cheek-bones with the heat, and their ears were ringing like a Broadway
New Year’s eve celebration, they managed to throw off the approaching
comatose and back out of the room and down to the restaurant for lunch.
The head waiter said all the tables were full but if they didn’t mind
sitting outside for a couple of weeks he would see what he could do.
They said “Oh-that’s-all-right” and thanked him very kindly and gave
him a Dollar Bill and sat down outside the door and tried to look as if
they didn’t mind it at all. They didn’t want to give the Head Waiter
the slightest suspicion that they were inconvenienced and run the risk
of his getting sore at them and shutting them off altogether from the
privilege of eating in the restaurant which he didn’t own.
During the same epoch they managed to get a little table facing the
wall and a pillar, and were soon rummaging through the Feed Folder for
some dish that they could afford to buy without becoming insolvent.
They finally took refuge in the haven of all who don’t know what they
want, and after they had eaten the last scrap of the roast beef they
quietly paid the eleven-dollar check and went out to find the bank.
The next day they took a train for their home, and were so accustomed
to foreign compartment cars that they decided to get a compartment.
But when they found out the price, they concluded to buy a motor car
instead and compromised on a berth in the main dormitory. There were no
lowers to be had, and so they thanked the Pullman Conductor and took an
upper.
The car seemed a trifle like a dry-kiln in temperature and they asked
the porter if he would mind introducing a little outside atmosphere.
He looked at the thermomenter and said it was only 190 degrees in the
car and that the rules of the company forbade him from opening any more
air-holes unless it got up to 3,000 degrees. They thanked the porter
for the trouble they had caused him and asked him how all the folks
were and bade him good-night and crawled up the ladder and disappeared
back of the curtains, and were soon wrapped in the arms of Morph.
A week after they had arrived home, and had told everybody how glad
they were to get back to God’s Country, the Cost of living began to
show unusual agility in the high jump. The trial heats had caused
people to gasp, but when the finals came on, everybody became highly
excited and ran to and fro wondering what was coming next in way of
sensation.
Mr. and Mrs. Typical American, with their originality of brain
convolutions, decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to teach
the people how to starve. And so they organized a Gradual Starvation
Class and secured many other Typical Americans as pupils and thanked
God that through his bounty, the people did not have to do the job
suddenly, but could dwindle away slowly and almost painlessly.
They were getting on Very Well until a certain few Americans—not in any
sense typical—came out in the open here and there, and said: “Not by a
damsight! With grainaries groaning with unused grain, with eggs piled
Babel-high in gigantic warehouses, with cotton enough in one State
to clothe the whole Nation in summer, and wool enough on the backs
of one-tenth of the sheep of the country to clothe the whole Nation
in winter, with banks bursting with gold and freight cars enough to
move the wares of the planet when not cornered in the holy cause of
Pillage—not by a damsight will America starve herself to make a few
Rich richer!”
And so it came to pass that these voices crying in the wilderness
jarred loose in time the sluggish national contentment of Mr. and Mrs.
Typ and other Americans everywhere, and made them think.
But just when they began to think, it was time for them to go Abroad
again.
HOT SKETCH NO. 23
WHEN MENTAL LEECH MEETS MENTAL LEECH
THERE was a temperamental manufacturer who used to come down to the
office after a thick night in the Loop and unleash a long low growl
about the lack of Initiative among his men.
“There isn’t a kanoop among them,” he said, “that has the originality
of a tadpole.”
On a certain day, not unlike any other day in this particular
establishment, the Sales Manager poked his nose gradually into the
Boss’s office, and, sniffing the Boss within, squeezed cautiously into
the room, scraping the nap all off his courage as he did so.
“Will you please be so kind as to tell me,” whispered the Sales
Manager, “if this little ginger-up letter to the Road Rats meets your
approval?”
The Boss grabbed the letter, shot a lightning glance at it upside-down,
and rammed it back into the Sales Manager’s hands.
“Rotten!” he said, “Lacks originality—pep! No punch in it!”
“Thank you,” replied the Sales Manager mildly. “I’ll see if I can not
embody some of the points of your constructive criticism.” And he oozed
out of the room again.
In came the Advertising Manager, walking on his ankles so as to not
make any riotous disturbance.
