Summary
In the languid twilight of the Gilded Age, when boll-weevil whispers traveled faster than gospel, a cabal of silk-hatted titans conspire to throttle the world’s cotton supply, dreaming of a monopoly that would make kings kneel. Their scheme hinges on one obstinate sphinx: John Osborne, a laconic planter whose warehouses bulge like pregnant clouds with white fiber. Osborne spurns their velvet bribes, then detonates their bubble with a single, contemptuous sell-order that sends prices cascading like confetti in a hurricane. Flush with schadenfreude and bullion, he returns to the soot-choked river town of his youth, purchasing the ancient Ashton Mills from the debt-crippled Stockley dynasty, keeping the dissolute heir Richard as a overseer. On the very day the deed is inked, a boiler explodes—Shillinglaw, the sotted engineer, has nodded off in a stupor—and a worker’s body is folded into the machinery like crumpled parchment. Osborne dispatches his clerk Piper to convey hush-money to the widow; Piper pockets the envelope, the theft witnessed only by Richard, who tucks the secret away like a stiletto. In the din of the looms, Elsie Kent—frail as lint yet fierce as lint-ignite—keeps her grandmother alive by sheer force of will; she loves Richard, who trifles with her virtue then discards her like a broken bobbin. Osborne, meanwhile, courts Hetty Drayson, whose family was bankrupted by Henry Stockley’s jealous vendetta. On his deathbed Stockley tries to balance the cosmic ledger: his fortune passes to Richard only if he weds Hetty, righting the ancestral wrong. Cornered, Richard smears Osborne as Elsie’s seducer, igniting the town’s rage. A forged telegram—24 transmuted into 124—traps Osborne in the path of a collapsing market; he awakens to bankruptcy and a lynch mob. Elsie, dying in childbirth, exonerates Osborne with her last breath; the mob pivots toward Richard, but Osborne shields him, forging a chain of irony that would make Aeschylus blanch. In the final reel Richard lures Osborne to a countryside “joy-ride,” claps him in a crumbling manse, then races home to claim Hetty as widow-in-waiting. A last-second rescue, an elevator shaft glowing like the maw of Hades, and Richard is dragged off in manacles, his silhouette shrinking against the frosty dawn.
Synopsis
A group of wealthy men try to corner the cotton market and force up the price. They succeed in their plans, and the market is thrown into a panic. To be entirely successful, it is necessary for them to take into their group John Osborne, who controls a great deal of cotton. They approach him with their plan, but he refuses to agree. Therefore, when cotton is high, he sells, thereby reducing the price, and incidentally making a large amount of money for himself. Osborne returns to the town of his birth, and buys the Ashton Cotton Mills from Henry Stockley and his son, Richard. He retains Richard as his general manager. On the day he takes over the mills the furnace blows up, due to the negligence of Shillinglaw, the drunken engineer. During the explosion a man is killed, and Osborne gives his clerk, Piper, money to be given to the widow. This money, however, Piper keeps, and the fact is known only to Richard Stockley, who observed him putting it away. In the mills there is working a young girl, named Elsie Kent, who is the sole support of her grandmother. She falls in love with Richard, and he betrays her. Osborne falls in love with Hetty Drayson. who lives with her mother. The Draysons had been wealthy, Mr. Drayson having been Henry Stockley's partner in the Ashton Mills, but because he had married the girl whom Stockley loved, Stockley. in revenge, ruined him. Drayson had shortly afterward died, and Mrs. Drayson had since been very bitter against Stockley. One day Henry Stockley is thrown from his horse and brought home in a dying condition. Before he dies, he makes his will. He feels remorse at the way he treated the Draysons, and he determines to make retribution. He leaves his property to his son, Richard, on the condition of Richard's marrying Hetty Drayson, thereby making up to the daughter for the wrong he did to the parents. This puts Richard in a quandary. He wants the money, and yet he knows that Hetty loves Osborne. Besides, there is Elsie, who is soon to become a mother. He solves the problem by spreading the report that Osborne is the betrayer of Elsie, thus alienating Hetty's affection from Osborne. Osborne's life is threatened. Osborne, foreseeing that there will be a great falling off in the price of cotton, telegraphs his broker in code to "sell out." The code number representing this is twenty-four. He gives this telegram to Piper to send. Richard waylays Piper, and, threatening to expose the latter's record of theft, makes him change the 24 to 124, which means "hold." Thus the bottom falls out of the cotton market, and Osborne is ruined. Osborne sells a half interest in the mills, and realizes enough to meet his liabilities. By this time the mill workers come to Osborne's office to attack him for the supposed betrayal of Elsie. Elsie, however, comes in, and to save Osborne, tells them the truth about Richard. The men turn and wish to lynch Richard, but Osborne saves him. Soon after this Elsie dies. Richard follows Osborne to New York and determines to get him out of the way, for now, with Elsie dead, he is in a position to marry Hetty. When he arrives in New York he sends a bogus telegram to Osborne as if from his broker, telling Osborne that he is sending an automobile to take Osborne to his country place over Sunday. When the automobile is out in the country, Osborne is seized and thrown in a deserted house. However, Osborne manages to overpower his captor and escapes. Meanwhile, Richard has gone home and telegraphs to Hetty, saying that Osborne is dead. He goes to see her, and pleads for her hand. She repulses him. He, in anger, pushes her into an elevator, and makes it descend. Before the elevator reaches the bottom, Osborne arrives and saves Hetty. Richard then is unmasked and is led away to prison.
Review Excerpt
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Melodrama, in the silent era, was never merely loud—it was orchestral, a fever-dream played on the nerves of an audience still unaccustomed to moving shadows. The Cotton King arrives like a sulphur-tinged wind, reeking of raw cotton, coal smoke, and the coppery tang of moral corrosion. What could have been a dry parable about commodity speculation mutates, under Sutton Vane Sr.’s pen, into a baroque tapestry of lust, revenge, and karmic boomerangs.
Cornering the Cloud: Economics as Grand Guign..."
