Part 5

"Weinie," said Max, exultingly, "this makes you. Be very nice to Mr. Rutgers. You'll have to pay him thousands of dollars--"

"Then, you vas in league mit him?"

"No. But he's a genius!"

"I thought he was German," said C. Weinpusslacher, controversially.

"Get busy, Weinie. The crowd will be here in a minute. And don't ask Mr. Rutgers to pay for his dinner."

"Why not?" growled Weinie. He was on his way to a sure million. That made the growl natural.

"What is thirty dollars for their dinner to thirty thousand dollars worth of free advertising?"

"Thirty dollars," observed C. Weinpusslacher, thriftily, "is _thirty dollars_!"

"Bah!"

"I tell you, it is, mister." C. Weinpusslacher frowned pugnaciously.

But Onthemaker knew his man. So he said: "I'll get Meyer Rabinowitz to give us an option on the property to-night before he reads the newspapers. As Rutgers said, once your place is a success, you'll have to pay any price the landlord wants. Meyer's got you! I can hear your squeals of agony already!"

Max shook his head so gloomily that C. Weinpusslacher actually began to tremble with joy. The thought of making money did not move him. The thought of losing the money he had not made, did. Oh yes; born money-makers!

By the time H. Rutgers arrived at the Colossal Restaurant Caspar Weinpusslacher, Esq., and the Hon. Maximilian Onthemaker had constituted themselves into a highly enthusiastic reception committee, for the crowd that came with H. Rutgers filled the street so that all you heard was the squealing and cursing of persons that were pressed against iron newel-posts of the old-fashioned stoops or precipitated into basements and cellars. Sixty policemen, impartially cursing the Mayor, Epictetus, and H. Rutgers, and yearning for the days of Aleck Williams, when clubs were made to be used and not to be fined for, endeavored to keep the crowd moving.

"You'll find everything ready, Mr. Rutgers," said M. Onthemaker. "Here is one of my cards. The name, you will see," he almost shouted, "is spelled with a _k_ not _h_--O-n-t-h-e-m-a-k-e-r. Everything is ready, Mr. Secretary." He looked at the reporters out of a corner of his eye.

"And it won't cost you nothing, not one cent," interjected C. Weinpusslacher, eagerly and distinctly. "Any feller wot's smart like you, Mr. Rutchers--"

"And the poor starving men," quickly interjected M. Onthemaker, not wishing for character-analyses yet, "who are the victims of a ruthless industrial system--"

"Yah, sandwiches!" put in C. Weinpusslacher.

M. Onthemaker grimaced horribly, and C. Weinpusslacher was silent for a minute. Presently he told Rutgers, "They get enough to eat here, anyways, I bet you."

He glared with a sort of malevolent triumph at M. Onthemaker, until he heard the boss say in stern accents:

"That, of course, Weinpusslacher, includes a couple of beers apiece."

"Of course! Of course!" put in M. Onthemaker, hastily. "The representatives of the press will sit at their own table, at which I am to have the honor of presiding, Max Onthemaker--O-n-t-h-e-m--"

"We got it down," the _Evening Journal_ man assured him, amiably.

C. Weinpusslacher was so angry that anybody should help him to make money, when half the pleasure is in making it yourself out of your fellow-men, that he said, spitefully, "There will be free beer!"

Hendrik Rutgers took an innkeeper's notion and made of it the most remarkable platform in the history of party government. He said, sternly, "Everything free for free men!"

A grunting murmur ran down the line of derelicts--the inarticulate tribute of great thirst to great leadership. In a hundred pairs of eyes a human hope kindled its fire for the first time in two hundred years!

Great indeed was Hendrik Rutgers!

His faithful sandwiches would go through fire for him! A man who can get free beer for Sahara throats could put out the fire--with more beer.

The boards were hung around the great hall in plain sight of the reporters, who copied the legends, that all America might read. While they were writing, Caspar was hiring thirty extra waiters and turning people away. Hendrik went from man to man, sternly warning that no one must begin to eat until he gave the order. A violation of his order would entail the loss of the dinner and most of the scalp. He also said they must not linger over their victuals, and told them that two extra beers apiece would be awarded to the ten men who finished first.

