Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son | Page 9

son, Jim.
That was a good many years ago when the house was a much smaller
affair. Jim's father had a lot of money till he started out to buck the
universe and corner wheat. And the boy took all the fancy courses and
trimmings at college. The old man was mighty proud of Jim. Wanted
him to be a literary fellow. But old Durham found out what every one
learns who gets his ambitions mixed up with number two red--that
there's a heap of it lying around loose in the country. The bears did
quick work and kept the cash wheat coming in so lively that one
settling day half a dozen of us had to get under the market to keep it
from going to everlasting smash.
That day made young Jim a candidate for a job. It didn't take him long
to decide that the Lord would attend to keeping up the visible supply of
poetry, and that he had better turn his attention to the stocks of mess
pork. Next morning he was laying for me with a letter of introduction
when I got to the office, and when he found that I wouldn't have a
private secretary at any price, he applied for every other position on the
premises right down to office boy. I told him I was sorry, but I couldn't
do anything for him then; that we were letting men go, but I'd keep him
in mind, and so on. The fact was that I didn't think a fellow with Jim's
training would be much good, anyhow. But Jim hung on--said he'd
taken a fancy to the house, and wanted to work for it. Used to call by
about twice a week to find out if anything had turned up.
Finally, after about a month of this, he wore me down so that I stopped
him one day as he was passing me on the street. I thought I'd find out if
he really was so red-hot to work as he pretended to be; besides, I felt

that perhaps I hadn't treated the boy just right, as I had delivered quite a
jag of that wheat to his father myself.
"Hello, Jim," I called; "do you still want that job?"
"Yes, sir," he answered, quick as lightning.
"Well, I tell you how it is, Jim," I said, looking up at him--he was one
of those husky, lazy-moving six-footers--"I don't see any chance in the
office, but I understand they can use another good, strong man in one of
the loading gangs."
I thought that would settle Jim and let me out, for it's no joke lugging
beef, or rolling barrels and tierces a hundred yards or so to the cars. But
Jim came right back at me with, "Done. Who'll I report to?"
That sporty way of answering, as if he was closing a bet, made me
surer than ever that he was not cut out for a butcher. But I told him, and
off he started hot-foot to find the foreman. I sent word by another route
to see that he got plenty to do.
I forgot all about Jim until about three months later, when his name was
handed up to me for a new place and a raise in pay. It seemed that he
had sort of abolished his job. After he had been rolling barrels a while,
and the sport had ground down one of his shoulders a couple of inches
lower than the other, he got to scheming around for a way to make the
work easier, and he hit on an idea for a sort of overhead railroad system,
by which the barrels could be swung out of the storerooms and run
right along into the cars, and two or three men do the work of a gang. It
was just as I thought. Jim was lazy, but he had put the house in the way
of saving so much money that I couldn't fire him. So I raised his salary,
and made him an assistant timekeeper and checker. Jim kept at this for
three or four months, until his feet began to hurt him, I guess, and then
he was out of a job again. It seems he had heard something of a new
machine for registering the men, that did away with most of the
timekeepers except the fellows who watched the machines, and he kept
after the Superintendent until he got him to put them in. Of course he
claimed a raise again for effecting such a saving, and we just had to

allow it.
I was beginning to take an interest in Jim, so I brought him up into the
office and set him to copying circular letters. We used to send out a