Only still photographers were being allowed inside the meeting hall. Two TV crews, encamped in the hotel lobby, had protested their exclusion to Teresa Van Buren. She told them, “It was decided that if we let television cameras in it would turn the annual meeting into a circus.”
A TV technician grumbled, “From the looks of things, it’s already a circus.”
It was Van Buren who was first to signal an alarm when it became evident, soon after 12:30, that the space and seating reserved would be totally inadequate. A hastily called conference then took place between GSP & L and hotel officials. It was agreed to open another hall, about half the size of the ballroom, where an overflow crowd of fifteen hundred could be accommodated, proceedings in the main hall to be transmitted there by a public address system. Soon, a squad of hotel employees was setting up chairs in the extra room.
But fresh arrivals quickly objected. “Nuts to that! I’m not sitting in some second-class outhouse,” a heavyset, red-faced woman insisted loudly. “I’m a stockholder with a right to be at the annual meeting and that’s where I’ll be.” With one beefy hand she shoved aside an elderly security guard; the other she used to unfasten a roped-off area, then marched into the already crowded ballroom. Several others pushed past the guard and followed her. He shrugged helplessly, then replaced the rope and tried to direct still more people to the overflow accommodation.
A thin, serious-faced man appealed to Teresa Van Buren. “This is ridiculous. I’ve flown here from New York and I’ve questions to ask at the meeting.”
“There will be microphones in the second hall,” she assured him, “and questions from there will be heard and answered in both halls.”
The man looked disgustedly at the milling throng. “Most of these people are just small stockholders. I represent ten thousand shares.”
A voice behind said, “I got twenty, mister, but my rights are as good as yours.”
Eventually both were persuaded to go to the smaller hall.
“He was right about small stockholders,” Van Buren observed to Sharlett Underhill, who had joined her briefly in the hotel foyer.
The finance vice president nodded. “A lot of the people here own ten shares or less. Very few have more than a hundred.”
Nancy Molineaux of the California Examiner had also been observing the influx. She was standing near the other two women.
“You hear that?” Van Buren asked her. “It refutes the charges that we’re a huge, monolithic company. These people you’re seeing are the ones who own it.”
Ms. Molineaux said skeptically, “There are plenty of big, wealthy shareholders, too.”
“Not as many as you’d think,” Sharlett Underhill injected. “More than fifty percent of our shareholders are small investors with a hundred shares or less. And our largest single stockholder is a trust which holds stock for company employees—it has eight percent of the shares. You’ll find the same thing true of other public utilities.”
The reporter seemed unimpressed.
“I haven’t seen you, Nancy,” Teresa Van Buren said, “since you wrote that rotten, unfair piece about Nim Goldman. Did you really have to do that? Nim’s a nice, hard-working guy.”
Nancy Molineaux smiled slightly; her voice affected surprise. “You didn’t like that? My editor thought it was great.” Unperturbed, she continued surveying the hotel foyer, then observed, “Golden State Power doesn’t seem able to do anything right. A lot of people here are as unhappy about their utility bills as about their dividends.”
Van Buren followed the reporter’s gaze to where a small crowd surrounded an accounts service desk. Knowing that many shareholders were also its customers, GSP & L set up the desk at annual meetings so that any queries about gas and electric charges could be dealt with on the spot. Behind the desk a trio of clerks was handling complaints while a lengthening line waited. A woman’s voice protested, “I don’t care what you say, that bill can’t be right. I’m living alone, not using any more power than I did two years ago, but the charge is double.” Consulting a video display connected to billing computers, a young male clerk continued explaining the bill’s details. The woman remained unmollified.
“Sometimes,” Van Buren told Nancy Molineaux, “the same people want lower rates and a bigger dividend. It’s hard to explain why you can’t have both.”
Without commenting, the reporter moved on.
At 1:40, twenty minutes before the meeting would begin, there was standing room only in the second hall and new arrivals were still appearing.
“I’m worried as hell,” Harry London confided to Nim Goldman. The two were midway between the ballroom and overflow room where the din from both made it hard to hear each other.
London and several of his staff had been “borrowed” for the occasion to beef up GSP & L’s regular security force. Nim had been sent, a few minutes ago, by J. Eric Humphrey to make a personal appraisal of the scene.
The chairman, who usually mingled informally with stockholders before the annual meeting, had been advised by the chief security officer not to do so today because of the hostile crowd. At this moment Humphrey was closeted behind scenes with senior officers and directors who would join him on the ballroom platform at 2 P.M.
“I’m worried,” London repeated, “because I think we’ll see some violence before all this is through. Have you been outside?”
Nim shook his head, then, as the other motioned, followed him toward the hotel’s outer lobby and the street. They emerged through a side door and walked around the building to the front.
The St. Charles Hotel had a forecourt which normally accommodated hotel traffic—taxis, private cars and buses. But now all traffic movement was prevented by a crowd of several hundred placard-waving, shouting demonstrators. A narrow entryway for pedestrians was being kept open by city police officers who were also restraining demonstrators from advancing further.