“I was just thinking—” he began.
“Impossible!” sneered His Gentle Bosslets, putting his heels up on
his glass-topped desk and lighting his eighty-seventh cigarette since
breakfast.
“I was just thinking,” continued the Adv. Mgr. affecting to ignore
the suggestion but failing miserably from the knees down, “I was just
thinking that maybe it might not be a bad plan, perhaps, to paint New
York next month, please.”
“NEVER!” roared the Boss. “Never in a thousand years. The painted
bulletin is no good—never was. Poster’s the thing! I’d rather post New
York for one month than paint it for forty years at half the price.”
“Very good, then—shall I go in for that?”
“Not on your life. I’ve just decided on a newspaper campaign.”
“Thank you,” said the Adv. Mgr., backing out of the room and falling
over a few chairs and things on the fairway.
When the intruder had vanished, Commander Boss got up, ran his long
temperamental digits through his top-fringe and pounded out into the
manufacturing department where he proceeded to raise from fourteen to
sixteen separate and distinct kinds of scarlet hell for the general
lack of initiative and commonsense around his plant.
Things went on in this happy homelike fashion until one fine warm
Spring day when Brigadier Boss up and booted the whole bunch of
bungling department heads into the great Out of Doors and set about to
effect a re-organization.
“What I want is men who do THEIR OWN thinking,” he said, and he began
telephoning and writing and wiring and advertising all over the country
for A-1 Initiativers.
In due time he got them and called them all into his office and
passed the cigars and explained how he wanted each man to run his
own Department just as if it was his own business, exercising merely
ordinary judgment and commonsense.
Then he went on to tell them how the old herd had always passed the old
buck to him, never doing anything unless they were told, fearing even
to set down the total of a column of figures without first consulting
him, and he wound up with a few Well Chosen remarks about Co-operation
and Co-ordination and the old reliable shoulder-to-the-wheel stuff.
Everybody was happy and talky and full of pep and chest-out chatter,
for be it remembered that each new Department Head was an Individual
and not a Person, and could hold his own with the best bullers of
bulldom.
And so they all adjourned to their respective stalls and started in
their new work with enthusiasm, energy and enterprise, and any other
snapful word that you could think of beginning with “e.”
Things went great and glorious for about a month when the Boss
discovered that the new Superintendent had put in a lot of machinery
in the manufacturing department that he did not approve of, and he
proceeded to give the Supe a double-nutted Call Down that carried to
Columbus, Ohio.
The Supe came back not unstrengthfully whereupon the Boss’s eyes
flashed like a Zeppelin night-searcher, and the Supe remembering that
he had seventeen children and a motorcycle to support, cooled down
almost to a solid, and let the Boss rave on like a knight of Montana
overcharged by a cabman.
Shortly after this explosion in the factory the Boss happened into
the Sales Manager’s throbbing little office, and in the course of a
high-spirited but not dangerous discussion on things in general he
discovered that the S. M. had re-districted the whole territory and
changed agencies right and left and down the middle.
Whereupon Major General Boss let out a roar that shook the business
mottoes from the walls and sent the stenographer scurrying to the
south gate. Everything he could think of off-hand he called the Sales
Manager, and then proceeded to look up a few choice ones in the Dock
Hands’ Ready Vocabulary.
At this, the Sales Manager doubled his fists and closed his eyes to an
ominous squint, and was all ready to spring—when he happened to think
of the monthly installment on his Victrola, and so he dropped into his
chair and sat numb and dumb, and then some.
On his way out, the Boss chanced to see the Advertising Manager pouring
over a dummy on his desk.
“What’s that bum thing?” growled Doc Boss, pointing his long
presidential finger toward the busy little desk.
“Why that’s the layout for a broadside that I’m mailing to the Dealer
Trade on our new No. 7’s,” replied the Advertising Manager, smiling.
“No good—no good in the world!” came back Uncle Boss. “Nobody on
earth would stop to read that thing. Too big—too unwieldy—copy too
scattered—weak copy, too—might just as well mail out a sheet of white
paper! A clumsy folder like that, gets in with the second-class matter
and goes the route of the wastebasket. Nothing to it!”
