THE SHOP
Certina had found its first modest home in Worthington on a side street.
As the business grew, the staid tenement which housed it expanded and
drew to itself neighboring buildings, until it eventually gave way to
the largest, finest, and most up-to-date office edifice in the city.
None too large, fine, or modern was this last word in architecture for
the triumphant nostrum and the minor medical enterprises allied to it.
For though Certina alone bore the name and spread the fame and features
of its inventor abroad in the land, many lesser experiments had bloomed
into success under the fertilizing genius of the master-quack.
Inanimate machinery, when it runs sweetly, gives forth a definite
tone, the bee-song of work happily consummated. So this great human
mechanism seemed, to Harrington Surtaine as he entered the realm of
its activities, moving to music personal to itself. Through its wide
halls he wandered, past humming workrooms, up spacious stairways,
resonant to the tread of brisk feet, until he reached the fifth floor
where cluster the main offices. Here through a succession of open
doors he caught a glimpse of the engineer who controlled all these
lively processes, leaning easily back from his desk, fresh, suavely
groomed, smiling, an embodiment of perfect satisfaction. Before Dr.
Surtaine lay many sheaves of paper, in rigid order. A stenographer sat
in a far corner, making notes. From beyond a side door came the
precise, faint clicking of a typewriter. The room possessed an
atmosphere of calm and poise; but not of restfulness. At once and
emphatically it impressed the visitor with a sense that it was a place
where things were done, and done efficiently.
Upon his son's greeting, Dr. Surtaine whirled in his chair.
"Come down to see the old slave at work, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir." Hal's hand fell on the other's shoulder, and the Doctor's
fingers went up to it for a quick pressure. "I thought I'd like to see
the wheels go 'round."
"You've come to the right spot. This is the good old cash-factory, and
yours truly is the man behind the engine. The State, I'm It, as Napoleon
said to Louis the Quince. Where McBeth sits is the head of the table."
"In other words, a one-man business."
"That's the secret. There's nothing in this shop that I can't do, and
don't do, every now and then, just to keep my hand in. I can put more
pull into an ad. to-day than the next best man in the business. Modesty
isn't my besetting sin, you see, Hal."
"Why should it be? Every brick in this building would give the lie to
it."
"Say every frame on these four walls," suggested Dr. Surtaine with an
expansive gesture.
Following this indication, Hal examined the decorations. On every side
were ordinary newspaper advertisements, handsomely mounted, most of them
bearing dates on brass plates. Here and there appeared a circular, or a
typed letter, similarly designated.
Above Dr. Surtaine's desk was a triple setting, a small advertisement, a
larger one, and a huge full-newspaper-page size, each embodying the same
figure, that of a man half-bent over, with his hand to his back and a
lamentable expression on his face.
Certain strongly typed words fairly thrust themselves out of the
surrounding print: "Pain--Back--Take Care--Means Something--Your
Kidneys." And then in dominant presentment--
CERTINA
CURES.
"What do you think of Old Lame-Boy?" asked Dr. Surtaine.
"From an æsthetic point of view?"
"Never mind the æsthetics of it. 'Handsome is as handsome does.'"
"What has that faded beauty done, then?"
"Carried many a thousand of our money to bank for us, Boyee. That's the
ad. that made the business."
"Did you design it?"
"Every word and every line, except that I got a cheap artist to touch up
the drawing a little. Then I plunged. When that copy went out, we had
just fifty thousand dollars in the world, you and I. Before it had been
running three months, I'd spent one hundred thousand dollars more than
we owned, in the newspapers, and had to borrow money right and left to
keep the manufacturing and bottling plant up to the orders. It was a
year before we could see clear sailing, and by that time we were pretty
near quarter of a million to the good. Talk about ads. that pull! It
pulled like a mule-team and a traction engine and a fifty-cent painless
dentist all in one. I'm still using that copy, in the kidney season."
"Do kidneys have seasons?"
