“Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” quotes from The Twilight Zone (1959)

Rod Serling

Witness a murder. The killer is Mr. William Feathersmith, a robber baron whose body composition is made up of a refrigeration plant covered by thick skin. In a moment Mr. Feathersmith will proceed on his daily course of conquest and calumny with yet another business dealing. But this one will be one of those bizarre transactions that take place in an odd marketplace known as the Twilight Zone.

Something that'll turn this two-bit tool shed into a factory: a self-starter. What do you mean, enlarge on it? It's a gizmo you press with your foot that starts an engine with an electric motor...What is it used for!? It's used to make twelve hundred jillion smackers, that's what it's used for...!! Listen, are you all there!!? It's a storage battery, a motor, and a do-hickey that starts the motor! I've given you the principle; now all you have to do is build it...! Now look, I am not a crummy draftsman or a two-bit blueprint boy; I am a promoter, a financier. I'm gonna give you the backing; I've already given you the principle; so all you have to do is build it...!! There's everything under the sun, and you sit around fixing tricycle pedals! There's radio, aluminum, airplanes... You foggy-headed carriage builders, we can make ourselves eleventy zillion dollars!

...It seems like only yesterday that you called me into your office and said, "Bill Feathersmith. I like your style, boy. I want you in with me." You remember that day?

I've cursed myself for it ever since. I've found you to be - from the moment I made you a junior partner, increasingly as the years have gone by, even by the cutthroat standards of our mutual trade - a predatory, conniving, grasping, acquisitive animal of a man...Without heart, without conscience, without compassion, without even a subtle hint of the common decencies. Shall we continue from there?

Rod Serling

Mr. William J. Feathersmith, tycoon, who tried the track one more time and found it muddier than he remembered, proving with at least a degree of conclusiveness that nice guys don't always finish last, and some people should quit when they're ahead. Tonight's tale of iron men and irony, delivered F.O.B. from the Twilight Zone.