He had made up his mind that the cold and callous world should be told how starving men eat.

What do people who get enough to eat know about starving men?

Nothing!

They impede the world's progress by being content. Human pigs!

In a surprisingly short time one hundred complete dinners were in front of one hundred starving men. Six bartenders were busy filling schooners--in plain sight of the starving men. But the boss's awful frown held them in check. Each man began to tremble in advance--fearing he might not be one of the ten to win the extra schooners.

The reporters looked at the hundred faces and began to write like mad.

Hendrik rose. There was an awed silence. The reporters stopped writing. One hundred inferior maxillaries began to castanet away like mad. The boss held up a hand. Then he said in measured tones:

"May God be good to us sandwich-men again this year! _Eat!_"

When he said eat, men ate. Don't forget the moral effect of commanding and being obeyed!

They flung themselves on the food like wild beasts, and made animal noises in their throats. They disdained forks, knives, and spoons. They used claws and jaws on meat, coffee, bread, potatoes, soup, or pie whichever was nearest.

No man wanted to be the last to finish.

"My God!" exclaimed the _Evening Post_ man. "This is absolutely horrible!"

"Pippin!" said the creative artist from the Sun.

All of them would treat it as a Belasco production. That is, they would impart to it all the dignity and importance of a political convention.

At 8 P.M. Hendrik Rutgers, man of destiny, rose to speak. He never even glanced at the reporters. He said, very earnestly, to his tattered cohorts:

"Comrades! Ours is beyond question the only labor union in the United States, and, for all I know, in the entire world, that is not monopolistic in its tendencies. We are individualists because advertising is not a science nor a trade, but an art, and we are artists. When the advertisers' greed saw the artists' hunger, the result was _that_!" He pointed to five score dehumanized faces before him.

"Great!" murmured the _Sun_ man.

"Hereafter watch the sandwich-man, and in one corner of the sign look for the union label--a skeleton carrying a coffin, to remind us that no matter what a man is when he is born, he goes to his Maker between boards. In death all men are equal, and in his coffin a man is the Ultimate Sandwich!"

"That's literature!" muttered the serious young man from the _Journal_.

"We refuse to be thieves. Therefore we decline to do any sandwiching for patent medicines, banks, quack cures, fraudulent stores, immoral books, coal-dealers, fake doctors, suburban real estate, bum chiropodists, or disreputable people of any kind, class, or nature whatsoever. We start with professional ethics, which is where most professions end. We who have been the lowest of the low class that work for their daily bread are now the S. A. S. A.--the Society of American Sandwich Artists. All we ask is permission to live! Our headquarters will be in the Allied Arts Building on Fifth Avenue."

His speech had quotable phrases. A country that once cast the biggest vote in its history for the square deal, that makes minions of dollars out of asking you if you see that hump, and from promising to do the rest if you push the button, and boasts of the thorn that made a rose famous, is bound to be governed by phrases. The only exceptions are the Ten Commandments. They are quotable, but not memorable.

All the newspapers spread themselves on that story. In their clubs the managing editors heard their fellow-members talk about the parade, and this made each M. E. telephone to the city editor to play it up. It was too picturesque not to be good reading, and since good reading is always easy writing, both reporters and editorial writers enjoyed themselves. That made them artists instead of wage-earners.

Hendrik Rutgers possessed the same quality of political instinct that nearly made the luckiest man in the world President of the United States. By blindly following it, young Mr. Rutgers jumped into the very heart of a profound truth. And once he landed, the same sublimated sagacity impelled him to stamp with both feet hard. Then, unemotionally perceiving exactly what he had done, he proceeded very carefully to pick out his own philosophical steps, in order to be able later on to prove that he had been coldly logical. Impulsive humanity always distrusts impulsiveness in others. Leaders, therefore, always call them carefully considered plans.

In all irreligious countries, as Hendrik Rutgers, astutely arguing backward, told himself, the people who buy, sell, and vote are alive only to To-day and therefore dare not take heed of the Hereafter. This has exalted _news_ to the dignity of a sacred commandment.

In such communities success is necessarily a matter of skilful publicity.

Who is the greatest of all press agents, working while you sleep and even when you blunder?

The People!

