That’s Rudolph Spreckels’s story, in brief.
Can you see the man ? Stress has been laid
upon his youth and his self-reliance, his fearless
readiness to fight. But there is an amiability
about the man that is very winning. He is hard,
hard as youth, both in conflict and in his judgments of men. “Are you with me?” he asked
a friend, and when the friend began to “explain,”
Spreckels cut him short: “Then you’re against
me. That’s all I wanted to know.” And his
friend didn’t like that; none of the men that
know him do; Spreckels is so cold-blooded in
opposition. But he is reasonable, most generous,
and even charming as an ally. When Heney’s
friends learned that he was “with Spreckels,”
they warned him.
“Look out, Frank! You want to run yourself and all your own undertakings. So does Spreckels, and Spreckels will run this prosecution of yours. He must dominate.” “I know,” said one banker; “I’ve gone into business schemes with hirn, but I never do now any more unless I’m willing to have him be the whole show. It’s safe to let him —he is a master manager; but I found out that if anybody opposed him, he would bust the scheme, you, and himself rather than not have his own way.”
So Heney expected to have trouble with
