NEW HORIZONS

Business thrives and new opportunities arise in Ohio. A new player arrives in NYC.  An inhumane operation reaches new depths in the Amazon.  

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With the Bennet order, business booms at The Mann Rubber Company.  A company party is thrown to celebrate the turn of good fortune.  Mark is cheered by his employees, even Sam Rothman, amid a festive and chaotic good time had by all.

In Cleveland, Brock Sylvester is approached by investors interested in buying out his share of the budding company.

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In the Amazon, Jose Ruiz oversees operations at the collection center. The imprisoned Indians plea for mercy as Ife and El Barbadiano bark orders at their captives. They tie up the women and threaten their lives if the men fail to gather rubber from the forest.  The fearful men do as their told and quickly produce impressive amounts of rubber.

Expecting they’ve earned their freedom, they soon learn Ruiz has no interest in letting them go. The gathering continues.

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Bank guard Jim Malloy accepts Mark’s offer and moves his family to Ohio to handle security duties.

Sam and Mark report to Brock Sylvester with the company’s real profits. Brock is pleased and informs he has turned down offers to sell his stock. This concerns Mark.

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In NYC, Amelia Sinclair introduces Violette to her fiance, Scotsman Sir Bruce Clarke, a London banker who expresses mysterious interest in Mark Mann’s ‘courage’.

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Mark takes Sam for a ride into the farmland, expresses his desire to buy out Brock Sylvester for fear of his true intentions of with their company.

He parks near a cornfield outside of town and lays out his plans for massive expansion. His vision is big. He wants two new state-of-art factories - one for making steel rims, a research laboratory, along with parking and cafeteria’s for the labor. Sam now believes in the automobile and agrees the world is not going back to horses. They estimate the costs at $5m. Sam knows it will require a major underwriter, but he’s not certain he should introduce Mark to Armen Silver.

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At Oro Blanco, the methods go from bad to worse. Ruiz’s crew finds new levels of motivation. Whippings and maimings become an everyday occurrence.

On one particular day, the Indians return with hardly any rubber, infuriating El Barbadiano who pulls a native into a bear hug and squeeze the life out of him.  On another day, Ife catches a young native trying to cheat the scales by stuffing rocks into the chunks of rubber. An unacceptable act swiftly punished by a beheading.  And when the Indians attempt to revolt and run, a slave hunt follows an activity with deadly results.  Each extreme tactic works better than the last.  Soon the launch sets off down the river - to the civilized world - over-packed with raw rubber.