Contemporary historians point out that in Egypt, more than four
thousand years ago, those who bore bad tidings to the reigning monarch
were in the habit of meeting death so swiftly that they could scarcely
have been incommoded by the circumstance. In fact, they had all the
satisfaction of inevitable demise with none of the discomforts
necessarily attendant on lingering annihilation.
Mr. Samuel Gunterson, returning from Boston with the signed contract of
Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, presently found himself in the position of
sensing all the restlessness and unhappiness of an expiring frame with
no hope of an early easement by carefree and cheerful decease. For the
news of his first important agency appointment was received by William
Street in a manner not at all calculated to flatter the man who had
made it. Of the numerous opinions expressed or unexpressed, ranging
from polite incredulity to unholy joy or open contempt, the only
quality which all these opinions held in common was their invidiousness.
The appointment received perhaps its most kindly treatment from those
most directly concerned. Mr. Wintermuth did not know anything about
Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy--in fact, he had never heard of them. And
so, when Mr. Gunterson, in his most convincing rhetoric; explained the
merits of the new agents and the increased income which he felt
confident the Guardian would receive, the President gave his assent,
merely expressing his deep regret at concluding his business relations
with Silas Osgood.
"But Mr. Osgood is retiring from the firm, anyway," said Mr. Gunterson.
"Indeed? I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Wintermuth.
With which comment the matter came to its discussion's end between
them. Nor did the President learn for a long time the real truth
regarding his Boston appointees, for with increasing years he had grown
increasingly difficult of access and intolerant of ideas conceived on
the outside and not in accord with his own. The men who once could
have come to him and frankly told him that the Guardian's Boston
appointment was a colossal blunder were, like himself, grown insensibly
out of the true current of underwriting affairs, while those who knew
the truth lacked either the purpose or the opportunity to lay before
him the exact state of affairs.
Among those who could not carry out their inclinations was Smith, for
he saw very little of Mr. Wintermuth in these early days of the
premiership of Gunterson; and he felt, moreover, that the President,
knowing his opinion of Mr. Gunterson, would be inclined to discount his
criticism on matters connected with the administration of the
Vice-President. So Mr. Wintermuth lived in ignorance until the results
began to show on the surface--which was not a far day.
From William Street, however, the busy and irreverent Street, soon came
the slings and arrows which pierced even Mr. Gunterson's almost
impregnable self-esteem. Only a few days after his return he overheard
a conversation between Mr. Cuyler and a placer, in the Guardian's own
office, which showed how the Street regarded the Boston appointment.
"Sorry, but I can't take that, Eddy; we don't write the shoe polish
manufacturers at all--there's too much naphtha used, and they all burn
eventually," were the words that caught his attention, and in the
shadow of the door he waited for the reply.
"Ah, come off, now--loosen up! I know the Guardian does write the
class, for this same concern's got a factory in Boston and I got a
Guardian policy on it only yesterday. That's why I'm giving you this.
Your Boston agents, Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, place the Boston end
for us. What's the matter--don't your agents have any prohibited list,
or do you let them do things you can't do in your own office?"
"Eddy," said Mr. Cuyler, sternly, "you're talking nonsense. I tell you
we don't write the class in my department, and I don't believe the
agency department does. The Boston firm you mention has just been
appointed, and probably they don't know our underwriting policy yet."
He handed back the binder.
The placer, realizing that the decision was final, and irritated at the
declination of a risk which he had found impossible to place elsewhere,
laughed loudly.
"Don't know your underwriting policy, hey? Well, they don't need
to--they've got an underwriting policy of their own. Do you know what
it is? It's to take a line on anything that's not actually on fire.
They're the slop bucket of Boston, the standard lemon of Kilby Street;
they've got a loss ratio of three thousand per cent, and they've burnt
the hide off every company that's ever touched them. You make me
tired. You're a fine, consistent bunch, you are--to pose as a
conservative company in New York and write every skate in Boston
through Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy! All right--good-by."
And in his exit his coat sleeve almost brushed against the man in the
hall who in his haste and folly had appointed Sternberg, Bloom, and
McCoy to represent the Guardian in the good city of Boston.
