PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
As I said, with that first dollar in the ginger jar representing the
first actual saving I had ever effected in my whole life, my
imagination became fired with new plans. I saw no reason why I myself
should not become an employer. As in the next few weeks I enlarged my
circle of acquaintances and pushed my inquiries in every possible
direction I found this idea was in the air down here. The ambition of
all these people was towards complete independence. Either they hoped
to set up in business for themselves in this country or they looked
forward to saving enough to return to the land of their birth and live
there as small land owners. I speak more especially of the Italians
because just now I was thrown more in contact with them than the
others. In my city they, with the Irish, seemed peculiarly of real
emigrant stuff. The Jews were so clannish that they were a problem in
themselves; the Germans assimilated a little better and yet they too
were like one large family. They did not get into the city life very
much and even in their business stuck pretty closely to one line. For
a good many years they remained essentially Germans. But the Irish
were citizens from the time they landed and the Italians eventually
became such if by a slower process.
The former went into everything. They are a tremendously adaptable
people. But whatever they tackled they looked forward to independence
and generally won it. Even a man of so humble an ambition as Murphy
had accomplished this. The Italians either went into the fruit
business for which they seem to have a knack or served as day laborers
and saved. There was a man down here who was always ready to stake
them to a cart and a supply of fruit, at an exorbitant price to be
sure, but they pushed their carts patiently mile upon mile until in
the end they saved enough to buy one of their own. The next step was a
small fruit store. The laborers, once they had acquired a working
capital, took up many things--a lot of them going into the country and
buying deserted farms. It was wonderful what they did with this land
upon which the old stock New Englander had not been able to live. But
of course in part explanation of this, you must remember that these
New England villages have long been drained of their best. In many
cases only the maim, the halt, and the blind are left and these stand
no more chance against the modern pioneer than they would against one
of their own sturdy forefathers.
Another occupation which the Italians seemed to preëmpt was the
boot-blacking business. It may seem odd to dignify so menial an
employment as a business but there is many a head of such an
establishment who could show a fatter bank account than two-thirds of
his clients. The next time you go into a little nook containing say
fifteen chairs, figure out for yourself how many nickels are left
there in a day. The rent is often high--it is some proof of a business
worth thought when you consider that they are able to pay for
positions on the leading business streets--but the labor is cheap and
the furnishings and cost of raw material slight. Pasquale had set me
to thinking long before, when I learned that he was earning almost as
much a week as I. It is no unusual thing for a man who owns his
"emporium" to draw ten dollars a day in profits and not show himself
until he empties the cash register at night.
But the fact that impressed me in these people--and this holds
peculiarly true of the Jews--was that they all shied away from the
salaried jobs. In making such generalizations I may be running a risk
because I'm only giving the results of my own limited observation and
experience. But I want it understood that from the beginning to the
end of these recollections I'm trying to do nothing more. I'm not a
student. I'm not a sociologist. The conditions which I observed may
not hold elsewhere for all I know. From a different point of view,
they might not to another seem to hold even in my own city. I won't
argue with anyone about it. I set down what I myself saw and let it go
at that.
Going back to the small group among whom I lived when I was with the
United Woollen, it seems to me that every man clung to a salary as
though it were his only possible hope. I know men among them who even
refused to work on a commission basis although they were practically
sure of earning in this way double what they were being paid by the
year. They considered a salary as a form of insurance and once in the
grip of this idea they had nothing to look forward to except an
increase. I was no better myself. I didn't really expect to be head of
the firm. Nor did the other men. We weren't working and holding on
with any notion of winning independence along that line. The most we
hoped for was a bigger salary. Some men didn't anticipate more than
twenty-five hundred like me, and others--the younger men--talked about
five thousand and even ten thousand. I didn't hear them discuss what
they were going to do when they were general managers or
vice-presidents but always what they could enjoy when they drew the
larger annuity. And save those who saw in professional work a way out,
this was the career they were choosing for their sons. They wanted to
get them into banks and the big companies where the assurance of lazy
routine advancement up to a certain point was the reward for industry,
sobriety and honesty. A salary with an old, strongly established
company seemed to them about as big a stroke of luck for a young man
as a legacy. I myself had hoped to find a place for Dick with one of
the big trust companies.
Of course down here these people did not have the same opportunities.
Most of the old firms preferred the "bright young American" and I
guess they secured most of them. I pity the "bright young American"
but I can't help congratulating the bright young Italians and the
bright young Irishmen. They are forced as a result to make business
for themselves and they are given every opportunity in the world for
doing it. And they _are_ doing it. And I, breathing in this
atmosphere, made up my mind that I would do it, too.
