The silence in the formal dining room was a physical presence. It was thick, as heavy as the velvet curtains that devoured the sound, and clean, broken only by the subdued, beating tick of a clock from the hallway. All eyes were on him. Ezra Prentice, quiet brother-in-law, now stiff under the gaze of the patriarch.
Jason's computer brain, a high-speed trading algo in a human frame, worked out variables in a microsecond. He considered the row of faces down the long polished table as a series of data points. John D. Rockefeller Jr., his face a tight-lidded disapproval, condemning him already. Alta, his wife, her pretty face a picture of worried misinterpretation, her fork frozen mid-air for her plate. And the rest of various relatives, their faces ranging from courteous interest to active embarrassment.
And then there was the face at the head of the table. John D. Rockefeller Sr. An old, impassive hawk, his pale eyes with no recognisable feeling, only a terrible, reptilian patience. He had asked a simple question, but it was a test. A wrong response would decide his whole future in this odd new world. A groveling, subservient response would have him thrown out as a sycophant. A fool's response would have him thrown into obscurity.
He needed a manifesto.
Jason lifted his water goblet, his hand rock steady. He drank slowly, with care. It was an old stalling tactic, a way of exerting mastery over a room, of making them wait for him. He deposited the crystal back onto its white linen, the soft click a pause in the stillness. He looked directly into the old man's eyes.
"I am still, sir," he began, his voice low-key but clear, reaching to the end of the table without trying. "Because I am listening."
He paused for a moment after issuing the simple statement before going on. "I am listening to a world getting repriced."
A glimmer of curiosity went through Senior's eyes. Junior squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, his disapproval taking shape.
"Everyone here, everyone in this country, speaks of this Great Depression as a plague," Ezra continued, his voice taking on a new ring, a professorial confident flow. "They speak of it as an emptiness, a hole where prosperity used to be. They are wrong." He surveyed the family with his eyes. "It is not an emptiness. It is a violent compression. Value has not gone away; it is only dislocated. Wealth, sir, has not been abolished. It is only in transit."
He leaned a little, his position mirroring that of the patriarch, forming an imaginary line connecting the two of them, which left all others out. "It is passing from the fearful to the patient. From the emotional to the rational. From the sentimental," he flashed a sharp glance at Junior, "to the unsentimental."
"Fear, sir," he said, his voice dropping lower, more confidential, "is a commodity. Commodity like oil, or wheat, or steel. It can be valued. It can be purchased and sold. And in this nation's history, the value of fear has never been lower. That is, men obsessed with it have never been acquired more cheaply."
The words fell like stones into a pool of still water. The metaphor was clinical, harsh, and rather without Christian charity as valued by Junior. Before anyone else could say a word, Junior's voice intervened, loaded with a righteous, barely held anger.
"Ezra, that's a foul thing to say." He laid down his silverware with a bitter clang. "We are talking about human suffering. We are talking about individuals who lose their homes, men who can't feed their kids. You talk as if it were an entry in a ledger. Our Christian duty—our Father's inheritance—is to alleviate that suffering. It is to offer relief, to create institutions, to offer grace. It is not to 'build assets' from among the poor."
The test was direct. The room was converted into a court, and he was set against Junior as his opponent counsels. Adrenaline was flowing in Jason's veins. This was his element.
He tipped his head towards his brother-in-law, his face not inflamed with wrath, but with patronizing tolerance, as though he was expounding a hard theory to a slow student.
"And what ever wipes out suffering more indelibly than a job, Junior?" he asked reasonably. "What is more gracious than a paycheck? A new factory? A business that survives this winter of economics and flourishes next spring, with hundreds, then thousands, of jobs?"
He waved an open hand. "Your charitable giving is a bandage. It is good, it is necessary, and I am proud you for it. But a bandage doesn't heal a wound. It only covers it up. True recovery, the kind that builds a nation and stands for generations, is done with harsh, imperative labors of cleansing out dead wood."
He sensed the tide of intellect going his direction. He pressed his point. "The corporations dying today? Most of them were dying anyway. Most were inefficient, poorly managed, overleveraged during the boom times. Most were dead trees from the root. That Depression isn't a plague, Junior. It is a wildfire. It is frightening, it is destructive, but it is not evil. It is a natural force, clearing the forest floor."
He looked back over his shoulder at the head of the table, at the only man who truly mattered. "You are trying to save each tree, Junior. You are running through smoke with a bucket of water. I am aiming for the rich, fertile soil that will be burned when the fire passes on. That is where new, strong growth will occur."
The room was stunned. Junior didn't know what to say, his face flushed with anger and surprise. Alta was staring at her husband as though he'd begun communicating in a new language. This was not her husband. This was a vulture.
But Senior... John D. Rockefeller Sr. was not surprised. For the first time that evening, a muscle moved on his ancient, expressionless face. The lines of his pale lips twitched, a fleeting trace of what, on a different man, would have been a smile. It was a face of a well-past-his-best predator, sniffing on the wind the scent of a hungry young hunter.
The old man leaned forward a little, an involuntary movement but an involuntary movement that took total room focus. His voice, when he did speak, was a reptilian, harsh grisly.
"Growth," he announced, savoring it. "Good word. Men in my establishment favor that word. Words are smoke, however, boy."
His pale blue eyes drilled into Ezra. The test hadn't been conducted. It only went a level up.
"Name it. Show me where this new growth you envision is hiding in my forest fire?"