This was but the beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs
came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that
every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some
detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over the
East he began to receive applications for agencies from men whom even
he knew to be unworthy of trust; and he realized that he had encouraged
their approach like vultures on the unhappy Guardian. Within a
fortnight of making the Boston appointment he had seriously considered
revoking it; but this would have necessitated the admission of his
initial error, and he lacked the courage to carry out his better
judgment. So, with a shrug of his mental shoulders and a cynical
reflection that good luck might perhaps avert the results of his
imprudence, he let the matter stand.
But good luck failed to materialize, and it was not long before the
expected began to happen. Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy's business
appeared outwardly passable, but curiously enough it almost always
seemed--after the loss--that the risk was one on which the company
should never have been committed. And there were two unpleasant
incidents where the Guardian was "caught on a binder"--where the loss
occurred before the agents could issue the policy or report the
acceptance of the risk to the New York office; and though Smith
investigated these, and in each case was obliged to hold the agents
blameless, the experience left an unfortunate impression. However,
Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy undoubtedly controlled an unusually large
volume of business. If losses were heavy, so were premiums, and the
relatively small losses which naturally attend a growing business where
no policy has been in force more than a month or two, postponed, for a
time at least, the worst of the evil days. But long before they came
the heavens had grown dark with trouble in numerous other quarters.
The general ruling of the Conference, providing that, except under
almost impossible qualifications and with reduced compensation, no
agent could continue to represent both Conference and non-Conference
companies, was now in effect. And it seemed as though never before had
there been such precision and unanimity in Conference methods; and
Smith, gloomily regarding the grim spectacle of the Guardian's decline,
could only curse under his breath the act of O'Connor that had brought
about this state of affairs.
Certainly there was no hesitancy about the Conference campaign, and the
results became at once apparent in the non-Conference offices. Hardly
a day passed which failed to bring to the Guardian the resignation of
one or more of its agents, with none to take their places except the
vultures, many of whom Mr. Gunterson remembered to have assisted in
accelerating the downfall of some of the other underwriting
institutions with which he had been connected. With a chill of dismay
he read of what a splendid opening awaited the Guardian in the general
agency of Henry Trafalgar and Company of Memphis, or Bates and Newsome
of Atlanta.
From the Guardian's own agents the letters of resignation were very
much alike, for the company was popular in a modest way, and most of
the writers had represented it for many years.
"We are notified by the committee in charge of this district," they
wrote, "that in order to secure the customary graded commission scale
we must resign our non-Conference companies. We are extremely sorry to
let the Guardian go, but the difference to us financially is such that
we would not feel justified in declining the Conference offer."
And so, one after one, they went. Many an agent wrote bitterly
attacking the Conference procedure and asking whether the Guardian
could not arrange to take care of his entire business, and stating that
if this could be done he would retain the Guardian and let the others
go. This, however, in nearly every case was out of the question, and
eventually all these agencies went with their fellows. During the
first month of the new year almost one hundred agents, some of them
among the most satisfactory and profitable of the Guardian's plant, had
been compelled to resign. The income from these agencies reached to
the neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars annually, and Mr.
Wintermuth began to take decided notice of his strategic position.
Of course, whenever an agency was lost, there was the possibility of
replacing the company in some non-Conference office; but this was not
so easy a matter. The non-Conference agents were principally lower
grade, cut-rate concerns, and not of the standard either professionally
or financially to which the Guardian was accustomed. The company's
field men, continually confronted by the discouraging task of finding
in a town a satisfactory agent, when none existed save in Conference
offices, became disheartened. Their letters to the home office
indicated their demoralization and Mr. Gunterson could not think how to
direct their campaigns for them.
At this juncture the hand on the reins needed to be both delicate and
firm, and the hand of Mr. Gunterson, while it may have had its moments
of inflexibility, was never delicate. And it was firm with less and
less frequency as the days went by. Never any too well convinced, at
the bottom of his heart, of the soundness of any course he elected to
pursue, the apparent necessity of sitting helplessly in his office and
watching his agency plant disintegrate before his eyes robbed him of
much of the assurance that had always been one of his predominant
factors. Outwardly his manner remained as impressive as ever, but it
was retained with an ever increasing difficulty.
