English; their rugged honesty and delightful manners have civilized California and prepared the way for that immense population constantly arriving by every train that is to make San Francisco the Paris of this continent and Los Angeles its London.

While as a class, the "remittance men" meet the condemnation and criticism of all thinking men in California, it is to the remittance men that California owes the establishment of its great ostrich feather industry. Some of these remittance men have enjoyed higher objects than social prestige and chronic idleness and have improved the face of the district with their care and capital. One of them came here thirty years ago filled with a desire to endow the American republic with the African ostrich and thus save money to the American people. For thirteen years he struggled on, feeding his family and ostriches with remittances and awaiting patiently, apparently in vain, for the appreciation by the American republic of the American ostrich feather. Ten years ago his efforts began to be rewarded and the American women, tourists and residents, began to fall over each other in their attempts to obtain the famed American ostrich feather.

Within a few years another AngloCalifornian millionaire had been created, a rara avis, and, after the manner of other wealthy in other foreign lands, he has spread his sails and flown home to the land of his fathers, endowed with a private opinion that England is the only place in the world where a gentleman ought to live. A stock com

pany survives him and carries on the immense business so well begun by this brilliant scion of one of England's nobles commercial families. The company has made a profit of over half a million dollars within the last four years; it is capitalized for $300,000 and is so adjusted that most of the important employees of the company share in the profits, a co-operative plan of the first class, insuring the best and most faithful services of several hundred people.

Not long after the establishment of this phenomenal success a procession of imitators began to appear and the land became deluged with the prospectii of ostrich feather companies; thousands in California do not look now with the old time interest and admiration on the perambulating long-legged ostrich; they own ostrich company stock subject to assessments. The standard English companies, however, pay well, one of them having declared a dividend annually for the last few years of thirtyfive per cent. While the greatest activity in the way of feather selling and exhibits remains in California, yet there are five times as many ostriches in Arizona as in California. All these creatures are increasing at the rate of thirty per cent. per annum, so that the American-Anglo ostrich feather trade will soon be a thing of the past; two or three million dollars find their way across the Atlantic in exchange for ostrich feathers; just as soon as the American ostrich population shall have

multiplied in sufficient number to supply the American demand the demit is given to this lucrative trade. The consolation for the English in this matter is the fact that most of the California ostrich feather profits will be remitted to London, for the English ostrich farmers now resident in California will doubtless follow the example of their illustrious pioneer and predecessor, that is, as soon as their fortunes are made vending finery to the American women they will seek the classic precincts of their native land, after the manner of other world conquerors from India, Ceylon and elsewhere.

Doubtless in a few years, when the Panama canal will induce many of the English to locate in this American Egypt, an English commercial song can be sung that will be more cheerful and encouraging. The advancing hosts of Americans from the frigid and torrid regions of the East are filling up the land; the city of Los Angeles has acquired a quarter of a million of these in the last ten years. The multiplication of women and ostriches mean unlimited supply and demand; in this industry the English control, and to them it will afford peculiar opportunities for monetary acquisition. An industry similar to that of Africa will soon be flourishing within our borders and doubtless the bear that ornaments the escutcheon of California will be removed and its place taken by an engraving of the peculiar and profitable ostrich that is to make countless fortunes for AngloAmerican investors of the near future.

THE

'HE directors' meeting was over. Larrabee shoved back his chair with the briskness of a man to whom time is money and money god. His fellow directors leaned back comfortably in theirs, which marked the social line between them. Lingering for perhaps twenty minutes, they had the appearance of settling down to indefinite idleness; the contractor, staying as long, was like an alert hawk with wings half spread for flight.

"Today's Record prints an ugly story about the wreck on the K., L. &. Q." Atwood said it to President Gordon, the veteran director, and Gordon raised questioning brows as he lighted a fresh cigar. Atwood explained:

"It seems that when the bridge was inspected, two weeks ago, the flexion test showed that it was weakening, but they were badly rushed and decided that it would hold for another month. In two weeks the Knight Templar special went through. It sounds bad."

