Although the affairs of the company were still being handled by Colonel Tom, and though he daily more and more asserted himself, the officers and shops, and later the big jobbers and buyers as well as the rich LaSalle Street directors, knew that a new force had come into the company. Men began dropping quietly into Sam’s office, asking questions, suggesting, seeking favours. He felt that he was getting hold. Of the department heads, about half fought him and were secretly marked for slaughter; the others came to him, expressed approval of what was going on and asked him to look over their departments and to make suggestions for improvements through them. This Sam did eagerly, getting by it their loyalty and support which later stood him in good stead. In choosing the new men that came into the company Sam also took a hand. The method used was characteristic of his relations with Colonel Tom. If a man applying for a place suited him, he got admission to the colonel’s office and listened for half an hour to a talk anent the fine old traditions of the company. If a man did not suit Sam, he did not get to the colonel. “You can’t have your time taken up by them,” Sam explained. In the Rainey Company, the various heads of departments were stockholders in the company, and selected from among themselves two men to sit upon the board, and in his second year Sam was chosen as one of these employee directors. During the same year five heads of departments resigning in a moment of indignation over one of Sam’s innovations--to be replaced later by two--their stock by a prearranged agreement came back into the company’s hands. This stock and another block, secured for him by the colonel, got into Sam’s hands through the use of Eckardt’s money, that of the Wabash Avenue woman, and his own snug pile. Sam was a growing force in the company. He sat on the board of directors, the recognised practical head of the business among its stockholders and employees; he had stopped the company’s march toward a second place in its industry and had faced it about. All about him, in offices and shops, there was the swing and go of new life and he felt that he was in a position to move on toward real control and had begun laying lines with that end in view. Standing in the offices in LaSalle Street or amid the clang and roar of the shops he tilted up his chin with the same odd little gesture that had attracted the men of Caxton to him when he was a barefoot newsboy and the son of the town drunkard. Through his head went big ambitious projects. “I have in my hand a great tool,” he thought; “with it I will pry my way into the place I mean to occupy among the big men of this city and this nation.” CHAPTER III