Carlton Club was a private meeting place for the British Empire's Conservative Party and industrial oligarchs.
At this moment, the air inside the club is filled with the aromas of fine tobacco, roasted veal, and old-fashioned power.
Oil paintings of the Battle of Waterloo hang on the walls, reminding everyone of the country's illustrious military achievements.
In a private meeting room on the second floor, four people sat around a long oak table.
Seated at the head of the table was Lord Clarendon, a powerful figure in the cabinet who was in charge of trade and industrial assessments.
To his right was Mr. Harrison, a steam engine tycoon who controlled dozens of textile mills and three coal mines in Manchester. To his left was François Dubois, a French industrialist who had come all the way from Paris, representing French industrial capital.
Cavendish and Joseph Swan stood at the end of the table.
Swan's hands were trembling slightly; he had just finished his demonstration.
The light bulb from New York was emitting a steady, yet dazzling, light in the center of the table.
The gas wall lamps that were originally lit in the conference room were now dimmed by this light.
Lord Clarendon shielded his eyes from the glare with his velvet-gloved fingers and frowned slightly.
"Wow, I must say. This is indeed a very clever little gadget, Mr. Swan."
The lord's voice trailed off in a long, aristocratic tone.
"It doesn't smoke, which is good news for London's air. But I've heard that this thing requires a huge thing called a 'generator' to power it?"
"Not just generators, Your Excellency."
Swann was eager to explain, trying to make these laymen understand the revolutionary nature of it.
"The generator is just the source. More importantly, once electricity can be transmitted stably, it will completely change the form of the factory."
Swan pointed at Mr. Harrison.
" Mr. Harrison, is your textile mill currently driven by a huge central steam engine, which then distributes power to hundreds of looms through a complex network of gears, belts, and drive shafts?"
Harrison leaned back in his chair, toying with a cigar in his hand, and nodded arrogantly upon hearing this.
"Of course, that's a great legacy James Watt left us. You know, my factory is the most efficient in Manchester."
"But it's also the most dangerous and costly!"
Seeing that he didn't care, Swan raised his voice.
"The belts can break and get caught in workers' arms. The mechanical transmission loss of power is as high as 40%! Moreover, if the central steam engine malfunctions even slightly, hundreds of machines in the entire factory will have to stop working!"
Swan drew a circle on the table.
"But if we use electricity, we can replace the belts with thick cables. We can even install a small electric motor on each loom and let it drive itself independently! There is no friction from the belts, no noise. Even if one machine breaks down, the others will still run."
"Most importantly," Swan said, pointing to the light bulb.
"With this light, your factory can abandon dangerous gas lamps. Workers can work in three shifts, and darkness will cease to exist. Your output will double!"
" General Electric Company has already begun this transformation in New York. Its factories in America are being completely transformed. If we don't keep up, their industrial products will become far cheaper than ours, and they will flood Europe with cheap steel and cloth!"
A brief silence fell over the meeting room.
Frenchman Dubois touched his meticulously trimmed mustache and broke the silence first.
"Mr. Swann, your vision is truly magnificent. It sounds like a poem about the future."
Dubois took a sip of Bordeaux red wine and raised an eyebrow.
"But let's talk business. Do you know how many francs it would cost to convert a textile factory with 50,000 spindles entirely into the kind of... 'electric motor' you're talking about? What does that represent?"
"I'm telling you, that means we need to tear down the existing drive system. Then we'll lay copper wire, oh God. Copper isn't cheap these days. Not to mention we'll have to buy those electric motors from you that haven't been proven to work reliably in dusty environments."
Mr. Harrison immediately agreed.
"The Frenchman is right. Swann, my steam engine can still run reliably for another twenty years. And the coal mine is right next to Manchester, so fuel costs are extremely low. Now you want me to throw away millions of pounds of fixed assets as scrap metal to exchange for a toy made by Americans that hasn't even stood the test of time? Don't be ridiculous."
"The key issue is that this is not just about money."
Harrison glanced disdainfully at the glowing light bulb.
"This is a disruption of the entire existing industrial system, and I don't like disruption. After all, disruption means risk, and risk is the enemy of capital."
