The Summerfield Advertising Agency, of which Mr. Daniel
C. Summerfield was president, was one of those curious exfoliations or
efflorescences of the personality of a single individual which is so
often met with in the business world, and which always means a
remarkable individual behind them. The ideas, the enthusiasm, the
strength of Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield was all there was to the
Summerfield Advertising Agency. It was true there was a large force of
men working for him, advertising canvassers, advertising writers,
financial accountants, artists, stenographers, book-keepers and the
like, but they were all as it were an emanation or irradiation of the
personality of Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield. He was small, wiry,
black-haired, black-eyed, black-mustached, with an olive complexion and
even, pleasing, albeit at times wolfish, white teeth which indicated a
disposition as avid and hungry as a disposition well might be.
Mr. Summerfield had come up into his present state of affluence or
comparative affluence from the direst poverty and by the directest
route--his personal efforts. In the State in which he had originated,
Alabama, his family had been known, in the small circle to which they
were known at all, as poor white trash. His father had been a rather
lackadaisical, half-starved cotton planter who had been satisfied with a
single bale or less of cotton to the acre on the ground which he leased,
and who drove a lean mule very much the worse for age and wear, up and
down the furrows of his leaner fields the while he complained of "the
misery" in his breast. He was afflicted with slow consumption or thought
he was, which was just as effective, and in addition had hook-worm,
though that parasitic producer of hopeless tiredness was not yet
discovered and named.
Daniel Christopher, his eldest son, had been raised with scarcely any
education, having been put in a cotton mill at the age of seven, but
nevertheless he soon manifested himself as the brain of the family. For
four years he worked in the cotton mill, and then, because of his
unusual brightness, he had been given a place in the printing shop of
the Wickham Union, where he was so attractive to the slow-going
proprietor that he soon became foreman of the printing department and
then manager. He knew nothing of printing or newspapers at the time, but
the little contact he obtained here soon cleared his vision. He saw
instantly what the newspaper business was, and decided to enter it.
Later, as he grew older, he suspected that no one knew very much about
advertising as yet, or very little, and that he was called by God to
revise it. With this vision of a still wider field of usefulness in his
mind, he began at once to prepare himself for it, reading all manner of
advertising literature and practicing the art of display and effective
statement. He had been through such bitter things as personal fights
with those who worked under him, knocking one man down with a heavy iron
form key; personal altercation with his own father and mother in which
he frankly told them that they were failures, and that they had better
let him show them something about regulating their hopeless lives. He
had quarreled with his younger brothers, trying to dominate them, and
had succeeded in controlling the youngest, principally for the very good
reason that he had become foolishly fond of him; this younger brother he
later introduced into his advertising business. He had religiously saved
the little he had earned thus far, invested a part of it in the further
development of the Wickham _Union_, bought his father an eight acre
farm, which he showed him how to work, and finally decided to come to
New York to see if he could not connect himself with some important
advertising concern where he could learn something more about the one
thing that interested him. He was already married, and he brought his
young wife with him from the South.
He soon connected himself as a canvasser with one of the great agencies
and advanced rapidly. He was so smiling, so bland, so insistent, so
magnetic, that business came to him rapidly. He became the star man in
this New York concern and Alfred Cookman, who was its owner and manager,
was soon pondering what he could do to retain him. No individual or
concern could long retain Daniel C. Summerfield, however, once he
understood his personal capabilities. In two years he had learned all
that Alfred Cookman had to teach him and more than he could teach him.
He knew his customers and what their needs were, and where the lack was
in the service which Mr. Cookman rendered them. He foresaw the drift
toward artistic representation of saleable products, and decided to go
into that side of it. He would start an agency which would render a
service so complete and dramatic that anyone who could afford to use his
service would make money.
