when the table-cloth is snapped, he began to get very irritabilious
and petulant, and told the Town Folks in a wavering falsetto what he
thought of the civic spirit of a community that would desert a Lifelong
Taxpayer for some young Upstart who had never helped the Town in any
way.
Several people, who could not conveniently pay their accounts at the
time because they had told the Ice Man to bring ice every day, were
inclined to agree with him right up to the doggone roof; but even
these few anti-penults were obliged to patronize Young Loch’s place to
a certain extent because The Latter now had the exclusive agency for
certain leading Implement Lines formerly held down by The Former, and
which required Repair Parts that must fit perfectly, but usually didn’t.
At last it was brought home to the once Mighty Monarch that any Dealer
who controlled a well-advertised and popular Line of Goods enjoyed a
Valuable Asset and was supposed to move a muscle once in a while in
the direction of selling the stuff, and not expect the manufacturer of
it to do all the chores.
Into his concrete cone was also drilled the tardy knowledge that a
Customer is entitled to some slight measure of Service, and in the
sanctified name of Profit should not be regarded in the light of a
blaspheming intruder if he fails to wiggle in on an abject stomach and
apologize for leaving some of his money in the joint.
In short, old Rigid Neck came to see ultimately that he was in the
Discard good and fine. With ever-increasing grouchiness he gradually
jelled down in the old sagged Cane Seat where the merry little spiders
could spin their silvery webs in peace above his cosmos.
The last heard of him, he had rented out his Store window to an
itinerant printer who installed therein a nice little Foot Press and
was doing very neat calling-cards for 50c per 100.
As for Young Loch he kept up the Good Work full many a year and came
to be most highly respected by his Fellow Citizens, including the
President of the Enterprise Real Estate & Investment Company whose
budding daughter Loch plucked off the rosebush of Love before his
red-eared rivals got within a mile of the garden.
Loch was also beloved by Salesmen everywhere, for he never asked them
for an Inside Five, a breakage allowance, or donation of Goods for a
Church Fair Raffle.
And he always got through with The Boys in time for them to get away on
the Four Forty-Five and see a good Show in the Big Town that night.
_The Lesson for Today:_ He who serves most is the King Pin.
HOT SKETCH NO. 8
THE EFFICIENCY EXPERT
THERE was a Piece of Cheese.
He wore a stand-up collar, broken-lot size, and had a/an Adam’s Apple
that used to romp up and down the highway every time he swallowed.
Also he was the busiest bee in the swarm.
After supper each night he had to rush down to the Depot to see that
the Railway Boys escorted the 7:12 in and out of the Town all right,
and then he’d rush back to the Cigar Store to hear the phonograph play,
and lay down a few sound rules on International Relations until the
President of the First National Bank came in to buy his after-dinner
cigar and it was time to lock up.
After that, he would tear madly over to the Kelly House and there drop
a few pearls of wisdom before the Night Clerk while that dignitary was
out at the curb cleaning the big tin cuspidors that had served in their
day to emphasize many a heated argument between rival groups of local
parliamentarians.
Ed Galloway was the name of our genius-in-the-cocoon and wherever Ed
was to be found, you knew that something of importance was pending. He
seemed to have a gift for being on the spot. If you saw him streaking
up Mill Street, you might wonder where he was going, and he might
wonder where he was going, but before he got a block away, a barn or
something would be sure to catch fire just as he was passing it, or a
horse get his hoof caught in the trace, or somebody would be driving
a stake just a wee bit off center, and straightaway Ed Galloway would
find an avenue for his services or advice. He was present everywhere
but Church.
Of course there were certain narrow, quibbling spirits, just as there
are in every hamletto, who objected to Ed always chiseling in on
everything, but there were not lacking those who, like Jeff Webster,
Sole Owner and Proprietor of Webster’s Bus Line, believed that Ed
Galloway had pretty near the right hashish on things, nine times out of
ten.
Away off somewhere in Thibet or in Sumatra there may have been some
petty local question that Ed was not wisdomed-up on, but everything
that took on the character of a national or international issue, he
could discuss from basement to belfry. He was as much at home in the
busy arena of Politics and Business as he was in the wide realm of
Science and Philosophy.
