_ "Mr. Fenger will see you now." Mr. Fenger, general manager,
had been a long time about it. This heel-cooling experience
was new to Fanny Brandeis. It had always been her privilege
to keep others waiting. Still, she felt no resentment as
she sat in Michael Fenger's outer office. For as she sat
there, waiting, she was getting a distinct impression of
this unseen man whose voice she could just hear as he talked
over the telephone in his inner office. It was
characteristic of Michael Fenger that his personality
reached out and touched you before you came into actual
contact with the man. Fanny had heard of him long before
she came to Haynes-Cooper. He was the genie of that
glittering lamp. All through the gigantic plant (she had
already met department heads, buyers, merchandise managers)
one heard his name, and felt the impress of his mind:
"You'll have to see Mr. Fenger about that."
"Yes,"--pointing to a new conveyor, perhaps,--"that has just
been installed. It's a great help to us. Doubles our
shipping-room efficiency. We used to use baskets, pulled by
a rope. It's Mr. Fenger's idea."
Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. Fenger had made it a
slogan in the Haynes-Cooper plant long before the German
nation forced it into our everyday vocabulary. Michael
Fenger was System. He could take a muddle of orders, a
jungle of unfilled contracts, a horde of incompetent
workers, and of them make a smooth-running and effective
unit. Untangling snarls was his pastime. Esprit de corps
was his shibboleth. Order and management his
idols. And his war-cry was "Results!"
It was eleven o'clock when Fanny came into his outer office.
The very atmosphere was vibrant with his personality. There
hung about the place an air of repressed expectancy. The
room was electrically charged with the high-voltage of the
man in the inner office. His secretary was a spare, middle-
aged, anxious-looking woman in snuff-brown and spectacles;
his stenographer a blond young man, also spectacled and
anxious; his office boy a stern youth in knickers, who bore
no relation to the slangy, gum-chewing, redheaded office boy
of the comic sections.
The low-pitched, high-powered voice went on inside, talking
over the long-distance telephone. Fenger was the kind of
man who is always talking to New York when he is in Chicago,
and to Chicago when he is in New York. Trains with the word
Limited after them were invented for him and his type. A
buzzer sounded. It galvanized the office boy into instant
action. It brought the anxious-looking stenographer to the
doorway, notebook in hand, ready. It sent the lean
secretary out, and up to Fanny.
"Temper," said Fanny, to herself, "or horribly nervous and
high-keyed. They jump like a set of puppets on a string."
It was then that the lean secretary had said, "Mr. Fenger
will see you now."
Fanny was aware of a pleasant little tingle of excitement.
She entered the inner office.
It was characteristic of Michael Fenger that he employed no
cheap tricks. He was not writing as Fanny Brandeis came in.
He was not telephoning. He was not doing anything but
standing at his desk, waiting for Fanny Brandeis. As she
came in he looked at her, through her, and she seemed to
feel her mental processes laid open to him as a skilled
surgeon cuts through skin and flesh and fat, to lay
bare the muscles and nerves and vital organs beneath. He
put out his hand. Fanny extended hers. They met in a
silent grip. It was like a meeting between two men. Even
as he indexed her, Fanny's alert mind was busy docketing,
numbering, cataloguing him. They had in common a certain
force, a driving power. Fanny seated herself opposite him,
in obedience to a gesture. He crossed his legs comfortably
and sat back in his big desk chair. A great-bodied man,
with powerful square shoulders, a long head, a rugged crest
of a nose--the kind you see on the type of Englishman who
has the imagination and initiative to go to Canada, or
Australia, or America. He wore spectacles, not the
fashionable horn-rimmed sort, but the kind with gold ear
pieces. They were becoming, and gave a certain humanness to
a face that otherwise would have been too rugged, too
strong. A man of forty-five, perhaps.
He spoke first. "You're younger than I thought."
"So are you."
"Old inside."
"So am I."
He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, folded his arms on
the desk.
"You've been through the plant, Miss Brandeis?"