Swan felt suffocated, and his mouth began to twitch.
He looked at these people who controlled the fate of the old world.
These people have no desire for technological progress in their eyes, only a concern for sunk costs and a fear of the unknown.
How to get the electrical work done well with these people?
"Your Excellency."
Seeing that things were not going well, Cavendish turned to Lord Clarendon.
"Even if private capital hesitates, could the government provide a special grant? After all, Argyle is using this technology for monopolistic expansion. If we hand over the electricity market, the British Empire's global hegemony will be lost..."
Lord Cavendish raised his hand to stop him from speaking.
"Cavendish. The government's job is to maintain order, not to take risks for the merchants."
"If this technology is truly profitable, the market will naturally flock to it. Forcibly intervening in the free market is what the French do."
The lord glanced at Dubois, who returned a forced smile.
"and..."
The lord picked up his teacup and gently blew on the steam.
" America...that place full of nouveau riche and speculators. They always like to pull off some eye-catching gimmicks. Let them experiment. Let them throw their money into underground cables."
"Once they overcome all the technical hurdles, with the British Empire's excellent Royal Academy system and Manchester's unparalleled manufacturing capabilities, we can produce better and cheaper equipment than them at any time."
"You should know that we have the world's largest colonial market. As long as we enter at the final stage, we can easily reap their rewards."
Cavendish stared incredulously at the powerful imperial official.
"arrogant."
Cavendish gritted his teeth and said in a low voice.
"This is pure arrogance. Once they build up patent barriers and set global voltage and interface standards, we'll be begging for their handouts!"
"Hmph~ Watch your words, Arthur."
The lord's eyes turned cold.
What kind of thing dares to talk to him like that?
"This is London, not the Stock Exchange in New York. No one can make the British Empire kneel."
The meeting ended unhappily.
Swann removed the light bulb from the battery, and the moment the light went out, he felt the entire room plunge into true darkness.
"Let's go, Joseph."
Cavendish picked up the suitcase and walked heavily toward the door.
Behind them, Harrison and Dubois had already begun discussing new quotas for importing cheap cotton from India, as if the technological demonstration about the future of humanity they had just witnessed was merely a magic show for amusement.
As soon as I stepped out of the club, a cold wind blew in.
"They don't understand."
Swan stood beside the carriage, his eyes reddening.
"They thought it was just a new lighting tool. They didn't understand that electricity is a completely new form of power."
"They will understand."
Cavendish boarded the carriage and looked at the silhouettes of the slowly moving steamships on the River Thames.
"When Argyle ' cargo fills Liverpool's docks, and when America's warships are equipped with electric lights and patrol at night, they will pay the price for their arrogance today."
"Then what do we do?" Swan asked desperately.
"Go back to your basement. Continue with the experiment."
Cavendish pulled a checkbook from his pocket, signed a string of numbers, tore it off, and handed it to Swann.
"Those short-sighted people won't pay, but I will. I'll sell several of my cargo ships. We must develop the formula for electric lights."
"We must preserve even a spark before the storm sweeps across Europe."
Prussian Kingdom, Berlin.
Inside the headquarters building of Siemens - Halsk Corporation.
Werner von Siemens, the founder of Prussian electrical engineering, is standing behind a large desk, his hands on the tabletop, his chest heaving.
Several senior engineers stood before him, heads bowed. Scattered on the table were telegrams from the United States, as well as several top-secret reports from Major Alvensleben, the German military attaché in Washington.
" General Electric Company …"
Siemens pronounced the name with great emphasis, as if he wanted to chew the four words to pieces.
" Heinrich White!"
Siemens slammed his hand on the table, making the ink bottle jump.
"That apprentice who used to work as a basic winding worker under me has now become the head of the largest electrical company in the United States. He even took a group of technical backbones we trained with him!"
"Sir," an engineer said, mustering his courage.
"Before White left, he submitted a memorandum to you regarding 'DC grid-connected power generation and small incandescent lamp distribution systems.' But at the time you thought..."
"I believe arc lamps are the future!"
Siemens interrupted abruptly, as if in response to stress.