The front page of the newspaper is therefore the arena of to-day!

To live in that page, all you have to do is to become News.

Once you become News all the king-making reporters of all the nation-making newspapers become your press agents. The public does the rest and pays all salaries.

Thrilled by his discovery, Hendrik called Max Onthemaker to one side and, with the air of a man risking one hundred and two millions of cash, said to him: "I have decided to make you chief counsel of my society. Your services will entitle you to represent me."

Never had man been so lavishly overpaid for breathing since the dawn of historical time. Hendrik went on, still imperial in bounty:

"I have in mind some great things. Every one of them will be worth as much space as the newspapers will give to this dinner. Do you see your chance?"

"I can't live on newspaper articles," began Max, elated but dissembling.

"You can die without them. Chronic obscurity; acute starvation," said Hendrik Rutgers in his clinical voice. "I not only do not propose to pay you a cent, but I expect you to pay all necessary expenses out of your privy purse without a murmur--unless said murmur is intended to express your legal opinion and your gratitude. I shall give you an opportunity to represent my society"--you would have sworn he was saying _my regiment_--"in actions involving the most famous names in America."

"For instance?" asked M. Onthemaker, trying to speak skeptically, that his eagerness might not show too plainly.

Hendrik Rutgers named six of the mightiest.

"You're on, Mr. Rutgers," said Max, enthusiastically. "Now, I think--"

"Wait!" interrupted Hendrik, coldly. "Never forget that I am not your press agent. You are mine."

"There will be glory enough to go around," said Max Onthemaker in his police-court voice. "When do we begin?"

"To-morrow."

"Yes, sir. And now--"

"My _now_ is your _when_! Your job is to find the legal way of helping the Cause."

"I will!" promised Onthemaker, heartfully. The Cause would be his Cause. He'd fix it so they couldn't leave out his name.

But Hendrik saw the gleam in the lawyer's eye.

That's the worst of all thoughts of self. They invariably are undisguisable.

"The Cause, Onthemaker," said Hendrik, sternly, "is the cause of the Society of American Sandwich Artists. We are not associated to make money for ourselves, but for our employers. This is revolutionary. Moreover, we are not working-men, but artists. Therefore our men not only love their work, but are law-abiding. This will make the employers helpless to retaliate. We shall never do anything without invoking the aid of the law, for I believe that the law will help the poor not less than the rich if properly--"

"Advertised," prompted Max. "I get you. In the forum of the people's liberties--the daily papers--is the place to try--"

Hendrik held up a hand. He had chosen the right lawyer. The interpretation of the law depends exclusively upon the tone of voice. All reporters are trained to be judges of elocution. They have to be, in republics.

"To-morrow--" Here Hendrik paused.

Max's face paled slightly as he waited. What was coming?

Hendrik finished: "_I shall telephone to you!_"

Max drew in his breath sharply.

Hendrik then nodded. It meant, "You have my permission to retire!"

"Thank you, Mr. Rutgers," said Max, respectfully, and withdrew from the presence on tiptoe.

Hendrik then beckoned to his sandwich lieutenant. "Fleming!" he said, sternly.

Fleming threw up an arm defensively from force of habit--the slave's immemorial salute. Then he grinned sheepishly. Then he said, eagerly, "Yes, boss!"

"I'm going to make you chief of the Meal Ticket Department, and I expect you to maintain discipline. But if I ever hear of any graft, such as accepting bonuses--" He closed his jaws and his fists. When you close both at the same time you inevitably win the debate. It is, however, difficult.

"Honest, b-boss," stammered Fleming, his eyes on Hendrik's right fist. "Honest, I--"

The boss's right unclenched itself. Fleming drew in a deep breath.

"Get the names and addresses of all the men here--in their own writing. Ask Onthemaker for a blank-book, and when the men have signed give the book back to him. They've got to sign!"

Fleming's face was pale but resigned. Signatures are lethal weapons in all industrial democracies. Ask the note-teller in any bank. But the boss had said, "_Sign!_"

Kismet!

"And you keep a book of your own so that when I want ten or twenty men of a certain type and appearance you will know where to find them. I hold you responsible!"

Poor Fleming almost collapsed. Responsibility in a republic really means accountability. Our entire system of law, as a great psychologist has pointed out, is based upon the same confusion of definitions.

