Youth Challenges | Page 4

which did not sit well on the
Foote tradition. Rangar wondered if at last a Foote had been born into
the family who was not off the old piece of cloth, who might, indeed,
prove difficult and disappointing. The flippancy indicated it.
"Our inventory," he said, severely, "five years ago, showed a trifle over
a million dollars. To-day these mills would show a valuation of five
millions. The earnings," he added, "have increased in even greater
ratio."

"Hum," said Bonbright, his mind already elsewhere. His thought,
unspoken, was, "If we've got so blamed much, what's the use piling it
up?"
At noon they had not finished the inspection of the plant; it was well
toward five o'clock when they did so, for Rangar did his duty
conscientiously. His explanations were long, careful, technical.
Bonbright set his mind to the task and listened well. He was even
interested, for there were interesting things to see, processes requiring
skilled men, machines that had required inventive genius to devise. He
began to be oppressed by the bigness of it. The plant was huge; it was
enormously busy. The whole world seemed to need axles, preferably
Foote axles, and to need them in a hurry.
At last, a trifle dazed, startled by the vastness of the domain to which
he was heir apparent, Bonbright returned to the aloof quiet of his
historic room.
"I've a lot to learn," he told Rangar.
"It will grow on you. ... By the way, you will need a secretary." (The
Footes had secretaries, not stenographers.) "Shall I select one for you?"
"Yes," said Bonbright, without interest; then he looked up quickly.
"No," he said, "I've selected my own. You say that girl--the one who
grinned--is competent?"
"Yes, indeed--but a girl! It has been the custom for the members of the
firm to employ only men."
Bonbright looked steadily at Rangar a moment, then said:
"Please have that girl notified at once that she is to be my secretary."
"Yes, sir," said Rangar. The boy WAS going to prove difficult. He
owned a will. Well, thought the man, others may have had it in the
family before--but it has not remained long.

"Anything more, Mr. Foote?"
"Thank you, no," said Bonbright, and Rangar said good evening and
disappeared.
The boy rested his chin on his hand again, and reflected gloomily. He
hunched up his shoulders and sighed. "Anyhow," he said to himself,
"I'll have SOMEBODY around me who is human."

CHAPTER II
Bonbright's father had left the office an hour before he and Rangar had
finished their tour of the works. It was always his custom to leave his
business early and to retire to the library in his home, where daily he
devoted two hours to adding to the manuscript of The Philosophical
Biography of Marquis Lafayette. This work was ultimately to appear in
several severe volumes and was being written, not so much to enlighten
the world upon the details of the career of the marquis as it was to
utilize the marquis as a clotheshorse to be dressed in Bonbright Foote
VI's mature reflections on men, events, and humanity at large.
Bonbright VII sat at his desk motionless, studying his career as it lay
circumscribed before him. He did not study it rebelliously, for as yet
rebellion had not occurred to him. The idea that he might assert his
individuality and depart from the family pattern had not ventured to
show its face. For too many years had his ancestors been impressing
him with his duty to the family traditions. He merely studied it, as one
who has no fancy for geometry will study geometry, because it cannot
be helped. The path was there, carefully staked out and bordered;
to-day his feet had been placed on it, and now he must walk. As he sat
he looked ahead for bypaths--none were visible.
The shutting-down whistle aroused him. He walked out through the
rapidly emptying office to the street, and there he stood, interested by
the spectacle of the army that poured out of the employees' entrances. It
was an inundation of men, flooding street from sidewalk to sidewalk. It

jostled and joked and scuffled, sweating, grimy, each unit of it eager to
board waiting, overcrowded street cars, where acute discomfort would
be suffered until distant destinations were reached. Somehow the sight
of that surging, tossing stream of humanity impressed Bonbright with
the magnitude of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, even more than the
circuit of the immense plant had done.
Five thousand men, in a newspaper paragraph, do not affect the
imagination. Five thousand men in the concrete are quite another
matter, especially if you suddenly realize that each of them has a wife,
probably children, and that the whole are dependent upon the dynasty
of which you are a