A week before the machinery was ready to turn over, the office force with its paraphernalia arrived from the old office and was installed in the new. It consisted of one stenographer, picked by Clothespin Jimmy wholly for efficiency and not at all for adornment; of a middle-aged bookkeeper, who seemed to have been born with something more than the normal quantity of organs, for there grew from his forehead a green eye-shade, without which he was never seen, and there sprouted in his right hand a pen. There was also an assistant bookkeeper, whose business in life was to act and look as much like the bookkeeper, Mr. Grierson, as possible; and a shipping-clerk, whose familiarity with freight-rates and with the occult business of routing freight-cars so they would arrive where they were intended to go, instead of at the other side of the continent, was such as to arouse Jim’s admiration. The clothespin war was as yet a minor trouble. He had one letter from the secretary of the Club, informing him that the price he had quoted was cut by another five per cent. This cut he met immediately. A flood of orders came in from brokers, traveling-men, wholesalers—all rushing to take advantage of the low market to stock up. These Jim culled over carefully, accepting only enough to keep his plant running to capacity, not overloading himself with orders which he would have to fill in case of a cessation of hostilities and consequent soaring of price. He called into conference his superintendent, millwright, master mechanic, and the foremen of his departments, but it was not a conference, as the event proved. It consisted merely of a brief statement by Jim. “The job you fellows are up against,” he said, “is to manufacture better and cheaper than anybody else. Prices are down. I believe we can still show a profit. Any man who has an idea that will save a tenth of a cent on a box of pins will find it profitable to bring it to me. What’s the best day’s average you made in the old plant, Pete?” “Seventy-five boxes a machine,” said the old pinmaker. “I’m expecting eighty here,” Jim told him. “It costs as much to operate a machine making sixty boxes as it does eighty. If you can make eighty, the extra five will come close to being profit. Don’t let a machine, a lathe, a saw, waste machine hours. Everything has got to run; it has got to run constantly, and it has got to produce the greatest quantity that is physically possible. I’m depending on you men. We have a new crew in large part. I want them to feel I’m depending on them. Tell every girl, every man of the crew, that the Ashe Clothespin Company is depending on her or on him, and that each may depend on me. If I expect them to give me a square deal, I expect myself to give them a square deal. Tell them that. There’ll be no dissatisfaction or labor trouble here if I can help it—and I can. I guess that’s all. Now get at it.”