The TV crews which had been refused admittance to the stockholders’ meeting had come outside to film the action.
Some signs being held aloft read:
Support
power & light
for people
The People Demand
Lower Gas / Electric
Rates
Kill The Capitalist
Monster
GSP & L
p & lfp
Urges
Public Ownership
Of GSP & L
Put People
Ahead of Profits
Groups of GSP & L stockholders, still arriving and moving through the police lines, read the signs indignantly. A small, casually dressed, balding man with a hearing aid stopped to cry angrily at the demonstrators, “I’m just as much ‘people’ as you are, and I worked hard all my life to buy a few shares …”
A pale, bespectacled youth in a Stanford University sweatshirt jeered, “Get stuffed, you greedy capitalist!”
Another among the arrivals—a youngish, attractive woman—retorted, “Maybe if some of you worked harder and saved a little …”
She was drowned out by a chorus of, “Screw the profiteers!” and “Power belongs to the people!”
The woman advanced on the shouters, a fist raised. “Listen, you bums! I’m no profiteer. I’m a worker, in a union, and …”
“Profiteer!” … “Bloodsucking capitalist!” … One of the waving signs descended near the woman’s head. A police sergeant stepped forward, shoved the sign away and hurried the woman, along with the man with the hearing aid, into the hotel. The shouts and jeering followed them. Once more the demonstrators surged forward; again the police held firm.
The TV crews had now been joined by reporters from other media—among them, Nim saw, Nancy Molineaux. But he had no wish to meet her.
Harry London observed quietly, “You see your friend Birdsong over there, masterminding this?”
“No friend of mine,” Nim said. “But yes, I see him.”
The bulky, bearded figure of Davey Birdsong—a broad smil
e on his face as usual—was visible at the demonstration’s rear. As the two watched, Birdsong raised a walkie-talkie radio to his lips.
“He’s probably talking to someone inside,” London said. “He’s already been in and out twice; he has one share of stock in his name. I checked.”
“One share is enough,” Nim pointed out. “It gives anyone a right to be at the annual meeting.”
“I know. And probably some more of his people have the same. They’ve something else planned. I’m sure of it.”
Nim and London returned inside the hotel unnoticed. Outside, the demonstrators seemed noisier than before.
In a small private meeting room off a corridor behind the ballroom stage, J. Eric Humphrey paced restlessly, still reviewing the speech he would shortly make. Over the past three days a dozen drafts had been typed and retyped, the latest an hour ago. Even now, as he moved, silently mouthing words and turning pages, he would pause occasionally to pencil in a change.
Out of deference to the chairman’s concentration, the others present—Sharlett Underhill, Oscar O’Brien, Stewart Ino, Ray Paulsen, a half-dozen directors—had fallen silent, one or two of the directors mixing drinks at a portable bar.
Heads turned as an outside door opened. It framed a security guard and, behind him, Nim, who came in, closing the door.
Humphrey put down the pages of his speech. “Well?”
“It’s a mob scene out there.” Nim described tersely his observations in the ballroom, overflow hall and outside the hotel.
A director inquired nervously, “Is there any way we can postpone the meeting?”
Oscar O’Brien shook his head decisively. “Out of the question. It’s been called legally. It must go on.”
“Besides,” Nim added, “if you did there’d be a riot.”
The same director said, “We may have that anyway.”
The chairman crossed to the bar and poured himself a plain soda water, wishing it were a scotch but observing his own rule of no drinking by officers during working hours. He said testily, “We knew in advance this was going to happen so any talk of postponement is pointless. We simply have to do the best we can.” As he sipped his soda: “Those people out there have a right to be angry—at us, and about their dividends. I’d feel the same way myself. What can you tell people who put their money where they believed it was safe, and suddenly find it isn’t after all?”
“You could try telling them the truth,” Sharlett Underhill said, her face flushing with emotion. “The truth that there isn’t any place in this country where the thrifty and hard-working can put their money with an assurance of preserving its value. Not in companies like ours any more; certainly not in savings accounts or bonds where the interest doesn’t keep pace with government-provoked inflation. Not since those charlatans and crooks in Washington debased the dollar and keep right on doing it, grinning like idiots while they rum us. They’ve given us a dishonest fiat paper currency, unbacked by anything but politicians’ worthless promises. Our financial institutions are crumbling. Bank insurance—the FDIC—is a façade. Social Security is a bankrupt fraud; if it were a private concern those running it would be in jail. And good, decent, efficient companies like ours are pushed to the wall, forced into doing what we’ve done, and taking the blame unfairly.”
There were murmurs of approval, someone applauded, and the chairman said drily, “Sharlett, maybe you should make the speech instead of me.” He added thoughtfully, “Everything you say is true, of course. Unfortunately most citizens aren’t ready to listen and accept the truth—not yet.”
“As a matter of interest, Sharlett,” Ray Paulsen asked, “where do you keep your savings?”
The financial vice president snapped back, “In Switzerland—one of the few countries where there’s still financial sanity—and the Bahamas—in gold coins and Swiss francs, the only honest currencies left. If you haven’t already, I advise the rest of you to do the same.”
