Eight o'clock saw him at his desk each morning.
By ten o'clock, it was into the machine and away for a round of the banks.
And usually in the machine with him was the ten thousand and more dollars that had been earned by his ferries and railways the day before. This was for the weakest spot in the financial dike.
And with one bank president after another similar scenes were enacted.
They were paralyzed with fear, and first of all he played his role of the big vital optimist.
Times were improving.
Of course they were. The signs were already in the air.
All that anybody had to do was to sit tight a little longer and hold on.
That was all.
Money was already more active in the East.
Look at the trading on Wall Street of the last twenty-four hours.
That was the straw that showed the wind.
Hadn't Ryan said so and so? and wasn't it reported that Morgan was preparing to do this and that?
As for himself, weren't the street-railway earnings increasing steadily?
In spite of the panic, more and more people were coming to Oakland right along.
Movements were already beginning in real estate.
He was dickering even then to sell over a thousand of his suburban acres.
Of course it was at a sacrifice, but it would ease the strain on all of them and bolster up the faint-hearted.
That was the trouble—the faint-hearts. Had there been no faint-hearts there would have been no panic.
There was that Eastern syndicate, negotiating with him now to take the majority of the stock in the Sierra and Salvador Power Company off his hands.
That showed confidence that better times were at hand.
And if it was not cheery discourse, but prayer and entreaty or show down and fight on the part of the banks, Daylight had to counter in kind. If they could bully, he could bully.
If the favor he asked were refused, it became the thing he demanded.
And when it came down to raw and naked fighting, with the last veil of sentiment or illusion torn off, he could take their breaths away.
But he knew, also, how and when to give in.
When he saw the wall shaking and crumbling irretrievably at a particular place, he patched it up with sops of cash from his three cash-earning companies.
If the banks went, he went too.
It was a case of their having to hold out.
If they smashed and all the collateral they held of his was thrown on the chaotic market, it would be the end.
And so it was, as the time passed, that on occasion his red motor-car carried, in addition to the daily cash, the most gilt-edged securities he possessed; namely, the Ferry Company, United Water and Consolidated Railways.
But he did this reluctantly, fighting inch by inch.
As he told the president of the Merchants San Antonio who made the plea of carrying so many others:—
"They're small fry.
Let them smash.
I'm the king pin here.
You've got more money to make out of me than them.
Of course, you're carrying too much, and you've got to choose, that's all.
It's root hog or die for you or them.
I'm too strong to smash.
You could only embarrass me and get yourself tangled up.
Your way out is to let the small fry go, and I'll lend you a hand to do it."
And it was Daylight, also, in this time of financial anarchy, who sized up Simon Dolliver's affairs and lent the hand that sent that rival down in utter failure.
The Golden Gate National was the keystone of Dolliver's strength, and to the president of that institution Daylight said:—
"Here I've been lending you a hand, and you now in the last ditch, with Dolliver riding on you and me all the time.
It don't go.
You hear me, it don't go.
Dolliver couldn't cough up eleven dollars to save you.
Let him get off and walk, and I'll tell you what I'll do.
I'll give you the railway nickels for four days—that's forty thousand cash.
And on the sixth of the month you can count on twenty thousand more from the Water Company."