as
cotton to be bought at extravagant prices, payable in gold, even while
the war was going on. These agents bought the cotton, the planters
agreeing to deliver it upon the banks of the rivers and leave it there
at Hallam's risk. Then Captain Hallam's steamboats, big and little,
would push their way up the little rivers, take the cotton on board, and
carry it to Cairo.

At Cairo, while the war lasted, there were difficulties to be
encountered. Military authority was supreme, and just when the influx of
cotton was greatest, military authority arbitrarily decreed that no
cotton should be shipped from Cairo to the North or East without a
military permit. For a time this decree seriously embarrassed trade. The
warehouses in Cairo were choked and glutted with cotton. New ones were
built only to be choked in the same way. The levee was piled high with
precious bales. Even vacant lots and unoccupied blocks in the low-lying
town were rented and made storage places for cotton bales, piled into
veritable mountains of wealth. For cotton was worth forty or fifty cents
a pound, and even more, at that time, and scores of mills were idle for
want of raw material, both in England and in New England, while not a
bale could be shipped because the military authorities would issue no
permits.

Will Hallam one day set himself down to think this thing out. "Why do
the military authorities deny us shipping permits?" he asked himself.
"The eastern buyers want the cotton, and we western holders of it want
to sell it to them. There is absolutely no military or other good reason
why the owner of cotton in one northern city should not be allowed to
ship it to other northern cities where it is needed." Then he saw a
light.

"The military people, or some of them, want a slice of the profit.
That's what's the matter. I don't like to pay a bribe, but in a military
time like this, and while Cairo is under martial law, I suppose I must
submit to conditions as they are. I'm no theorist or moralist. I'm
fairly honest, I think, but I'm a practical business man. Besides, I've
a dozen partners interested in this cotton, and I owe it to them to get
it off to a market. If I don't, most of them will go to the bowwows,
financially. The military authorities have no right to forbid shipment
and ruin men in this way, but they have the power and they are
exercising it. What's that the Bible says about ploughing with the other
fellow's heifer, and making friends