Meeting of the Board | Page 3

turning purple. Now he slammed his fist
down on the desk. "We should just turn the company back to
Management again, eh? Just let you have a free hand to rob us blind
again. Well, it won't work, Towne. Not while I'm secretary of this
union. We fought long and hard for control of this corporation, just the
way all the other unions did. I know. I was through it all." He sat back
smugly, his cheeks quivering with emotion. "You might say that I was
a national leader in the movement. But I did it only for the men. The
men want their dividends. They own the stock, stock is supposed to pay
dividends."
"But they're cutting their own throats," Walter wailed. "You can't build
a company and make it grow the way I've been forced to run it."

"Details!" Torkleson snorted. "I don't care how the dividends come in.
That's your job. My job is to report a dividend every six months to the
men who own the stock, the men working on the production lines."
Walter nodded bitterly. "And every year the dividend has to be higher
than the last, or you and your fat friends are likely to be thrown out of
your jobs--right? No more steaks every night. No more private
gold-plated Buicks for you boys. No more twenty-room mansions in
Westchester. No more big game hunting in the Rockies. No, you don't
have to know anything but how to whip a board meeting into a frenzy
so they'll vote you into office again each year."
Torkleson's eyes glittered. His voice was very soft. "I've always liked
you, Walter. So I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you." He paused, then
continued. "But here on my desk is a small bit of white paper. Unless
you have my signature on that paper on the first of next month, you are
out of a job, on grounds of incompetence. And I will personally see that
you go on every White list in the country."
Walter felt the fight go out of him like a dying wind. He knew what the
White list meant. No job, anywhere, ever, in management. No chance,
ever, to join a union. No more house, no more weekly pay envelope. He
spread his hands weakly. "What do you want?" he asked.
"I want a production plan on my desk within twenty-four hours. A plan
that will guarantee me a five per cent increase in dividends in the next
six months. And you'd better move fast, because I'm not fooling."
* * * * *
Back in his cubbyhole downstairs, Walter stared hopelessly at the
reports. He had known it would come to this sooner or later. They all
knew it--Hendricks of Promotion, Pendleton of Sales, the whole
managerial staff.
It was wrong, all the way down the line. Walter had fought it tooth and
nail since the day Torkleson had installed the moose heads in Walter's
old office, and moved him down to the cubbyhole, under Bailey's

watchful eye. He had argued, and battled, and pleaded, and lost. He had
watched the company deteriorate day by day. Now they blamed him,
and threatened his job, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
He stared at the machines, clicking busily against the wall. An idea
began to form in his head. Helpless?
Not quite. Not if the others could see it, go along with it. It was a
repugnant idea. But there was one thing they could do that even
Torkleson and his fat-jowled crew would understand.
They could go on strike.
* * * * *
"It's ridiculous," the lawyer spluttered, staring at the circle of men in
the room. "How can I give you an opinion on the legality of the thing?
There isn't any legal precedent that I know of." He mopped his bald
head with a large white handkerchief. "There just hasn't been a case of
a company's management striking against its own labor. It--it isn't done.
Oh, there have been lockouts, but this isn't the same thing at all."
Walter nodded. "Well, we couldn't very well lock the men out, they
own the plant. We were thinking more of a lock-in sort of thing." He
turned to Paul Hendricks and the others. "We know how the machines
operate. They don't. We also know that the data we keep in the
machines is essential to running the business; the machines figure
production quotas, organize blueprints, prepare distribution lists, test
promotion schemes. It would take an office full of managerial experts
to handle even a single phase of the work without the machines."
The man at the window hissed, and Pendleton quickly snapped out the
lights. They sat in darkness, hardly daring to breathe. Then: "Okay. Just
the man next