"Arc lights are bright and big enough! Perfect for illuminating train stations and squares. Who cares if those housewives' living rooms need light? Making a few cents like that is a beggar's business!"
But Siemens was an extremely intelligent and pragmatic man. After venting his anger, he immediately regained the composure typical of Prussians.
He picked up Major Alvensleben's report, which detailed how the Argyle Empire used congressional bills to suppress dissent, how it monopolized oil and steel, and now how it used the power grid to seize land.
"I have to admit, Felix Argyle is a business genius." Siemens sat back down in his chair.
"He saw the market for democratizing electricity. Then he used light bulbs as bait, but what he really wanted to sell was the network of cables laid under the streets."
"Once a city becomes dependent on his power grid, it is as if it has handed over the lifeline of the city to him."
Siemens looked at the engineers.
"How is our replication of that 'vacuum carbon filament light bulb' going?"
"It's not going well, sir." The engineer was sweating profusely.
" General Electric's process is extremely secretive. We tried cotton thread, paper, and even linen, but they burned off very quickly after being electrified. They seem to have found a special plant fiber and carbonized it using an unknown chemical method."
"Patents are even more troublesome."
Another person in charge of legal affairs stepped forward.
"We have received information that General Electric has begun filing patent applications for a complete system with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This includes not only light bulbs but also their generators."
"If we want to enter the US market, we have to bypass these patents. Or... pay them hefty licensing fees."
Siemens sneered.
"Pay a licensing fee? To a conman who didn't even go to college and just sells weapons?"
He stood up and walked to the huge map of Europe on the wall.
" Prussia doesn't need to cater to the Americans. We are about to unify Germany and build the most powerful empire in Europe. Even if Prussia and Argyle have a good relationship at present, that's not a reason for us to give up."
"Notify the lab to suspend further development of arc lamps and focus all efforts on overcoming the technical barriers to small incandescent lamps. If paper doesn't work, try charcoal! If charcoal doesn't work, try every plant in the world!"
"Also," Siemens turned his head.
"I'm going to see Chancellor Bismarck."
"The Americans can use state power to promote standardization, and so can we. I want to persuade the Prime Minister to include electrification as a national strategy in preparations for the upcoming war (referring to the Franco-Prussian War)."
"They think America is a hotbed of innovation? Ridiculous. Without a solid theoretical foundation and precise machining capabilities, America's workshop-style innovations won't go far."
"As long as the Prussian state machinery starts running, it will only take a few years to crush that ' General Electric ' thing."
This is Siemens ' arrogance.
It also reflects the arrogance of the whole of Europe; even Prussia doesn't really think much of America.
They stubbornly believe that heritage and lineage can overcome any tactical disadvantages.
Some even believe that Felix Argyle was just a lucky nouveau riche who picked up a few bricks at the base of the pyramid of "electrification".
They had no idea that Felix wasn't building a pyramid.
Felix was weaving a web.
...
At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
New York.
Under a gloomy sky, deep trenches were dug into the streets of Manhattan.
Hundreds of Irish workers, like worker ants, laid insulated pipes coated with asphalt in the mud and water.
At Pearl Street Power Station, the towering chimneys of the second phase of the project are rising steadily.
Wearing a hard hat, Heinrich White stood on the scaffolding, pointing to the distant street and giving loud instructions.
"The transformer box for Line 2 must be completed today, and the banks on half of Wall Street need to be electrified next month."
Below him, several horse-drawn carriages bearing the " General Electric " logo were unloading cargo.
It was filled with boxes of light bulbs.
Felix's carriage was parked on the street corner.
He looked through the car window at the cable trenches that were being filled in.
"boss."
Frost, who was sitting next to me, handed me a briefing.
"Our intelligence agents in Europe have reported back. Capitalists in London have rejected Joseph Swan's request for large-scale investment. Although Siemens in Berlin has begun to pay attention, the Prussian government is currently focused on preparing for war against France, and the funding for the laboratory is a drop in the bucket."
Felix's lips curled into a smile after hearing this.
Then the car window was lowered to let the cold wind blow into the car.