There was one thing that Ed had in common with all great political
leaders, whether they were fully aware of it or not. It was a positive,
ultimatum-like tone in which he rendered his decisions in all cases,
regardless of their importance to you, to him and/or to the world at
large.
If, for instance, Ed happened to pass a cup of water from the Court
House pump to the stranger within the gates, he would say: “That water,
Sir, is the purest, freshest water in this here whole State.” He’d
say it with a sweep of the arm that seemed to include not only the
State but the whole Universe, neither of which territories had he ever
canvassed.
And invariably the stranger, after drinking the ordinary every-day
water from the ordinary every-day Court House pump, would smack his
lips and agree with Ed and have another go at it.
Now everybody in every town of every State of every Nation says the
same thing about the water of his particular pump, and there is nothing
of news-value either in this observation on our part, or in the
statement re pure water on the part of said kanoops the world over.
But whenever Ed Galloway up and said that water was pure, or the Tariff
was doomed, or that Stocks would go to a New Low, or that we were going
to have rain, you had a sense that here was a man who undoubtedly had a
corner on all outstanding knowledge of the subject.
Ed’s words always carried a certain vanadium finality that clinched
the case and demoralized rebuttal, but there was always left in the
heart of the Vanquished a sort of half-formed desire to call Ed a liar
on general principles, although with no hopes of course of proving it;
for Ed was always there with The Figures, which he dug up out of the
vasty deep of his Imagination to support his side of the case, while
his opponent usually was equipped with nothing but a village vocab of
short jerky monosyllables and a chew of tobacco.
One day Ed met the owner of the Plow Factory in the barber’s chair
getting his chinchillas chipped and told him right off the keyboard
that his plant was doing but 8-3/4 percent of the total plow business
of the county.
The old wowser gasped like a gaffed sturgeon at this impertinent news
and attempted to swing back more or less crushingly, but the lather got
in his mixer, and so all he could do was to lie there and let Ed go
ahead and throw the short-horn.
Ed proceeded to tell him exactly how many farms there were in the
County, State and Nation, the acreage under cultivation, the average
number of plows per farm, and so on.
And then Ed wheeled suddenly about, and pointing his finger accusingly
at his be-lathered and outstretched victim, exclaimed: “How many of
these four thousand three hundred and thirty-two plows did YOU sell in
Crooked Creek County last year!”
The old man did not say so, but he as much as admitted that he was a
dub at the facts of his own business, and later on when he was putting
on his overcoat, and Jake the star wielder of the rasp was helping
to pull his undercoat down where it didn’t belong, he turned around
pseudo-casually to Ed and told him to drop around to the factory some
afternoon and have a chat.
* * * * *
Now it so happened that the Young Man who had charge of the Sales and
Advertising end of the Plow Factory was a very faithful and steady
Young Man. His conduct was at all times “exemplary,” to coin a word.
Every morning as the Court House clock struck eight, he could be seen
dismounting from his tin bicycle at exactly the same spot in front
of the office door. He had never been late but one morning in his
episcopalean life, and that was after a thick night at the Welfare
Social when he went in too strong for the strawberry-whisp.
He was one of those Young Men you can always Rely Upon. You know the
kind—always the same. He did the same thing this year that he did last
year: (a) and at the same time: (b) and in the same place: (c) and in
the same way.
The same Copy that stood in the Ads last year, stood in the Ads this
year—and occasionally got tired and sat down in the valuable space.
All his letters to The Trade opened and closed the same way like a
door—“Replying to yours” and “Hoping to have.”
He also wrote Weekly Letters to the Men on the Road and talked in
the earnest, measured phrases of a requiem, about Punch and Pep and
Live Wire. There was almost enough live wire in these salesmanic
scintillations to singe the hair off an apple. After you got past the
waxed opener beginning with the inevitable “Well Boys,” the stuff went
like a warm home-brew.
There was another thing about this Young Man worthy of eulogy. He was
one of those Model Employees who always pitch the ball so the Boss can
hit it. Whenever the Old Man would ask him a question he would burst a
blood-vessel straining to answer it so that it would stack four-square
with what the O. M. thought about the matter.
To sum up, this young Sales and Advertising Manager of the hitherto
tabulated Plow Factory, was, confidentially speaking, habitually
scared to a pea-green that he would offend the Boss and lose his good
hundred-dollar job.