"Kidney troubles do."
"I'd have thought such diseases wouldn't depend on the time of year."
"Maybe they don't, actually," admitted the other. "Maybe they're just
crowded out of the public mind by the pressure of other sickness in
season, like rheumatism in the early winter, and pneumonia in the late.
But there's no doubt that the kidney season comes in with the changes
of the spring. That's one of my discoveries, too. I tell you, Boyee,
I've built my success on things like that. It's psychology: that's what
it is. That's what you've got to learn, if you're going into the
concern."
"I'm ready, Dad. It sounds interesting. More so than I'd have thought."
"Interesting! It's the very heart and core of the trade." Dr. Surtaine
leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a
picture of expository enthusiasm. "Here's the theory. You see, along
about March or April people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy.
They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. Well,
one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. After
wonder comes worry. He's the best little worrier in the trade, Old
Lame-Boy is. He just pesters folks into taking proper care of
themselves. They get Certina, and we get their dollars. And they get
their money's worth, too," he added as an afterthought for Hal's
benefit, "for it's a mighty good thing to have your kidneys tonicked up
at this time of year."
"But, Dad," queried Hal, with an effort of puzzled reminiscence, "in the
old days Certina wasn't a kidney remedy, was it?"
"Not specially. It's always been _good_ for the kidneys. Good for
everything, for that matter. Besides, the formula's been changed."
"Changed? But the formula's the vital thing, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes. Of course. Certainly it's the vital thing: certainly. But,
you see,--well,--new discoveries in medicine and that sort of thing."
"You've put new drugs in?"
"Yes: I've done that. Buchu, for instance. That's supposed to be good
for the kidneys. Dropped some things out, too. Morphine got sort of a
bad name. The muckrakers did that with their magazine articles."
"Of course I don't pretend to know about such things, Dad. But morphine
seems a pretty dangerous thing for people to take indiscriminately."
"Well, it's out. There ain't a grain of it in Certina to-day."
"I'm glad of it."
"Oh, I don't know. It's useful in its place. For instance, you can't run
a soothing-syrup without it. But when the Pure Food Law compelled us to
print the amount of morphine on the label, I just made up my mind that
I'd have no government interference in the Certina business, so I
dropped the drug."
"Did the law hurt our trade much?"
"Not so far as Certina goes. I'm not even sure it didn't help. You see,
now we can print 'Guaranteed under the U.S. Food and Drugs Act' on every
bottle. In fact we're required to."
"What does the guaranty mean?"
"That whatever statement may be on the label is accurate. That's all.
But the public takes it to mean that the Government officially
guarantees Certina to do everything we claim for it," chuckled Dr.
Surtaine. "It's a great card. We've done more business under the new
formula than we ever did under the old."
"What is the formula now?"
"Prying into the secrets of the trade?" chuckled the elder man.
"But if I'm coming into the shop, to learn--"
"Right you are, Boyee," interrupted his father buoyantly. "There's the
formula for making profits." He swept his hand about in a spacious
circle, grandly indicating the advertisement-bedecked walls. "There's
where the brains count. Come along," he added, jumping up; "let's take a
turn around the joint."
Every day, Dr. Surtaine explained to his son, he made it a practice to
go through the entire plant.
"It's the only way to keep a business up to mark. Besides, I like to
know my people."
Evidently he did know his people and his people knew and strongly liked
him. So much Hal gathered from the offhand and cheerily friendly
greetings which were exchanged between the head of the vast concern and
such employees, important or humble, as they chanced to meet in their
wanderings. First they went to the printing-plant, the Certina Company
doing all its own printing; then to what Dr. Surtaine called "the
literary bureau."
"Three men get out all our circulars and advertising copy," he explained
in an aside. "One of 'em gets five thousand a year; but even so I have
to go over all his stuff. If I could teach him to write ads. like I do
it myself, I'd pay him ten thousand--yes, twenty thousand. I'd have to,
to keep him. The circulars they do better; but I edit those, too. What
about that name for the new laxative pills, Con? Hal, I want you to meet
Mr. Conover, our chief ad.-man."