"It seems they are still living in the old dream of the steam age."
Felix looked at the trenches that cut New York's underground into a grid pattern.
"They thought the essence of industry was the roar of machines and the meshing of gears."
"But they are wrong. The power of the future lies in these invisible copper wires. It lies in the heat generated by the electric current."
"In that case, let the European gentlemen continue calculating the cost of coal."
Felix tapped on the wooden planks of the carriage, signaling the coachman to start the journey.
"They'll find out when they realize what's happening and try to connect the factory to electricity."
"From generators to switches, from light bulbs to insulating varnish."
"Everything in this world that can produce light and power is marked with Argyle."
The carriage slowly drove into the street.
The wheels rolled over the newly filled-in soil.
Beneath the soil, bronze-colored veins are pulsating silently, spreading towards the heart of America.
Snowflakes mixed with coal dust, carried by the cold wind blowing from the Delaware River, slammed hard onto the cobblestone pavement of Philadelphia's Third Street.
The gas streetlights still flickered in the daytime, like fireflies struggling to survive in this cold winter.
A black carriage without any family crest came to a stop in front of the magnificent Greek-style columns of the Drexel Bank.
The two purebred Hanoverian horses pulling the cart puffed out white smoke as they irritably pawed at the ice shards on the ground.
The carriage door was suddenly pushed open.
John Garrett, the railroad tycoon who controlled the Baltimore and Ohio railways, jumped off the carriage without waiting for the driver to put down a footstool.
The gentleman who used to leisurely savor Virginia snuff at Baltimore headquarters now seemed somewhat impatient.
Garrett looked up at the heavy, ornate brass door. The words " Drexel and Partners" were inscribed above the door.
The letters gleamed with a metallic sheen in the gray light of the sky.
He pushed open the door and entered Philadelphia's oldest and most conservative financial stronghold.
The bank lobby has a black and white marble floor.
Beneath the towering dome, dozens of bookkeepers in black vests stood behind chest-high mahogany tables, their dip pens making a soft scratching sound as they rubbed against the heavy ledgers.
But Garrett didn't linger on the first floor. Instead, he skillfully climbed the stairs covered with heavy Persian carpets and headed straight for the partners' private office area on the second floor.
At the end of the corridor, the large door made from a single piece of black walnut wood was tightly shut.
Anthony Drexel's private secretary was standing outside the door.
" Mr. Garrett."
The secretary bowed slightly, speaking respectfully.
"The boss is currently meeting with a guest. Please wait in the lounge..."
"Damn rest, get out of my way, Richard."
Garrett shoved aside the secretary who tried to stop him; he wasn't in the mood for such things.
Things in Washington were making him very upset.
He gripped the cold brass handle, twisted it forcefully, and pushed the door open to enter.
With a loud bang, the oak door slammed against the wall's crash pad.
Inside the spacious office, the smokeless coals in the fireplace were radiating an orange-red heat.
The room was decorated in an extremely luxurious yet understated style, with several Dutch-style landscape paintings hanging on the walls and deep red velvet curtains hanging over the huge floor-to-ceiling windows.
Hearing the sound of someone breaking down the door, Anthony Drexel, who was sitting behind his desk, looked up.
The Philadelphia financial guru was dressed in a dark gray robe-style suit, and a hint of displeasure flashed in his gray eyes behind his monocle, but it was quickly concealed.
Across from the desk sat a short, haggard-looking man.
It was Andrew Carnegie himself.
Upon seeing Garrett burst in, Carnegie seemed to leap from her chair.
" Mr. Garrett!"
"You've come at the right time. I've heard about the House of Representatives. But I have something more urgent to tell Mr. Drexel. Your dispatch office in West Virginia sent a telegram this morning saying that the coal train to the Braddock site will be delayed for a whole week due to line 'maintenance'."
Carnegie rushed up to Garrett, waving his arms incoherently.
"A week, do you know what that means to me? My blast furnace is preheating, it's a sixty-foot monster. If there's no continuous supply of coke, the temperature inside the furnace will drop. Once the semi-molten iron ore solidifies in the furnace, that $100,000 blast furnace will be completely unusable! At that point, we'll have to use explosives to blast the scrap iron out. You can't shut it down at this time."