When Eugene first heard of this agency, the Summerfield concern was six
years old and rapidly growing. It was already very large and profitable
and as hard and forceful as its owner. Daniel C. Summerfield, sitting in
his private office, was absolutely ruthless in his calculations as to
men. He had studied the life of Napoleon and had come to the conclusion
that no individual life was important. Mercy was a joke to be eliminated
from business. Sentiment was silly twaddle. The thing to do was to hire
men as cheaply as possible, to drive them as vigorously as possible, and
to dispose of them quickly when they showed signs of weakening under the
strain. He had already had five art directors in as many years, had
"hired and fired," as he termed it, innumerable canvassers, ad writers,
book-keepers, stenographers, artists--getting rid of anyone and everyone
who showed the least sign of incapacity or inefficiency. The great
office floor which he maintained was a model of cleanliness, order--one
might almost say beauty of a commercial sort, but it was the
cleanliness, order and beauty of a hard, polished and well-oiled
machine. Daniel C. Summerfield was not much more than that, but he had
long ago decided that was what he must be in order not to be a failure,
a fool, and as he called it, "a mark," and he admired himself for being
so.
When Mr. Baker Bates at Hudson Dula's request went to Mr. Summerfield in
regard to the rumored vacancy which really existed, the latter was in a
most receptive frame of mind. He had just come into two very important
advertising contracts which required a lot of imagination and artistic
skill to execute, and he had lost his art director because of a row over
a former contract. It was true that in very many cases--in most cases,
in fact--his customers had very definite ideas as to what they wanted to
say and how they wanted to say it, but not always. They were almost
always open to suggestions as to modifications and improvements, and in
a number of very important cases they were willing to leave the entire
theory of procedure to the Summerfield Advertising Company. This called
for rare good judgment not only in the preparation, but in the placing
of these ads, and it was in the matter of their preparation--the many
striking ideas which they should embody--that the judgment and
assistance of a capable art director of real imagination was most
valuable.
As has already been said, Mr. Summerfield had had five art directors in
almost as many years. In each case he had used the Napoleonic method of
throwing a fresh, unwearied mind into the breach of difficulty, and when
it wearied or broke under the strain, tossing it briskly out. There was
no compunction or pity connected with any detail of this method. "I hire
good men and I pay them good wages," was his favorite comment. "Why
shouldn't I expect good results?" If he was wearied or angered by
failure he was prone to exclaim--"These Goddamned cattle of artists!
What can you expect of them? They don't know anything outside their
little theory of how things ought to look. They don't know anything
about life. Why, God damn it, they're like a lot of children. Why should
anybody pay any attention to what they think? Who cares what they think?
They give me a pain in the neck." Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield was very
much given to swearing, more as a matter of habit than of foul
intention, and no picture of him would be complete without the
interpolation of his favorite expressions.
When Eugene appeared on the horizon as a possible applicant for this
delightful position, Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield was debating with himself
just what he should do in connection with the two new contracts in
question. The advertisers were awaiting his suggestions eagerly. One was
for the nation-wide advertising of a new brand of sugar, the second for
the international display of ideas in connection with a series of French
perfumes, the sale of which depended largely upon the beauty with which
they could be interpreted to the lay mind. The latter were not only to
be advertised in the United States and Canada, but in Mexico also, and
the fulfilment of the contracts in either case was dependent upon the
approval given by the advertisers to the designs for newspaper, car and
billboard advertising which he should submit. It was a ticklish
business, worth two hundred thousand dollars in ultimate profits, and
naturally he was anxious that the man who should sit in the seat of
authority in his art department should be one of real force and
talent--a genius if possible, who should, through his ideas, help him
win his golden harvest.