"Yes. Twice. Once with a regular tourist party. And once
with the special guide."
"Good. Go through the plant whenever you can. Don't stick
to your own department. It narrows one." He paused a
moment. "Did you think that this opportunity to come to
Haynes-Cooper, as assistant to the infants' wear department
buyer was just a piece of luck, augmented by a little
pulling on your part?"
"Yes."
"It wasn't. You were carefully picked by me, and I don't
expect to find I've made a mistake. I suppose you know
very little about buying and selling infants' wear?"
"Less than about almost any other article in the world--at
least, in the department store, or mail order world."
"I thought so. And it doesn't matter. I pretty well know
your history, which means that I know your training. You're
young; you're ambitious, you're experienced; you're
imaginative. There's no length you can't go, with these.
It just depends on how farsighted your mental vision is.
Now listen, Miss Brandeis: I'm not going to talk to you in
millions. The guides do enough of that. But you know we do
buy and sell in terms of millions, don't you? Well, our
infants' wear department isn't helping to roll up the
millions; and it ought to, because there are millions of
babies born every year, and the golden-spoon kind are in the
minority. I've decided that that department needs a woman,
your kind of woman. Now, as a rule, I never employ a woman
when I can use a man. There's only one other woman filling
a really important position in the merchandise end of this
business. That's Ella Monahan, head of the glove
department, and she's a genius. She is a woman who is
limited in every other respect--just average; but she knows
glove materials in a way that's uncanny. I'd rather have a
man in her place; but I don't happen to know any men glove-
geniuses. Tell me, what do you think of that etching?"
Fanny tried--and successfully--not to show the jolt her mind
had received as she turned to look at the picture to which
his finger pointed. She got up and strolled over to it, and
she was glad her suit fitted and hung as it did in the back.
"I don't like it particularly. I like it less than any
other etching you have here." The walls were hung with
them. "Of course you understand I know nothing about
them. But it's too flowery, isn't it, to be good? Too many
lines. Like a writer who spoils his effect by using too
many words."
Fenger came over and stood beside her, staring at the black
and white and gray thing in its frame. "I felt that way,
too." He stared down at her, then. "Jew?" he asked.
A breathless instant. "No," said Fanny Brandeis.
Michael Fenger smiled for the first time. Fanny Brandeis
would have given everything she had, everything she hoped to
be, to be able to take back that monosyllable. She was
gripped with horror at what she had done. She had spoken
almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must have
been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and
thought. "Now I begin to understand you," Fenger went on.
"You've decided to lop off all the excrescences, eh? Well,
I can't say that I blame you. A woman in business is
handicapped enough by the very fact of her sex." He stared
at her again. "Too bad you're so pretty."
"I'm not!" said Fanny hotly, like a school-girl.
"That's a thing that can't be argued, child. Beauty's
subjective, you know."
"I don't see what difference it makes, anyway."
"Oh, yes, you do." He stopped. "Or perhaps you don't,
after all. I forget how young you are. Well, now, Miss
Brandeis, you and your woman's mind, and your masculine
business experience and sense are to be turned loose on our
infants' wear department. The buyer, Mr. Slosson, is going
to resent you. Naturally. I don't know whether we'll get
results from you in a month, or six months or a year. Or
ever. But something tells me we're going to get them.
You've lived in a small town most of your life. And we want
that small-town viewpoint. D'you think you've got it?"
Fanny was on her own ground here. "If knowing the
Wisconsin small-town woman, and the Wisconsin farmer woman--
and man too, for that matter--means knowing the Oregon, and
Wyoming, and Pennsylvania, and Iowa people of the same
class, then I've got it."
"Good!" Michael Fenger stood up. "I'm not going to load you
down with instructions, or advice. I think I'll let you
grope your own way around, and bump your head a few times.
Then you'll learn where the low places are. And, Miss
Brandeis, remember that suggestions are welcome in this
plant. We take suggestions all the way from the elevator
starter to the president." His tone was kindly, but not
hopeful.
