Part 1

Chapter 14,171 wordsPublic domain

DUMBELLS OF BUSINESS

PROFF O.U. BOJACK (BUS.DOC.)

AUTHOR OF “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN SALESMANSHIP,” “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN BUYING,” “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN LOVE & MARRIAGE,” ETC.

Fighting Editor

“BOJACK’S NOISY EXPORTER”

Pruned of Profanity by LOUIS C. M. REED

1922 THE STRATFORD CO., PUBLISHERS Boston, Massachusetts

The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A.

_THESE playful biffs on the beak of Business appeared originally in a little House Magazine called “Auto Suggestions.”_

_Many of them have been completely revised for the purpose of this volume, over the rasping nasal protest of Proff Bojack who believes in letting Well Enough alone until it crawls up and bites you in the leg, as mentioned somewhere in the text—then roll over on the other side._

_The characters are drawn from the daily life of the average American business organization where men are somehow sweating through to Success against the cordovan inertia of the Dumbells of Business._

—_THE PRUNER_

DEDICATED WITH A WARMTH OF FELLOW FEELING TO ALL BEDEVILED BRETHERN OF THE BUSINESS WORLD

_The Author_

Contents

Hot Sketch No. Page 1 The Plant Cured of Mossbackitis 1 2 The Lurid Lot of the Leaker 13 3 The Self Abnegationist And His Finish 21 4 The Bird Who Berated Business Assn’s 29 5 The Advertising Genius of Squirrelville 39 6 The Salesman Who Became Buyer 47 7 The Pampered Dealer 59 8 The Efficiency Expert 69 9 The Road Rat Who Gave Up Home Comforts 85 10 The Man Who Organized Manufacturers 103 11 The Perpetual Planner 113 12 The Twin-Six Philanthropist 123 13 The Yob Who Let Business Slide 131 14 The Would-Be Sales Promoter 139 15 The Young Satellites of Stallville 157 16 The Benedict Who Wisdomed-Up 165 17 The Business Baggers of Punkton 173 18 The Picayune Planet 183 19 The Passing of the Buck Passer 191 20 The Executive With The Clerk’s Mind 199 21 The War Winning Patrioteer 209 22 Typical American And Critical American 219 23 When Mental Leech Meets Mental Leech 233 24 The Export Group Grafter 245

HOT SKETCH NO. 1

THE PLANT CURED OF MOSSBACKITIS

OUT among the gnarled oaks of Squirrel Cove there buzzed a busy manufacturing plant.

It had been established since Time wore a bib, and, as far back as History could recall, had been handed down from Whiskers to Whiskers without a break.

The same old Superintendent with his chew of Fine Cut tucked away in a back-cavity, was always on hand each generation to bury the father and drill the son into the mysteries of Production and Distribution. Old Faithful used to love to take off his beaver cap and stroke the top of his glazed Summit while he told some eager visitor all about the industrial heirloom and his long and watchful connection with it.

In the course of centuries the Concern had of course worked up some business around the County, but at no time did there ever occur what you would call a Sensational Increase in trade. In fact, careful scrutiny revealed nothing in the whole town that could be associated with a sensation of any kind.

The annual output of the particular Hive of Industry under discussion went wholly to Old Customers who had been buying regularly since Washington hurdled the Delaware. If any attempt was ever made to get New Business it was altogether an unconscious act, and no record of the perpetrator remains.

At the time of which we are now yodeling, the current Owner and Proprietor was closing in on his sixty-fifth Milestone, and, like his father and grandfather before him, he believed in letting Well Enough alone until it crawled up and bit him in the leg. Then he would roll over on the other side.

It is only natural that such a highly strung temperament as this should be accompanied by more or less radically advanced views on Business in general. This was indeed the case, yes. And he was a horrible spendthrift when it came to Advertising. In the course of say two lunar years his total linage amounted to about as much as a Fourth Avenue delicatessen. He never counted the cost of any plant installation under one figure.

