Chapter 3. Desperate in Dayton

John Henry Patterson had a problem: His business was on the verge of failing. In fact, if sales didn’t improve dramatically, there was a good chance that he might go bankrupt. If he did, it would wipe him out financially, and it would ruin his brother, Frank, too, whom Patterson had convinced to invest in the new business.

Financial ruin was bad enough. Seeing his brother and his brother’s family wiped out was horrible. But for a man as proud—some might even say as arrogant—as John Henry Patterson, there was an even worse consequence of failing: He would become the laughingstock of his community, Dayton, Ohio. For him, that would be even more painful than going broke.

For years, Patterson and his brother had been extremely ...

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