Fanny was standing too, her mental eye on the door. But now
she turned to face him squarely.
"Do you mean that?"
"Absolutely."
"Well, then, I've one to make. Your stock boys and stock
girls walk miles and miles every day, on every floor of this
fifteen-story building. I watched them yesterday, filling
up the bins, carrying orders, covering those enormous
distances from one bin to another, up one aisle and down the
next, to the office, back again. Your floors are concrete,
or cement, or some such mixture, aren't they? I just
happened to think of the boy who used to deliver our paper
on Norris Street, in Winnebago, Wisconsin. He covered his
route on roller skates. It saved him an hour. Why don't
you put roller skates on your stock boys and girls?"
Fenger stared at her. You could almost hear that mind of
his working, like a thing on ball bearings. "Roller
skates." It wasn't an exclamation. It was a decision. He
pressed a buzzer--the snuff-brown secretary buzzer. "Tell
Clancy I want him. Now." He had not glanced up, or taken
his eyes from Fanny. She was aware of feeling a little
uncomfortable, but elated, too. She moved toward the door.
Fenger stood at his desk. "Wait a minute." Fanny
waited. Still Fenger did not speak. Finally, "I suppose
you know you've earned six months' salary in the last five
minutes."
Fanny eyed him coolly. "Considering the number of your
stock force, the time, energy, and labor saved, including
wear and tear on department heads and their assistants, I
should say that was a conservative statement." And she
nodded pleasantly, and left him.
Two days later every stock clerk in the vast plant was
equipped with light-weight roller skates. They made a sort
of carnival of it at first. There were some spills, too,
going around corners, and a little too much hilarity. That
wore off in a week. In two weeks their roller skates were
part of them; just shop labor-savers. The report presented
to Fenger was this: Time and energy saved, fifty-five per
cent; stock staff decreased by one third. The
picturesqueness of it, the almost ludicrous simplicity of
the idea appealed to the entire plant. It tickled the humor
sense in every one of the ten thousand employees in that
vast organization. In the first week of her association
with Haynes-Cooper Fanny Brandeis was actually more widely
known than men who had worked there for years. The
president, Nathan Haynes himself, sent for her, chuckling.
Nathan Haynes--but then, why stop for him? Nathan Haynes
had been swallowed, long ago, by this monster plant that he
himself had innocently created. You must have visited it,
this Gargantuan thing that sprawls its length in the very
center of Chicago, the giant son of a surprised father. It
is one of the city's show places, like the stockyards, the
Art Institute, and Field's. Fifteen years before, a
building had been erected to accommodate a prosperous mail
order business. It had been built large and roomy, with
plenty of seams, planned amply, it was thought, to allow the
boy to grow. It would do for twenty-five years,
surely. In ten years Haynes-Cooper was bursting its seams.
In twelve it was shamelessly naked, its arms and legs
sticking out of its inadequate garments. New red brick
buildings--another--another. Five stories added to this
one, six stories to that, a new fifteen story merchandise
building.
The firm began to talk in tens of millions. Its stock
became gilt-edged, unattainable. Lucky ones who had bought
of it diffidently, discreetly, with modest visions of four
and a half per cent in their unimaginative minds, saw their
dividends doubling, trebling, quadrupling, finally soaring
gymnastically beyond all reason. Listen to the old guide
who (at fifteen a week) takes groups of awed visitors
through the great plant. How he juggles figures; how
grandly they roll off his tongue. How glib he is with
Nathan Haynes's millions.
"This, ladies and gentlemen, is our mail department. From
two thousand to twenty-five hundred pounds of mail,
comprising over one hundred thousand letters, are received
here every day. Yes, madam, I said every day. About half
of these letters are orders. Last year the banking
department counted one hundred and thirty millions of
dollars. One hundred and thirty millions!" He stands there
in his ill-fitting coat, and his star, and rubs one bony
hand over the other.
"Dear me!" says a lady tourist from Idaho, rather
inadequately. And yet, not so inadequately. What
exclamation is there, please, that fits a sum like one
hundred and thirty millions of anything?