Hendrik saw the fear of statutory punishment seep into his lieutenant's soul. He stopped it at exactly the right point.

"Fleming," he said, kindly, "I trust you!"

Fleming felt himself decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of Unearned Food. It made him into an active citizen.

"I'll get the men when you shout, boss!" he promised, proudly, realizing the meaning of the duty of a voter.

However, it would never do to have your creatures think they also have the power to create. Therefore Hendrik said, "If you don't--"

"I'll get 'em for you, b-boss. Honest, I will!" meekly promised Fleming, taking his place in the ranks. He was an ideal cabinet officer.

Hendrik Rutgers did not _know_ men. He _guessed_ them. He thus saved himself the fatigue of thinking.

Weinpusslacher swaggered by, counting his millions. He had begun to feel haughty. Hendrik stopped him by lifting his right forefinger and then smartly moving it Hendrikward.

"Weinie, I guess you're famous. You give the free meal tickets to Onthemaker. And don't try to cheat!"

"I never do such--" began Caspar, angrily.

"You never will to me," interrupted Hendrik, making Weinie's unuttered words his own. It took away from Weinie all sense of proprietorship in his own property.

This also is called genius. Such men should be tax-collectors instead of railroad bankers.

Hendrik glanced toward the reporters and saw that Mr. Onthemaker was talking to them and looking at him--looking at him both ingratiatingly and proudly. He therefore knew that Max was being quoted by the newspaper men, and the only subject on which they would quote him was Hendrik Rutgers. He also knew that the desire for reflected glory, in all newspaper-reading countries, is so strong that Max would be a great political historian. The best way to blow your own horn is to lend it to an obscure friend.

Hendrik Rutgers left the Colossal Restaurant certain that he was News, and that his job consisted of continuing to be News.

To become News and then to continue to be News a man must be plausible, persistent, and picturesque.

There was no altitude of success to which he might not climb, provided he lost six-sevenths of his name and mutilated his surname in like degree.

He must become two letters: _H. R._

He thus would become an immortal during his own lifetime, which was immortality enough for any man who merely wished to acquire fame, wealth, and one wife in his own country.

So brightly lighted was his road that he knew exactly where to plant each foot--in the front page!

He must do it all. Therefore he must make others do the work. But this man who now was a million miles beyond all bank clerks knew exactly _what_ he needed, which made it easy for him to know exactly _whom_ he needed. This knowledge would establish the basis on which the workers must work.

He sought a newspaper-advertising agency; ordered the manager to insert in all the morning papers the same advertisement, in large type, with triple spacing, to show that money was no object.

This always impresses people who wish to make money.

The advertisement read:

WANTED--FIRST-CLASS ADVERTISING CANVASSERS. I AM ANXIOUS TO PAY 50 PER CENT. MORE THAN IS CUSTOMARY TO SUCH MEN. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU, MY HUNGRY AND HOPEFUL FRIEND! Apply between 9 and 10 A.M. to

H. R.

ALLIED ARTS BLDG.

_P. S. The better the men the fewer I need. The fewer I use the greater the profit to the lucky ones. Keep away unless you are a Wonder._

It was the first time that an advertisement for "Help Wanted" had contained a postscriptum. H. R. did it because he knew that the unusualness of it would make professional people talk. Every experienced advertising man must realize that H. R. had not written an advertisement, but had dictated a brief letter to him. The signer was too busy and too much in earnest to compose a regular advertisement.

Genius neglects no opportunity, however slight. Consider the small but efficient yellow-fever microbe.

V

Monday morning, at 8.30 A.M., H. R. was in his office. At 8.35 he had engaged a stenographer by telephone and told the starter and the elevator-men who H. R. was. Later on the dozen men who answered the advertisement made it impossible for either starter or elevator-men ever to forget who H. R. was without the use of gratuities, profanity, or promises.

H. R.'s first task was to compose memoranda for the use and guidance of Max Onthemaker and Lieutenant Fleming. At 8.45 the first-class advertising canvassers began to appear in numbers. Really efficient men are never modest. Neither are really inefficient men. Efficiency is always a matter of personal judgment. Even efficiency experts will tell you that nobody is really efficient until efficiency experts have said so.