"It sounds criminal," said that President sententiously. "The way they kill people in America,' is getting to be a by-word, and it is not a pretty one for an American to hear. We are so busy getting ahead of some one else that we bid fair to outstrip the amiable weakness of regarding the other man's safety."

"Never while he holds us liable in cash," murmured Wilmot from the other side of Larrabee. He was a brevet official in a street railway corporation whose dividends had been appreciably diminished by heavy damage suits.

Larrabee listened, his sharp little brown eyes whisking from one to another. Like most men whose education has been of their own picking up, he was avidly curious of current affairs,

and his opinions on them were yea and nay. He broke in now bluntly:

"I know blamed well I'd bring action if I were in a smash like that. When a man buys a railroad ticket he buys reasonable protection to the end of his journey, and he's entitled to his money's worth."

"Very true, Mr. Larrabee." It was President Gordon's earnest voice. "Every producer, broadly, speaking, bears a certain responsibility toward the con. sumer, but it is the tendency of the day to forget that. It reminds me of a talk I had with an enthusiastic friend the other day. He contended that nowhere is safety held so lightly, against dollars and cents, as in our own country. Gain, he said, is the pre-requisite; human life the negligible quantity. He cited the adulteration of foods and medicines, either actively poisoning them or robbing them of their nourishing and cur

ative values, and he reminded me of the

diphtheria epidemic last year, when so many children in the public schools sickened and died, until it was found that the antitoxin was adulterated. He says that it is cheaper to put more arsenic in dyes than the law specifies is safe, and that in consequence clothing and wall-papers exhale their own share of poison. But it saves a few cents on the yard or piece. He went into details about some of the more noticeable and sickening disasters of recent years, and said that all the attendant casualties resolved themselves into one primary cause-ultimate profit."

"He may be right to a certain extent." Wilmot leaned forward and punctuated each point with two upraised fingers. "I don't deny his facts, but his deductions are too sweeping. These things adjust themselves. It is not a clear-sighted business policy for

producer or carrier to go beyond a certain mark, and to that extent he is bound to give protection. Sometimes he overreaches himself, but it carries its own cure. Waiving the ethics of the matter, you know that no responsible business man goes into a scheme which he knows is going to kill people. He understands the reaction."

"Which was just my friend's point." The president smiled genially as he arose. "No business scheme actually contemplates the taking of human life; it simply overlooks it entirely. It doesn't enter, so to speak, into the specifications. Well, gentlemen, my sermon is finished. I am now going to risk my personal safety on one of Wilmot's cars, and if I lose a leg or two, I shall prove this argument in court."

Larrabee left them-he was always the first out and as the president turned to follow, Wilmot looked over at him with twinkling eyes.

"Have you seen this afternoon's

Times?"

"No. What's in it?"

"Well, I didn't think you had, when you began your exposition on negligible quantities. You know Larrabee is in the City Hall Ring, and the Times lines up with the opposition. It comes out with a column article about a new scraper he is putting up for Morrison on Forty-second, next to the Berwick, and it more than hints that he has inched on the specifications until it doesn't come up to legal requirements for safety. Then it raps the Berwick and calls it 'a rotted eight-story firetrap.' The Berwick belongs to Larrabee, you know."

"No, I did not know," The old director frowned a little.

"I thought the Berwick was a pretty decent hotel," Atwood ventured curiously.

“Oh, it looks all right, and it commands good prices; but I guess it was pretty old when Larrabee bought it, dirt cheap, about ten years ago. He has

painted and frescoed and gilded and upholstered it until it's quite showy; but I shouldn't care to live there myself. It's too bad about Morrison's building."

"Hasn't the city a building inspector to look after these things?"

"Oh, Rankin!" Wilmot laughed a little. "Larrabee got him his appointment," he volunteered. "However, it's no business of mine."

