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

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 raft of them to the trade. That was just before the general adoption of typewriters, when they were still in the experimental stage. But Jim hadn't been in the office plugging away at the letters for a month before he had the writer's cramp, and began nosing around again. The first thing I knew he was sicking the agents for the new typewriting machine on to me, and he kept them pounding away until they had made me give them a trial. Then it was all up with Mister Jim's job again. I raised his salary without his asking for it this time, and put him out on the road to introduce a new product that we were making--beef extract.
Jim made