* * * * *
That is why he never told Dear Boss about a/an Idea he had perfected
for increasing Sales, and never dared slip it into operation on his own
account either.
But that night when Ed Galloway met him coming from the Revival and
began to ask him all kinds of questions about the factory and the plow
business in general, so as to shape himself up strong for his coming
interview with the Big Flash, the Young Man unsuspectingly opened up
and told Ed all the things he could do for the Works if he were only
given half a chance.
The next day Ed, primed like a new pump, blew out to the Factory. When
he asked to see the Boss, all the little time-clock punchers in the
place began to twitter and twutter. They knew Ed of old and logically
concluded he was booking himself for a thorny turn-down. But he wasn’t.
The Boss told Ed to come right in and take a chair. Ed took it and
brought it as close to the Boss’s desk as he could without rubbing it
against the Old Man’s chest. Then he sat down on it and said he only
had a couple of minutes to spare but would like to lay down briefly a
plan he had worked out for building Sales.
And with that business-like prelim, Ed proceeded to put into concrete
and fearless expression the very Idea that the Model Young Man had
confided to him the night before.
The Old Man scowled pleasingly,—a token of endorsement, which, had it
been directed to any regular inmate of the place, from the Manager
down to the Office Roach, would have emboldened the Trusty to ask for
a salary lift. But Ed Galloway preferred to ignore the democratic
outburst and continued right on, just as if the Boss had told him to
get out.
He adjusted his adams-apple, threw an effective knit-brow, and said
that what We must first do was to find out Our strength in the Trade.
“The way to go about it,” he said, “is to first send out a return
post-card to every farmer in Crooked Creek County asking him how he
likes his Arrow Plow. Farmers are irish-loyal to any farm tool they
like—see? They won’t exactly genuflect to it, but they’ll yell and wave
and that sort of thing—see? And they love nothing better than to write
letters to Firms.
“All right, then: if they are already using an Arrow Plow, they’ll say
so all over the return post-card and up the margins. And if they’re
using some other make of plow—see?—they’ll be just as proud to tell
what plow it is. Get it?”
“Now then,” continued Ed, grabbing a pencil and commencing to figure
on the Old Man’s shirt front, “the returns will be 90 percent easy—and
from these returns we can get the Arrow’s actual strength as well as
the strength of the Competition in the terry-tory, thus enabling us to
focus first on the weak spots and then throw our whole force against
our competitors’ strong-hold. Get me?”
* * * * *
Now there is no sane reason why this little tale should be dragged out
to the length of a Turn Verein entertainment, and so we are not going
on to tell you how the Boss got all het up over this and other plans
that Ed Galloway got from the Model Young Lobster and then presented to
The Boss, nor how Doc Boss finally gave Ed _carte blanche_ and things
like that, and told him to go ahead and put the various campaigns
through.
Nor are we going to mention the coincidental visit to the Plow Factory
of an Advertising man from one of the big national agencies—a dashing,
dynamic, daredevil, who would dare anything on somebody else’s
money—and who mapped out for Ed Galloway an original and corking
national campaign which Ed promptly submitted to The Boss as the child
of his own brilliant brain, and which the Agency Man didn’t care a dam
about so long as he scythed in his good old fifteen percent agency
commission, and which went through with a whoop and proved to be one
big snorting, pawing, red-nostriled, fiery success.
Nor are we going into a lot of yawny detail all about how the Factory
rose from its musty Rip and became one of the greatest farm machinery
organizations in the country and put up a mammoth electric sign so
that passengers on the Limited could see “THE HOME OF THE ARROW PLOW,”
and almost got news of its erection on the Associated Wire (dam the
censors!) and how the Company stood up $500,000 against Andy Carnegie’s
$500 for a Library for the Town, and got new engraved letterheads
showing a birds-eye of the whole town as the factory with the name of
Edward Galloway as General Sales & Advertising Director.
All we are going to mention is that in time Ed put off the
straight-stand collar, and put on some flesh over the adams-apple,
and quit getting his neck shaved clear around, and began making
abstract speeches, (written by somebody else because he was so busy) on
“EFFICIENCY” before Ad-Men’s Clubs and Civic Bodies, until at last he
stood Big Favorite wherever talk is talked.