Nim was looking at his watch. He went to the door and opened it. “It’s a minute to the hour. Time to go.”
“Now I know,” Eric Humphrey said as he led the way out, “how the Christians felt when they had to face the lions.”
The management representatives and the directors filed quickly onto the platform, the chairman going directly to a podium with a lectern, the others to chairs on his right. As they did so the hubbub in the ballroom stilled briefly. Then, near the front, a few scattered voices shouted, “Boo!” Instantly the cry was taken up until a cacophony of boos and catcalls thundered through the hall. On the podium J. Eric Humphrey stood impassively, waiting for the disapproving chorus to subside. When it lessened slightly he leaned forward to the microphone in front of him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my opening remarks on the state of our company will be brief. I know that many of you are anxious to ask questions …”
His next words were drowned out in another uproar. Amid it were cries of “You’re damned right!” … “Take questions now!” … “Cut the horseshit!” … “Talk dividend!”
When he could make himself heard again, Humphrey countered, “I certainly do intend to talk about dividends but first there are some matters which must …”
“Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, on a point of order!”
A new, unseen voice was booming though the PA system. Simultaneously a red light glowed on the chairman’s lectern, indicating that a microphone in the overflow room was being used.
Humphrey spoke loudly into his own mike. “What is your point of order?”
“I object, Mr. Chairman, to the manner in which …”
Humphrey interrupted. “State your name, please.”
“My name is Homer F. Ingersoll. I am a lawyer and I hold three hundred shares for myself, two hundred for a client.”
“What is your point of order, Mr. Ingersoll?”
“I started to tell you, Mr. Chairman. I object to the way in which inadequate, inefficient arrangements were made to hold this meeting, with the result that I and many others have been relegated, like second-class citizens, to another hall where we cannot properly participate …”
“But you are participating, Mr. Ingersoll. I regret that the unexpectedly large attendance today …”
“I am raising a point of order, Mr. Chairman, and I hadn’t finished.”
As the booming voice cut in again, Humphrey said resignedly, “Finish your point of order, but quickly, please.”
“You may not know it, Mr. Chairman, but even this second hall is now jampacked and there are many stockholders outside who cannot get into either one. I am speaking on their behalf because they are being deprived of their legal rights.”
“No,” Humphrey acknowledged, “I did not know it. I am genuinely sorry and I concede our preparations were inadequate.”
A woman in the ballroom stood up and cried, “You should all resign! You can’t even organize an annual meeting.”
Other voices echoed, “Yes, resign! Resign!”
Eric Humphrey’s lips tightened; for a moment, uncharacteristically, he appeared nervous. Then, with an obvious effort, he controlled himself and tried again. “Today’s attendance, as many of you know, is unprecedented.”
A strident voice: “So was cutting off our dividends!”
“I can only tell you—I had intended to say this later but I’ll state it now—that omission of our dividend was an action which I and my fellow directors took with great reluctance …”
The voice again: “Did you try cutting your own fat salary?”
“… and with full awareness,” Humphrey persisted, “of the unhappiness, indeed hardship, which …”
Several things then happened simultaneously.
A large, soft tomato, unerringly aimed, struck the chairman in the face. It burst, leaving a mess of pulp and juice which dripped down his face, suit and shirtfront.
As if on signal, a barrage of more tomatoes and several eggs followed, splattering the stage and the chairman’s podium. Many in t
he ballroom audience jumped to their feet; a few were laughing but others, looking around them for the throwers, appeared shocked and disapproving. At the same time a new disturbance could be heard, with raised voices growing in volume, immediately outside.
Nim, also on his feet near the center of the ballroom where he had gone when the management group occupied the platform, was searching for the source of the fusillade, ready to intervene if he could find it. Almost at once he saw Davey Birdsong. As he had been doing earlier, the p & lfp leader was speaking into a walkie-talkie; Nim guessed that he was giving orders. Nim tried to push his way toward Birdsong but found it impossible. By now the scene in the ballroom was one of total confusion.
Abruptly Nim found himself face to face with Nancy Molineaux. For an instant she betrayed uncertainty.
His anger flared. “I suppose you’re loving all of this so you can write about us as viciously as usual.”
“I just try to be factual, Goldman.” Her self-assurance returning, Ms. Molineaux smiled. “I do investigative reporting where I think it’s needed.”
“Yeah, investigative, meaning one-sided, slanted!” Impulsively he pointed across the room to Davey Birdsong and his walkie-talkie. “Why not investigate him?”
“Give me one good reason why I should.”
“I believe he’s creating a disturbance here.”
“Do you know he is?”
Nim admitted, “No.”
“Then let me tell you something. Whether he helped or not, this disturbance happened because a lot of people believe that Golden State Power & Light isn’t being run the way it should be. Or don’t you ever face reality?”
With a contemptuous glance at Nim, Nancy Molineaux moved away.
Then the noise outside increased still further and, adding to the ballroom shambles, a phalanx of newcomers pushed their way in. Behind them were still more people, among them bearers of anti-GSP & L signs and placards.