Part 23

He swore that Fairman was demoralizing the Labor Market and nervously pulled scotch hairs out of his dilating nostrils.

Time tangoed on.

Visitors to the plant of Fairman began to comment on the clear merry eyes of the workers. The men went about their tasks with speed and accuracy.

And whistled betimes.

And sang, maybe.

The factory’s output increased fifty percent without straining a ligament. The puddler seemed as interested as the President in everything that was doing around the Works.

If you had stood on the corner when the morning whistles blew, and watched the dinner-pailers heading up Main Street, you could have picked the workers of Fairman from the toilers of Grabit with your eyes 22° off centre.

The Grabiters all had that “I wasn’t-hired-to-do-that” air, and groused about the Boss in low dismal tones all the way from liver-and-coffee to forge and furnace, and back again. Every shoulder balanced its chip; and grouch, gruff and grump settled over the Works so thick you couldn’t rip it with a rapier.

Every morning when Grabit opened his mail he was regaled with much pleasing news from Kicking Kusstomers about defective Goods, shortage and all those things that wallow in the wake of a system of inspection that has sagged to a dull routine through indifference and the lack of pussonel interest.

Grabit didn’t sneak behind any door and whisper to himself what he really thought of the unreasonable dubs that made these complaints. On the contrary, he called his melancholy stenographer and dictated a masterful piece of satire and roofraising rhetoric that was calculated to double them up like a jack-knife.

Now all this kind of thing was planked sirloin for the Salesmen of Fairman. They shared in the profits of their Concern and didn’t have to knock down Bus Fares any more in their expense books, and so they were full of joy and jump.

They got after the disgruntled Customers of Grabit like bees after blossoms and did not exactly have to shoot up the place to scare any of them away from their old connections.

Grabit’s Salesmen were drawing down their good old $100 a month salary, and turning in vouchers for street-car fares, and so when they ran up against the Order Baggers of Fairman they were able to put up about as strong a rebuttal as a girls’ debating society.

Each succeeding season saw a new addition to the Fairman works, until forty acres had been brought under roof and the town had been made a regular stop for the Fast Express. Grabit noted every progressive step with increasing pains in the pit of the stomach, but not to be outdone, he revolutionized things himself by installing a new factory whistle.

Statements of the local banks showed steady increases in the deposits of Fairman’s workers. Neat little brick homes with phonographs in the parlors sprouted all over the town and made business good for the butcher, the baker, and the electric light and power company.

Men with long hair and short hair and no hair to speak of, came from far and near and from Vedersburg, Indiana, to find out how Fairman did it, and to get nose-close to the system in actual operation.

Certain yard-stick philanthropists questioned the Ultimate Good of it all, and there were many sincere and hard-working Business Men clearing all the way from $1,000 to $5,000 a year in their own business, who called Fairman “an industrial accident” and believed down back of their little cramped undershirts that such a thing as an accidentally successful man could actually be.

Recapitulation: Fairman became one slashing, sensational success no matter how you looked at the question—whether altruistically, practically, or through a knot-hole.

As for Grabit, he sits today at his dusty little desk, fingering his penny Ledger and absentmindedly feeling around in his whiskers betimes for a wild hair or two. Listlessly he turns the ledger pages and counts the tombstones, and in gloomy speculation asks himself why all those old Customers went over to the Competish,

Why his Salesmen were slipshod And his goods built on luck Why his best men deserted And the worst stuck—and struck.

An echo answers “Why.”

The Office Cat, scrawny and sarcastic, jumps on the window ledge. She gives Grabit one withering look, puts her thumb-equivalent to her nose, and disappears into the night.

Grabit is alone.

Isn’t it harrowing though?

HOT SKETCH NO. 18

THE PICAYUNE PLANET

ONCE there was a ball-shaped mass of matter whirling through space called “The Earth.”

Compared to other masses of matter chasing through the charted Universe, it was about as big and important as a louse on the leg of an elephant.