Part 4

“Be it known to you further that no Business can succeed without Loyalty and Co-operation. Modern Business demands of every man that he be loyal, or be off.

“Pin-headedness, tale-peddling and office politics are barnacles on the barque of Business, and the Firm that does not scrape them off is doomed to decay.

“Any man with a brow an inch over all, should know that the lot of the Leaker means to be ultimately despised by the very men he has made confidants of.

“Every time you have started one of those he-said-that-you-said-that-I-said stories of yours, you have rawed up all the decent men of this Office.

“Today you stand about as popular around here as a hair in the butter; but you don’t know it, because, like all back-fence babblers, you are foggy up on the perceptive plane, and you think that the man who listens must like yourself be loose.

“Some day you will learn, young man, that a tight tongue makes a sagacious sky-piece—that to speak well is to cheat hell—that the chain of Successful Business is linked with loyalty—and the Leaker lands in Limbo long before the last lap’s run.

“Thanking you for your kind attention, and asking you to now kindly consider yourself sunk without warning, I beg to remain etc, etc.”

Having spake after the manner of the hereinbefore mentioned, Comrade Boss removed his eyes from the transgressor, and wheeled around in his chair.

And, taking his pen between his index finger and the back of his hand, began to sign yesterday’s mail.

So.

HOT SKETCH NO. 3

THE SELF ABNEGATIONIST AND HIS FINISH

THERE was a Large Employer with fantail whiskers who got good and sore at his Help.

They didn’t have the interests of the business At Heart, he said. All they cared about was to fist-in their salaries and see that the Office Clock was accurate.

Any time any of them did any dweedling little thing in the shape of exceptional work, they expected credit for it, he murmured.

If the Sales Manager pulled up his sales, he would pull down his vest and bid for congratulations.

If the Credit Man lost only 1/40th of 1 per cent on the year’s accounts, he would dodge around in front of the throne expecting to be caught and laureled.

If a stenographer got her dictation at four o’clock, and then jumped into the saddle and won the race before Big Whistle, she would expect her Dictator to say she was Some little hustlerine.

Even the Office Squirrel looked for commendation every time he discharged the responsibilities of his Office without fumble or fizzle.

What this Employer wanted, he contended, was employees who would work for the good of the Business and not be always thinking about their own good. He said he hadn’t a man around the place who could sink Self with the rock of Gibraltar tied around its neck. The reward for doing a good thing, he preached, was in having done it.

* * * * *

Now it so happened that Our Hero was a Town Pillar, and although he did not at any time lean toward the philanthrop stuff hard enough to push it over, still he felt that he’d like to do a few Good Things for the Community before he hopped the Styx.

In his mental unfoldment he had forged clear past the point where One feels that One has done One’s full duty when One takes care of One’s own wife and One’s children.

He felt that every man owed a responsibility to the Community in which he lived, moved and had his Three Squares.

So he decided to erect a public drinking fountain with a lion spitting fresh water from between its teeth.

He went and got some good news prints of himself, then called in the reporters and announced his decision. The announcement was followed by a shower of publicity in the local Press that would have cost Father John a hundred dollars.

One newspaper that gave him only a Stick and didn’t print his picture, was forthwith put upon the Drab List and the Standing Ad of his Business was withdrawn for life.

When the fountain was all set up, Our Hero declined to pay the bill until the name of the donor was carved in large letters in some conspicuous place, according to the Conditions of Agreement. So the Town Council met and decided to carve it on the southern view of the lion.