With this in mind I outlined for myself a systematic course of
procedure. It was evident that in this as in any other business I must
master thoroughly the details before taking up the larger problems.
The details of this as of any other business lay at the bottom and so
for these at least I was at present in the best possible position. The
two most important factors to the success of a contractor seemed to me
to be, roughly speaking, the securing and handling of men and the
purchase and use of materials. Of the two, the former appeared to be
the more important. Even in the few weeks I had been at work here I
had observed a big difference in the amount of labor accomplished by
different men individually. I could have picked out a half dozen that
were worth more than all the others put together. And in the two
foremen I had noticed another big difference in the varying capacity
of a boss to get work out of the men collectively. In work where labor
counted for so much in the final cost as here, it appeared as though
this involved almost the whole question of profit and loss. With a
hundred men employed at a dollar and a half a day, the saving of a
single hour meant the saving of a good many dollars.
It may seem odd that so obvious a fact was not taken advantage of by
the present contractors. Doubtless it was realized but my later
experience showed me that the obvious is very often neglected. In this
business as in many others, the details fall into a rut and often a
newcomer with a fresh point of view will detect waste that has been
going on unnoticed for years. I was almost forty years old, fairly
intelligent, and I had everything at stake. So I was distinctly more
alert than those who retained their positions merely by letting
things run along as well as they always had been going. But however
you may explain it, I knew that the foreman didn't get as much work
out of me as he might have done. In spite of all the control I
exercised over myself I often quit work realizing that half my
strength during the day had gone for nothing. And though it may sound
like boasting to say it, I think I worked both more conscientiously
and intelligently than most of the men.
In the first place the foreman was a bully. He believed in driving his
men. He swore at them and goaded them as an ignorant countryman often
tries to drive oxen. The result was a good deal the same as it is with
oxen--the men worked excitedly when under the sting and loafed the
rest of the time. In a crisis the boss was able to spur them on to
their best--though even then they wasted strength in frantic
endeavor--but he could not keep them up to a consistent level of
steady work. And that's what counts. As in a Marathon race the men who
maintain a steady plugging pace from start to finish are the ones who
accomplish.
The question may be asked how such a boss could keep his job. I myself
did not understand that at first but later as I worked with different
men and under different bosses I saw that it was because their methods
were much alike and that the results were much alike. A certain
standard had been established as to the amount of work that should be
done by a hundred men and this was maintained. The boss had figured
out loosely how much the men would work and the men had figured out to
a minute how much they could loaf. Neither man nor boss took any
special interest in the work itself. The men were allowed to waste
just so much time in getting water, in filling their pipes, in
spitting on their hands, in resting on their shovels, in lazy chatter,
and so long as they did not exceed this nothing was said.
The trouble was that the standard was low and this was because the men
had nothing to gain by steady conscientious work and also because the
boss did not understand them nor distinguish between them. For
instance the foreman ought to have got the work of two men out of me
but he wouldn't have, if I hadn't chosen to give it. That held true
also of Rafferty and one or two others.
Now my idea was this: that if a man made a study of these men who, in
this city at any rate, were the key to the contractor's problem, and
learned their little peculiarities, their standards of justice, their
ambitions, their weakness and their strength, he ought to be able to
increase their working capacity. Certainly an intelligent teamster
does this with horses and it seemed as though it ought to be possible
to accomplish still finer results with men. To go a little farther in
my ambition, it also seemed possible to pick and select the best of
these men instead of taking them at random. For instance in the
present gang there were at least a half dozen who stood out as more
intelligent and stronger physically than all the others. Why couldn't
a man in time gather about him say a hundred such men and by better
treatment, possibly better pay, possibly a guarantee of continuous
work, make of them a loyal, hard working machine with a capacity for
double the work of the ordinary gang? Such organization as this was
going on in other lines of business, why not in this? With such a
machine at his command, a man ought to make himself a formidable
competitor with even the long established firms.
At any rate this was my theory and it gave a fresh inspiration to my
work. Whether anything came of it or not it was something to hope for,
something to toil for, something which raised this digging to the
plane of the pioneer who joyfully clears his field of stumps and
rocks. It swung me from the present into the future. It was a
different future from that which had weighed me down when with the
United Woollen. This was no waiting game. Neither your pioneer nor
your true emigrant sits down and waits. Here was something which
depended solely upon my own efforts for its success or failure. And I
knew that it wasn't possible to fail so dismally but what the joy of
the struggle would always be mine.
In the meanwhile I carried with me to my work a note book and during
the noon hour I set down everything which I thought might be of any
possible use to me. I missed no opportunity for learning even the most
trivial details. A great deal of the information was superficial and a
great deal of it was incorrect but down it went in the note book to be
revised later when I became better informed.
