We had not much reason to be anxious about our debts.  Not what we had to pay of our own debts could give us much trouble, but rather what we might have to pay for our debtors.  It was not our bills payable but our bills receivable which required attention, for we soon had to begin meeting both.  Even our own banks had to beg us not to draw upon our balances.  One incident will shed some light upon the currency situation.  One of our pay-days was approaching.  One hundred thousand dollars in small notes were absolutely necessary, and to obtain these we paid a premium of twenty-four hundred dollars in New York and had them expressed to Pittsburgh.  It was impossible to borrow money, even upon the best collaterals; but by selling securities, which I had in reserve, considerable sums were realized—­the company undertaking to replace them later.

It happened that some of the railway companies whose lines centered in Pittsburgh owed us large sums for material furnished—­the Fort Wayne road being the largest debtor.  I remember calling upon Mr. Thaw, the vice-president of the Fort Wayne, and telling him we must have our money.  He replied: 

“You ought to have your money, but we are not paying anything these days that is not protestable.”

“Very good,” I said, “your freight bills are in that category and we shall follow your excellent example.  Now I am going to order that we do not pay you one dollar for freight.”

“Well, if you do that,” he said, “we will stop your freight.”

I said we would risk that.  The railway company could not proceed to that extremity.  And as a matter of fact we ran for some time without paying the freight bills.  It was simply impossible for the manufacturers of Pittsburgh to pay their accruing liabilities when their customers stopped payment.  The banks were forced to renew maturing paper.  They behaved splendidly to us, as they always have done, and we steered safely through.  But in a critical period like this there was one thought uppermost with me, to gather more capital and keep it in our business so that come what would we should never again be called upon to endure such nights and days of racking anxiety.

Speaking for myself in this great crisis, I was at first the most excited and anxious of the partners.  I could scarcely control myself.  But when I finally saw the strength of our financial position I became philosophically cool and found myself quite prepared, if necessary, to enter the directors’ rooms of the various banks with which we dealt, and lay our entire position before their boards.  I felt that this could result in nothing discreditable to us.  No one interested in our business had lived extravagantly.  Our manner of life had been the very reverse of this.  No money had been withdrawn from the business to build costly homes, and, above all, not one of us had made speculative ventures upon the stock exchange, or invested in any other enterprises than those connected with the main business.  Neither had we exchanged endorsements with others.  Besides this we could show a prosperous business that was making money every year.