The years between 1908 and the summer of 1914 were a golden age of quiet, relentless growth for the House of Hemsworth. The reverberations of the 1907 Panic had settled, leaving a changed landscape. While J.P. Morgan was hailed as the nation's financial savior, the Hemsworth Conglomerate had used the chaos to silently position itself at the very heart of the new industrial economy. The empire, with its seven pillars now secured, was no longer a nascent idea; it was a burgeoning reality. Damon, now in his late teens, had receded from public view, directing operations from his father's study with the cold, precise efficiency of a master chess player. Arthur Hemsworth, his face hardened by a newfound purpose, was the public face of his son's genius, earning a reputation for having a supernatural knack for business.
The first of the Hemsworth pillars to truly explode in scale was Thorne Motors. William Thorne, the chief engineer, had been given a blank check and a single mandate from Damon: "Cut the time to build a car by half, then half again. And cut the price to match." The result was the revolutionary T Model, a simple, rugged, and—most importantly—affordable automobile. Thorne, with Damon's capital and logistical genius behind him, was the first to fully implement a moving assembly line in his factories, bringing the chassis to the worker and not the other way around. The speed of production was unprecedented. A car that once took twelve hours to assemble now took ninety minutes. The price, thanks to the vertically integrated supply chain of Hemsworth steel and Apex lubricants, plummeted. By 1912, Thorne Motors was producing more cars than any other company in the world, its simple, black-painted vehicles becoming a symbol of American mobility. The profits were not siphoned off; they were immediately reinvested into building even larger factories and into researching new engine technologies.
Side-by-side with Thorne's automotive revolution, the Hemsworth Mercantile retail chain became a nationwide phenomenon. Damon had not been interested in elegant storefronts or luxury goods. He was interested in volume. The Volume Depots, as they were still called, began to appear like monolithic, standardized structures on the outskirts of every major town, their shelves stocked with affordable goods. The secret was the Conglomerate's vast logistics network. Thorne's new trucks, powered by Apex gasoline, ran day and night, ferrying goods from centralized warehouses to the depots with clockwork precision. The network was so efficient that Hemsworth Mercantile could undercut local merchants on price and still turn a healthy profit. By 1913, the sight of a red-and-gold Thorne truck was as common as a train on a railway. The empire was not just building industries; it was creating the very infrastructure of modern life.
The oil and banking pillars, meanwhile, continued their symbiotic growth. Apex Fuels, flush with cash from the profits of Thorne Motors, expanded its refining capacity, becoming a major competitor to Standard Oil's fractured successors. Damon, foreseeing the massive demand for petroleum during the coming war, began quietly securing drilling rights in Venezuela and the Middle East, using the family bank's immense capital to ink deals that were still decades away from being profitable. The Hemsworth Bank, now seen as a fortress of stability after the 1907 Panic, handled all the financing, providing loans for infrastructure and foreign governments while stockpiling reserves in gold and other strategic commodities like copper and rubber.
The true work of this era, however, was done in the shadows, on the two pillars that had no business yet existing: Airlines and Semiconductors. Damon's foreknowledge told him that while the coming war would be fought with steel and oil, the subsequent global order would be dictated by air power and information.
Vance Air Transport, the nascent air cargo company, was a financial sinkhole. Its fleet of unreliable, modified biplanes was costly to maintain and its routes were limited. But Damon had a different goal. He used the company to secure air route permits, purchase valuable airfields, and, most importantly, provide a living for the nation's handful of talented aeronautical engineers and pilots. The company was essentially a pre-emptive talent acquisition program. Damon knew that when the war came, the demand for military aircraft would be immense, and the Conglomerate would have the only existing team of pilots and mechanics capable of building and flying them. He was not creating a business; he was creating a war machine.