I watched my fellow workmen as much as possible and plied them with
questions. I wanted to know where the cement came from and in what
proportion it was mixed with sand and gravel and stone for different
work. I wanted to know where the sand and gravel and stone came from
and how it was graded. Wherever it was possible I secured rough prices
for different materials. I wanted to know where the lumber was bought
and I wanted to know how the staging was built and why it was built.
Understand that I did not flatter myself that I was fast becoming a
mason, a carpenter, an engineer and a contractor all in one and all at
once. I knew that the most of my information was vague and loose. Half
the men who were doing the work didn't know why they were doing it and
a lot of them didn't know how they were doing it. They worked by
instinct and habit. Then, too, they were a clannish lot and a jealous
lot. They resented my questioning however delicately I might do it and
often refused to answer me. But in spite of this I found myself
surprised later with the fund of really valuable knowledge I acquired.
In addition to this I acquired _sources_ of information. I found out
where to go for the real facts. I learned for instance who for this
particular job was supplying for the contractor his cement and gravel
and crushed stone--though as it happened this contractor himself
either owned or controlled his own plant for the production of most of
his material. However I learned something when I learned that. For a
man who had apparently been in business all his life, I was densely
ignorant of even the fundamentals of business. This idea of running
the business back to the sources of the raw material was a new idea to
me. I had not thought of the contractor as owning his own quarries and
gravel pits, obvious as the advantage was. I wanted to know where the
tools were bought and how much they cost--from the engines and
hoisting cranes and carrying system down to pick-axes, crowbars and
shovels. I made a note of the fact that many of the smaller implements
were not cared for properly and even tried to estimate how with proper
attention the life of a pick-axe could be prolonged. I joyed
particularly in every such opportunity as this no matter how trivial
it appeared later. It was just such details as these which gave
reality to my dream.
I figured out how many cubic feet of earth per day per man was being
handled here and how this varied under different bosses. I pried and
listened and questioned and figured even when digging. I worked with
my eyes and ears wide open. It was wonderful how quickly in this way
the hours flew. A day now didn't seem more than four hours long. Many
the time I've felt actually sorry when the signal to quit work was
given at night and have hung around for half an hour while the
engineer fixed his boiler for the night and the old man lighted his
lanterns to string along the excavation. I don't know what they all
thought of me, but I know some of them set me down for a college man
doing the work for experience. This to say the least was flattering to
my years.
As I say, a lot of this work was wasted energy in the sense that I
acquired anything worth while, but none of it was wasted when I recall
the joy of it. If I had actually been a college boy in the first flush
of youthful enthusiasm I could not have gone at my work more
enthusiastically or dreamed wilder or bigger dreams. Even after many
of these bubbles were pricked and had vanished, the mood which made
them did not vanish. I have never forgotten and never can forget the
sheer delight of those months. I was eighteen again with a lot besides
that I didn't have at eighteen.
My work along another line was more practical and more successful.
What I learned about the men and the best way to handle them was
genuine capital. In the first place I lost no opportunity to make
myself as solid as possible with Dan Rafferty. This was not altogether
from a purely selfish motive either. I liked the man. In a way I think
he was the most lovable man I ever met, although that seems a
lady-like term to apply to so rugged a fellow. But below his beef and
brawn, below his aggressiveness, below his coarseness, below even a
peculiar moral bluntness about a good many things, there was a strain
of something fine about Dan Rafferty. I had a glimpse of it when he
preferred going back to the sewer gas rather than let a man like the
old foreman force him into a position where the latter could fire him.
But that was only one side of him. He had a heart as big as a woman's
and one as keen to respond to sympathy. This in its turn inspired in
others a feeling towards him that to save my life I can only describe
as love--love in its big sense. He'd swear like a pirate at the
Dagoes and they'd only grin back at him where'd they'd feel like
knifing any other man. And when Dan learned that Anton' had lost his
boy he sent down to the house a wreath of flowers half as big as a
cart wheel. There was scarcely a day when some old lady didn't manage
to see Dan at the noon hour and draw him aside with a mumbled plea
that always made him dig into his pockets. He caught me watching him
one day and said in explanation, "She's me grandmither."
After I'd seen at least a dozen different ones approach him I asked
him if they were all his grandmothers.
"Sure," he said. "Ivery ould woman in the ward is me grandmither."