“What you want,” continued the Boss, rising in temperature, “is a
snappy little envelope insert like this—” And he grabbed up a small
piece of paper and folded it angrily and shook it before the surprised
eyes of the new Adv. Mgr.
Whereupon, without waiting for further reasoning or retort, Captain
Boss withdrew, leaving the puzzled Adv. Mgr. to ponder over the punk
suggestion. “Perhaps he’s right after all,” he reflected.
A few days later Colonel Boss wandered into the Advertising Manager’s
office again.
“What’s this dinky little thing?” he inquired, picking up a dummy that
the Adv. Mgr. had on his desk.
“Why that’s just a little insert I’m getting ready to send out to the
Dealer Trade on our new No. 7’s.”
“Holy Smoke!” ejaculated Commodore Boss, “how do you expect us to get
by with our No. 7’s on that measley little thing. What you want is a
smashing broadside—something big enough for a fellow to see without
impairing his eyesight—something that will command attention—something
that will—”
“Hold on!” broke in the Adv. Mgr., rising from his warm chair and
looking kind of doggone determined. “Last week I had a broadside
underway and you came in here and ordered it off, and said you wanted
an insert. You now come in and rap the insert and say you want a
broadside.”
“Oh, hell,” cut in Premier Boss, “don’t pay any attention to what I
say.”
“I’m not going to,” flashed back the now thoroughly aroused Adv. Mgr.,
“but YOU are going to pay attention to what I say, and you’re going to
remember it the longest day you live.”
“When I came here,” he continued, sticking his fist right up close to
the Boss’s olfactory knob, “you told me that your old organization was
a bunch of dummies and said you wanted initiative. You SAID it, but you
did not MEAN it. _You_ don’t want initiative and independent thinking.
You want weakness and sycophancy.
“You could not stand a strong mind in your establishment six months.
There would be a constant clash for mental supremacy. THE OLD MEN THAT
YOU CANNED ALL HAD WILL POWER OF THEIR OWN ONCE. But you sapped their
wills to feed your own rotten gourmand Will. And when they had no more
mental pap to give you, you despised them. You despised them for lack
of the very thing you robbed them of.
“You are a Mental Leech—the most dangerous class of citizen in the
world. And when it so happens that your stripe is an employer, your sin
is doubly damnable because the mental resistance of the average employe
is weakened against your onslaught through the fear he has of losing
his job.
“I’ll concede that you have never before been CONSCIOUS of what you
were doing,” roared the Adv. Mgr, “but from this moment you _shall_ be
conscious of it, and of your responsibility if you dare ever again to
use it—you big blustering mental bully you!”
“You’re fired,” interrupted the Boss in a flannel voice and plainly
whipped.
“I decline to quit!” thundered the Advertising Manager.
“All right then, STAY!” said the Boss with a sudden calmness. “We can
get along together. _We are onto each other._”
HOT SKETCH NO. 24
THE EXPORT GROUP GRAFTER
ON A crisp and crackling December morn, a Jones Farm sausage with a big
cigar and deep-dish collar of four-flusher fur, swished into the office
of Messrs Eazley Skinned & Co., Manufacturers.
He took out a race-track amplifier and announced that he was about
to make a trip all the way to Europe in the interest of a group of
Non Competitive manufacturers and would be pleased to let one other
Representative Firm in on this satin-faced opportunity.
Now the office of Messrs Eazley Skinned & Co., was a placid,
tooth-picking sort of a place. The business had been passed down the
aisle from sire to son so many times that it had begun to wear slick
in spots like the plush seat of the collection box. The whole place
breathed of Longtime Service but very little business. Whenever the
door opened every bucolic head in the room turned toward it like a
Grammar School class.
The sudden announcement, therefore, that somebody was about to proceed
on a hazardous journey to a far-off place like Europe created no little
stir in this hive of hustle. We do not mean by this that it unleashed
as much excitement as an Order would have done, or a Wall Street Bomb.
But it was sufficient to start every pair of eyes forward from their
bushings including those shrewd gray see-ers of Mr. Eazley Skinned
himself.
