Adolph Schlimmer's wink was of the self-satisfied variety that plainly
says to the person at whom it is directed, "They're mostly fools in this
world--except you and me, and I'm not quite sure about you." Adolph
Schlimmer was a small man, but he thought he had enough worldly wisdom
and sharpness for a giant. "You bet you, I don't get fooled very much,"
he boasted.
Just now his wink was directed at Carroll Brown, an insurance solicitor.
"How much iss there in it for you?" he asked.
"Oh, I get my commission, of course," replied Brown.
"Sure, sure,"--and again Adolph winked. "You don't need it all, maybe."
"Why not?" asked Brown with disconcerting frankness. "I'm entitled to
what I earn."
"Sure, sure," admitted Adolph, somewhat annoyed. "It's vorth something
to you to make the money, ain't it, yes? I gif you the chance. It might
be vorth something to me, perhaps, maybe."
"Oh, if you want me to divide my commission with you," exclaimed Brown,
"we might as well quit talking right here. It would cost me my job, if
anybody found it out."
"Who iss to find it out? I bet you, if people could find out things,
we'd haf more people in jail than out. Some big men, vorth millions,
would haf to live a century to serf their time out. The boss discharges
hiss clerk for doin' what he iss doin' himself."
"It's against the law," argued Brown. "It's a rebate on premiums and is
prohibited."
"Sure, sure," conceded Adolph again. "But you got to do something to
make business, ain't it? I gif premiums and I get discounts. There don't
nobody fool me very much."
"Well, I'm taking no chances with either my job or the law," announced
Brown, "even if I wanted to sacrifice part of my legitimate commission.
I'm offering you a policy in a first-class company on the same terms
that we give them to all others, and that's the best I can do. If you're
looking for an advantage over your neighbors, you'll have to go
elsewhere. The very first rule of straight business is to treat all
alike."
"Sure it iss," returned Adolph. "Look at the railroads and the big
shippers." Again he winked wisely. "I bet you, your boss ain't such a
fool as you. Make the big money when you can, but don't run avay from
the little money. I gif you a chance for the little money because I'm
smart; some other feller let you haf it all because he issn't."
Therein lay the measure of Adolph. It was beyond his comprehension that
any man should treat all fairly: some one surely was "on the inside,"
and his first thought in any transaction was to make a quiet "deal" with
some interested party that would give him a trifling advantage over
others. He was shrewd in a small and near-sighted way, and he had an
idea that all men, except fools, looked at things as he did. He believed
there was "graft" in everything. That being the case, it was the duty of
a sharp man to get a share of it, even if, as in this instance, it only
lessened his own expense somewhat. So Adolph Schlimmer went to see
Brown's boss, who happened to be Dave Murray.
"I get me some insurance," he announced.
"All right," returned Murray agreeably. "You look like a good risk."
"Risk?" repeated Adolph. "No, _nein_. I'm a sure thing."
Murray laughed.
"That's bad," he said banteringly. "Sure things are what men go broke on
in this world; they're the biggest risks of all." Then, explanatorily:
"I mean you seem to be in good physical condition, so that our physician
is likely to pass you."
"You bet you," returned Adolph, "but it's my vife what counts. If I die,
I leaf her the money; if she die, she leaf me nothing."
"Oh, you want to get a policy on your wife's life," said Murray
thoughtfully, not favorably impressed with the other's commercial tone.
"How much?"
"_Zwei_ t'ousand dollars."
"Not very much," commented Murray. "A man of sense would prefer a good
wife to two thousand dollars any day. Is she a worker?"
"You bet you, yes," replied Adolph earnestly. "If she die, I looss money
on her at that price. I figger it all out. She safe me the wages uf a
clerk and a cook and some other things. I count up what she safe me and
what she cost me and she's vorth fifteen dollars a week easy in work and
ten dollars a week in saving. I can't afford to looss that. I insure the
store and the stock, and now I insure this. I watch out for myself
pretty close."
Murray was both disgusted and amused. Such a character as this was new
to his experience, but the risk might be, and probably was, a perfectly
good and legitimate one.
"Well, you bring your wife in," he said after a moment of thought, "and
I'll talk to her."
"Sure," said Adolph. Then he winked in his wise way. "I safe you the
commission. What iss there in it for me?"
"What?" exclaimed Murray.
"I haf a talk with Brown," explained Adolph. "It's vorth something to
him to get the business, but he don't make it vorth nothing to me to
give it."
"If he did we'd discharge him."
"Sure, sure," returned the imperturbable Adolph. "We got to watch the
boys or there won't be nothing left for us. So I safe the commission for
you. What iss there in it for me?"
"Not a damn thing!"