Fanny Brandeis, fresh from Winnebago, Wisconsin, slipped
into the great scheme of things at the Haynes-Cooper plant
like part of a perfectly planned blue print. It was as
though she had been thought out and shaped for this
particular corner. And the reason for it was, primarily,
Winnebago, Wisconsin. For Haynes-Cooper grew and
thrived on just such towns, with their surrounding farms and
villages. Haynes-Cooper had their fingers on the pulse and
heart of the country as did no other industry. They were
close, close. When rugs began to take the place of ingrain
carpets it was Haynes-Cooper who first sensed the change.
Oh, they had had them in New York years before, certainly.
But after all, it isn't New York's artistic progress that
shows the development of this nation. It is the thing they
are thinking, and doing, and learning in Backwash, Nebraska,
that marks time for these United States. There may be a
certain significance in the announcement that New York has
dropped the Russian craze and has gone in for that quaint
Chinese stuff. My dear, it makes the loveliest hangings and
decorations. When Fifth Avenue takes down its filet lace
and eyelet embroidered curtains, and substitutes severe
shantung and chaste net, there is little in the act to
revolutionize industry, or stir the art-world. But when the
Haynes-Cooper company, by referring to its inventory
ledgers, learns that it is selling more Alma Gluck than
Harry Lauder records; when its statistics show that
Tchaikowsky is going better than Irving Berlin, something
epochal is happening in the musical progress of a nation.
And when the orders from Noose Gulch, Nevada, are for those
plain dimity curtains instead of the cheap and gaudy
Nottingham atrocities, there is conveyed to the mind a fact
of immense, of overwhelming significance. The country has
taken a step toward civilization and good taste.
So. You have a skeleton sketch of Haynes-Cooper, whose
feelers reach the remotest dugout in the Yukon, the most
isolated cabin in the Rockies, the loneliest ranch-house in
Wyoming; the Montana mining shack, the bleak Maine farm, the
plantation in Virginia.
And the man who had so innocently put life into this
monster? A plumpish, kindly-faced man; a bewildered,
gentle, unimaginative and somewhat frightened man, fresh-
cheeked, eye-glassed. In his suite of offices in the new
Administration Building--built two years ago--marble and oak
throughout--twelve stories, and we're adding three already;
offices all two-toned rugs, and leather upholstery, with
dim, rich, brown-toned Dutch masterpieces on the walls, he
sat helpless and defenseless while the torrent of millions
rushed, and swirled, and foamed about him. I think he had
fancied, fifteen years ago, that he would some day be a
fairly prosperous man; not rich, as riches are counted
nowadays, but with a comfortable number of tens of thousands
tucked away. Two or three hundred thousand; perhaps five
hundred thousand!--perhaps a--but, nonsense! Nonsense!
And then the thing had started. It was as when a man idly
throws a pebble into a chasm, or shoves a bit of ice with
the toe of his boot, and starts a snow-slide that grows as
it goes. He had started this avalanche of money, and now it
rushed on of its own momentum, plunging, rolling, leaping,
crashing, and as it swept on it gathered rocks, trees,
stones, houses, everything that lay in its way. It was
beyond the power of human hand to stop this tumbling,
roaring slide. In the midst of it sat Nathan Haynes,
deafened, stunned, terrified at the immensity of what he had
done.
He began giving away huge sums, incredible sums. It piled
up faster than he could give it away. And so he sat there
in the office hung with the dim old masterpieces, and tried
to keep simple, tried to keep sane, with that austerity that
only mad wealth can afford--or bitter poverty. He caused
the land about the plant to be laid out in sunken gardens
and baseball fields and tennis courts, so that one
approached this monster of commerce through enchanted
grounds, glowing with tulips and heady hyacinths in
spring, with roses in June, blazing with salvia and golden-
glow and asters in autumn. There was something apologetic
about these grounds.
