Then he went on to tell them how the old herd had always passed the old
buck to him, never doing anything unless they were told, fearing even
to set down the total of a column of figures without first consulting
him, and he wound up with a few Well Chosen remarks about Co-operation
and Co-ordination and the old reliable shoulder-to-the-wheel stuff.
Everybody was happy and talky and full of pep and chest-out chatter,
for be it remembered that each new Department Head was an Individual
and not a Person, and could hold his own with the best bullers of
bulldom.
And so they all adjourned to their respective stalls and started in
their new work with enthusiasm, energy and enterprise, and any other
snapful word that you could think of beginning with “e.”
Things went great and glorious for about a month when the Boss
discovered that the new Superintendent had put in a lot of machinery
in the manufacturing department that he did not approve of, and he
proceeded to give the Supe a double-nutted Call Down that carried to
Columbus, Ohio.
The Supe came back not unstrengthfully whereupon the Boss’s eyes
flashed like a Zeppelin night-searcher, and the Supe remembering that
he had seventeen children and a motorcycle to support, cooled down
almost to a solid, and let the Boss rave on like a knight of Montana
overcharged by a cabman.
Shortly after this explosion in the factory the Boss happened into
the Sales Manager’s throbbing little office, and in the course of a
high-spirited but not dangerous discussion on things in general he
discovered that the S. M. had re-districted the whole territory and
changed agencies right and left and down the middle.
Whereupon Major General Boss let out a roar that shook the business
mottoes from the walls and sent the stenographer scurrying to the
south gate. Everything he could think of off-hand he called the Sales
Manager, and then proceeded to look up a few choice ones in the Dock
Hands’ Ready Vocabulary.
At this, the Sales Manager doubled his fists and closed his eyes to an
ominous squint, and was all ready to spring—when he happened to think
of the monthly installment on his Victrola, and so he dropped into his
chair and sat numb and dumb, and then some.
On his way out, the Boss chanced to see the Advertising Manager pouring
over a dummy on his desk.
“What’s that bum thing?” growled Doc Boss, pointing his long
presidential finger toward the busy little desk.
“Why that’s the layout for a broadside that I’m mailing to the Dealer
Trade on our new No. 7’s,” replied the Advertising Manager, smiling.
“No good—no good in the world!” came back Uncle Boss. “Nobody on
earth would stop to read that thing. Too big—too unwieldy—copy too
scattered—weak copy, too—might just as well mail out a sheet of white
paper! A clumsy folder like that, gets in with the second-class matter
and goes the route of the wastebasket. Nothing to it!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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