"You play it that way with the fool," advised Adolph complacently. "It's
a bully bluff for the feller that don't know how things was done in
business. Then we go splits, yes?"
The ignorance and effrontery of the man so amazed Murray that he forgot
his indignation for a moment and undertook to explain.
"There is no commission on business that comes to the office," he said.
"Sure!" laughed Adolph, again resorting to that sagacious wink. "You let
the company make it, yes? I stay home, you send man to tell me get
insured, I say yes, man get paid--ain't it so? I come here to get
insured, and you give that man's pay to the company, the men vorth
millions--oh, yes, sure!" Adolph laughed at the absurdity of the thing.
"Iss there anything in my eye?" he asked suddenly.
"You sit down there!" ordered Murray, for Adolph was now leaning
familiarly over Murray's desk. "I ought to kick you out, but I'm going
to tell you a few things. Sit down and keep still. I'm several sizes
bigger than you are and it's my turn." Murray spoke so aggressively that
Adolph promptly returned to his seat. "Now, to begin with, you make a
mistake in judging everybody else by yourself; there are a lot of decent
people in this world. A good many may worship the almighty dollar, and
that's bad enough, but God help the few who get down to worshiping the
almighty cent. A good many keep a lookout for graft, but you are the
first one I ever saw who seemed to think everybody was crooked."
"No, _nein_; only business--"
"Keep still! You insult everybody you try to do business with by acting
on the assumption that he is in your class. You have absorbed some of
the tricky commercialism that is prevalent these days, and you've got
the idea that there isn't anything else--not even common sense. You would
break the law for a trifle. What you propose is morally wrong, but we
won't discuss that, because you can't understand it."
"I don't like--"
"Keep still! I'm doing you a favor, but I've got to tell you first what
a libel you are on the average human being. The law that you want to
break was made for the protection of just such financially insignificant
people as you. It prohibits giving rebates in any form on insurance
premiums and provides that the acceptance of such a rebate by the
policy-holder shall invalidate his policy, and that the giving of such a
rebate by a company or any of its agents shall subject the company to a
fine. Do you understand?"
"Sure; but who iss to know?"
Murray was discouraged, but he had set out to drive a lesson home to
this dull-witted fellow who thought he was smart, and he valiantly held
to his task. He could feel nothing but contempt for the man, but he had
become rather interested in convincing him how foolish he was. Besides,
Murray was a bitter opponent of the rebate evil in all lines of
business--every one knows how it fosters monopoly--and he attacked it
whenever and wherever he could.
"If rebates on insurance premiums were not unlawful," he asked, "do you
think people of your kind are the ones who would get them? Well, hardly.
The millionaires, the rich men, the men who take out the big policies,
would get them, and you little fellows would pay the full price, just as
you do wherever else the rebate evil exists. This law was made to
protect you, and you want to break it down. Well, I suppose there are
others just as bad. The men for whose benefit a law is made frequently
insist upon playing with it until they drop it and break it, and then
they wonder why the splinters won't do them as much good as the original
law." Having warmed up to a subject that interested him, Murray was
talking for himself now. Adolph could understand in a general way what
he meant, but many of the remarks were entirely beyond his
comprehension. "Look at it in another way," Murray went on. "As a
speculation, the insurance rebate is a mistake. The man who gets or
accepts a rebate is taking a risk. 'Well,' he argues, 'so is the man who
buys wheat or stocks or undeveloped real estate of problematical future
value.' Quite right; but when you speculate you want to be sure that
your probable or possible profits bear a fair proportion to the risk and
your possible losses. It's all right to make a secured loan of one
thousand dollars at five per cent., but when you put your thousand into
a scheme where there is a chance of losing every cent of it, you also
want a chance of making a good deal more than the legal rate of
interest. Russell Sage is said to look as closely after the small
profits as the large, but Russell would shy away from an investment--a
real safe _investment_--that promised only a ten cent profit on five
dollars; and if it were a _speculation_, where he might lose the whole
five, he would want to see a possibility of winning at least half as
much. The man who accepts an insurance premium rebate is going into a
speculation--a flimsy, cheap speculation, with a chance of loss so
entirely out of proportion to the slight advantage he gains over other
policy-holders that no man with a grain of sense would consider it for a
moment. To secure a discount on his premium he risks his whole policy.
Why, in your case you would put a two-thousand-dollar policy in danger
to save a few miserable dollars. It isn't cleverness, it isn't
shrewdness, it isn't business, it isn't sense; it isn't anything but
damn foolishness. Do you understand?"
"Sure," answered Adolph. "If we iss found out, I looss the policy and
you looss a fine. We both looss."
"That's it exactly."
"Vell, if we both looss by telling, who iss going to find it out?"
demanded Adolph triumphantly. "You bet you, I take the chance. Go ahead
with her."
