"For the shocking salary of six dollars a week I was collector for the
Prudential Insurance company. One rent day I lacked the necessary four
dollars and a half. I telegraphed my other ego, my dear brother Jim, in
Pittsburg. The same day brought from him a telegraph money-order for
twenty-five dollars, and soon afterward a letter asking me to go to
Pittsburg and help him out. I had always been deemed an expert in the
leather line, especially in locating anything wrong in the various
processes. My brother was a member of a new millionaire leather firm,
which was losing thousands of dollars every week because they were
unable to locate the weakness in the process. Jim wanted me to find the
flaw.
"It was with the utmost repugnance that I quit my happy slum life, but I
loved Jim, and it was the call of the ancient clan in my blood. When I
arrived in Pittsburg, without a trunk, and with other marks of the
proletarian on me, Mr. Kirkman, the millionaire tanner, showered me with
every luxury--every luxury except that of thought and true emotion.
Never before did I realise so intensely my indifference to what money
can buy. My private office in the shop was stocked with wines and
imported cigarettes: but I was not so well off as in my happy slum.
"I toiled like a sleepless sisyphus, and one day, in a flash of
intuition, I located and showed the flaw in an obscure process; I was
completely successful.
"I had put no price on my services. For Jim's sake, I had worked like a
Trojan, physically and mentally, for a month. With unlimited money at my
disposal, I had drawn only twenty dollars altogether, and this I sent to
Marie, to keep the wolf away from the Rogues' Gallery, our flat.
"When the factory was running smoothly, I told Mr. Kirkman that I would
break in a man for my place. He made me a tempting offer to take full
charge of the shop. I told him I would not be a participant in
exploiting his 'hands,' who were getting only $7 to $8 a week.
Furthermore, I said I would not stand for the discharge of any man for
incompetency. I had never in the shop met any man I could not teach and
learn something from in return; I had never discharged a man, and never
would. The millionaire boss nevertheless continued to urge me to take
the position, and my brother Jim offered me two thousand dollars' worth
of stock at par and a large yearly salary. Well, I suppose, there's no
use of anybody's trying to move me when Jim has failed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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