The Job (Lewis)/Man and Woman/Chapter 21

TO Una and to Mr. Fein it seemed obvious that, since women have at least half of the family decision regarding the purchase of suburban homes, women salesmen of suburban property should be at least as successful as men. But Mr. Truax had a number of “good, sound, conservative” reasons why this should not be so, and therefore declined to credit the evidence of Una, Beatrice Joline, and saleswomen of other firms that it really was so.

Yet, after solving the Boutell office problem, Una was frequently requisitioned by “Chas.” to talk to women about the advantages of sites for themselves and their children, while regular and intelligent (that is, male) salesmen worked their hypnotic arts on the equally regular and intelligent men of the families. Where formerly it had seemed an awesome miracle, like chemistry or poetry, to “close a deal” and bring thousands of dollars into the office, now Una found it quite normal. Responsibility gave her more poise and willingness to take initiative. Her salary was raised to thirty dollars a week. She banked two hundred dollars of commissions, and bought a Japanese-blue silk negligée, a wrist-watch, and the gown of black satin and net recommended by Miss Joline. Yet officially she was still Mr. Truax’s secretary; she took his dictation and his moods.

Her greatest reward was in the friendship of the careful, diligent Mr. Fein.

She never forgot a dinner with Mr. Fein, at which, for the first time, she heard a complete defense of the employer’s position—saw the office world from the stand-point of the “bosses.”

“I never believed I’d be friendly with one of the capitalists,” Una was saying at their dinner, “but I must admit that you don’t seem to want to grind the faces of the poor.”

“I don’t. I want to wash’em.”

“I’m serious.”

“My dear child, so am I,” declared Mr. Fein. Then, apparently addressing his mixed grill, he considered: “It’s nonsense to say that it’s just the capitalists that ail the world. It’s the slackers. Show me a man that we can depend on to do the necessary thing at the necessary moment without being nudged, and we’ll keep raising him before he has a chance to ask us, even.”

“No, you don’t—that is, I really think you do, Mr. Fein, personally, but most bosses are so afraid of a big pay-roll that they deliberately discourage their people till they lose all initiative. I don’t know; perhaps they’re victims along with their employees. Just now I adore my work, and I do think that business can be made as glorious a profession as medicine, or exploring, or anything, but in most offices, it seems to me, the biggest ideal the clerks have is safety—a two-family house on a stupid street in Flatbush as a reward for being industrious. Doesn’t matter whether they enjoy living there, if they’re just secure. And you do know—Mr. Truax doesn’t, but you do know—that the whole office system makes pale, timid, nervous people out of all the clerks—”

“But, good heavens! child, the employers have just as hard a time. Talk about being nervous! Take it in our game. The salesman does the missionary work, but the employer is the one who has to worry. Take some big deal that seems just about to get across—and then falls through just when you reach for the contract and draw a breath of relief. Or say you’ve swung a deal and have to pay your rent and office force, and you can’t get the commission that’s due you on an accomplished sale. And your clerks dash in and want a raise, under threat of quitting, just at the moment when you’re wondering how you’ll raise the money to pay them their present salaries on time! Those are the things that make an employer a nervous wreck. He’s got to keep it going. I tell you there’s advantages in being a wage-slave and having the wages coming—”

“But, Mr. Fein, if it’s just as hard on the employers as it is on the employees, then the whole system is bad.”

“Good Lord! of course it’s bad. But do you know anything in this world that isn’t bad—that’s anywhere near perfect? Except maybe Bach fugues? Religion, education, medicine, war, agriculture, art, pleasure, anything—all systems are choked with clumsy, outworn methods and ignorance—the whole human race works and plays at about ten-per-cent. efficiency. The only possible ground for optimism about the human race that I can see is that in most all lines experts are at work showing up the deficiencies—proving that alcohol and war are bad, and consumption and Greek unnecessary—and making a beginning. You don’t do justice to the big offices and mills where they have real efficiency tests, and if a man doesn’t make good in one place, they shift him to another.”

“There aren’t very many of them. In all the offices I’ve ever seen, the boss’s indigestion is the only test of employees.”