Today Edward Ewart Galloway, Efficiency Engineer, sits in his own
luxurious suite of solid mahog in New York, surrounded on every side
by Brains to which he adds Guts and clears 85 percent net on the
combination.
Every little while he gets an emergency call from some big industrial
patient who pays him a steel magnate’s salary to come out to their
plant and sit around smoking dollar cigars and twisting his moustache
and looking wonderfully wise until such time as he can quietly find out
what their own Sales Manager’s plans are for the coming season, and
then in a Confidential Report to the Board, recommend them as his own
good, original, incomparable stuff.
And the moral of it all is this: If you would rise in the Boss’s
estimation and in salary, tell him occasionally that he doesn’t know
what he’s talking about. It’s the only compliment he’ll stand for.
HOT SKETCH NO. 9
THE ROAD RAT WHO GAVE UP HOME COMFORTS
THE Whiffles did not exactly dwell on any Estate sweeping the green
hills. They lived, moved and had their boiled cabbage in one of those
sedentary little dumps that get their air through the keyhole in winter
and smell like a Subway Local on a wet day.
The Whiffles had a son by the name of Ezekiel. On top of it he wore a
readymade tie with a corset-stay on the back to keep it from looking
human.
Ezekiel’s father had jute whiskers that blossomed from the chin out. He
used to sit in the kitchen in his stocking-feet making nothing out of a
piece of old wire. This hasn’t anything to do with the story, so we are
tabulating it before the action begins.
It was Ezekiel’s daily custom to drop in at the Kelly House to find out
if the Four Twenty was on time and thereby live more abundantly.
On this particular day, while Ezekiel was discussing the momentous
issue with the diligently idle crowd of local Chair Polishers, he got
acquainted with a Travelling Salesman from Whopps Corners, Ind., who
always registered from New York City and wore a golden-pheasant vest.
Ezekiel had been reading about the Opportunities that were standing
around on the corners of every big city getting bowlegged waiting for
competent men to come and get them. So he asked the New York Salesman
from Whopps Corners how about it.
The Salesman was modest and retiring, in keeping with the traditions of
his profession, and it was therefore under considerable reluctance that
he admitted to Ezekiel, with rather long easy puffs of the hessian,
that as for himself he was only fetching down about a thousand dollars
a month salary, plus a reasonable monthly unearned increment from his
Expense Account. In spite of his shyness he seemed to give off the
general impression that the Selling Game was one rosy-cheeked cinch.
Ezekiel thereupon decided that of all the fine arts, Salesmanship
appeared to offer opportunities of the most scopeful circumference for
becoming a millionaire in one reel.
So he went home and changed his socks in a devil-may-care fashion, and
started for Chicago that same night, determined to land a job with some
big House that travelled snappy men and did not grieve about Expense
Accounts.
He was shrewd enough before leaving home to re-inforce his proposition
with several strong To-Whom-It-May-Concerns from men of high standing
in the community. One was from the Mayor of Squirrel Cove and another
was executed by the Proprietor of the Crescent Hand Laundry who up and
spoke in no uncertain tone respecting the high esteem in which our
fellow townsman, Ezekiel Whiffle, was held by one and all.
* * * * *
Here let it be set down truthfully, with malice toward none, that
Ezekiel Whiffle was no speckled yobbish when it came to doing the thing
he packed off to do. He had a life-long record of accomplishment as
clean as a willow whistle from the day he set out as a youth to shingle
the silo, down to the last leg of the last stove he set up at the
Hardware Store before his departure.
Thus it did not take Ezekiel one thousand years to land a job in
Chicago, although the parking facilities for men less energetic were
very tempting in the City of Basement Restaurants.
Within one week of his first lap round the Loop, Ezekiel had secured a
comfortable berth as County Hurdler for a large Manufacturing Concern
that was struggling to make both ends meet on 142 percent net profit
after paying State and Federal squeeze.
Ezekiel’s very earnestness impressed the Boss, even if his Letters of
Recommendation did not cause any wild demonstration around the Works.
His lack of experience gave him a fresh point of view. He was quite
free from the customary we-never-did-it-that-way advice to men who had
been running their own business successfully for twenty years.
When the matter of salary was mentioned, Ezekiel had to remove his
ear-muffs to be sure he heard the figure correctly. But he decided to
go to it anyway and prove that he was worth more than the sixty dollars
a month.
