Dumbells of Business

Part 1

DUMBELLS OF BUSINESS

DUMBELLS OF BUSINESS

PROFF O.U. BOJACK (BUS.DOC.)

AUTHOR OF “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN SALESMANSHIP,” “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN BUYING,” “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN LOVE & MARRIAGE,” ETC.

Fighting Editor

“BOJACK’S NOISY EXPORTER”

Pruned of Profanity by LOUIS C. M. REED

1922 THE STRATFORD CO., PUBLISHERS Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright, 1922 The STRATFORD CO., Publishers Boston, Mass.

The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A.

THESE playful biffs on the beak of Business appeared originally in a little House Magazine called “Auto Suggestions.”

Many of them have been completely revised for the purpose of this volume, over the rasping nasal protest of Proff Bojack who believes in letting Well Enough alone until it crawls up and bites you in the leg, as mentioned somewhere in the text—then roll over on the other side.

The characters are drawn from the daily life of the average American business organization where men are somehow sweating through to Success against the cordovan inertia of the Dumbells of Business.

—THE PRUNER

DEDICATED WITH A WARMTH OF FELLOW FEELING TO ALL BEDEVILED BRETHERN OF THE BUSINESS WORLD

The Author

Contents

Hot Sketch No. Page 1 The Plant Cured of Mossbackitis 1 2 The Lurid Lot of the Leaker 13 3 The Self Abnegationist And His Finish 21 4 The Bird Who Berated Business Assn’s 29 5 The Advertising Genius of Squirrelville 39 6 The Salesman Who Became Buyer 47 7 The Pampered Dealer 59 8 The Efficiency Expert 69 9 The Road Rat Who Gave Up Home Comforts 85 10 The Man Who Organized Manufacturers 103 11 The Perpetual Planner 113 12 The Twin-Six Philanthropist 123 13 The Yob Who Let Business Slide 131 14 The Would-Be Sales Promoter 139 15 The Young Satellites of Stallville 157 16 The Benedict Who Wisdomed-Up 165 17 The Business Baggers of Punkton 173 18 The Picayune Planet 183 19 The Passing of the Buck Passer 191 20 The Executive With The Clerk’s Mind 199 21 The War Winning Patrioteer 209 22 Typical American And Critical American 219 23 When Mental Leech Meets Mental Leech 233 24 The Export Group Grafter 245

HOT SKETCH NO. 1

THE PLANT CURED OF MOSSBACKITIS

OUT among the gnarled oaks of Squirrel Cove there buzzed a busy manufacturing plant.

It had been established since Time wore a bib, and, as far back as History could recall, had been handed down from Whiskers to Whiskers without a break.

The same old Superintendent with his chew of Fine Cut tucked away in a back-cavity, was always on hand each generation to bury the father and drill the son into the mysteries of Production and Distribution. Old Faithful used to love to take off his beaver cap and stroke the top of his glazed Summit while he told some eager visitor all about the industrial heirloom and his long and watchful connection with it.

In the course of centuries the Concern had of course worked up some business around the County, but at no time did there ever occur what you would call a Sensational Increase in trade. In fact, careful scrutiny revealed nothing in the whole town that could be associated with a sensation of any kind.

The annual output of the particular Hive of Industry under discussion went wholly to Old Customers who had been buying regularly since Washington hurdled the Delaware. If any attempt was ever made to get New Business it was altogether an unconscious act, and no record of the perpetrator remains.

At the time of which we are now yodeling, the current Owner and Proprietor was closing in on his sixty-fifth Milestone, and, like his father and grandfather before him, he believed in letting Well Enough alone until it crawled up and bit him in the leg. Then he would roll over on the other side.

It is only natural that such a highly strung temperament as this should be accompanied by more or less radically advanced views on Business in general. This was indeed the case, yes. And he was a horrible spendthrift when it came to Advertising. In the course of say two lunar years his total linage amounted to about as much as a Fourth Avenue delicatessen. He never counted the cost of any plant installation under one figure.

