Capitalists and financiers -- Fiction; Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Meat industry and trade -- Fiction; Political fiction
"What do you know about sausage?" he asked.
I told him what I had in mind. When I worked for the Enterprise we used
to have trouble in selling our sausage. Women were afraid of it,
thinking it was made from any foul scraps in the store. So, to make the
customers take it, I hit on the plan when we had fresh sausage meat of
putting some of the sausages by in clean little pasteboard boxes, and
the next time a particular customer came in I would call her attention
to one of the boxes, "which I had put aside for her specially." And she
would take it every time. In this way the Enterprise built up a
considerable trade in sausages. The same condition existed in other
markets, as I knew; good customers were afraid to eat the ordinary
sausage. So, I thought, why shouldn't the packing-house put up a
superior kind of sausage in nice little boxes, with a fancy name? The
marketmen could retail them handily. Carmichael seemed to be impressed
with my idea: he asked questions and said he would think it over. That
encouraged me to spring another scheme on him. Dround's trade was in
the Jewish quarters, but of course we didn't sell to the real Jews.
[Illustration: _"What do you know about sausage?" he asked._]
"Why not get some old rabbi and make kosher meat--the real article?
Strauss and the other packers don't handle it. We might have the market
to ourselves, and it is a big one, too."
"Kid, you've got a head on you," big John said to me with warmth. And I
saw myself a member of the firm next week!
It didn't work as easily as that, however. The next time I saw the
manager I asked him about sausage and kosher meat, and he scowled. It
seems he had presented my ideas to Mr. Henry I. Dround, and that
gentleman had turned them down. He was a packer, so the head of the
house said, and no cat's-meat man, to retail sausages in paper packages
to the public. The same way with the kosher meat idea: his business was
the packing business, and the firm wasn't trying any ventures. It seemed
to me that Mr. Henry I. Dround lacked enterprise; I felt that his
manager would have given my ideas a trial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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