During the following fortnight Ezekiel overalled it in the various
departments of the big Works getting grease on his face and gathering a
rustic headful of practical information which resolved itself finally
into a beautifully webbed mass that made the last estate of the poor
goop worse than the first.
Zeekie was assigned by the Sales Manager to Luke’s Rock, Iowa, for
the initial sales bombardment. The Sales Manager, with his well-set
little New England head, had of course never been there himself, just
as he had never been any place else, but he talked as though he had
been making the dorp for years, and assured Ezekiel that there were
wonderful possibilities at Luke’s Rock and said he would be greviously
disappointed if Zeke did not pull out of there with fourteen carloads
scored up in his Order Book.
“We are expecting big things of you,” he said.
“That’s more than I am expecting of you,” replied Zeke. But he replied
it strictly to himself.
Then the S. M. gave Zeke one of those Boston handshakes and a modest
bunch of Expense Money and told him to track.
* * * * *
Let us now be seated while we study Human Nature a little, and see if
it is not a fact that when you hand a good Job and a bunch of Expense
Money to a beadle who has never had either, you are liable to put
a crimp in his psychology and enlarge his ego until he can’t find
anything to fit it.
Take for illusample: When Ezekiel went from the Office to the Railway
Station to catch his train, he felt so goshdanged good that he could
have punched a hole through a limousine window for sheer ebullience of
spirit.
But when he found that his train was late, he went up to the ticket
window and told Mr. Vanderbilt just what he thought of the whole ratty
System. And he told it so that everybody around the room could hear it
and marvel at his courage and knowledge of railroading. He spoke as in
behalf of an injured constituency.
When he boarded his train and got the hang of things, he commanded the
porter to raise a window here and lower a shade there, and he ignored
the cuspidor entirely every time he took a chew.
When he arrived at his metropolitan destination he gave the owner of
the yellow Bus a beautiful bawl for not helping him with his little
belly-leather suit-case, and on the way up to the hotel he complained
to his fellow passengers about the rickety old boat, and wondered why
there were no taxicabs in the dump.
When he was assigned to his room at the Luke’s Rock Hotel he kicked
like a trapped rabbit because it was a walk-up. And when he saw the
room he threw up both good old farm-knotted hands and said it wouldn’t
do a-tall. They gave him another room and he went over and felt the
bed and said the mattress was about as soft and responsive as the Town
Scales.
When he came down for breakfast next morning and the Proprietor with
his little strive-to-please face asked him how he had slept, he growled
back “Rotten!” and lumbered into the dining room.
When the food came on, he complained that the butter was rancid, the
rolls were doughy, the coffee was like turpentine, the eggs were
boiled 3-3/4 minutes instead of 3-5/8 minutes as ordered, and the
service was fierce.
A silent, contended-looking man sat opposite Ezekiel. He thanked the
waitress with the thin Face and receding Future every time she brought
him anything, and he seemed to relish the little meal as much as
anybody could with a 72-centimetre dub sitting opposite.
Finally Ezekiel addressed the silent man. “This Road Life is certainly
fierce, ain’t it?”, he said, pushing back his plate and yanking his
napkin from under his red chin.
“It is,” replied the Man. “But it wouldn’t be, if four-flushers like
you would keep off it.” Zeek stared, with jaws ajar.
“You are just an ordinary single-cylinder rum,” went on the stranger,
“that never knew anything better than a corn-husk mattress and large
beans soaked in hot water, until you got a job on the Road. Some day
you may learn that the man who has travelled most, kicks least, and
that the quickest way to tell a cheap staller is to see how he adapts
himself to Road conditions.”
And with this caustic valedictory, the speaker got up from the table
and left the room. Ezekiel, flushed and fast foundering, intended to
get up too, and tell the fellow what he thought of him, but decided to
keep his seat when he saw about nine feet of man arise from the table.
* * * * *
Now Ezekiel Whiffle might have sieved through something of benefit from
this experience had he been given time for reflection. But he had to
turn his thought to selling those 14 carloads that his Sales Manager
had told him were crouching for a chance to spring into his brand new
Order Book.
Besides, he was in no position to get a close-up on himself while he
still had a Roll and represented the largest factory of its kind in the
country.