If anybody had suggested travelling the Trade, the proposition would have met with the same enthusiastic endorsement that a Shell Game would get at a Dunkard picnic.

All salesmen were looked upon as a species of unclassified bandit that victimized Firms and Customers alike, and revelled at nights with Champagne, Chickens and Chant.

Now it so happened that our Captain of Industry had a daughter. In looks she was strictly neutral, and in intelligence just sort of medio-semi. Her heart was laced to a young Scrod she had met when she was East at School learning to parry and thrust with knife and fork.

She had never seen anything like this rollicking Young Buck from one end of her shaved-neck County to the other, and so she went limp the first time he threw a ray in her direction. He was a thoroughbred at that, and could get in and out of a Taxi without furring up his Top Hat, and pay a dinner check without stopping his story and then forgetting afterward what he was talking about.

It required no profound psychoanalysis to tell from Daughter’s manner that there was only one kernel in the crib so far as she was concerned. As for the tall-collared gentry of Squirrel Cove, the entries were closed and they knew it to a man and gave her the whole runway.

Now ever since Daughter was a baby blowing bubbles out of the corners of her mouth, Papa had lived in Mortal Dread of a day when she might buckle up with a man who would be only after his Thirty Dollars which he had slowly and painfully piled up through pluck, perseverance and pre-natal pull. And so when he saw her temperature rising and her appetite falling, he dug out her secret and then started on a quiet hunt to find out whether the daring Disturber was Grade A, or tinnif.

As he had feared, the Rat proved to be a Baltimore Luncher pulling down Fifteen Dollars per week and washing his own clothes in the bath tub.

This discovery caused a Family Upheaval which for pep, polish and all-round proficiency had all Mexican Mixups looking like a harmless after-school scamper at Hop Scotch.

Every evening at sundown when Father would come home from the din and roar of his quarter-acre Plant, the neighbors would gather at their windows for the latest war news. Sometimes the Carranzaists would be on top; at other times the Villaists and Zapaists would have it.

Daughter protested hotly during these Bloody Encounters that her king was Poor but Honest, but father had him sized up as a Single Cylinder.

One night when the walls were being freshly inlaid with flying furniture and bric-a-brac, Daughter ducked out of the peaceful abode and down to the Railway Station and caught the Milk Train for New York. The following Wednesday at 4 P. M., Kendallville Time, she took Philip Darlington Wakefield for Better or Worse and wired Father for his blessing and $100 to come back home on.

At first Father was all for raising his hand to High Heaven and pronouncing the Irish Cottage Curse with all the spine-chilling heroics about darkening the Threshold, but Mother looked quietly over her goggles and told him to cut the cheap melodramatic stuff and behave like a white man, and tell the Young Folks to buy a couple of postcards of the Woolworth Building and come back home.

Under this stinging philippic Father melted into the big armchair and became human, and a couple of days later the Bride and Groom blew into Squirrel Cove and turned all Main Street into little groups of excited goatees.

Philip Darlington gave Father the first Hoyo he had ever smoked and took the old gazunk completely off his underpinning by showing a knowledge of Industry and Finance that only a Fifteen Dollar New York clerk can possess. On the strength of it he landed a job in Father’s mighty Works and wasn’t there a week before every yunk in the place was plotting for his destruction.

The reason, tersely and succinctly expressed, was that Phil proved to have Ideas and nobody around the Works cared to deliberately expose himself to the danger of infection. But Phil went right ahead and shifted men and things here, there and everywhere, and put in Time Clocks and Cost Systems and all kinds of efficiency effects.

He took the dusty correspondence off the long wire and had it filed in steel filing cabinets, and reduced the length of the Daily Conference from three cigars to one cigar. He relieved the Shipping Clerk of the Sales end of the Business, and established a separate Purchasing Department, thereby lifting this important work from the shoulders of the Night Watchman.

Phil also got out the first and only Catalogue the concern had ever had in all their 4,000 years of aggressive Trade Building, and had the whole force threatening to strike when he announced that he was going out for New Business.