Conover, a dapper young man with heavy eye-glasses, greeted Hal with
some interest, and then turned to the business in hand.
"What'd you think of 'Anti-Pellets'?" he asked. "Anti, opposed to, you
know. In the sub-line, tell what they're opposed to: indigestion,
appendicitis, and so on."
"Don't like it," returned Dr. Surtaine abruptly. "Anti-Ralgia's played
that to death. Lemme think, for a moment."
Down he plumped into Conover's chair, seized a pencil and made tentative
jabs at a sheet of paper. "Pellets, pellets," he muttered. Then, in a
kind of subdued roar, "I've got it! I've got it, Con! 'Pro-Pellets.'
Tell people what they're for, not what they're against. Besides, the
name has got the idea of pro-pulsion. See? Pro-Pellets, pro-pel!" His
big fist shot forward like a piston-rod. "Just the idea for a laxative.
Eh?"
"Fine!" agreed Conover, a little ruefully, but with genuine
appreciation of the fitness of the name. "I wish I'd thought of it."
"You did--pretty near. Anyway, you made me think of it. Anti-Pellets,
Pro-Pellets: it's just one step. Like as not you'd have seen it yourself
if I hadn't butted in. Now, go to it, and figure out your series on
that."
With kindly hands he pushed Conover back into his chair, gave him a
hearty pat on the shoulder, and passed on. Hal began to have an inkling
of the reasons for his father's popularity.
"Have we got other medicines besides Certina?" he asked.
"Bless you, yes! This little laxative pills business I took over from a
concern that didn't have the capital to advertise it. Across the hall
there is the Sure Soother department. That's a teething syrup: does
wonders for restless babies. On the floor below is the Cranicure Mixture
for headaches, Rub-it-in Balm for rheumatism and bruises, and a couple
of small side issues that we're not trying to push much. We're handling
Stomachine and Relief Pills from here, but the pills are made in
Cincinnati, and we market 'em under another trade name."
"Stomachine is for stomach troubles, I assume," said Hal. "What are the
Relief Pills?"
"Oh, a female remedy," replied his father carelessly. "Quite a booming
little trade, too. Take a look at the Certina collection of
testimonials."
In a room like a bank vault were great masses of testimonial letters,
all listed and double-catalogued by name and by disease.
"Genuine. Provably genuine, every one. There's romance in some of 'em.
And gratitude; good Lord! Sometimes when I look 'em over, I wonder I
don't run for President of the United States on a Certina platform."
From the testimonial room they went to the art department where Dr.
Surtaine had some suggestions to make as to bill-board designs.
"You'll never get another puller like Old Lame-Boy," Hal heard the head
designer say with a chuckle, and his father reply: "If I could I'd start
another proprietary as big as Certina."
"Where does that lead to?" inquired Hal, as they approached a side
passage sloping slightly down, and barred by a steel door.
"The old building. The manufacturing department is over there."
"Compounding the medicine, you mean?"
"Yes. Bottling and shipping, too."
"Aren't we going through?"
"Why, yes: if you like. You won't find much to interest you, though."
Nor, to Hal's surprise, did Dr. Surtaine himself seem much concerned
with this phase of the business. Apparently his hand was not so close in
control here as in the other building. The men seemed to know him less
well.
"All this pretty well runs itself," he explained negligently.
"Don't you have to keep a check on the mixing, to make sure it's right?"
"Oh, they follow the formula. No chance for error."
They walked amidst chinking trucks, some filled with empty, some with
filled and labeled bottles, until they reached the carton room where
scores of girls were busily inserting the bottles, together with folded
circulars and advertising cards, into pasteboard boxes. At the far end
of this room a pungent, high-spiced scent, as of a pickle-kitchen with a
fortified odor underlying it, greeted the unaccustomed nose of the
neophyte.