Murray leaned wearily back in his chair.
"You'd better get out of here," he said. "This company wouldn't issue a
policy in which you had any sort of interest on any terms. I was curious
to discover if I could not stir up just a glimmer of business sense in
you, and my curiosity is satisfied. You seem to me like a man who would
risk all his money to win a fly-speck, if he thought he was going to win
it by some underhand deal. Get out as quick as you can! But I tell you
again, don't fool with rebates!"
Adolph stopped in the doorway.
"You got to haf the whole commission, yes?" he remarked with accusing
bitterness. "I take you for a hog."
Then he disappeared very suddenly, for he feared Murray would pursue.
Here again was the measure of Adolph. In spite of Murray's explanation,
he could see nothing except a chance to win by saving a part of the
commission. He could not comprehend that he was running any unusual risk
or doing anything that another would not do, if the other had the sense
to see the chance. In fact, he was fully convinced in his own mind that
Murray was merely talking for effect and really desired the whole
commission for himself. This made him the more determined to gain this
small advantage for himself--partly because his little business world was
made up of such devious methods, and partly because it would be an
evidence of his own cleverness.
Now, occasionally a solicitor for a company of high standing, acting on
his own responsibility, will divide his commission in order to get some
one to take out a policy. If he is trying to make a record, the
temptation is considerable. If the policy is large, his half of this
commission may be more than his whole commission in most other cases. He
does this secretly, but he is inviting three kinds of trouble: his own
discharge, a fine for his company, and a loss for the policy-holder.
These three things will follow discovery, but he takes the chance. And
there are irresponsible or unscrupulous companies or agencies (so it is
said) that will tacitly approve such a course in some instances, taking
the necessary risk in order to get business. Of course, no first-class
or reliable company will sanction or even tolerate such methods.
Nevertheless, Adolph, the shrewd fool, finally found the man for whom he
was searching. A man may nearly always find trouble if he searches for
it industriously, and Adolph was industrious. Unfortunately for him,
however, he treated several other solicitors to his knowing wink before
he met the one who agreed to his proposition, and, when it was learned
that Adolph was taking out a policy on his wife's life, they were quick
to reach conclusions. But it was none of their business, and they said
nothing. What they knew merely made it easier to prove the case, if the
question should ever arise. The solicitor who finally entered into the
deal was one who had done the same thing before. He was "broke" a good
part of the time, and, when in that condition, he did not question
closely the ethics of any proposition that promised an early, even
though small, cash return. He was an outcast among such of the many
conscientious men of the fraternity as knew him, but the local agent of
the company that employed him was not particular, and there were rumors
that the company itself might have been more strict.
Anyhow, Adolph got the policy he wanted. His wife was disposed to object
at first, for she had not been consulted until Adolph had made his
bargain. There was no use, he argued, in telling her about it until he
knew what he was going to do.
"I buy you a policy," he finally told her in the tone that a man--another
man--might tell his wife he would buy her a sealskin coat.
"What's that?" she asked.
"It pays _zwei_ t'ousand dollars," he explained.
Mrs. Schlimmer was not enthusiastic.
"When?" she asked.
[Illustration: "What's the use to me?" she persisted]
"When you are in the grafe," he answered after a pause.
"What's the use to me?" she persisted.
"My dear," he said, with such gallantry as he could command, "it shows
what you iss vorth."
Somehow, she was not flattered. She was a good wife, who worked hard,
and she herself thought she was worth it, but she was selfish enough to
think she ought to realize on her own value.
"No, _nein_," he argued, "it ain't the vay it's done. You got yourself,
ain't it, yes? When you ain't got yourself, you ain't here, but I am.
You don't looss yourself when you die, but I looss you, and you're vorth
a lot."
"There's other women," she retorted.
"But they ain't vorth what you are by _zwei_ t'ousand dollars," he
insisted, and this delicate bit of flattery won the day. After all, it
made no difference to her. She rebelled a little at going to the
insurance office to be examined, however.
"You tell 'em I'm all right," she urged. "You know."
But a new gown--a cheap one--gained this point, and she went.
Adolph prided himself very much on this stroke of business. His great
aim in life was to pay a little less than the market price for
everything, and he was never convinced that he was really doing this
unless the deal had to be carried out in some underhand way. When he
could buy for less than others he was making so much more money, and it
was his experience that the biggest profit lay in shady transactions. In
others he had made, or saved, much more than in this, but the
difficulties he encountered in this instance convinced him that it was
an especially notable achievement. He was proud of his success.
"You bet you, they don't fool me very much," he asserted frequently.
