Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [135]
In precisely half an hour the manager of his bank knocked on the door followed by a team of ten accountants and half a dozen office boys loaded with ledgers and box-files, company reports and balance sheets. Frank had drilled them well. “Tell him everything,” he had said, “every last goddamn detail until his head spins and he doesn’t know which end is up.”
After five hours, Harry called a halt. “Okay,” he snarled, standing up, his head swimming with numbers and projections. “No more bullshit. Give me the bottom line. Which are successful and which are not?”
“I’m glad to say all the Harrison companies are very successful, sir,” the manager said, “particularly the railroads and the steel, though we have high hopes for the oil with the new prospecting in the northern territories.”
“The net worth,” Harry snarled impatiently, “what’s the net worth of Harrisons, goddamit?”
“Three hundred million dollars, sir.”
“And my personal worth?” Harry’s fingers drummed impatiently on his desk.
“Almost a hundred and fifty million, sir.”
He nodded. “Fine. Now you may leave.” He waited until they had collected their papers and accounts and statements and filed from his office, then he slumped, exhausted, back into his chair. Goddamn it, all he had asked for was to know what the companies were worth, he didn’t need a blow-by-blow account. But by God, he was richer than even he had thought.
But it wasn’t enough simply to take over the business his grandfather had started and his father had expanded. He had to do something on his own. Something his father had not created. This Harrison had to make his own mark on San Francisco.
He stood and stared gloomily out the window at the newsboys calling the Extra on the street below. Hearst’s morning Examiner competed in San Francisco with the Chronicle and the later editions of the Daily News, the Call and the Bulletin. Harry admired Hearst and his newspaper empire, he was impressed by the Scripps-Howard chain, and he thought deeply about the power and prestige of being a newspaper giant. He thought about how to do it. Money talked—he could always buy the other papers’ editors and reporters by bribing them with huge salaries, he could hire away their photographers, install the latest machinery, get his paper out before anyone else’s hit the streets, and give the readers what they wanted. And what did they want? A tabloid, he decided, excitedly, and at the cheapest price. A one-cent tabloid. Goddamn it, he would be the next Hearst. He would call it the Harrison Herald, he’d cover every scandal, every fire, every burlesque star, every murder, and show ’em the pictures. And he’d do the same in Los Angeles. In fact, he would make it a policy to open a new Herald in a new city every year, and in ten years he would have beaten Hearst at his own game. He would be “Harrison, the Newspaper King” and his name would be a household word, just like Hearst. He had the money to do it and nothing was going to stop him.
He called back the bank manager and the accountants, but he didn’t call in Frank and the other directors. This was his baby and they would have nothing to do with it. He gave his orders: find premises, find the latest machinery, find out costs, get him the names of the top editors and news reporters, not just on the West Coast but in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington. Whatever underhanded means it took to do it, find out the operating figures of the rival newspapers. Maybe he could just take over one of them. And just one other thing. He wanted it all done this week.
Smiling, he looked into their astonished faces as he buttoned his jacket and smoothed back his fair hair. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said, walking