After a twenty-one round Go with Father-in-Law over the revolutionary question of Advertising, Phil got in touch with a Big Agency and listened to them reel off the usual now-you-want-to-start-off-with-a-page-in-the-Saturday-Evening-Post advice, after which he proceeded to map out his own campaign as is Customary with the Laity about to advertise.

Phil also had to back Father-in-Law up against the silo and sew up both his eyes and put a pair of vacuum-cup lips on him before he could get the Old Man to see the necessity of sending a force of bright-eyed Salesmen out on the Road to sell the Stuff. Phil said there was no use manufacturing a good article and then keeping it a secret.

Every day there was something unusual doing around the Works, and of course it was all very thrilling, but when the bills began to roll in, Father-in-Law threw thirty different kinds of foaming spasm, followed by Sinking Spells that threatened to lay him ’neath the Mossy Mound. But Phil was always there with the pulmotor and the Soothing Word to pull him through.

One day when everybody around the Office was getting all ready for the Last Sad Rites on account of all this frenzied expense, business suddenly began to pour in like beer out of a busted vat. Consternation thereupon Reigned Supreme and acted like a drunken sailor.

The little Plant squeaked and groaned and heaved and puffed until it fairly burst its little panties trying to keep up with Orders. All Squirrel Cove, from the Mayor down to the Poundmaster, was given a job at something or other, and Phil was heralded all the way from Angusville to Jowett Junction as the greatest Organizing Genius the County had ever known.

When the Fiscal Year ended and Father-in-Law took a happy peep at the Balance Sheet and saw that he had holed-out more coin than all his Ancestors put together, he called Phil to his parental side and shifted the following Beautiful Tribute from his proud bosom:

“My boy,” he said, “I feel like a tan-eyed gnat for having charted you up as a parasite when I first saw you looming up on the Links. I thought you were marrying my daughter just to romp off with her father’s little Yen Bag. I would have thought the same of any man who didn’t have a few crullers of his own. I didn’t realize that there might be a chance of my getting a dumsight more out of you than you could ever get out of me. Henceforth you are a fifty percent owner of this Dugout, and what’s more, here is a little present for you in recognition of your sterling worth.”

Phil stood the cotton umbrella in a corner and soled off to break the gladsome tidings to his wife and found her tossing tennis balls with some Tea Toad in a green Sport Coat. Later Phil spied the two walking together through the Big Grove and she was listing to starboard.

“H’m,” he h’md, “I’ve got the Old Man, but it’s cost me the gal.”

He turned sadly away, mumbling something about what he thought of a Life that kept a fellow always manoeuvering for position.

Over the hills came the floating fragrance of frying fishballs, while in the tall whiffletree above him a chipmunk chipped softly to its mate.

_Lesson for Today:_ When you set out to cure Industrial Mossbackitis, the dangers are great.

HOT SKETCH NO. 2

THE LURID LOT OF THE LEAKER

A YOUNG man had a job with an old organization.

The job was not that of General Manager.

Nor was it Department Manager.

It was not a managership of any kind, character, quality or description—all claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

It was just a job.

It was the kind of job that any young man with an eye on ideas and a finger on the future, might have with any old Organization steeped in stability and pickled in policy.

In other less alliterative language, we might smooth down our shirt-front and say that the young man had A Chance.

If we cared to toss off all restraint and emphasize the statement with grape-juice profanity, we might say that the young man had a Very, Very good chance.

But he didn’t know how to take care of his chance.

He took chances with his Chance.

And one day it got away from him.

When the Boss handed him his passports, he asked for an explanation, and the Boss passed him one, medium well done.

It ran as per follows, WITNESSETH:

“Young Man,” heaved the Boss, scratching his right ear pleasingly with his left thumb, “the reason we are decorating you with the Order of the Canned is because we have found that YOU LEAK. And any concern that does not plug the leak the moment they locate it, will soon be sitting around garter-high in the mire of misunderstanding.