And, in time, he told how clever he was. Not at first, however; he was
very cautious at first, for Murray's words had made an impression on
him. But, after he had paid a few premiums, the lapse of time gave him a
feeling of security, and one day, in boasting of his business
shrewdness, he mentioned that he was even sharp enough to get life
insurance at a bargain. After that, it was easier to speak of it again,
and he finally told the story. The news spread in his own little circle.
It was quite a feat, and he was held to have demonstrated remarkable
cleverness. When another told of some sharp business deal, some one
would remark, "Yes, that was clever, but you never got life insurance at
a bargain." And, in the course of time--six months or more from the time
the story was first breathed--it came to the ears of one Daniel Grady.
This was unfortunate, for Daniel at once jumped to the conclusion that
he had been cheated. Daniel had a small policy in the same company, and
this policy was costing him the full premium without rebate of any kind
from any insurance solicitor or anybody else. Daniel did not like this,
and neither did he like Adolph; in fact, he would have been willing to
pay a little higher premium for the privilege of making trouble for
Adolph. Failing that, Daniel would like to get on even terms with him.
"It's th' divil iv a note," said Daniel, "that I sh'u'd be payin' more
than that little shrimp, an' me only thryin' to take care iv Maggie an'
th' childhern. I'll go down to th' office an' push th' face iv th' man
in if he don't give me th' same rate, I will so."
But Daniel wisely did nothing of the kind, for he recalled that there
were a number of clerks in the office and a police station not far away,
and he had no wish to add a fine to his expenses. Instead, after
pondering the matter a few weeks and growing steadily more indignant, he
went to see a little lawyer who had an office over a saloon, next to a
justice of the peace. Daniel planned only to get his premiums reduced,
but the lawyer saw other opportunities.
"It's a great chance," said the lawyer. "You're a policy-holder--"
"Who says so?" demanded Daniel, for this sounded to him like an
accusation.
"I mean," explained the lawyer, "that you are insured in the company."
"What iv it?" asked Daniel.
"Why, the other policy-holders are the ones discriminated against in a
case like this," said the lawyer, "and any one of them can file a
complaint."
"I'm not the kind iv a man to do much complainin'," declared Daniel. "I
niver see that it did much good. If I c'u'd give Schlimmer a bad turn--"
"That's it; that's it exactly. You can knock his insurance sky-high and
get some money yourself."
"Say that wanst more," urged Daniel. "Me hearin' seems to be playin'
thricks."
"The law," said the lawyer slowly, "fines a company for doing that--"
"How much?"
"I'll have to look it up. Pretty stiff fine, though, and the informer--"
"I don't like th' word."
"Well, the man who makes the complaint gets half the fine. Do you
understand that? Let me take charge of the matter for you, and we'll
divide the money."
"Will it hurt me own insurance?" asked Daniel.
"Not a bit."
"I'm not lukkin' to l'ave Maggie an' th' childhern without money whin I
die, jist to land a dollar-twinty f'r me own pocket now. That's a
Schlimmer thrick."
"Your insurance will be just as good as it ever was," the lawyer
asserted.
"Will there be twinty dollars in it f'r me?" Daniel persisted.
"There'll be a good deal more than that--exactly how much I can't say."
"Go ahead," instructed Daniel. "Put the little divil through."
The lawyer investigated and found his task comparatively easy, for
Adolph had now personally told the story to several people. Indeed, by
the exercise of a little ingenuity, the lawyer got him to tell it to
him. Then he acted.
When the news reached the local agency of the company there was no
indecision as to what should be done. Unnecessary publicity in a matter
of that kind was the very last thing sought. The solicitor was called
in, put on the rack, and promptly confessed. Then he was discharged
without further questioning. Perhaps the local agent was afraid he might
learn of other similar instances if he pressed the matter too far, and
he was quite content to remain in ignorance of anything else of that
nature, so long as the public also remained in ignorance. The company
promptly acknowledged its fault, showed that it had cleared itself
morally by discharging the offending agent, and proceeded to clear
itself legally by paying the necessary fine.
When the news came to Adolph, however, there was wailing prolonged, for
his policy was annulled.
"I bet you," said Adolph, "that feller Murray put up the job. He iss a
great hog; he iss like those mono_pol_ists that puts smaller people out
of business and gobbles it all."
Then Adolph got a pencil and a sheet of paper and began to figure his
losses.
"_Zwei_ t'ousand dollar insurance," he groaned, "and maybe she wouldn't
lif long. And I gif her a dress, too--a new dress. _Ach, Himmel!_ it's
hard when a man's vife beats him. A new dress for nothing at all but to
looss money. That law iss a shame. It iss a--what you call
it?--restriction of business."
Thereafter, for some time, the sight of the new gown would make Adolph
morose and gloomy, and his friends found him unusually modest and
unobtrusive.