“Yes, yes, I know, but that isn’t the point. The point is that they are making such tests—beginning to. Take the schools where they actually teach future housewives to cook and sew as well as to read aloud. But, of course, I admit the very fact that there can be and are such schools and offices is a terrible indictment of the slatternly schools and bad-tempered offices we usually do have, and if you can show up this system of shutting people up in treadmills, why go to it, and good luck. The longer people are stupidly optimistic, the longer we’ll have to wait for improvements. But, believe me, my dear girl, for every ardent radical who says the whole thing is rotten there’s ten clever advertising-men who think it’s virtue to sell new brands of soap-powder that are no better than the old brands, and a hundred old codgers who are so broken into the office system that they think they are perfectly happy—don’t know how much fun in life they miss. Still, they’re no worse than the adherents to any other paralyzed system. Look at the comparatively intelligent people who fall for any freak religious system and let it make their lives miserable. I suppose that when the world has no more war or tuberculosis, then offices will be exciting places to work in—but not till then. And meantime, if the typical business man with a taste for fishing heard even so mild a radical as I am, he’d sniff, ‘The fellow don’t know what he’s talking about; everybody in all the offices I know is perfectly satisfied.’”

“Yes, changes will be slow, I suppose, but that doesn’t excuse bosses of to-day for thinking they are little tin gods.”

“No, of course it doesn’t. But people in authority always do that. The only thing we can do about it is for us, personally, to make our offices as clean and amusing as we can, instead of trying to buy yachts. But don’t ever think either that capitalists are a peculiar race of fiends, different from anarchists or scrubwomen, or that we’ll have a millennium about next election. We’ve got to be anthropological in our view. It’s taken the human race about five hundred thousand years to get where it is, and presumably it will take quite a few thousand more to become scientific or even to understand the need of scientific conduct of everything. I’m not at all sure that there’s any higher wisdom than doing a day’s work, and hoping the Subway will be a little less crowded next year, and in voting for the best possible man, and then forgetting all the Weltschmertz, and going to an opera. It sounds pretty raw and crude, doesn’t it? But living in a world that’s raw and crude, all you can do is to be honest and not worry.”

“Yes,” said Una.

She grieved for the sunset-colored ideals of Mamie Magen, for the fine, strained, hysterical enthusiasms of Walter Babson, as an enchantment of thought which she was dispelling in her effort to become a “good, sound, practical business woman.” Mr. Fein’s drab opportunist philosophy disappointed her. Yet, in contrast to Mr. Schwirtz, Mr. Truax, and Chas., he was hyperbolic; and after their dinner she was gushingly happy to be hearing the opportunist melodies of “Il Trovatore” beside him.

The Merryton Realty Company had failed, and Truax & Fein were offered the small development property of Crosshampton Hill Gardens at so convenient a price that they could not refuse it, though they were already “carrying” as many properties as they could easily handle. In a characteristic monologue Mr. Truax asked a select audience, consisting of himself, his inkwell, and Una, what he was to do.

“Shall I try to exploit it and close it out quick? I’ve got half a mind to go back to the old tent-and-brass-band method and auction it off. The salesmen have all they can get away with. I haven’t even a good, reliable resident salesman I could trust to handle it on the grounds.”

“Let me try it!” said Una. “Give me a month’s trial as salesman on the ground, and see what I can do. Just run some double-leaded classified ads. and forget it. You can trust me; you know you can. Why, I’ll write my own ads., even: ‘View of Long Island Sound, and beautiful rolling hills. Near to family yacht club, with swimming and sailing.’ I know I could manage it.”

Mr. Truax pretended not to hear, but she rose, leaned over his desk, stared urgently at him, till he weakly promised: “Well, I’ll talk it over with Mr. Fein. But you know it wouldn’t be worth a bit more salary than you’re getting now. And what would I do for a secretary?”

“I don’t worry about salary. Think of being out on Long Island, now that spring is coming! And I’ll find a successor and train her.”

“Well—” said Mr. Truax, while Una took her pencil and awaited dictation with a heart so blithe that she could scarcely remember the symbols for “Yours of sixteenth instant received.”