“Were it not for the red-nosed fact that here and there in this Organization is a man foolish enough to be loyal to the institution that enables him to close down his troubles when he closes down his desk, the whole Office would by now be torn with internal strife like a rat-tailed Roadster, and we would be headed for the rocks of riot and rebellion.

“Your up-stairs piping is so defective that everything you take in at the ears runs out of your mouth. You hear one man spill some remark about another, and you scamper off with your little red eyes to tell the other.

“Then when the other comes back with a rib-rocker on the first man, you scamper back again and break the news to Number One.

“The other day you eared-in on a conversation I was having with my partner about one of our men, and in exactly eleven minutes by our beloved Office Clock the whole Force had tabulated the tidings.

“Before I had a chance to talk to the man myself, he came at me with the logical deduction that he had a right to be informed at first hands on a matter concerning himself that seemed to be as well known around the Works as the hour for Knocking off Work.

“And WITNESSETH: Sometimes when Party of the First Part has been discussing important matters in conference with himself or others, you have hopped around like a coolie with the dhobe itch, trying to sniff out some clue on which to ground a bit of gab.

“I have never walked through the office that I did not spot you back of a door holding a whisper-fest with somebody, and, if my memory isn’t fooling me, we have never yet talked here in the office about lifting or lopping prices, or changing selling plans, or shuffling Salesmen, or shaking up the territory, that it has not leaked out to the Road Robbins long before we wanted it to.

“We now know for a cinchety that you are the guilty goop because you fell for a plant that we had cleverly framed up with the kindly assistance of myself.

“AND, since we propose to run this roost harmoniously—radiating a wee wisp of sunshine and fellowship wherever we can, and making Business a pleasure instead of a punch-up—there does not seem to be any place around these puritanical precincts for a leaky radiator.

“You are bright and clever, and you don’t injure your spine trying to get out of the path of an idea, and, by all the rules but one, you should shoot right to the top of any business.

“The one rule that you have not yet sponged up is that Success is more than brains and bustle. Success is the art of closing up the Exhaust occasionally.

“I can find no doubt in any hole or corner of my mind that you have many times scratched your busy little head and wondered why you have remained in the same job all these centuries while other men not so clever as your oblique self have sailed right past you into the harbor of Heavy Responsibility With Correspondingly Light Pay. The reason is as stated in yon foregoing.

“Be it known to you further that no Business can succeed without Loyalty and Co-operation. Modern Business demands of every man that he be loyal, or be off.

“Pin-headedness, tale-peddling and office politics are barnacles on the barque of Business, and the Firm that does not scrape them off is doomed to decay.

“Any man with a brow an inch over all, should know that the lot of the Leaker means to be ultimately despised by the very men he has made confidants of.

“Every time you have started one of those he-said-that-you-said-that-I-said stories of yours, you have rawed up all the decent men of this Office.

“Today you stand about as popular around here as a hair in the butter; but you don’t know it, because, like all back-fence babblers, you are foggy up on the perceptive plane, and you think that the man who listens must like yourself be loose.

“Some day you will learn, young man, that a tight tongue makes a sagacious sky-piece—that to speak well is to cheat hell—that the chain of Successful Business is linked with loyalty—and the Leaker lands in Limbo long before the last lap’s run.

“Thanking you for your kind attention, and asking you to now kindly consider yourself sunk without warning, I beg to remain etc, etc.”

Having spake after the manner of the hereinbefore mentioned, Comrade Boss removed his eyes from the transgressor, and wheeled around in his chair.

And, taking his pen between his index finger and the back of his hand, began to sign yesterday’s mail.

So.

HOT SKETCH NO. 3

THE SELF ABNEGATIONIST AND HIS FINISH

THERE was a Large Employer with fantail whiskers who got good and sore at his Help.

They didn’t have the interests of the business At Heart, he said. All they cared about was to fist-in their salaries and see that the Office Clock was accurate.

Any time any of them did any dweedling little thing in the shape of exceptional work, they expected credit for it, he murmured.