Faced with a Carnegie on the verge of collapse, Garrett did not offer his usual condescending reassurance.
He bypassed the anxious Scotland man and walked to Drexel's desk, placing his hands on the green velvet tablecloth and staring intently at the still composed banker.
"The line has not been inspected."
Garrett's voice was deep and subdued.
" Andrew, stop shouting. The coal trucks from West Virginia aren't getting here because of scheduling issues or the weather."
Carnegie froze, his bloodshot eyes filled with confusion.
"Why is that? You signed a transport guarantee!"
Garrett closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
When he opened his eyes again, the railroad tycoon's eyes were filled with exhaustion and anger.
"Didn't you just say the reason? It's because in Washington, that damn House of Representatives just passed the Railway Safety and Standardization Act."
Garrett said through gritted teeth.
Carnegie remained frozen in that waving arm pose.
Although he knew that standardizing rail gauges would make material transportation more difficult, he didn't expect it to happen so quickly.
"How...how dare they go to such extremes?"
Carnegie stammered, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down with difficulty.
"This violates the principles of free trade... This is a blatant plunder of private property by the government!"
"in principle?"
Drexel, seated in his large leather chair, finally spoke.
" In Argyle ' dictionary, there is now only monopoly and obedience, no 'principles'. He uses the guise of national defense and security to feed those Washington politicians with money."
Drexel put down the paper cutter, crossed his hands on the table, and turned his gaze to Garrett.
" Junior, I didn't expect you to come all the way to Philadelphia. You look like you just attended your own funeral."
"Isn't this a funeral, Tony?"
Garrett addressed Drexel by his given name and pulled out a chair, sitting down heavily.
"You know what changing course means, right?" Garrett looked at Drexel.
"The bill had a deadline of 1872, which sounds like almost two years away. But changing the gauge of thousands of miles of railroad tracks isn't as simple as drawing a line on paper!"
Garrett stretched out his hands, which were calloused from years of holding reins and cigars.
"All the roadbeds need to be re-compacted. Every single sleeper has to be dug up and replaced. The most critical issue is the locomotives! I have two hundred heavy steam locomotives, and their axles are all six feet wide. If the track gauge is narrowed, all these behemoths will have to be towed back to the locomotive factory, their chassis dismantled, and their axles recast! And then there are those five thousand freight cars!"
Garrett's chest heaved violently.
"During this damn renovation, my entire railroad line will be half-paralyzed. Capacity will drop by 70 percent. Moreover, my company will not earn a single cent during this process, but will have to pay exorbitant engineering and material costs."
Upon hearing the words "capacity down by 70 percent", Carnegie, who was standing next to his, felt a wave of dizziness and almost lost his balance.
"no..."
Carnegie muttered to himself.
"If your transport capacity decreases, what will happen to my coal and iron ore? The steel mill is about to produce its first batch of molten steel!"
Garrett turned to look at his desperate ally.
"There's nothing I can do, Andrew. This is Argyle's vicious scheme. He's not only using the knife of the law to cut my flesh, but he also wants to use my blood to extinguish your fire."
Garrett looked at Drexel again.
"Tony, we're backed into a corner. The House has Felix, and while those old men in the Senate are still bickering, I've heard that Anna Clark is using the 'defense threat' label to pin it on every opponent. The key is that her father is the Senate President, and I think it's only a matter of time before the bill passes, barring any unforeseen circumstances."
"So I came to you for money."
Garrett stared intently at the Philadelphia banker and revealed the true purpose of his trip.
A somber atmosphere permeated the office.
As soon as Garrett finished speaking, Carnegie also turned his hopeful gaze to Drexel.
At this moment, the banker sitting behind the large mahogany table became their only hope.
"Perhaps...you could tell me."
Drexel neither immediately refused nor agreed, but simply stared at Garrett with his calm, gray eyes.
How much exactly is needed?
"Ten million US dollars."
Garrett gritted his teeth and uttered a number that would make an ordinary businessman faint on the spot.
