Читать книгу Dumbells of Business - Louis Custer Martin Reed - Страница 6

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ON A hell-hot Saturday afternoon in August a certain American manufacturer sat in his executive oven mopping like a German chef.

The Cashier came in and spread before him the weekly Worry Sheet, and then chugged off for the week-end in his little threshing machine.

All the other Help had of course already gone, for it was about ten minutes before closing time.

The only man left around the Works was the afore-specified manufacturer. He couldn’t get off because he was the Boss.

Suddenly, without warning, prologue, or advance copy for the Press, he launched a vicious right-arm jab at two million flies that were mobilizing on his occiput, and then lammed out the following trenchant blank verse:

“Blankety blank my hide if I ain’t getting hankety-pankety sick of this blank country and its laws. Here I am, week in and week out, sweating like a Somali dock-hand to make both ends meet, and instead of being charted up as a useful, constructive factor in the country’s development, I’m hooted from the house-tops, shot at from ambush, chased up trees, and hounded like a pole-cat.

“The goods I make are clean, legitimate, honorable goods, and a public necessity. By their manufacture and sale, thousands of people have it soft on both the productive and distributive ends of the line. If it were not for this business, this two-spot town would be fanning for air inside twenty-four hours, and hundreds of happy homes would be hurdling to Hades.

“Not a week goes by that I’m not digging up for some Church, School, Library, Fair, Famine, Hospital or some form of wallet-puller. I pay more town, county, state and federal taxes than the whole loafing lot of Timber Tops at Washington put together.

“And yet every move I make, or don’t make, I’m yanked up before some inch-browed Investigating Committee to explain why I didn’t do what I did, or did do what I didn’t.

“First they fan me for maintaining prices and then for cutting prices. They lower freight rates so I can compete in a certain market, and then just when I’ve gone to the expense of advertising and traveling it, the State and Interstate Commissions get into a dog-fight and they shoot the freight rates up again.

“They charge me an Income Tax on what I make, and an Income Tax on what I lose. They compel me to fill out long, winding webbed-up Forms that they don’t understand themselves, and that would be sufficient to dam any Office Boy in the land for business incompetence.

“Out of the taxes that I and my impotent kind are soaked with, they send a lot of clerks over the globe to write high-school tracts on the Old Stuff about our Great Trade Chances Abroad, and then spring a Seaman’s Law joker that tosses American Shipping into the Discard and puts our goods at the mercy of ships of Nations that are out to stick tacks in the tire of American Trade.

“For twenty years sane men have been struggling to pull the Tariff out of the toils of Party Pilferers and give Industry a chance to tell where it’s at, and yet to this muggy day it is made the mule on which Boneheads in black fedoras ride in and out of Congress.

“I maintain that the backbone, brains and belly of this Nation is BUSINESS, and yet when it comes to enacting legislation, Business hasn’t the voice of a pink-eyed chigger. It is forced to operate under laws made by men that couldn’t hold a bill clerk’s job in a Brooklyn kiosk, and I for one am getting good and dam sick of the whole frowsy, fiddling farce.”

With this perorational explosion, Comrade Manufacturer slapped down the corrugated cover of his Roll Top, jammed his hat on a bent ear, and soled off home to take it out on The Folks.

Monday morning came around, according to cosmic custom. The much admired face of the office clock smiled out the hour of ten, and the last story of the week-end’s mush had been passed along Bookkeeper’s Row.

A neatly harnessed young man with a well-groomed superstructure appeared at the General Office Door.

“What is the nature of your business?” inquired the Office Rat in a ripsaw crescendo.

“Tell him I am a Field Secretary of the National Business Men’s Phalanx, lately organized to express the collective business sentiment of the Nation to the law-builders at Washington,” replied the Field Secretary. “And tell him,” he added, handing out his official pasteboard, “that I am here to explain to him why he should become a member.”

The boy bowlegged off to an adjoining office and returned with the pleasing tidings that the Boss was Too Busy.

“Go back and tell him that it is to his interest that I be allowed to come alongside now,” said Field Secretary.

The boy reluctantly went away again, and in a moment later came back and told the F. S. to take a seat. Whereupon the F. S. took it, and then for one long, lonely newspaper-reading, thumb-twirling, watch-glancing hour he held it down without a whimper.

Finally he called the boy again and told him that he’d like to see the Boss during the present era if possible. The boy waddled off once more to the secret chamber of the Great and Grouchy One. When he returned he brought back this cheery message:

“Tell the gentleman I don’t believe I care to go into the matter. I am Very Busy today, and besides, I am not in favor of these Associations that cost a lot of money and produce no results.”

“Very well,” replied the Field Secretary sweetly, “I’ll consider myself null and void.”

“But just kindly inform your intelligent Boss for me,” he continued, “that the reason these Associations cost a lot of money is because of the time they lose in hanging around waiting to get possum heads like himself to see their own Game. And the reason they ‘produce no results’ is because stupid men can’t see that they’ve got to get together to produce results.”

“And tell him further,” went on Field Sec., edging toward the door and raising his voice just high enough so that it could be heard about seven miles, “that while I shall expect to lose my good hundred-dollar job for it, I can not restrain myself the pleasure of telling him and his visionless ilk that they deserve just exactly the kind of legislation they are getting, and that as far as I myself am concerned, they can all go and take a great big jump into the seventeenth sub-basement of hell. Good-NIGHT!”

And with this impressive Valedictory the Field Secretary departed, slamming the door so hard that it jarred the ledger out of balance and woke up every clerk in the place.

Lesson for Today: There are none so blind as the trusting husband and the bright-eyed business man.