If the Sales Manager pulled up his sales, he would pull down his vest and bid for congratulations.

If the Credit Man lost only 1/40th of 1 per cent on the year’s accounts, he would dodge around in front of the throne expecting to be caught and laureled.

If a stenographer got her dictation at four o’clock, and then jumped into the saddle and won the race before Big Whistle, she would expect her Dictator to say she was Some little hustlerine.

Even the Office Squirrel looked for commendation every time he discharged the responsibilities of his Office without fumble or fizzle.

What this Employer wanted, he contended, was employees who would work for the good of the Business and not be always thinking about their own good. He said he hadn’t a man around the place who could sink Self with the rock of Gibraltar tied around its neck. The reward for doing a good thing, he preached, was in having done it.

* * * * *

Now it so happened that Our Hero was a Town Pillar, and although he did not at any time lean toward the philanthrop stuff hard enough to push it over, still he felt that he’d like to do a few Good Things for the Community before he hopped the Styx.

In his mental unfoldment he had forged clear past the point where One feels that One has done One’s full duty when One takes care of One’s own wife and One’s children.

He felt that every man owed a responsibility to the Community in which he lived, moved and had his Three Squares.

So he decided to erect a public drinking fountain with a lion spitting fresh water from between its teeth.

He went and got some good news prints of himself, then called in the reporters and announced his decision. The announcement was followed by a shower of publicity in the local Press that would have cost Father John a hundred dollars.

One newspaper that gave him only a Stick and didn’t print his picture, was forthwith put upon the Drab List and the Standing Ad of his Business was withdrawn for life.

When the fountain was all set up, Our Hero declined to pay the bill until the name of the donor was carved in large letters in some conspicuous place, according to the Conditions of Agreement. So the Town Council met and decided to carve it on the southern view of the lion.

The minister of the Church which comrade Hero attended heard of his munificent gift to the Town. His Reverence got in some fast legwork and ran down the modest philanthropist just as the aforesaid latter was ducking into his office.

The following Sunday morning when the congregation assembled for a quiet snooze, the Minister got up in the turret and announced the recent donation of a beautiful stained-glass window.

In due time the window was puttied in, showing a patriarch with a staff and a cloven hat. But when Old Sol turned on his spotlight, did it reveal the graceful and modest inscription, “Donated by A Friend?” It did—NOT. It revealed the full and complete name of the generous benefactor in letters about the size of a small barn. The price he paid for the complete job was left off, however.

Sometime afterwards the Town got the community development bug. Our Hero stood up on a vinegar barrel at a mass meeting and told the assembled whiskers that there was no reason on the face of God’s Green Earth why they shouldn’t be as big as New York, and that if every man would Put his Shoulder to the Wheel they could make Chicago look like a way-station.

When the cheers died down, Our Hero was made Chairman of the Might and Main Committee. He took off his Prince Al and got on the job.

For six months he worked like a Zulu wharf-boy, and through his Untiring Efforts the town copped several new industries, and was lifted from the 34th to the 24th city of the State in point of population and municipal purity.

New York did not exactly get jealous and call for a re-canvass of the Census, but there was no question about the enhanced Well Being of the community as a result of Our Hero’s unselfish public spirit.

When the next mayoralty election came around, one of the lesser members of the Might and Main Committee, who had attended but one meeting and slept throughout, put himself up as a Candidate and offered the Committee’s record of achievement as the reason why all Patriotic Citizens should toss their votes in his tub.

Doc Hero tried to cut in and tell the excited Populace who it was that did the Real Work of the Might and Main Committee but he could not break through the line. The candidate was elected by an “overwhelming majority,” to coin a phrase.

Whereupon Uncle Hero sat him down and quilled a Public Letter to Ye Editor in which he Regretted Deeply that his work was not Appreciated and that he got no Credit for all he had done for the Town.

_Lesson for Today:_ When a man gets beyond the desire for personal praise he has got beyond the grave.

HOT SKETCH NO. 4

THE BIRD WHO BERATED BUSINESS ASSN’S

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