The right man naturally was hard to find. The last man had been only
fairly capable. He was dignified, meditative, thoughtful, with
considerable taste and apprehension as to what the material situation
required in driving home simple ideas, but he had no great imaginative
grasp of life. In fact no man who had ever sat in the director's chair
had ever really suited Mr. Summerfield. According to him they had all
been weaklings. "Dubs; fakes; hot air artists," were some of his
descriptions of them. Their problem, however, was a hard one, for they
had to think very vigorously in connection with any product which he
might be trying to market, and to offer him endless suggestions as to
what would be the next best thing for a manufacturer to say or do to
attract attention to what he had to sell. It might be a catch phrase
such as "Have You Seen This New Soap?" or "Do You Know Soresda?--It's
Red." It might be that a novelty in the way of hand or finger, eye or
mouth was all that was required, carrying some appropriate explanation
in type. Sometimes, as in the case of very practical products, their
very practical display in some clear, interesting, attractive way was
all that was needed. In most cases, though, something radically new was
required, for it was the theory of Mr. Summerfield that his ads must not
only arrest the eye, but fix themselves in the memory, and convey a fact
which was or at least could be made to seem important to the reader. It
was a struggling with one of the deepest and most interesting phases of
human psychology.
The last man, Older Freeman, had been of considerable use to him in his
way. He had collected about him a number of fairly capable artists--men
temporarily down on their luck--who like Eugene were willing to take a
working position of this character, and from them he had extracted by
dint of pleading, cajoling, demonstrating and the like a number of
interesting ideas. Their working hours were from nine to five-thirty,
their pay meagre--eighteen to thirty-five, with experts drawing in
several instances fifty and sixty dollars, and their tasks innumerable
and really never-ending. Their output was regulated by a tabulated
record system which kept account of just how much they succeeded in
accomplishing in a week, and how much it was worth to the concern. The
ideas on which they worked were more or less products of the brains of
the art director and his superior, though they occasionally themselves
made important suggestions, but for their proper execution, the amount
of time spent on them, the failures sustained, the art director was more
or less responsible. He could not carry to his employer a poor drawing
of a good idea, or a poor idea for something which required a superior
thought, and long hope to retain his position. Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield
was too shrewd and too exacting. He was really tireless in his energy.
It was his art director's business, he thought, to get him good ideas
for good drawings and then to see that they were properly and speedily
executed.
Anything less than this was sickening failure in the eyes of
Mr. Summerfield, and he was not at all bashful in expressing himself. As
a matter of fact, he was at times terribly brutal. "Why the hell do you
show me a thing like that?" he once exclaimed to Freeman. "Jesus Christ;
I could hire an ashman and get better results. Why, God damn it, look at
the drawing of the arm of that woman. Look at her ear. Whose going to
take a thing like that? It's tame! It's punk! It's a joke! What sort of
cattle have you got out there working for you, anyhow? Why, if the
Summerfield Advertising Company can't do better than that I might as
well shut up the place and go fishing. We'll be a joke in six weeks.
Don't try to hand me any such God damned tripe as that, Freeman. You
know better. You ought to know our advertisers wouldn't stand for
anything like that. Wake up! I'm paying you five thousand a year. How do
you expect I'm going to get my money back out of any such arrangement as
that? You're simply wasting my money and your time letting a man draw a
thing like that. Hell!!"
The art director, whoever he was, having been by degrees initiated into
the brutalities of the situation, and having--by reason of the time he
had been employed and the privileges he had permitted himself on account
of his comfortable and probably never before experienced salary--sold
himself into bondage to his now fancied necessities, was usually humble
and tractable under the most galling fire. Where could he go and get
five thousand dollars a year for his services? How could he live at the
rate he was living if he lost this place? Art directorships were not
numerous. Men who could fill them fairly acceptably were not impossible
to find. If he thought at all and was not a heaven-born genius serene in
the knowledge of his God-given powers, he was very apt to hesitate, to
worry, to be humble and to endure a good deal. Most men under similar
circumstances do the same thing. They think before they fling back into
the teeth of their oppressors some of the slurs and brutal
characterizations which so frequently issue therefrom. Most men do.
Besides there is almost always a high percentage of truth in the charges
made. Usually the storm is for the betterment of mankind.
