Middle West -- Fiction; Real estate developers -- Fiction; Suburbs -- Fiction
“Yes, Sam,” his father agreed pleasantly. “He talks pretty good. I don’t
know as I seldom heard no better.”
“But what do you think of it?” the eager Dan urged. “What I want to
know: Don’t you think I’ve made my case? Don’t you believe that Ornaby
Addition——”
“Let’s wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn interrupted quietly. “Let’s listen here
a minute. First, there’s the distance. You say yourself Shelby says he
ain’t goin’ to put no car line out there; and it’s true he ain’t.”
“But I told you I haven’t given that up, Mr. Kohn. I expect to have
another talk with Mr. Shelby next week.”
“_He_ don’t,” Mr. Kohn remarked. “He spoke to me yesterday a good deal
about it at bank directors’ meeting. No, Mr. Oliphant; don’t you expect
it. You ain’t goin’ to git no car line until you got people out there,
and how can you git people out there till you git a car line? Now wait!”
With a placative gesture he checked Dan, who had instantly begun to
explain that with enough capital the Addition could build its own
tracks. “Wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn went on. “If you can’t git enough
capital for your Addition how could you git it for a car line, too? No,
Mr. Oliphant; but I want to tell you I got some idea maybe you’re right
about how this city’s goin’ to grow. I’ve watched it for thirty years,
and also I know something myself how the people been comin’ from Europe,
and how they’re still comin’. It ain’t only them;—people come to the
cities from the country like they didn’t used to. The more they git a
little bit education, the more they want to live in a city; that’s where
you’re goin’ to git a big puportion the people you claim’s goin’ to
crowd in here.
“But listen a minute, Mr. Oliphant; that there Ornaby’s farm is awful
far out in the country. Now wait! I’m tellin’ _you_ now, Mr. Oliphant,
please. Times are changin’ because all the time we git so much new
invented machinery. Workin’ people are willin’ to live some ways from
where they work, even if they ain’t on a car line. Why is that? It’s
because they can’t afford a horse and buggy, but now they got bicycles.
But you can’t git ’em to live as far out as that there Ornaby’s farm,
even with bicycles, because except in summer the roads ain’t nothing but
mud or frozen ruts and snow, and you can’t git no asphalt street put out
there. The city council wouldn’t ever——”
“Not to-day,” Dan admitted. “I don’t expect to do this all in a week or
so, Mr. Kohn. But ten years from now——”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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