Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/118

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freely from the banks. When the banks eventually drew the strings close—and they did this at a disappointingly low limit to George,—Thomas Pence, President of the Blue Lake Steamship Company and one of the stockholders interested through Stephen Gilman, generously opened his own check book.

"Stop worrying, George!" he told the anxious young man. "I'll lend you what money you need. Or quit this foolish little business soon as you can get away from it. It's good, of course, but it's little. It'll always be little. I'll take you into my steamship company, give you a block of stock, make you general manager in a couple of years, and you can stand to skim off a million before you're gray."

Pence had heard all about how George had worked out the allotment of the parts contracts; and he, in common with some others, was beginning to look upon young Judson as Milton Morris did, as a kind of a miracle-worker.

But George could say "No," to the steamship business. "Mr. Pence," he responded in that earnestly respectful way of his which always robbed disagreement of its offense, "if you think this is a little business you're a blind man. Automobile manufacture will be the biggest business in America in half a century. It'll be pretty good-sized in ten years. A million? Say, the Morris-Judson Company will do a mil-