Those same grandmothers stood him in good stead later in his life, for
every single grandmother had some forty grandchildren and half of
these had votes. But Dan wasn't looking that far ahead then. Two facts
rather distinguished him at the start; he didn't either drink or
smoke. He didn't have any opinions upon the subject but he was one of
the rare Irishmen born that way. Now and then you'll find one and as
likely as not he'll prove one of the good fellows you'd expect to see
in the other crowd. However, beyond exciting my interest and leading
me to score him some fifty points in my estimate of him as a good
workman, I was indifferent to this side of his character. The thing
that impressed me most was a quality of leadership he seemed to
possess. There was nothing masterful about it. You didn't look to see
him lead in any especially good or great cause, but you could see
readily enough that whatever cause he chose, it would be possible for
him to gather about him a large personal following. I was attracted to
this side of him in considering him as having about all the good raw
material for a great boss. Put twenty men on a rope with Dan at the
head of them and just let him say, "Now, biys--altogither," and you'd
see every man's neck grow taut with the strain. I know because I've
been one of the twenty and felt as though I wanted to drag every
muscle out of my body. And when it was over I'd ask myself why in the
devil I pulled that way. When I told myself that it was because I was
pulling with Dan Rafferty I said all I knew about it.
It seemed to me that any man who secured Dan as a boss would already
have the backbone of his gang. I didn't ever expect to use him in this
way but I wanted the man for a friend and I wanted to learn the secret
of his power if I could. But I may as well confess right now that I
never fully fathomed that.
In the meanwhile I had not neglected the other men. At every
opportunity I talked with them. At the beginning I made it a point to
learn their names and addresses which I jotted down in my book. I
learned something from them of the padrone system and the unfair
contracts into which they were trapped. I learned their likes and
dislikes, their ambitions, and as much as possible about their
families. It all came hard at first but little by little as I worked
with them I found them trusting me more with their confidences.
In this way then the first summer passed. Both Ruth and the boy in the
meanwhile were just as busy about their respective tasks as I was. The
latter took to the gymnasium work like a duck to water and in his
enthusiasm for this tackled his lessons with renewed interest. He put
on five pounds of weight and what with the daily ocean swim which we
both enjoyed, his cheeks took on color and he became as brown as an
Indian. If he had passed the summer at the White Mountains he could
not have looked any hardier. He made many friends at the Y.M.C.A. They
were all ambitious boys and they woke him up wonderfully. I was
careful to follow him closely in this new life and made it a point to
see the boys myself and to make him tell me at the end of each day
just what he had been about. Dick was a boy I could trust to tell me
every detail. He was absolutely truthful and he wasn't afraid to open
his heart to me with whatever new questions might be bothering him. As
far as possible I tried to point out to him what to me seemed the good
points in his new friends and to warn him against any little
weaknesses among them which from time to time I might detect. Ruth did
the rest. A father, however much a comrade he may be with his boy, can
go only so far. There is always plenty left which belongs to the
mother--if she is such a mother as Ruth.
As for Ruth herself I watched her anxiously in fear lest the new life
might wear her down but honestly as far as the house was concerned she
didn't seem to have as much to bother her as she had before. She was
slowly getting the buying and the cooking down to a science. Many a
week now our food bill went as low as a little over three dollars. We
bought in larger quantities and this always effected a saving. We
bought a barrel of flour and half a barrel of sugar for one thing.
Then as the new potatoes came into the market we bought half a barrel
of those and half a barrel of apples. She did wonders with those
apples and they added a big variety to our menus. Another saving was
effected by buying suet which cost but a few cents a pound, trying
this out and mixing it with the lard for shortening. As the weather
became cooler we had baked beans twice a week instead of once. These
made for us four and sometimes five or six meals. We figured out that
we could bake a quart pot of beans, using half a pound of pork to a
pot, for less than twenty cents. This gave the three of us two meals
with some left over for lunch, making the cost per man about three
cents. And they made a hearty meal, too. That was a trick she had
learned in the country where baked beans are a staple article of diet.
I liked them cold for my lunch.
As for clothes neither Ruth nor myself needed much more than we had. I
bought nothing but one pair of heavy boots which Ruth picked up at a
bankrupt sale for two dollars. On herself she didn't spend a cent. She
brought down here with her a winter and a summer street suit, several
house dresses and three or four petticoats and a goodly supply of
under things. She knew how to care for them and they lasted her. I
brought down, in addition to my business suit, a Sunday suit of blue
serge and a dress suit and a Prince Albert. I sold the last two to a
second hand dealer for eleven dollars and this helped towards the
boy's outfit in the fall. She bought for him a pair of three dollar
shoes for a dollar and a half at this same "Sold Out" sale, a dollar's
worth of stockings and about a dollar's worth of underclothes. He had
a winter overcoat and hat, though I could have picked up these in
either a pawnshop or second hand store for a couple of dollars. It was
wonderful what you could get at these places, especially if anyone had
the knack which Ruth had of making over things.