In this dark hour his only sustaining reflection was that this rule,
which was working such havoc among the Guardian's smaller agencies, did
not apply to the larger cities whence came a large proportion of the
company's premium income. Boston, of course, with a local rule even
more radical than that of the field generally, had gone the way of the
small towns; but in New York separation was out of the question since
most of the important companies maintained their own local departments,
dispensing with agents altogether; in Philadelphia the local
underwriters had never been able to agree among themselves on any
drastic measures and there seemed no likelihood of a change; while in
Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore soothingly sepulchral silence and
calm reigned.
As the month of January gave place to the briefest of his brothers, a
temporary lull in hostilities appeared to have arrived. Mr. Gunterson,
drawing a long breath, was wondering if it could be possible that the
worst of the tempest had passed, when eruptions from three craters
burst forth almost simultaneously, and by the light of their flames it
was seen that all which had gone before was of minor moment compared to
that which was now to come.
It was about the third week in February that a Conference war was
declared in Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Baltimore. In the ears of Mr.
Gunterson the triple detonation rang terribly, like the very voice of
doom, and it was with the desperation of hopelessness that he addressed
himself to the solution of this new problem.
He no longer trusted himself as direct mediator; his Boston experience
had cured him of all personal meddlesomeness; it was much more
dignified to remain quietly in New York directing the efforts of his
subordinates and criticizing them when they failed to accomplish the
impossible. He did not care to expose himself to another Sternberg,
Bloom, and McCoy triumvirate. So he sat in his office, dictating
letters and giving endless pieces of impracticable advice to special
agents who inwardly cursed; and to Mr. Wintermuth he bore weirdly
distorted versions of situations and crises beyond any power of his to
unravel or even to explain.
Even on matters of fact he was pleasingly vague.
"How many agencies have we lost?" the President demanded on one
occasion.
"Really, I could hardly say exactly," Mr. Gunterson responded. "You
see, some that haven't actually resigned have stopped sending us
business--to any extent. But," he added, "we can more than make up
such losses in income when our new appointments show the full results
of their business."
"How long do you calculate that's going to take?" abruptly inquired the
usually courteous Mr. Wintermuth.
Mr. Gunterson did not know, but he was decidedly of the opinion that it
could not be very long before the tide was stemmed.
But as the days went by the tide continued to run in the same
direction. Baltimore, threatening dire things, hung trembling in the
balance; Buffalo had already gone over to the enemy; Philadelphia was
as yet hesitating before the final irrevocable leap. So February wore
away, and March entered.
James Wintermuth was more disturbed than he had been at any time
covered by what was now a good and had once been a miraculous memory.
His company had so long been his pride, his reliance, his solace, and
almost his gospel that he had grown to think of it as a sort of fixed
star, whose light perhaps might be exceeded by some larger and more
pretentious luminary, but which would nevertheless shine steadily on,
beyond the fear of any cosmic upheaval.
Now he beheld it not only overclouded, but even menaced--beheld its
light in danger of being dimmed if not utterly extinguished. It was
absurd, it was tragic, it was unbelievable--yet it was so. And when he
was confronted with the fact, there crept back into the old gentleman's
heart something of his old fire, as well as a slow, brooding sense of
angry injury against the men or forces responsible for his present
difficulties. His elder resentment was of course against O'Connor, who
was taking advantage in every way of the Guardian's misfortunes; but as
the palpably weakening hold of the company brought him more closely in
touch with its underwriting affairs, as the questionable losses from
Boston and other similar agencies began to arrive in faster and faster
succession, and he clearly perceived the weakness and incapability of
Gunterson's management, his irritation rightly directed itself more and
more against the luckless Vice-President.
One other thing of recent occurrence had shaken--perhaps out of
proportion to its consequences--what little confidence he still felt in
the judgment of his underwriting manager. That related to the attempt
of Mr. Gunterson to inject his advice into the Guardian's affairs
financial. Early in February he had suggested to Mr. Wintermuth the
advisability of purchasing for the Guardian some bonds of an embryonic
steel company then erecting a plant in Alabama. Mr. Gunterson knew
personally some of the people back of this, the bonds seemed remarkably
cheap, and the bonus in common stock made the proposition in his
opinion decidedly attractive. Mr. Wintermuth's investigation of the
concern and its prospectus had quickly convinced him that its officers
were of far more capability in the industry of disposing of what, by a
polite extension of the term, might be called securities than in
manufacturing steel, and a skeptical investing public evidently reached
the same conclusion, for within a month after Mr. Gunterson's friendly
suggestion, the Birmingham Bessemer Steel Corporation was in the hands
of a receiver, who, after some hesitation, issued a statement to the
effect that the bondholders might eventually realize fifteen cents on
every dollar they had paid in.