The breezy visitor was immediately ushered into the private office of
Mr. E. Skinned who put on his coat and reached for the trusty box of
5-scenters, calling meanwhile to the other shirt-sleeved Executives who
came filing in. Soon every chair was tilted back comfortably and the
fumes of the hemp panetella rent the air, so to speak. The show was
about to commence.
“Gentlemen,” began the Weenie with the Collar, “the trip I am about to
make will cover _all_ of Europe.” He paused to let it sink in. Ernie
Shackleton could not have done more.
“And the group of manufacturers I shall represent will have my
Undivided Attention. I shall represent _only_ the interests of the
firms who are fortunate enough to sign up with me, and no other firm in
America will be able to induce me to give them one single bit of trade
information, no matter how many tears they shed.”
At this juncture nobody in the meeting thought to ask His Fur Collar
how many firms he intended to represent. So he didn’t volunteer the
information that he was out for a neat total anywhere from 40 and 4,000.
Then spoke up the President in an inquiring crescendo. “Just what
cities, or whatever you call them over there, do you intend to visit?”
he asked.
“Every metropolis in Europe,” flashed back the intrepid explorer as he
began spreading a map of South Africa out over the desk, tracing with
a pencil the various points he would touch on his daring expedition
provided the domestic touch proved good enough to enable him to do so.
“I will sail from New York here (pointing to Cape Town) on the
Acquatoonia on January 1st and my passage alone will cost me $350.00
for a 7-day trip or $50.00 a day before I even get to London. There it
will cost me anywheres from $25.00 to $30.00 a day at the _Sav_-voy
without counting Roast Lamb from the push-cart at Simpson’s which I
understand is listing somewhat and from there I will cross the Channel
to Paris and the channel trip alone will cost me $75.00 easily, and the
tipping in Paris is fierce since the War.”
Here the coherent and logical trade commissioner was again not
interrupted by anybody asking him if he had ever been in any of these
places before, or had ever sold goods anywhere else on the face of the
earth. So he very sensibly kept still on these points and continued to
talk about the fierce expenses at every town he proposed to back into.
If any of his discriminating hearers at any time during the informing
Foreign Trade discourse were interested enough in their own financial
welfare to go through the enervating ordeal of dropping their chairs
forward a few inches to take a look at his old bluff-map, he was not
aware of it. Nor did any of them appear to wish to interrupt his
forceful and lucid presentation of his program by asking him How About
Orders or any other irrelevant thing like that.
They all merely puffed the old cabbagio, chins up and eyes on ceiling,
and swung their legs as they watched the smoke rings float away from
the bunk. Mr. Eazley Skinned broke in at one stage to tell about the
big tips that Mrs. Eastbrook and her husband Jim Eastbrook said it cost
them that time when they went to Euripp.
Things were coming along great and grand for the Bright Lad with the
Grab Bag; so of his own accord he continued to elaborate his story.
He told how he would distribute their catalogues and Price Lists
wherever he went, and make regular monthly reports, and he explained
how all orders that would flock in from the New York Export Houses
would naturally be the result of his efforts and how the factory was
to simply credit him with the commission on each shipment since he
wouldn’t have time to always check up, being so busy selling goods all
the time and so forth.
The Boss of the works here ventured to inquire how much that commission
was going to be, and the Wise Gink modestly said 5% because he was
leading up to something else. The Boss said 5% was fair enough and all
whiskers around the room nodded affirmatively.
“Now then,” said the Dominating Personality as he came pounding down
the final stretch, “in order to help defray a part of my expenses each
manufacturer will be asked to pay $500.00, and in order to avoid the
delays and expense of remitting, this amount will be paid by each one
in advance.”
At this every tilted chair around the room suddenly and concertedly
hit on all four cylinders and a few hep coughs and sideglances were
exchanged, but there was no show of disapproval—merely surprise.
Observing this, the Globe Trotter jumped right into the breach fur
collar and all, and began telling them all once more about the fierce
expenses and explaining how he himself was going to stand 50% of the
cost of the trip while the firms he represented would only be stuck
with 50% all bunched together.
It was cheap, dirt cheap, for all they would get, and he was not
charging in his time either—simply the actual cash outlay that he
would have to suffer without an anaesthetic in travelling such costly
terrytory. And the tips! Great Gamaliel, those tips!
