From those towers the great banners stood out stiff in the northwest wind. These were not the national flag; that emblem you might see floating modestly from the squat Customs House, the very wind stolen from it by the tall surrounding towers. (One might think of some medieval city where feudal strongholds rose defiant, one against another, commanding the King’s own palace.) Highest of all, as if it ruled the City, flew the blue banner of Telephone. Across a narrow street the two lords of oil flouted each other—red and yellow against blue and white. Maroon of Grand Hotel, crimson and black of the Bank, blue of Power-Light, blue and gold of the Railroad. One might have said that these and their like were the rulers of the City and the World.

Yet one might well look again. Was it perhaps by some inter-company agreement that all the banners streamed off to the southeast? No, not the Board of Directors, not even the stockholders voting as one man, could make their flag fly to the north. The Chief Engineer himself could not contrive that miracle.

From sources too mighty and too far removed for even the great companies to manipulate, that wind drew its power and assumed its direction—from the contrast of ocean and continent, from the whirling of the earth, from the sun itself. That air had come on a long journey. Northeastward from the doldrums of the equator it had moved, miles high above the ocean in the great upper current of the anti-trades. Upon a spiral two thousand miles long it had flowed back to earth around the gentle swirl of the Pacific High. Now it was swinging southward until it would doubtless join the wide sweep of the trades, reach again the doldrums, and exploding into thunderstorms rise to the upper atmosphere and start north once more.

Upon this very day the directors of Power-Light meeting in their room on the sixteenth floor had just heard a discouraging report about the depleted water-reserves in their hundred and more artificial lakes. The directors would gladly have paid many thousands of dollars to any man who could alter the direction of that flag by ninety degrees and bring in a southwester. But they did not even consider such a solution. Instead, with long faces, they approved the expenditure of certain huge sums for the operation of auxiliary steam power-houses.

Upon the sidewalks of the City, people on the shady side drew their coats around them, but on the sunny side they felt cosily warm. The cool clean air filled the lungs; there was vigor in it. Shrewd merchants put forward their best displays, and quoted the proverb: “Do business with men when the wind is in the northwest.” At street-corners the eddies of air set men clutching at their hats, women at their skirts. “Fine day . . . Fine weather . . . Bracing. . . . Good for golf. . . . Puts life in a fellow.”