Mr. Summerfield knew this. He knew also the yoke of poverty and the
bondage of fear which most if not all his men were under. He had no
compunctions about using these weapons, much as a strong man might use a
club. He had had a hard life himself. No one had sympathized with him
very much. Besides you couldn't sympathize and succeed. Better look the
facts in the face, deal only with infinite capacity, roughly weed out
the incompetents and proceed along the line of least resistance, in so
far as your powerful enemies were concerned. Men might theorize and
theorize until the crack of doom, but this was the way the thing had to
be done and this was the way he preferred to do it.
Eugene had never heard of any of these facts in connection with the
Summerfield Company. The idea had been flung at him so quickly he had no
time to think, and besides if he had had time it would have made no
difference. A little experience of life had taught him as it teaches
everyone else to mistrust rumor. He had applied for the place on hearing
and he was hoping to get it. At noon the day following his visit to
Mr. Baker Bates, the latter was speaking for him to Mr. Summerfield, but
only very casually.
"Say," he asked, quite apropos of nothing apparently, for they were
discussing the chances of his introducing his product into South
America, "do you ever have need of an art director over in your place?"
"Occasionally," replied Summerfield guardedly, for his impression was
that Mr. Baker Bates knew very little of art directors or anything else
in connection with the art side of advertising life. He might have heard
of his present need and be trying to palm off some friend of his, an
incompetent, of course, on him. "What makes you ask?"
"Why, Hudson Dula, the manager of the Triple Lithographic Company, was
telling me of a man who is connected with the _World_ who might make a
good one for you. I know something of him. He painted some rather
remarkable views of New York and Paris here a few years ago. Dula tells
me they were very good."
"Is he young?" interrupted Summerfield, calculating.
"Yes, comparatively. Thirty-one or two, I should say."
"And he wants to be an art director, does he. Where is he?"
"He's down on the _World_, and I understand he wants to get out of
there. I heard you say last year that you were looking for a man, and I
thought this might interest you."
"What's he doing down on the _World_?"
"He's been sick, I understand, and is just getting on his feet again."
The explanation sounded sincere enough to Summerfield.
"What's his name?" he asked.
"Witla, Eugene Witla. He had an exhibition at one of the galleries here
a few years ago."
"I'm afraid of these regular high-brow artists," observed Summerfield
suspiciously. "They're usually so set up about their art that there's no
living with them. I have to have someone with hard, practical sense in
my work. Someone that isn't a plain damn fool. He has to be a good
manager--a good administrator, mere talent for drawing won't do--though
he has to have that, or know it when he sees it. You might send this
fellow around sometime if you know him. I wouldn't mind looking at him.
I may need a man pretty soon. I'm thinking of making certain changes."
"If I see him I will," said Baker indifferently and dropped the matter.
Summerfield, however, for some psychological reason was impressed with
the name. Where had he heard it? Somewhere apparently. Perhaps he had
better find out something about him.
"If you send him you'd better give him a letter of introduction," he
added thoughtfully, before Bates should have forgotten the matter. "So
many people try to get in to see me, and I may forget."
Baker knew at once that Summerfield wished to look at Witla. He dictated
a letter of introduction that afternoon to his stenographer and mailed
it to Eugene.
"I find Mr. Summerfield apparently disposed to see you," he wrote. "You
had better go and see him if you are interested. Present this letter.
Very truly yours."
Eugene looked at it with astonishment and a sense of foregoneness so far
as what was to follow. Fate was fixing this for him. He was going to get
it. How strange life was! Here he was down on the _World_ working for
fifty dollars a week, and suddenly an art directorship, a thing he had
thought of for years, was coming to him out of nowhere! Then he decided
to telephone Mr. Daniel Summerfield, saying that he had a letter from
Mr. Baker Bates and asking when he could see him. Later he decided to
waste no time, but to present the letter direct without phoning. At
three in the afternoon he received permission from Benedict to be away
from the office between three and five, and at three-thirty he was in
the anteroom of the general offices of the Summerfield Advertising
Company, waiting for a much desired permission to enter.