On the second day of March an unusual thing happened. Mr. Cuyler
entered the elevator and mounted to the top floor of the Guardian
building, crossing the floor toward Mr. Wintermuth's office.
"Hello! What are you doing up here?" Smith inquired, knowing the stars
must be strangely out of their courses to attract Mr. Cuyler to this
unaccustomed altitude. A true local department man is always
uncomfortable, never at home, above the grade floor. "Has the
Sub-Treasury or the Aquarium made a total loss, or what's the matter?"
he cheerfully proceeded.
"No," said Cuyler, sourly. And without further answer he passed on
into the President's room.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Cuyler," said the President, amiably, but the
local secretary with a glum face stopped him.
"Well, we've lost O'Brien," he said.
"What's that?" demanded the other. "Lost O'Brien? What do you mean?
Not O'Brien of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street?"
"That's the man. The best branch manager we ever had--the man we kept
when the Exchange made us close all our branch offices but one. Well,
he's thrown us."
"Thrown us! O'Brien? Why, he's been with us for fifteen years! Tell
me about this at once, sir."
"There's nothing to tell, or nothing much," replied the local
secretary, bitterly. "The business he's been giving us has been
dropping off,--we haven't got a new risk out of him in a month and
we've been losing a lot of our renewals,--and yesterday Charlie saw his
placer going into the Salamander office with a bundle of binders."
"The Salamander? O'Connor!"
"Yes, sir, O'Connor. So to-day I went around to the restaurant where
he eats when he comes down town. He was there."
"O'Brien, you mean? Well, what did he say?"
"He said," replied Cuyler, slowly, "that he had no complaint to make of
the way we'd treated him, but that the Salamander was offering him
facilities which we didn't offer him, and he felt obliged to do
something for them."
"He means they're paying him excess brokerage or something of that
sort," said Mr. Wintermuth, acidly.
"Yes, I suppose so, but of course that's a thing you can't say unless
you're in a position to prove it. Anyhow, he's gone--and about twenty
thousand dollars worth of preferred business with a thirty per cent
loss ratio for ten years has gone with him."
The President rose and walked up and down his office. This was
bringing the fight to his very door, with a vengeance.
"What can we do about it?" he said, stopping in front of Cuyler and
fixing on that dismayed person a vaguely furious gaze.
"I don't know. I suppose we'll have to hunt around and dig up another
branch manager in O'Brien's place. It'll take a lot of hunting,
though. You don't pick up a business like that every day in the week."
The President could make no better suggestion, and in this instance he
did not call the Vice-President into conference.
"Do the best you can, then," he said shortly; "and let me know how
you're getting along."
Mr. Cuyler descended gloomily to his proper milieu, and took up the
task of finding a branch office manager to replace the recreant
O'Brien. But agents like O'Brien were few, and most of the best of
them had their own old-established connections with other companies.
Again, the Guardian's reputation for conservatism made Cuyler's task
the harder. One or two, after considering the matter, were frightened
away by their dread lest the Guardian accept nothing but their more
desirable risks, making it all the more difficult for them to place
those that were not so desirable. The Guardian's local secretary had
as wide an acquaintance as any man on the Street, but he found himself
confronted by an exceedingly difficult problem.
Meanwhile a branch manager must be secured. The company's local income
was dropping behind in a way that had not happened within the memory of
man. In this state of affairs it was not long before Cuyler again
sought Mr. Wintermuth, and this time the advice of Mr. Gunterson was
solicited.
It had been nearly a week since Mr. Gunterson had been impaled upon any
very serious dilemma, and in this interval he had regained much of his
shaken confidence, so that he addressed himself to the solution of Mr.
Cuyler's difficulties with much of his pristine assurance.
"Why not get Joe Darkner? He's got a fine class of business and a lot
of it," he suggested at once.
