Further Foolishness Part 15

(III)

The familiar narrative in which the Successful Business Man recounts the early struggles by which he made good.

...No, sir, I had no early advantages whatever. I was brought up plain and hard--try one of these cigars; they cost me fifty cents each. In fact, I practically had no schooling at all. When I left school I didn't know how to read, not to read good. It's only since I've been in business that I've learned to write English, that is so as to use it right. But I'll guarantee to say there isn't a man in the shoe business to-day can write a better letter than I can. But all that I know is what I've learned myself.

Why, I can't do fractions even now. I don't see that a man need. And I never learned no geography, except what I got for myself off railroad folders. I don't believe a man _needs_ more than that anyway. I've got my boy at Harvard now. His mother was set on it. But I don't see that he learns anything, or nothing that will help him any in business. They say they learn them character and manners in the colleges, but, as I see it, a man can get all that just as well in business--is that wine all right?

If not, tell me and I'll give the head waiter h.e.l.l; they charge enough for it; what you're drinking costs me four-fifty a bottle.

But I was starting to tell you about my early start in business. I had it good and hard all right. Why when I struck New York--I was sixteen then--I had just eighty cents to my name. I lived on it for nearly a week while I was walking round hunting for a job. I used to get soup for three cents, and roast beef with potatoes, all you could eat, for eight cents, that tasted better than anything I can ever get in this d.a.m.n club. It was down somewhere on Sixth Avenue, but I've forgotten the way to it.

Well, about the sixth day I got a job, down in a shoe factory, working on a machine. I guess you've never seen shoe-machinery, have you? No, you wouldn't likely. It's complicated. Even in those days there were thirty-five machines went to the making of a shoe, and now we use as many as fifty-four. I'd never seen the machines before, but the foreman took me on. "You look strong," he said "I'll give you a try anyway."

So I started in. I didn't know anything. But I made good from the first day. I got four a week at the start, and after two months I got a raise to four-twenty-five.

Well, after I'd worked there about three months, I went up to the floor manager of the flat I worked on, and I said, "Say, Mr. Jones, do you want to save ten dollars a week on expenses?" "How?" says he. "Why," I said, "that foreman I'm working under on the machine, I've watched him, and I can do his job; dismiss him and I'll take over his work at half what you pay him." "Can you do the work?"

he says. "Try me out," I said. "Fire him and give me a chance." "Well," he said, "I like your spirit anyway; you've got the right sort of stuff in you."

So he fired the foreman and I took over the job and held it down. It was hard at first, but I worked twelve hours a day, and studied up a book on factory machinery at night. Well, after I'd been on that work for about a year, I went in one day to the general manager downstairs, and I said, "Mr. Thompson, do you want to save about a hundred dollars a month on your overhead costs?" "How can I do that?" says he. "Sit down." "Why," I said, "you dismiss Mr. Jones and give me his place as manager of the floor, and I'll undertake to do his work, and mine with it, at a hundred less than you're paying now." He turned and went into the inner office, and I could hear him talking to Mr. Evans, the managing director. "The young fellow certainly has character," I heard him say.

Then he came out and he said, "Well, we're going to give you a try anyway: we like to help out our employes all we can, you know; and you've got the sort of stuff in you that we're looking for."

So they dismissed Jones next day and I took over his job and did it easy. It was nothing anyway. The higher up you get in business, the easier it is if you know how.

I held that job two years, and I saved all my salary except twenty-five dollars a month, and I lived on that.

I never spent any money anyway. I went once to see Irving do this Macbeth for twenty-five cents, and once I went to a concert and saw a man play the violin for fifteen cents in the gallery. But I don't believe you get much out of the theatre anyway; as I see it, there's nothing to it.

Well, after a while I went one day to Mr. Evans's office and I said, "Mr. Evans, I want you to dismiss Mr. Thompson, the general manager." "Why, what's he done?" he says.

"Nothing," I said, "but I can take over his job on top of mine and you can pay me the salary you give him and save what you're paying me now." "Sounds good to me," he says.

So they let Thompson go and I took his place. That, of course, is where I got my real start, because, you see, I could control the output and run the costs up and down just where I liked. I suppose you don't know anything about costs and all that--they don't teach that sort of thing in colleges--but even you would understand something about dividends and would see that an energetic man with lots of character and business in him, If he's general manager can just do what he likes with the costs, especially the overhead, and the shareholders have just got to take what he gives them and be glad to. You see they can't fire him--not when he's got it all in his own hands--for fear it will all go to pieces.

Why would I want to run it that way for? Well, I'll tell you. I had a notion by that time that the business was getting so big that Mr. Evans, the managing director, and most of the board had pretty well lost track of the details and didn't understand it. There's an awful lot, you know, in the shoe business. It's not like ordinary things. It's complicated. And so I'd got an idea that I would shove them clean out of it--or most of them.

So I went one night to see the president, old Guggenbaum, up at his residence. He didn't only have this business, but he was in a lot of other things as well, and he was a mighty hard man to see. He wouldn't let any man see him unless he knew first what he was going to say. But I went up to his residence at night, and I saw him there.

