Long before the day of the annual meeting Galt had a large majority of the stockholders with him. Nevertheless, he sent me abroad to solicit the proxies of foreign stockholders. They were easy to get. I was surprised to find that the foreigners, who are extremely shrewd in these matters, with an instinct for men who have the money making gift, had already made up their minds about Galt. They had been watching his work and they were buying Great Midwestern stock on account of it. When it came to the meeting Valentine had not enough support to elect one director. His humiliation was complete. Then he resigned and Galt was elected in his place, to be both chairman and president. He was not exultant. For an hour he walked about the office with a brooding, absent air. This was his invariable mood of projection. He was not thinking at all of what had happened. He put on his hat and stood for a minute in the doorway. Looking back he said, “Hold tight, Coxey,” and slammed the door behind him. CHAPTER XI HEARTH NOTES i Galt’s overthrow of Valentine was an episode of business which need not have concerned the outside world. But the conditions of the struggle were dramatic and personal and the papers made big news of it. The consequences were beyond control. Henry M. Galt was publicly discovered. That of course was inevitable, then or later. He was already high above the horizon and rising fast. The astronomers were unable to say whether he was a comet or a planet. They were astonished not more by the suddenness of his coming than by the rate at which he grew as they observed him. The other consequences were abnormal, becoming social and political, and followed him to the end of his career. Valentine was not a man to be smudged out of the picture. He was a person of power and influence. The loss of his historic position was of no pecuniary moment, for he was very rich; it was a blow at his prestige and a hurt to his pride, inflicted in the limelight. His grievance against Galt was irredressible. Honestly, too, he believed Galt to be a dangerous man. But he was a fair fighter within the rules and would perhaps never himself have carried the warfare outside of Wall Street where it belonged. Mrs. Valentine was the one to do that. She was the social tyrant of her time, ruling by fear and might that little herd of human beings who practice self-worship and exclusion as a mysterious rite, import and invent manners, learn the supercilious gesture which means “One does not know them,” and in short get the goat of vulgus. Her favor was the one magic passport to the inner realm of New York society. Her disfavor was a writ of execution. She was a turbulent woman, whose tongue knew no inhibitions. Whom she liked she terrified; whom she disliked she sacrificed.