The Desert FiddlerHamby, William H. (William Henry)
General
The Desert Fiddler
Hamby, William H. (William Henry)
Cotton farmers -- Fiction; Fiddlers -- Fiction; Western stories
"See that?" The old gentleman pointed to a tractor with ten plows
attached. "That's success. Those plows are good and the engine is
good; but it's only when they are hooked up together they are worth
twenty teams and ten men. That's the way to multiply results--hook
good things together. Resolution and hard work aren't enough. Got to
have brains. Got to use 'em. Organize your forces.
"Don't tell me," the old chap spoke with some heat, "that a man who
uses his brains and by one day's work makes something that saves a
million men ten days' work is only entitled to one day's pay. Not a
bit of it. He's entitled to part of what he saves every one of those
million men. That's the difference between a little success and a big
success. The little one makes something for himself; the big one makes
something for a thousand men--and takes part of it. Has a right to.
Those Chinamen across the line get sixty-five cents a day. If you can
manage them so they earn a dollar and a half a day and give them a
dollar and thirty cents of it and keep twenty cents, you are a public
benefactor as well as a smart man. That is the way to do it; use your
brains to increase other men's production and take a fair per cent. of
it, and you'll be both rich and honest."
Bob's brown eyes were eagerly attentive. He liked this cryptic old
man. This was real stuff he was talking; and it was getting at the
bottom of Rogeen's own problem. All these years he had tried to
produce value single-handed. But to win big, he must think, plan,
organize so as to make money for many people, and therefore entitle
himself to large returns.
"I'm going to try that very thing," he said. "I've just leased one
hundred and sixty acres. Half already planted in cotton, and I'm going
to plant the rest."
Bob was proud of his achievement. He had been really glad he failed to
get the Red Butte Ranch. It was entirely too big to tackle without
capital or experience. But he had found a rancher anxious to turn
loose his lease for about half what he had spent improving it. Rogeen
then convinced a cotton-gin man that he was a good risk; and offered to
give him ten per cent. interest, half the cotton seed, and to gin the
crop at his mill if he would advance money sufficient to buy the lease
and raise the crop. The gin man had agreed to do it.
Crill jerked his head approvingly. "Good move. That's the way to go
at it. Think first, then work like the devil at the close of a
revival."
Crill paused, and then asked abruptly:
"Know a man named Jenkins?"
"Yes," replied Bob.
"Is he safe?"
Bob grinned. "About as safe as a rattlesnake in dog days."
As Jim Crill stalked up the outside stairway of Reedy Jenkins' office,
the wind whipping the tail of the linen duster about his legs, he
carried with him two very conflicting opinions of Reedy--Mrs. Barnett's
and Bob Rogeen's. Maybe one of them was prejudiced--possibly both.
Well, he would see for himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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