ho knew the river, and had shown capacity in business,
were made steamboat captains in his service, or steamboat clerks, or
wharf-boat managers, or agents, or something else--all at fair
salaries.

It was Captain Will Hallam's practice to make partners of all men who
might render him service in that capacity. Thus when he saw how great a
business there must be at Cairo in supplying Pittsburg steam coal to the
government fleets on the Mississippi, and to the thousands of other
steamboats trafficking in those waters, he went at once to Pittsburg and
two days later he had made a certain Captain Red his partner in the
control of that vastly rich trade.

Captain Red was the largest owner of the Pittsburg mines, and the
pioneer in the business of carrying coal-laden barges in acres and
scores of acres down the river, pushing them with stern-wheel steamers
of large power, but still of a power insufficient for the accomplishment
of the best results.

Captain Red's fleet was unable to control the trade. Captain Hallam
pointed out to him the desirability of making it adequate and dominant.
Within two days the two had formed a partnership which included a number
of New York bankers and investors as unknown and silent stockholders in
the enterprise, and an abundant capital was provided. An order was given
for the hurried building of the Ajax, the Hector, the Agamemnon, the
Hercules, and half a dozen other stern-wheel steamers of power so great
that they could not carry the coal needed for their own furnaces, but
must tow it in barges alongside.

These powerful steamers were to push vast fleets of coal-laden barges
down the river all the way from Pittsburg on the east to St. Louis on
the west, and New Orleans on the south. They were to supply, through
Hallam's agents, every town along the river and every steamboat that
trafficked to any part of it. Hallam was master of it all. Cairo was to
be the central distributing point, and if anybody along the river owned
a coal mine in Kentucky or Indiana, or elsewhere, he was quickly made to
understand that his best means of marketing his product at a profit was
to sell it through the Hallam yards at Cairo.

In the meanwhile, as one region after another in the South was conquered
by the Union arms, Captain Hallam, whose long river service had brought
him into acquaintance with pretty nearly everybody worth knowing south
of Cairo, established agents of his own at every point where there w