Even more discreet was the work at Hemsworth Labs. Tucked away in a quiet New Jersey location, the team of scientists, led by the brilliant but eccentric Dr. Elias (who had been lured from Apex Fuels), was given one task: pure, unfettered research into the properties of a new crystal diode and the potential of solid-state electronics. While the world was obsessed with massive, clunky vacuum tubes, Damon was directing his scientists to build the theoretical foundation for the transistor. The lab produced no products, generated no revenue, and was an object of derision among Arthur's financial peers, who called it "Damon's folly." They couldn't know that Damon was investing not in a product, but in the intellectual property that would eventually power everything from radios to computers. The future of the empire lay in a tiny piece of treated silicon, and Damon was determined to own the patents.
As the years progressed, Damon's personal life became increasingly detached from his work. He was seen as a brilliant enigma, a cold and calculating young man who had no interest in the society events that defined his class. He attended parties only to speak with foreign diplomats or to quietly corner the heads of key companies. His mother, Eleanor, despaired of his lack of suitors, but Arthur, seeing the daily profits from Thorne Motors and Hemsworth Mercantile, was less concerned. His son was not a man; he was a force of nature.
In early 1914, the air felt tense. Europe was a powder keg, and the financial markets were starting to show signs of a looming crisis. For Arthur, it was unsettling déjà vu. For Damon, it was a moment of supreme, thrilling anticipation.
He sat with his father in the study one evening in June, the glow of the desk lamp illuminating a massive, detailed map of Europe that was now a permanent fixture on the wall. Red and blue pins marked the movements of armies and navies.
"The Germans have been building their fleet, Father," Damon stated, tracing a finger across the North Sea. "The British will not allow it. An assassination in Sarajevo... it is the match that lights the fire. I believe we have less than two months before the major powers are at war."
Arthur leaned forward, his face etched with worry. "A European war? My God, Damon. The financial markets will collapse. It will be another panic, only a hundred times worse."
"It will be a panic for those who are not prepared. We are prepared," Damon replied, his voice firm. "We will not be caught short. Every one of our assets has been positioned to pivot. Our factories at Thorne Motors are designed for easy conversion to military vehicles. Apex Fuels has the capacity to supply fuel to an entire navy. Hemsworth Mercantile's logistics network will be invaluable for military supply. We've spent the last six years building a war machine in the guise of a commercial conglomerate."
He looked at his father, his eyes holding a vision of the future that Arthur could barely comprehend. "And most importantly, we have the funds. The House of Hemsworth will not be a passive observer of this war. We will be its primary financier. We will provide the loans to the Allied powers, and we will demand control over key resources and industrial assets as collateral. When the war is over, we will not just be rich. We will be the most powerful financial and industrial entity in the world."
Arthur stared at his son. "You speak of this conflict with such… indifference. Thousands will die."
"Of course they will, Father. It is a tragedy. But it is a tragedy that is coming, whether we profit from it or not," Damon said, a chilling philosophical detachment in his tone. "Our job is not to prevent it; we cannot. Our job is to ensure that the Hemsworth family and the empire we are building do not just survive but thrive. I know the outcome of this war. I know who will win. We will fund that side, and we will be positioned to own the peace that follows. Our future empire is not just built on steel and oil; it is built on foresight, and the cold, hard logic of profit."
"And the two final pillars?" Arthur asked, a desperate hope in his voice that his son had some humanistic plans for them. "What of Airlines and Semiconductors?"
"They are the seeds of the new world. We will use the war to accelerate their development," Damon explained, his eyes gleaming with a terrible ambition. "Vance Air Transport will supply the military with planes, and its pilots will become the first generation of commercial flyers. And Hemsworth Labs… they will use military funding to research advanced electronics for communications. The war will prove the need for the technology we are building. The world will be ready for it. The war will accelerate our entire timeline."
Arthur, for the first time, felt the true weight of the burden he carried. He was not merely a banker anymore; he was a general in a war of capital, with his own son as his cold, all-knowing commander. He had seen his son's genius save them, and now he was watching it prepare to conquer the world, turning even the greatest human conflict into a strategic opportunity. The world was on the brink of war, and his family was about to make a fortune.