The Last Days of Night(77)

“How does this spell our bankruptcy?” asked Paul. “The Barings don’t own this company.”

“But how many of our creditors are now soon to be theirs?”

Paul began to understand the problem.

“Your creditors are going to demand repayment of their loans sooner than anticipated.”

“A lot sooner than anticipated,” replied Westinghouse as he gestured toward a letter on his desk. “That’s from A. J. Cassart. He would like his loans repaid by this coming Friday.”

“Christ…It’s Tuesday.”

“Did you read that in the paper too?”

“How much?”

“Hard to say. But this letter will not be the last of its kind that I receive this week. I have been going over our numbers….It’s no secret that we operate at a loss. Under normal circumstances, this is not a problem. Most growing businesses employ the same tactics.”

“How much debt are we in?”

“You, Mr. Cravath, are not in any debt at all. I am in debt for approximately three million dollars.”

“And what are the assets of the company?”

“All told? Approximately two and a half million.”

Paul began to pace the room, considering the problem. “So we’ll need to raise at least five hundred thousand in capital in order to convince your creditors not to seize the company.”

“I’m glad to see you’ve been practicing your mathematics.”

Paul stopped pacing by the ceiling-high bookshelves on the far side of the room. He turned to face Westinghouse.

“It’s not you who is in debt. It is your company. So that’s the first thing. It’s not on you alone.”

“You’re mistaken,” said Westinghouse.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve put up this house and everything in it as collateral. It might not be worth a full half a million, but it’s no tenement.”

Paul knew George Westinghouse had always taken the affairs of his company quite personally. It was named after him, and he treated the corporation as an extension of his own corpus. But it was one thing to do so emotionally; it was another to endanger the roof over his wife’s head.

Seeing the expression on Paul’s face, Westinghouse smiled with a stubborn na?veté.

“You think this is a grave mistake,” suggested Westinghouse.

“Sir, it’s your family,” said Paul.

“Am I in for one of your speeches? They’re quite good, kid, I’ll give you that. But if your aim is to convince me to simply let my company fall without placing every ounce of weight I have underneath it as support, well…not even you are that eloquent.”

Paul knew his argument would lose. The first thing he had learned about persuading others was how to determine when—and of what—they were capable of being persuaded. On that day, he knew Westinghouse would not be moved. And so he also knew that the only way to save his client was to stave off this bankruptcy himself.





You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN



OVER THE NEXT few weeks, Paul and Westinghouse took turns making penitent pilgrimages to the most moneyed of the New York moneymen. The stations of their cross were formed by Wall Street, Union Square, and Madison Square. Not a millionaire was spared their devotionals. Westinghouse forswore his company’s sins. The financial promiscuity would come to an end. The firm’s governance was pledged to frugality. In their pleas, the men asked for more than mere blessings. They asked for absolution.

Research into newer and more elaborate products would be halted, with a focus fixed solely upon improving the manufacture and cost-effectiveness of existing devices. They were without the bottomless war chest that J. P. Morgan provided Edison, and so their culture was naturally quite different. They did not aim to be some manner of pie-in-the-sky idea factory. Westinghouse worked. The company would continue to make things, and they would be the highest-quality electrical products in the world. That had always been their goal, and it always would be.

Even the program to develop a new light bulb far afield of Edison’s would be abandoned. They could not continue to afford the manpower on a task that had, after a year, borne no progress at all. Westinghouse’s engineers were good, but they were expensive, and not one of them was Nikola Tesla. The immediate survival of the company was at stake.

They would need only a moderate injection of capital to keep things going through the coming winter. The few hundreds of thousands of dollars they required to maintain operations were small beer compared to the fortunes to be generated by electric light.

But every time Paul and Westinghouse concluded their practiced supplications, they were reminded by the apologetic millionaires across from them that this all depended on a victory over Edison. From the safety of their glazed oak desks, the bankers were quick to suggest that if direct current became the standard of the day, then the Westinghouse Electric Company would play little part in the prosperity. The problem was not with the frugality or operational efficiency of the company—it was with the fragility of its very existence. Who would profit from providing expensive medicine to a man whose illness was already terminal?

They did experience moments of success. Fresh investments were secured from Hugh Garden, A. T. Rowand, and William Scott, extending the company’s life by a few frenzied weeks. Carter and Hughes lent their extensive connections to the cause, producing a much-needed $130,000 just a week into the crisis; it bought them another month. Paul was able to scrape together a few days of survival here and there through his Columbia network. These were the terms in which they now measured—not in dollars and cents, but in weeks, days, even hours. A million dollars could buy a year. A thousand dollars barely afforded a day.