"Good!" he sniffed. "How clean and appetizing it smells!"
Enthusiasm warmed the big man's voice once more.
"Just what it is, too!" he exclaimed. "Now you've hit on the second big
point in Certina's success. It's easy to take. What's the worst thing
about doctors' doses? They're nasty. The very thought of 'em would gag a
cat. Tell people that here's a remedy better than the old medicine and
pleasant to the taste, and they'll take to it like ducks to water.
Certina is the first proprietary that ever tasted good. Next to Old
Lame-Boy, it's my biggest idea."
"Are we going into the mixing-room?" asked his son.
"If you like. But you'll see less than you smell."
So it proved. A heavy, wet, rich vapor shrouded the space about a huge
cauldron, from which came a sound of steady plashing. Presently an
attendant gnome, stripped to the waist, appeared, nodded to Dr.
Surtaine, called to some one back in the mist, and shortly brought Hal a
small glass brimming with a pale-brown liquid.
"Just fresh," he said. "Try it."
"My kidneys are all right," protested Hal. "I don't need any medicine."
"Take it for a bracer. It won't hurt you," urged the gnome.
Hal looked at his father, and, at his nod, put his lips to the glass.
"Why, it tastes like spiced whiskey!" he cried.
"Not so far out of the way. Columbian spirits, caramel, cinnamon and
cardamom, and a touch of the buchu. Good for the blues. Finish it."
Hal did so and was aware of an almost instantaneous glow.
"Strong stuff, sir," he said to his father as they emerged into a
clearer atmosphere.
"They like it strong," replied the other curtly. "I give 'em what they
like."
The attendant gnome followed. "Mr. Dixon was looking for you, Dr.
Surtaine. Here he comes, now."
"Dixon's our chief chemist," explained Dr. Surtaine as a shabby,
anxious-looking man ambled forward.
"We're having trouble with that last lot of cascara, sir," said he
lugubriously.
"In the Number Four?"
"Yes, sir. It don't seem to have any strength."
"Substitute senna." So offhand was the tone that it sounded like a
suggestion rather than an order.
As the latter, however, the chemist contentedly took it.
"It'll cost less," he observed; "and I guess it'll do the work just as
well."
To Hal it seemed a somewhat cavalier method of altering a medical
formula. But his mind, accustomed to easy acceptance of the business
which so luxuriously supplied his wants, passed the matter over lightly.
"First-rate man, Dixon," remarked Dr. Surtaine as they passed along.
"College-bred, and all that. Boozes, though. I only pay him twenty-five
a week, and he's mighty glad to get it."
On the way back to the offices, they traversed the checking and
accounting rooms, the agency department, the great rows of desks whereat
the shipping and mailing were looked after, and at length stopped before
the door of a small office occupied by a dozen women. One of these, a
full-bosomed, slender, warm-skinned girl with a wealth of deep-hued,
rippling red hair crowning her small, well-poised head, rose and came to
speak to Dr. Surtaine.
"Did you get the message I sent you about Letter Number Seven?" she
asked.
"Hello, Milly," greeted the presiding genius, pleasantly. "Just what was
that about Number Seven?"
"It isn't getting results."
"No? Let's see it." Dr. Surtaine was as interested in this as he had
been casual about the drug alteration.
"I don't think it's personal enough," pursued the girl, handing him a
sheet of imitation typewriter print.
"Oh, you don't," said her employer, amused. "Maybe you could better it."
"I have," said the girl calmly. "You always tell us to make
suggestions. Mine are on the back of the paper."
"Good for you! Hal, here's the prettiest girl in the shop, and about the
smartest. Milly, this is my boy."
The girl looked up at Hal with a smile and brightened color. He was
suddenly interested and appreciative to see to what a vivid prettiness
her face was lighted by the raised glance of her swift, gray-green eyes.
