The Cotton King

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