If anybody had suggested travelling the Trade, the proposition would have met with the same enthusiastic endorsement that a Shell Game would get at a Dunkard picnic.

Part 2

All salesmen were looked upon as a species of unclassified bandit that victimized Firms and Customers alike, and revelled at nights with Champagne, Chickens and Chant.

Now it so happened that our Captain of Industry had a daughter. In looks she was strictly neutral, and in intelligence just sort of medio-semi. Her heart was laced to a young Scrod she had met when she was East at School learning to parry and thrust with knife and fork.

She had never seen anything like this rollicking Young Buck from one end of her shaved-neck County to the other, and so she went limp the first time he threw a ray in her direction. He was a thoroughbred at that, and could get in and out of a Taxi without furring up his Top Hat, and pay a dinner check without stopping his story and then forgetting afterward what he was talking about.

It required no profound psychoanalysis to tell from Daughter’s manner that there was only one kernel in the crib so far as she was concerned. As for the tall-collared gentry of Squirrel Cove, the entries were closed and they knew it to a man and gave her the whole runway.

Now ever since Daughter was a baby blowing bubbles out of the corners of her mouth, Papa had lived in Mortal Dread of a day when she might buckle up with a man who would be only after his Thirty Dollars which he had slowly and painfully piled up through pluck, perseverance and pre-natal pull. And so when he saw her temperature rising and her appetite falling, he dug out her secret and then started on a quiet hunt to find out whether the daring Disturber was Grade A, or tinnif.

As he had feared, the Rat proved to be a Baltimore Luncher pulling down Fifteen Dollars per week and washing his own clothes in the bath tub.

This discovery caused a Family Upheaval which for pep, polish and all-round proficiency had all Mexican Mixups looking like a harmless after-school scamper at Hop Scotch.

Every evening at sundown when Father would come home from the din and roar of his quarter-acre Plant, the neighbors would gather at their windows for the latest war news. Sometimes the Carranzaists would be on top; at other times the Villaists and Zapaists would have it.

Daughter protested hotly during these Bloody Encounters that her king was Poor but Honest, but father had him sized up as a Single Cylinder.

One night when the walls were being freshly inlaid with flying furniture and bric-a-brac, Daughter ducked out of the peaceful abode and down to the Railway Station and caught the Milk Train for New York. The following Wednesday at 4 P. M., Kendallville Time, she took Philip Darlington Wakefield for Better or Worse and wired Father for his blessing and $100 to come back home on.

At first Father was all for raising his hand to High Heaven and pronouncing the Irish Cottage Curse with all the spine-chilling heroics about darkening the Threshold, but Mother looked quietly over her goggles and told him to cut the cheap melodramatic stuff and behave like a white man, and tell the Young Folks to buy a couple of postcards of the Woolworth Building and come back home.

Under this stinging philippic Father melted into the big armchair and became human, and a couple of days later the Bride and Groom blew into Squirrel Cove and turned all Main Street into little groups of excited goatees.

Philip Darlington gave Father the first Hoyo he had ever smoked and took the old gazunk completely off his underpinning by showing a knowledge of Industry and Finance that only a Fifteen Dollar New York clerk can possess. On the strength of it he landed a job in Father’s mighty Works and wasn’t there a week before every yunk in the place was plotting for his destruction.

The reason, tersely and succinctly expressed, was that Phil proved to have Ideas and nobody around the Works cared to deliberately expose himself to the danger of infection. But Phil went right ahead and shifted men and things here, there and everywhere, and put in Time Clocks and Cost Systems and all kinds of efficiency effects.

He took the dusty correspondence off the long wire and had it filed in steel filing cabinets, and reduced the length of the Daily Conference from three cigars to one cigar. He relieved the Shipping Clerk of the Sales end of the Business, and established a separate Purchasing Department, thereby lifting this important work from the shoulders of the Night Watchman.

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