I talked first with his daughter, and I said I just had to see him. I said it so she didn't dare refuse. There's a way in talking to women that they won't say no.

So I showed Mr. Guggenbaum what I could do with the stock.

"I can put that dividend," I says, "clean down to zero--and they'll none of them know why. You can buy the lot of them out at your own price, and after that I'll put the dividend back to fifteen, or twenty, in two years."

"And where do _you_ come in?" says the old man, with a sort of hard look. He had a fine business head, the old man, at least in those days.

So I explained to him where I came in. "All right," he said. "Go ahead. But I'll put nothing in writing." "Mr.

Guggenbaum, you don't need to," I said. "You're as fair and square as I am and that's enough for me."

His daughter let me out of the house door when I went.

I guess she'd been pretty scared that she'd done wrong about letting me in. But I said to her it was all right, and after that when I wanted to see the old man I'd always ask for her and she'd see that I got in all right.

Got them squeezed out? Oh, yes, easy. There wasn't any trouble about that. You see the old man worked up a sort of jolt in wholesale leather on one side, and I fixed up a strike of the hands on the other. We pa.s.sed the dividend two quarters running, and within a year we had them all scared out and the bulk of the little shareholders, of course, trooped out after them. They always do. The old man picked up the stock when they dropped it, and one-half of it he handed over to me.

That's what put me where I am now, do you see, with the whole control of the industry in two states and more than that now, because we have the Amalgamated Tanneries in with us, so it's practically all one concern.

Guggenbaum? Did I squeeze him out? No, I didn't because, you see, I didn't have to. The way it was--well, I tell you--I used to go up to the house, see, to arrange things with him--and the way it was--why, you see, I married his daughter, see, so I didn't exactly _need_ to squeeze him out. He lives up with us now, but he's pretty old and past business. In fact, I do it all for him now, and pretty well everything he has is signed over to my wife.

She has no head for it, and she's sort of timid anyway --always was--so I manage it all. Of course, if anything happens to the old man, then we get it all. I don't think he'll last long. I notice him each day, how weak he's getting.

My son in the business? Well, I'd like him to be. But he don't seem to take to it somehow--I'm afraid he takes more after his mother; or else it's the college that's doing it. Somehow, I don't think the colleges bring out business character, do you?

X. A Study in Still Life--My Tailor

He always stands there--and has stood these thirty years--in the back part of his shop, his tape woven about his neck, a smile of welcome on his face, waiting to greet me.

"Something in a serge," he says, "or perhaps in a tweed?"

There are only these two choices open to us. We have had no others for thirty years. It is too late to alter now.

"A serge, yes," continues my tailor, "something in a dark blue, perhaps." He says it with all the gusto of a new idea, as if the thought of dark blue had sprung up as an inspiration. "Mr. Jennings" (this is his a.s.sistant), "kindly take down some of those dark blues.

"Ah," he exclaims, "now here is an excellent thing." His manner as he says this is such as to suggest that by sheer good fortune and blind chance he has stumbled upon a thing among a million.

He lifts one knee and drapes the cloth over it, standing upon one leg. He knows that in this att.i.tude it is hard to resist him. Cloth to be appreciated as cloth must be viewed over the bended knee of a tailor with one leg in the air.

My tailor can stand in this way indefinitely, on one leg in a sort of ecstasy, a kind of local paralysis.

"Would that make up well?" I ask him.

"Admirably," he answers.

I have no real reason to doubt it. I have never seen any reason why cloth should not make up well. But I always ask the question as I know that he expects it and it pleases him. There ought to be a fair give and take in such things.

"You don't think it at all loud?" I say. He always likes to be asked this.

"Oh, no, very quiet indeed. In fact we always recommend serge as extremely quiet."

I have never had a wild suit in my life. But it is well to ask.

Then he measures me--round the chest, nowhere else. All the other measures were taken years ago. Even the chest measure is only done--and I know it--to please me. I do not really grow.

"A _little_ fuller in the chest," my tailor muses. Then he turns to his a.s.sistant. "Mr. Jennings, a little fuller in the chest--half an inch on to the chest, please."

It is a kind fiction. Growth around the chest is flattering even to the humblest of us.

"Yes," my tailor goes on--he uses "yes" without any special meaning--"and shall we say a week from Tuesday?

Mr. Jennings, a week from Tuesday, please."

"And will you please," I say, "send the bill to--?" but my tailor waves this aside. He does not care to talk about the bill. It would only give pain to both of us to speak of it.

The bill is a matter we deal with solely by correspondence, and that only in a decorous and refined style never calculated to hurt.

I am sure from the tone of my tailor's letters that he would never send the bill, or ask for the amount, were it not that from time to time he is himself, unfortunately, "pressed" owing to "large consignments from Europe." But for these heavy consignments, I am sure I should never need to pay him. It is true that I have sometimes thought to observe that these consignments are apt to arrive when I pa.s.s the limit of owing for two suits and order a third.

But this can only be a mere coincidence.