"Yes, but he's sewed up body and soul with the National of Norway,"
Cuyler responded shortly.
"Well, what's the matter with Hart and Leith?"
"Nothing but East Side stuff. Besides, they're dead ones--won't last
out the year," replied the local underwriter, somewhat impatiently. As
though he had not canvassed such obvious possibilities as these!
"Why not try Schermerhorn and Snow?" was Mr. Gunterson's next
suggestion.
The President broke into the discussion.
"They've been uptown managers of the Inland for twenty years. And Snow
is a big stockholder in the company. We would be wasting our time to
approach them."
There was a hint of contempt in his tone. A man who volunteered
helpful advice about a difficult situation without being in possession
of the most rudimentary information bearing on it was hardly worthy of
serious attention. Perhaps the keen ear of the Vice-President detected
this, for he flushed slightly, and was silent for a moment.
"I'll give the matter my attention," he said reassuringly to Cuyler.
"I'm a little out of touch with local affairs, but I know plenty of
first-rate uptown brokers, and I guess I can locate us to good
advantage. I'll see you about it later."
And he made his majestic exit.
The matter being now under his august advisement, it might have been
supposed that relief was in sight and a new and desirable connection as
good as made. But in less than a week from the time of this
conversation Mr. Cuyler again sought the President, and the expression
of his face could not have been misinterpreted.
"Well, what's the matter now?" Mr. Wintermuth inquired, as the local
underwriter seated himself.
"Who do you think is gone now?" said Cuyler, abruptly.
"Who?" demanded his superior officer.
"Jenkinson--and Hammond, Dow, and Company."
"Gone!" repeated the President, slowly. The brokers in question were
known to be on the most friendly terms with the company, and it was
generally supposed that the first choice of most of their business went
to the Guardian. "Gone! What do you mean? Nothing has happened to
either of those people! What are you talking of?"
"I mean they're gone, so far as the Guardian is concerned. We've taken
as much as ten thousand a year from each of those offices. And now
O'Connor's got them."
The President looked at him in silence.
"I knew something was the matter, and to-day I saw O'Connor and
Jenkinson at lunch, laughing and talking as familiar as though they'd
been friends for years. It's no use, sir--he's going after every
really good broker that we've got attached to us."
"But the Salamander can't take care of all their business. Why, those
two firms must do business with nearly every office on the Street,
anyway."
"The Salamander will take all the best of the business we get now, or
most of it, and help them out, I suppose, on a lot of tough risks that
I've never been willing to write. O'Connor's a plunger, you know, when
he's got a gambling company back of him. It looks to me as if we'd
only get what he left--targets, and big lines where Jenkinson and
Hammond Dow have enough to go round."
Mr. Cuyler's oldest friend had never seen him more troubled than at
this moment. So deep, in fact, was his gloom that the President put
aside his own concern to try to reassure his old counterman. In this
he succeeded not at all; Mr. Cuyler's dejection was settled.
"What about a branch manager in place of O'Brien?" inquired Mr.
Wintermuth at length, thinking at least to change the subject, and
hoping to touch a brighter theme. Mr. Cuyler's face darkened still
further, if such a thing were possible.
"Nothing doing," he said inelegantly but comprehensively.
"Hasn't Mr. Gunterson--?" the President began, but he stopped short.
"What's that?" he asked sharply. "What were you going to say?"
"I guess I'd better not say it," responded the local underwriter with
deliberation.
"Go ahead," said his chief.
"Well, then," the other answered, "I was going to say 'To hell with
Gunterson!'"
Mr. Wintermuth leaned back in his chair, with his eyes fixed on his
subordinate.
"Cuyler," he said, "Mr. Gunterson is your superior officer, and that
was an entirely improper thing for you to say. But I've known you,
Cuyler, for forty years, and I don't mind telling you that that is
exactly what I have been wanting to say about Mr. Gunterson for the
last three weeks."
A rueful smile broke through the gloom of both.
"Well, I'm glad you feel the same way about it, and I'm glad I got it
out of my system; but I don't see that it helps things much, does it?"
the local underwriter replied.
"I'm not so sure of that," said Mr. Wintermuth. "It helps me, and
possibly the assistance will spread to the whole situation later on."
