Part 22 (1/2)
”I don't believe you are,” Grant admitted. ”You are a remarkable woman.
I think we shall get along all right if you are able to distinguish between independence and bravado.” He turned to his desk, then suddenly looked up again. He was homesick for someone he could talk to frankly.
”I don't mind telling you,” he said abruptly, ”that the deference which is being showered upon me around this inst.i.tution gives me a good deal of a pain. I've been accustomed to working with men on the same level.
They took their orders from me, and they carried them out, but the older hands called me by my first name, and any of them swore back when he thought he had occasion. I can't fit in to this 'Yes sir,' 'No sir,'
'Very good, sir,' way of doing business. It doesn't ring true.”
”I know what you mean,” she said. ”There's too much servility in it. And yet one may pay these courtesies and not be servile. I always 'sir'd'
your father, and he knew I did it because I wanted to, not because I had to. And I shall do the same with you once we understand each other. The position I want to make clear is this: I don't admit that because I work for you I belong to a lower order of the human family than you do, and I don't admit that, aside from the giving of faithful service, I am under any obligation to you. I give you my labor, worth so much; you pay me; we're square. If we can accept that as an understanding I'm ready to begin work now; if not, I'm going out to look for another job.”
”I think we can accept that as a working basis,” he agreed.
She produced notebook and pencil. ”Very well, SIR. Do you wish to dictate?”
The selection of a place to call home was a matter demanding Grant's early attention. He discussed it with Mr. Jones.
”Of course you will take members.h.i.+ps in some of the better clubs,” the lawyer had suggested. ”It's the best home life there is. That is why it is not to be recommended to married men; it has a tendency to break up the domestic circle.”
”But it will cost more than I can afford.”
”Nonsense! You could buy out one of their clubs, holus-bolus, if you wanted to.”
”You don't quite get me,” said Grant. ”If I used the money which was left by my father, or the income from the business, no doubt I could do as you say. But I feel that that money isn't really mine. You see, I never earned it, and I don't see how a person can, morally, spend money that he did not earn.”
”Then there are a great many immoral people in the world,” the lawyer observed, dryly.
”I am disposed to agree with you,” said Grant, somewhat pointedly. ”But I don't intend that they shall set my standards.”
”You have your salary. That comes under the head of earnings, if you are finnicky about the profits. What do you propose to pay yourself?”
”I have been thinking about that. On the ranch I got a hundred dollars a month, and board.”
”Well, your father got twenty thousand a year, and Roy half that, and if they wanted more they charged it up as expenses.”
”Considering the cost of board here, I think I would be justified in taking two hundred dollars a month,” Grant continued.
Jones got up and took the young man by the shoulders. ”Look here, Grant, you're not taking yourself seriously. I don't want to a.s.sail your pet theories--you'll grow out of them in time--but you hired me to give you advice, and right here I advise you not to make a fool of yourself. You are now in a big position; you're a big man, and you've got to live in a big way. If for nothing else than to hold the confidence of the public you must do it. Do you think they're going to intrust their investments to a firm headed by a two-hundred-dollar-a-month man?”
”But I AM a two-hundred-dollar-a-month man. In fact, I'm not sure I'm worth quite that much. I've got no more muscle, and no more sense, and very little more experience than I had a month ago, when in the open market my services commanded a hundred and board.”
”When a man is big enough--or his job is big enough--” Jones argued, ”he arises above the ordinary law of supply and demand. In fact, in a sense, he controls supply and demand. He puts himself in the job and dictates the salary. You have a perfect right to pay yourself what other men in similar positions are getting. Besides, as I said, you'll have to do so for the credit of the firm. Do you call a doctor who lives in a tumble-down tenement? You do not. You call one from a fine home; you select him for his appearance of prosperity, regardless of the fact that he may have mortgaged his future to create that appearance, and of the further fact that he will charge you a fee calculated to help pay off the mortgage. When you want a lawyer, do you seek some garret pract.i.tioner? You do not. You go to a big building, with a big name plate”--the pugnacious moustache gave hint of a smile gathering beneath--”and you pay a big price for a man with an office full of imposing-looking books, not a tenth part of which he has ever read, or intends ever to read. I admit there's a good deal of bunco in the game, but if you sit in you've got to play it that way, or the dear public will throw you into the discard. Many a man who votes himself a salary in five figures--or gets a friendly board of directors to do it for him--if thrown unfriended between the millstones of supply and demand probably couldn't qualify for your modest hundred dollars a month and board. But he has risen into a different world; instead of being dictated to, he dictates. That is your position, Grant. Look at it sensibly.”
”Nevertheless, I shall get along on two hundred a month. If I find it necessary in order to protect the interests of the business to take a members.h.i.+p in an expensive club, or commit any other extravagance, I shall do so, and charge it up as a business expense. Besides, I think I can be happier that way.”
”And in the meantime your business is piling up profits. What are you going to do with them? Give them away?”
”No. That, too, is immoral--whether it be a quarter to a beggar or a library to a city. It feeds the desire to get money without earning it, which is the most immoral of all our desires. I have not yet decided what I shall do with it. I have hired an expert, in you, to show me how to make money. I shall probably find it necessary to hire another to show me how to dispose of it. But not a dollar will be given away.”
”And so you would let the beggar starve? That's a new kind of altruism.”
”No. I would correct the conditions that made him a beggar. That's the only kind of altruism that will make him something better than a beggar.”