Larrabee had not seen the afternoon's Times, but he bought one as he went out into the chillp dusk. He always bought the opposition papers; they kept him posted on what his enemies were up to.

It was late, but he would go down to his dingy little office before going home. He squeezed on the rear platform of a cross-town car, braced his legs for corners with ease of long habit and took out his paper. He was enjoying himself now. In the directors' room of the Cornhill Bank he felt smothered; but here he was elbowing his own kind.

Two or three columns he skimmed over quickly in the dimming light; then his jaw settled into hardness, his bright little eyes narrowed into two sharply peering slits. The fighter in Larrabee was coming out. Presently he dropped off the car as it slowed down, and went into a shabby office building.

Five stories up was the office of "John P. Larrabee, Contractor and Builder." As Larrabee entered it his clerk, just ready to leave, hesitated expectantly, but the contrator shook his head.

"No, I don't want you."

He sat down by his desk, waited until the clerk had gone and pulled the telephone toward him. When he got his number he gave a little internal grunt of satisfaction. Building Inspector Rankin was in.

"Hello! That you, Rankin? This is Larrabee. Seen the Times? Say, I want to talk to you tonight.

A grim little smile twitched at his mouth as he hung up. His skies were clearing. This was action, and action was meat and strong drink to him. He stayed at his desk nearly an hour longer, deep in a wilderness of figures.

He ate alone that night. His boy Frank was home from college for the Easter holiday, but he was out somewhere for supper-no, dinner. Plain supper had always been good enough for Larrabee, but the boy's friends. seemed to do things differently. Down somewhere in his tough little knotted muscle of a heart Larrabee nursed a queer vanity over the "swellness" of his boy's college friends. Frank should have the things in life which he himself had been denied. His wife had died some years before, but he still kept his house, with all its speaking ugliness of misspent wealth, for the boy's sake. It was for the same untimate end, unformulated but insistent, that he had taken an expensive pew in an expensive church and sat stolidly through the service each Sunday morning, and for the same reason he lingered after the directors' meeting of the Cornhill Bank, listening to conversation which he did not always understand. In some obscure way these things seemed to be a title of respectability to hand on to the boy.

Larrabee was no fool. He knew where he stood-that with all his money and strength he could not get beyond a certain plane. He knew that while men like Atwood and Gordon would meet him genially on a business level, they would as soon think of inviting an East River tugboat to sit at their tables. For himself he could snap his fingers at it; but they should not despise his son. Frank should be all that he was and all that he could not hope to be, and thus far the boy had justified his ambition,

When Rankin came Larrabee carried him off to what he always called the "sittin'-room," and shut the door. For ten minutes the strong murmur of his voice rose and fell.

"Now," finished Lararbee, "I want you to go over to the Berwick and the new building. Make a regular official inspection, and report. Pay special at. tention to the new building. That's the way to shut those fellows up. As soon as you're through I'll go to the Times people and cram it down their throats."

The Building Inspector cleared his own throat and hesitated. He had been in politics long enough to know what he owed his backers.

"I took a run up there after I got your 'phone, but it was so dark I couldn't see much. Maybe a little bracing here and there might show up well. They've been blasting a couple of sqares down, and that might have weakened it. If Morrison should get nervous-"

“Fiddlesticks! The contractor snapped it out contemptuously. "I'll be responsible to Morrison. Now see here, Rankin, I'm not running any risk of losing money on buildings that I put up. If that place isn't safe I'll go to work and make it safe. That's business, and you're the man to put me wise about it. But I say it is safe. I've been all over the plans again tonight. Guess you've heard somebody talk."

He narrowed his sharp eyes at Rankin, not ill-naturedly. The Inspector knew as well as he that Larrabee had "inched" on the specifications in quantity and quality as far as he dared, and justified himself in it. That, as he would have said, was business. Rankin also knew that what Larrabee said was true-that he was not the man to lose money by going too far if he knew it.

"I questioned the foreman a bit," he admitted, "and he said that the masons have been grumbling lately. They have