Meanwhile the gentleman who was thus summarily consigned to the
infernal regions was doing his vague utmost to cope with three
situations at once, any one of which would have been entirely beyond
his capabilities to control. New York, Philadelphia, and the Eastern
field as a whole,--each was a problem in itself, and each was getting
farther and farther out of hand. The Guardian's field men were
demoralized, beholding the fine agency plant of their company crumble
and melt away while they stood helpless to hold it together. And Mr.
Gunterson, when asked for remedies, could reply only in nebulous words
of even more crepuscular and doubtful pertinence. New York was
admittedly beyond him, and Philadelphia, harkening to siren voices that
promised great things, was presently to vote on the separation rule for
that city.
It is a depressing business, this watching the burning of one's own
ancestral house, the sinking of one's proudest ship of all the fleet.
It was altogether too much for Mr. Wintermuth. For nearly a week he
was missing from the office, and no man at the Guardian knew of his
whereabouts. With the decline in volume of the company's business, the
amount of routine work in the office became unbearably, demoralizingly
light. The map clerks loafed and the bookkeepers joked with one
another. Smith found time hanging heavy on his hands; but by Mr.
Gunterson's orders he stayed at his desk, although he could have done
much, had he been permitted to go out among his agents in the field, to
stem the tide.
In the local department the atmosphere was charged with the contagious
mourning of Mr. Cuyler, who with funereal face sat contemplating the
shrinkage of his business. For with the loss of his branch manager and
his two best brokers, there was a deficit in his premium returns which
he could not overcome. And certainly his melancholy countenance did
not attract business; it was a bold placer indeed who tried with quip
and banter to secure Mr. Cuyler's acceptance of a doubtful risk. His
world was awry, and all who ran might read it. His brow became
unpleasantly corrugated, his smile a thing of the past. If Mr.
O'Connor had wanted evidence of the success of his local campaign, he
could have gained it from one look at Mr. Cuyler.
Above stairs, however, doom being still a matter of immediate prospect
rather than a thing accomplished, Mr. Gunterson still held forth,
maintaining a sort of fictitious calm. At times he was even cheerful,
and did his best to rally his dazed and despondent subordinates. But
Bartels, seeing slip away accounts of agents he had audited for twenty
years, was in a state of stubborn, uncompromising rage which closely
resembled the dementia of a dumb animal, and Mr. Gunterson could do
nothing with him. Still the Vice-President struggled manfully to keep
his head above water, to seem cheerful and optimistic. He came from
his room one morning, and spoke briskly to Smith.
"I notice that some of your clerks leave their hats around loose
instead of hanging them up," he said. "That should not be allowed in a
well-conducted office. Please give the necessary orders."
Smith looked at him. This was the closest Mr. Gunterson had come to
real contact with the vital problems before him. A company in his
charge was disintegrating under his hesitant and futile hand--and he
talked about clerks' hats which should properly be hung up!
"Yes, sir," said Smith, quietly. "I'll speak about it."
The weeks followed one another with intolerable slowness. March began,
and dragged its weary length along, and still the darkness increased in
the Guardian's skies. From Boston the Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy
losses were beginning to come with the frequency and regularity of the
shots from a rapid-fire gun. The East was thoroughly disorganized, and
even the West, apparently by some subtle psychological influence, was
beginning to experience a sympathetic slump. Philadelphia still hung
on, the local agents not having been able to agree on any plan of
compensation for separating its Conference sheep from their alien goat
associates.
Mr. Wintermuth, silent and noncommittal, had returned to the office,
but took little part in the conduct of his company's underwriting
affairs. And in this manner March wore itself almost out--and it
seemed as though the Guardian's span of life were growing rapidly
shorter.
On the last day of the month there was a meeting of the directors in
the closed room off the President's own. It was a short meeting, and
Mr. Wintermuth did the most of the talking, while Mr. Whitehill, who
had advocated the election of Mr. Gunterson, had little to say. And so
it befell that the directors, after voting him salary in advance for a
liberal term, accepted the resignation from the Guardian of Samuel
Gunterson; and to fill the vacancy so created, there was unanimously
elected to be Vice-President and under-writing manager, Richard Smith.