"Are you coming into the business, Mr. Surtaine?" she asked composedly,
and with almost as proprietary an air as if she had said "our business."
"I don't know. Is it the sort of business you would advise a rather lazy
person to embark in, Miss--"
"Neal," she supplied; adding, with an illustrative glance around, upon
her busy roomful, all sorting and marking correspondence, "You see, I
only give advice by letter."
She turned away to answer one of the subordinates, and, at the same
time, Dr. Surtaine was called aside by a man with a shipping-bill.
Looking down the line of workers, Hal saw that each one was simply
opening, reading, and marking with a single stroke, the letters from a
distributing groove. To her questioner Milly Neal was saying, briskly:
"That's Three and Seven. Can't you see, she says she has spots before
her eyes. That's stomach. And the lameness in the side is kidneys. Mark
it 'Three pass to Seven.' There's a combination form for that."
"What branch of the work is this?" asked Hal, as she lifted her eyes to
his again.
"Symptom correspondence. This is the sorting-room."
"Please explain. I'm a perfect greenhorn, you know."
"You've seen the ads. of course. Nobody could help seeing them. They all
say, 'Write to Professor Certain'--the trade name, you know. It's the
regular stock line, but it does bring in the queries. Here's the
afternoon mail, now."
Hundreds upon hundreds of letters came tumbling from a bag upon the
receiving-table. All were addressed to "Prof." or "Dr." Certain.
"How can my father hope to answer all those?" cried Hal.
The girl surveyed him with a quaint and delicious derision. "He? You
don't suppose he ever sees them! What are _we_ here for?"
"You do the answering?"
"Practically all of it, by form-letters turned out in the printing
department. For instance, Letter One is coughs and colds; Two,
headaches; Three, stomach; and so on. As soon as a symp-letter is read
the girl marks it with the form-letter number, underscores the address,
and it goes across to the letter room where the right answer is mailed,
advising the prospect to take Certina. Orders with cash go direct to the
shipping department. If the symp-writer wants personal advice that the
form-letters don't give, I send the inquiry upstairs to Dr. De Vito.
He's a regular graduate physician who puts in half his time as our
Medical Adviser. We can clear up three thousand letters a day, here."
"I can readily see that my father couldn't attend to them personally,"
said Hal, smiling.
"And it's just as good this way. Certina is what the prospects want and
need. It makes no difference who prescribes it. This is the Chief's own
device for handling the correspondence."
"The Chief?"
"Your father. We all call him that, all the old hands."
Hal's glance skimmed over the fresh young face, and the brilliant eyes.
"You wouldn't call yourself a very old hand, Miss Neal."
"Seven years I've worked for the Chief, and I never want to work in a
better place. He's been more than good to me."
"Because you've deserved it, young woman," came the Doctor's voice from
behind Hal. "That's the one and only reason. I'm a flint-livered old
divvle to folks that don't earn every cent of their wages."
"Don't you believe him, Mr. Surtaine," controverted the girl, earnestly.
"When one of my girls came down last year with tuber--"
"Whoof! Whoof! Whoof!" interrupted the big man, waving his hands in the
air. "Stop it! This is no experience meeting. Milly, you're right about
this letter. It's the confidential note that's lacking. It'll work up
all right along the line of your suggestion. I'll have to send Hal to
you for lessons in the business."
"Miss Neal would have to be very patient with my stupidity."
"I don't think it would be hard to be patient with you," she said
softly; and though her look was steady he saw the full color rise in her
cheeks, and, startled, felt an answering throb in his pulses.
"But you mustn't flirt with her, Hal," warned the old quack, with a
joviality that jarred.
Uncomfortably conscious of himself and of the girl's altered expression,
Hal spoke a hasty word or two of farewell, and followed his father out
into the hallway. But the blithe and vivid femininity of the young
expert plucked at his mind. At the bend of the hall, he turned with half
a hope and saw her standing at the door. Her look was upon him, and it
seemed to him to be both troubled and wistful.