To hear that boy unfold the thrilling drama of Europe’s Tipping Evil
was like listening to a tale of Armenian Massacre. You just couldn’t
help but thank God that you were right at home, safe from all tipping
harm. Whenever he thought he saw one of his hearers struggling to get
that Five Hundred Dollar Retainer past the adams-apple, he would come
on again with another shower of Expenditures. He spent thousands of
dollars for tips inside thirty minutes.
It is a custom of the Spanish arena to let the biggest and bravest bull
out last. Likewise our heroic Trade Toreador saved up his best sword
thrusts and wild waving of the red-lined cape until the last act.
And he was some bird at that! When he concluded, there wasn’t a whisker
around the room that wasn’t trembling with suppressed excitement. Dream
pictures of million-dollar single orders floated before the glassy
eyes of every hypnotised galoot in the conference.
Mechanically they got up one by one and filed out of the room to hold a
secret caucus before announcing their momentous decision. When the last
nice, large, fat head had disappeared through the doorway, our hero got
out his Memo Book and entered another $500.00 to his credit. He had
them wirestitched and he knew it.
Inside 5 minutes they all filed slowly in again, took their places
around the room, tilted back their restful time-passers once more, and
drew long complacent puffs at the binder twine perfecto.
The President then arose, dropped some ashes on his vest, rubbed them
slowly into it with his left hand, stroked his patriarchal pampus-grass
with his right, and announced that they had decided to go in as one of
the Elect.
Everything settled, he then announced to his confreres, in strict
accordance with popular custom, that it might not be a bad idea to call
the Export Manager in and get his opinion.
So in popped the little Rascal with his Atlas and all, loaded to the
ear-peaks with catch questions for the garrulous Grafter. One of the
clerks had slipped out long ago to the little typewriter-desk at which
the Export Manager sat, to tell him what was going on in the Directors’
Room and so he was loaded for sea-lions.
But when he heard that the whole thing was already settled, he closed
up like a spring trap which made the Firm think he knew even less than
he did about anything. At that he was wise for he had nothing to gain
and would only have got the brilliant new Foreign Representative sore
at him at the getaway instead of later on which is the customary time
for Foreign Travellers to plot for the destruction of Hon. Directors
of Exports. So all he did was to take orders as to the quantity of
Domestic catalogues and Price Lists that the Intruder wanted sent to
him at London.
* * * * *
Eight months have elapsed. Or make it eighteen. No news will come from
the front anyway. For the catalogues that were sent to London were
thrown in the Dump long, long ago, and the great Trade Getter has never
sent in one single, solitary, stingy order. Long thrilling Reports that
had about them the peculiar metallic ring of the Generality-Report,
just as though each of the ten manufacturing suckers had received an
exact copy, were received every month for a few months.
Then about the fifth month they began to shrink in size and promise.
About the seventh month, Dear Firm got merely a post card. It was a
picture of the Moulin Rouge, and merely wished them a Merry Xmas. After
that they received regularly each month nothing more than a sharp
twinge in the big toe.
One aromatic Spring morning as they were all sitting together in
tooth-picking complacency talking about things in general, a bright
young man with a tweed suit and a Strand W. waistcoat flared into the
General Office and announced that he was about to go Abroad in the
interest of a group of American Manufacturers and—
Author’s Note:—The finish of this story will be written in a
country churchyard.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Dedication page, the word “BRETHERN” was retained as printed due to the
great amount of comic dialect used in the text. With the exception of
proper names as noted and the one instance of “occasionaly” printing
was retained. This includes things like “stationary” for writing paper,
“accomodation,” etc.
To avoid redundancy for the reader, repeated story titles have been
removed. Originally, each was titled across two pages as:
HOT SKETCH NO. 24
THE EXPORT GROUP GRAFTER
THE EXPORT GROUP GRAFTER
Page 66, “today” changed to “Today” (_The Lesson for Today:_ He who
serves)
Page 85, “Whifflles” changed to “Whiffles” twice (THE Whiffles did not)
(The Whiffles had a)
Page 109, “Wilyums” changed to “Willyums” (Whereupon Mrs. Willyums)
Page 153, “occasionaly” changed to “occasionally” (will occasionally
find)