"Only ten million US dollars in cash flow can support B&O Railroad to hire three times the workforce to work day and night to complete the gauge conversion without stopping the core trunk lines, while also purchasing new standard gauge locomotives. Moreover, this money can also allow me to stabilize the company's stock price on Wall Street and prevent the Argyle jackals from taking the opportunity to short the stock."
"Tony, I know you have the ability. Didn't London just inject two million pounds of credit into your joint venture bank? That's eight million dollars! Add to that the Drexel family's reserves in Philadelphia, and you can come up with that money."
"If you lend me the money, I'm willing to use 30% of B&O Railroad's equity as collateral. Moreover, once the track conversion is completed, our transportation efficiency will be much higher, and Carnegie's steel mills will produce cheap rails in a continuous stream. The return on this investment will be extremely high!"
Upon hearing this, Carnegie quickly stepped forward to echo his sentiment.
"That's right, Mr. Drexel. As long as Mr. Garrett's railroads keep running, Carnegie -McCandris Steel Company will keep operating. Our converter technology is far superior to that of those idiots under Argyle. If we unite, we can completely crush them on price."
Drexel listened quietly to the persuasion of the two industrialists. He then picked up the ivory paper cutter and tapped it lightly on the table.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The rhythmic tapping sounded like a countdown to their hopes.
" Junior, Andrew."
Drexel stopped tapping.
"Do you think that a bank's vault is like an inexhaustible well, where you can just throw a bucket down and draw water full of gold coins?"
Drexel stood up and walked to the row of walnut bookshelves that took up an entire wall.
" Mr. Morgan did commit to a two million pound limit, that is a fact."
Drexel pulled out a thick black ledger.
"But that money was intended to build a financial defense against the Imperial Bank across the entire North American continent. It was for waging a currency war on Wall Street and Argyle, and for controlling the pricing power of commodities such as food and cotton."
He turned around and waved the ledger in his hand.
"This money is for weapons to attack, not for filling the holes you created by rebuilding the railway tracks with mud."
Garrett's face instantly turned ashen.
"A mess? Tony, without the B&O railroad, your logistics lifeline on the East Coast would be strangled by Argyle! What would you do without transportation? Don't you understand that?"
"Of course...of course I understand."
Drexel threw the ledgers on the table.
"But I have a bigger problem to consider. Junior, you just said you need ten million dollars. But let me tell you, even if I emptied all the gold bars in Philadelphia's underground vault today and gave them to you, you still wouldn't win this war."
"Why?!"
Garrett and Carnegie shouted almost simultaneously.
"Because of time."
Drexel walked to the window and pointed to the muddy street outside.
"Even if the funding is in place, you'll need to hire 100,000 workers to dig up old railway sleepers in the frozen soil of Maryland and remelt the axles in the Baltimore factory. This process will take at least ten months—remember, ten months!"
Drexel whirled around, his gaze piercing Carnegie like a knife.
"My partner Andrew, tell me, if B&O Railroad's freight volume drops by 70 percent over the next ten months, what will you use to make steel? Can those blast furnaces go hungry for ten months?"
Carnegie opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
I just felt a sudden dizziness.
"I...I can try using a horse-drawn carriage..."
Carnegie's voice was so faint it was like a mosquito's buzz.
"Enough, stop fooling yourself!"
Drexel interrupted him sharply.
"Wagons? You want to use wagons to haul tens of thousands of tons of iron ore across the Appalachian Mountains? That's not even enough to fill a tooth gap! Besides, Argyle has already planted spies around Pittsburgh. As soon as your wagon caravan dares to set out, his ' Vanguard Security ' will disguise themselves as bandits and burn all your coal to the ground!"
Drexel walked back to his desk, placed his hands on the surface, leaned forward, and looked at the two of them with an extremely imposing posture.
"That's the most terrifying thing about that devil Argyle."
"He's not competing with you on who has more money or who has better technology. He's using the federal machine to change the physical rules that run this country."
"Changing the width of the railway tracks is like sucking out the air you need to survive. Even if I stuff your pockets full of gold, you'll still suffocate in the vacuum!"
