“To hell with pickings! Are you going to be satisfied with his droppings all your life? Not me! . . . We only have to look around us. Everybody on the inside is making pots of money right now, pots! There’s never been anything like it. Why shouldn’t we? Wouldn’t you like to have money enough of your own to tell that old swell-front to go to hell, and close the door as he went out?” Harry twisted in his chair without answering. “Well, I mean to,” said Joe. “I want a pile, and I’m going to grab it.” “How?” asked Harry. “Well, I been picking up quite a bit about the ways of the Street, one place and another,” said Joe. “I make the old man talk about it, without his getting on to how much he’s giving away. All the talk is of mergers now. The air is full of it. That is how the money is made. Millions in a stroke of the pen!” “Everything is merged, now,” said Harry. “Not quite everything. I’ll tell you about a cunning little merger that I have in mind. These electric cabs that have increased so fast the last two or three years. You see them everywhere now. There are five small companies operating them. The damn things are so expensive, and they break down so often, the companies are all bankrupt, and only keep going by selling more stock all the time. You can always stick the public with a new thing like that. How about merging all the New York cab companies?” “But if they’re all bankrupt . . . ?” Joe wagged his hand. “What do I care about that? Think of the publicity! Everybody is interested in cabs. Cabs are romantic. Cabs are always associated with going on the loose. And horseless cabs have news value. Look here! First you go round to the different companies and make an agreement with each one. Oh, it ain’t much of an agreement. They simply agree to come in if the others do, see? Anybody will agree to that. But the five agreements make a good-looking bunch of documents to shake in a sucker’s face, see? He won’t read ’em. Then you incorporate. There’s regular men you can get for incorporators. I’m going to call it the Consolidated Cab Co. Con. Cab ’ll look good on the ticker. . . .” “It’s a con, all right,” said Harry. “By God! that’s right!” said Joe pulled up short. “A cheap josh might ruin us. Well, call it the Manhattan Cab Company, then. Man. Cab on the ticker. . . . Soon as you’re incorporated, you let loose your publicity. ‘Big Corporation formed to take over all New York cabs!’ That’s news, see? You don’t have to pay for it. It’s good for a front page spread. Then you place an order for a thousand new cabs. That’s another news story. Then you get an option on an abandoned car-barn, and announce a super-garage, see? And so on. You tell how wonderful the new service is going to be, and quote the reduced rates. The papers will eat it up.