H. R. allowed the applicants to accumulate in the anteroom. The new stenographer had been told to write, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party" two thousand times and to time herself. The spectators thereby realized that this was a busy office.

He was confronting his first crisis--the selection of a man who must not only be highly competent, but must be made to realize that H. R. was a pioneer, a man to whom tradition, precedents, and custom were less than nothing. H. R. studied the situation and then went out to the anteroom and looked at the waiting dozen slowly.

There are a few men in the world who can look a crowd from head to foot and manage to make each man in it feel guilty. After H. R. had so looked at them, he asked, skeptically, "Are _all_ of you first-class men?"

To their honor be it said, not one of them answered No. Men collectively may be cruel or blind, but seldom petty or egotistical. Observe mobs.

H. R. turned his back on the crowd and returned to his private office. He did it on purpose. Men usually follow those who act as if they do not care whether they have a following or not. It is wiser to be wrong and not hesitate than to vacillate and be right. Besides, much quicker.

At the threshold he half turned and, without looking at any one in particular, said: "I need only four first-class men. The others might as well go away."

Twelve men heard him. Twelve men followed him.

He sat down at his new desk, put the unpaid bill for same in a drawer, and confronted them.

"Eight of you can go," he observed, and waited.

Each man cast a glance of pity at his neighbor.

"Don't be so modest," H. R. told them, kindly.

"You said first-class men?" politely inquired a young man, smooth-shaven, blond, blue-eyed, and very clean-looking.

"Yes," answered H. R.

"That's what I understood," said the young man, extending his hand. "Barrett's my name."

H. R. ignored the outstretched hand and stared at the clean-looking young man.

On the faces of eleven Christian gentlemen came a fraternal look of self-conscious modesty. But young Mr. Barrett, unabashed, said, cheerily:

"Keep on looking. _I_ know you want me. When _you_ discover it, we'll do business."

"Go to the foot of the class," said H. R., impassively. You could tell nothing from his voice. It is a valuable gift.

The young man eyed H. R. shrewdly, then walked to a corner of the room, sat down, pulled a memorandum-book from his pocket, and began to count his contracts in advance.

"Your _last_ name, please," said H. R., looking as if what he had asked for was the _right_ name. The assumption of guilt has the effect of putting even the innocent on the defensive. The strategic inferiority of the defensive is always acknowledged by the defeated--even before the defeat.

He jotted down the replies, one after another. Within one and three-quarter minutes these men felt themselves deprived of their individual entities. They had been turned into a list of surnames, a fragment of the rabble.

The leader stood alone--he alone had a _first_ name! Smith merely votes; John Smith has his own opinion. H. R. had acted instinctively. He never would have had the conscious wisdom of an editorial writer. There are many editorial writers in all republics. Hence, practical politics.

"Where did you see my advertisement?" asked H. R. "One at a time, please. Also, state why you looked in that particular newspaper?"

They told him, one at a time, in the hearing of the others, thereby intensifying their own feeling of having been lumped into an electorate. He made notes as they answered. Some had seen it in the _Herald_. Others blamed the _World_ or the _Times_ or the _Sun_, or the _Tribune_. Three gave two papers; one had seen three. They expressed their professional opinion of that particular advertising medium, feeling that said opinion was a qualification of fitness.

Young Mr. Barrett from his chair answered: "In all the papers. I also looked in the German, Yiddish, and Italian papers; in the _Courier des Etats-Unis_, and in the first morning edition of every afternoon paper. I did it to get a line on _you_."

H. R. did not look as if he had heard Barrett. He said to the others: "I thank you all for coming. I shall not need Wilson, Streeter, Manley, Hill, Roberts, Smith, Jenks, or MacDuffy."

One of the rejected came forward, scowling. He was naturally a robust-looking person. He said, "Say, this is--"

H. R. did not allow the full expression of individual opinion--a form of salutary discipline which explains why people are governed. He snarled in a tone of voice that made his shoulders look a yard wide: "Mr. Book Agent, I've picked the men I want. What I don't want is to hear any remarks. Talk them into a dictagraph and send the cylinders by parcels post to my secretary."