"It's fair
enough," he explained to Ed. "A hundred things can cause the plants to die,
but if they die it'll be blamed on the machine. What will become of the
town if we don't believe in the thing we're going to manufacture here?"
The crowds of people, who in the evenings walked out along Turner's Pike
to look at the field with its long rows of sturdy young cabbages, moved
restlessly about and talked of the new days. From the field they went along
the railroad tracks to the site of the factory. The brick walls began to
mount up into the sky. Machinery began to arrive and was housed under
temporary sheds against the time when it could be installed. An advance
horde of workmen came to town and new faces appeared on Main Street in the
evening. The thing that was happening in Bidwell happened in towns all over
the Middle West. Out through the coal and iron regions of Pennsylvania,
into Ohio and Indiana, and on westward into the States bordering on the
Mississippi River, industry crept. Gas and oil were discovered in Ohio and
Indiana. Over night, towns grew into cities. A madness took hold of the
minds of the people. Villages like Lima and Findlay, Ohio, and like Muncie
and Anderson in Indiana, became small cities within a few weeks. To some of
these places, so anxious were the people to get to them and to invest their
money, excursion trains were run. Town lots that a few weeks before the
discovery of oil or gas could have been bought for a few dollars sold for
thousands.
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