“All right then, STAY!” said the Boss with a sudden calmness. “We can get along together. _We are onto each other._” HOT SKETCH NO. 24 THE EXPORT GROUP GRAFTER ON A crisp and crackling December morn, a Jones Farm sausage with a big cigar and deep-dish collar of four-flusher fur, swished into the office of Messrs Eazley Skinned & Co., Manufacturers. He took out a race-track amplifier and announced that he was about to make a trip all the way to Europe in the interest of a group of Non Competitive manufacturers and would be pleased to let one other Representative Firm in on this satin-faced opportunity. Now the office of Messrs Eazley Skinned & Co., was a placid, tooth-picking sort of a place. The business had been passed down the aisle from sire to son so many times that it had begun to wear slick in spots like the plush seat of the collection box. The whole place breathed of Longtime Service but very little business. Whenever the door opened every bucolic head in the room turned toward it like a Grammar School class. The sudden announcement, therefore, that somebody was about to proceed on a hazardous journey to a far-off place like Europe created no little stir in this hive of hustle. We do not mean by this that it unleashed as much excitement as an Order would have done, or a Wall Street Bomb. But it was sufficient to start every pair of eyes forward from their bushings including those shrewd gray see-ers of Mr. Eazley Skinned himself. The breezy visitor was immediately ushered into the private office of Mr. E. Skinned who put on his coat and reached for the trusty box of 5-scenters, calling meanwhile to the other shirt-sleeved Executives who came filing in. Soon every chair was tilted back comfortably and the fumes of the hemp panetella rent the air, so to speak. The show was about to commence. “Gentlemen,” began the Weenie with the Collar, “the trip I am about to make will cover _all_ of Europe.” He paused to let it sink in. Ernie Shackleton could not have done more. “And the group of manufacturers I shall represent will have my Undivided Attention. I shall represent _only_ the interests of the firms who are fortunate enough to sign up with me, and no other firm in America will be able to induce me to give them one single bit of trade information, no matter how many tears they shed.” At this juncture nobody in the meeting thought to ask His Fur Collar how many firms he intended to represent. So he didn’t volunteer the information that he was out for a neat total anywhere from 40 and 4,000. Then spoke up the President in an inquiring crescendo. “Just what cities, or whatever you call them over there, do you intend to visit?” he asked. “Every metropolis in Europe,” flashed back the intrepid explorer as he began spreading a map of South Africa out over the desk, tracing with a pencil the various points he would touch on his daring expedition provided the domestic touch proved good enough to enable him to do so.