The room was deathly silent.
Garrett slumped back in his chair, his eyes reddening. This tough guy, who had never yielded during the Civil War, was now utterly exhausted.
"So, we're finished like this?" Garrett muttered to himself.
"B&O Railway, a business built over half a century, is going to be completely destroyed because of that bastard's words?"
Carnegie, meanwhile, was crouching beside the fireplace, his hands covering his head.
He thought of the dilapidated thatched cottage in his old home in Scotland, and the humiliation he had suffered in his struggle to get ahead.
Now, his steel empire is facing collapse before it has even been built.
"I'm not reconciled..."
Carnegie dug his fingers deep into his hair and tore at it forcefully.
"I'm not willing to give up! The converter has just been debugged. Just give me three months, even just three months!"
Drexel looked at the two men, once so arrogant but now so dejected, and a fleeting hint of pity crossed his eyes, but his eyes were mostly filled with indifference.
In the world of bankers, there is no sympathy, only loss mitigation.
If B&O Railroad is destined to decline, and if Carnegie's steel mill is destined to shut down, then the Drexel - Morgan consortium must withdraw as soon as possible, or find a new agent.
But this is by no means the optimal solution.
If Argyle manages to capture these two key strategic points without bloodshed, then the tyrant of New York will next turn his attention to Philadelphia.
"Calm down, Gentlemen."
Drexel sat back down in his chair and straightened the cuffs of his robe.
"Crying and complaining are the privileges of the weak. We're in big business; even if the sky falls, we'll calculate how much money we can make from the broken stones."
Garrett looked up, a faint flame rekindling in his eyes.
"Do you have any other ideas?"
" Logically speaking, we have already lost in the context of America."
Drexel clasped his hands together and gently rubbed his chin with his thumbs.
" Argyle has taken over the White House, Congress, and the media, and now he controls the so-called 'standards.' Here, he is the law."
Drexel looked up at the world map hanging on the wall.
"Since we can't win here, we must bring in a stronger external force. A force that even Washington politicians have to be wary of."
Carnegie stood up and walked to his desk.
You mean... Europe?
"More accurately, the City of London and the Paris Stock Exchange."
A glint of light flashed in Drexel's eyes.
" Argyle ' expansion has been too rapid. He is now essentially the first family in America, seriously threatening the interests of the old world aristocracy. His Imperial Bank is eroding the market share of European capital in America, his arms sales to Prussia are a thorn in the side of the French, and his steel industry is keeping the British and French steel oligarchs up at night."
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Although those European gentlemen are arrogant and slow-witted, what if we set a fire under their backside?"
Garrett frowned.
"Ignite it? How? Are we supposed to ask Queen Victoria to send a fleet to blockade New York Harbor?"
"Come on, buddy, we don't need warships."
Drexel gave a cold laugh.
"What we need is panic, financial panic."
Drexel opened the drawer and took out a stack of blank telegrams.
" What is Argyle' most valuable asset right now? And what does he rely on to maintain his monopoly? It's the railroads and those bonds. His Pennsylvania Railroad, Mississippi and Eastern Railroad, Union Pacific and Erie are interconnected, and except for Mississippi, they are all publicly traded companies."
"What if Mr. Morgan, together with several major European banking families, simultaneously announced in London and Paris that, due to 'concerns about arbitrary changes to American infrastructure standards,' they would refuse to underwrite any newly issued U.S. bonds and massively sell off their holdings of Argyle -related assets, such as those railroad companies?"
Garrett and Carnegie gasped.
"That's a financial nuclear explosion…" Garrett murmured.
"European capital is the lifeblood of America's development. If they withdraw their capital en masse, Wall Street will collapse tomorrow. President Grant absolutely cannot afford such economic turmoil."
"That's right."
Drexel picked up the dip pen, adjusted his posture, and dipped it into the ink bottle.
"Once an international financial panic is triggered, those lawmakers in Washington will find that the bribes they received from Argyle are simply not enough to make up for the losses caused by the collapse of the national credit."
"By then, not only will the bill concerning track gauge be torn to shreds, but Argyle himself may also be torn to pieces."