This, then, was the environment that Fanny Brandeis had
chosen. On the face of things you would have said she had
chosen well. The inspiration of the roller skates had not
been merely a lucky flash. That idea had been part of the
consistent whole. Her mind was her mother's mind raised to
the nth power, and enhanced by the genius she was trying
to crush. Refusing to die, it found expression in a hundred
brilliant plans, of which the roller skate idea was only
one.
Fanny had reached Chicago on Sunday. She had entered the
city as a queen enters her domain, authoritatively, with no
fear upon her, no trepidation, no doubts. She had gone at
once to the Mendota Hotel, on Michigan Avenue, up-town, away
from the roar of the loop. It was a residential hotel, very
quiet, decidedly luxurious. She had no idea of making it
her home. But she would stay there until she could find an
apartment that was small, bright, near the lake, and yet
within fairly reasonable transportation facilities for her
work. Her room was on the ninth floor, not on the Michigan
Avenue side, but east, overlooking the lake. She spent
hours at the windows, fascinated by the stone and steel city
that lay just below with the incredible blue of the sail-
dotted lake beyond, and at night, with the lights spangling
the velvety blackness, the flaring blaze of Thirty-first
Street's chop-suey restaurants and moving picture houses at
the right; and far, far away, the red and white eye of the
lighthouse winking, blinking, winking, blinking, the rumble
and clank of a flat-wheeled Indiana avenue car, the sound of
high laughter and a snatch of song that came faintly up to
her from the speeding car of some midnight joy-riders!
But all this had to do with her other side. It had no
bearing on Haynes-Cooper, and business. Business! That was
it. She had trained herself for it, like an athlete. Eight
hours of sleep. A cold plunge on arising. Sane food. Long
walks. There was something terrible about her earnestness.
On Monday she presented herself at the Haynes-Cooper plant.
Monday and Tuesday were spent in going over the great works.
It was an exhausting process, but fascinating beyond belief.
It was on Wednesday that she had been summoned for the talk
with Michael Fenger. Thursday morning she was at her desk
at eight-thirty. It was an obscure desk, in a dingy corner
of the infants' wear department, the black sheep section of
the great plant. Her very presence in that corner seemed to
change it magically. You must remember how young she was,
how healthy, how vigorous, with the freshness of the small
town still upon her. It was health and youth, and vigor
that gave that gloss to her hair (conscientious brushing
too, perhaps), that color to her cheeks and lips, that
brightness to her eyes. But crafty art and her dramatic
instinct were responsible for the tailored severity of her
costume, for the whiteness of her blouse, the trim common-
sense expensiveness of her shoes and hat and gloves.
Slosson, buyer and head of the department, came in at nine.
Fanny rose to greet him. She felt a little sorry for
Slosson. In her mind she already knew him for a doomed man.
"Well, well!"--he was the kind of person who would say,
well, well!--"You're bright and early, Miss--ah--"
"Brandeis."
"Yes, certainly; Miss Brandeis. Well, nothing like making a
good start."
"I wanted to go through the department by myself," said
Fanny. "The shelves and bins, and the numbering system. I
see that your new maternity dresses have just come in."
"Oh, yes. How do you like them?"
"I think they're unnecessarily hideous, Mr. Slosson."
"My dear young lady, a plain garment is what they want.
Unnoticeable."
"Unnoticeable, yes; but becoming. At such a time a woman is
at her worst. If she can get it, she at least wants a dress
that doesn't add to her unattractiveness."
"Let me see--you are not--ah--married, I believe, Miss
Brandeis?"
"No."
"I am. Three children. All girls." He passed a nervous
hand over his head, rumpling his hair a little. "An
expensive proposition, let me tell you, three girls. But
there's very little I don't know about babies, as you may
imagine."
But there settled over Fanny Brandeis' face the mask of
hardness that was so often to transform it.
The morning mail was in--the day's biggest grist, deluge of
it, a flood. Buyer and assistant buyer never saw the actual
letters, or attended to their enclosed orders. It was only
the unusual letter, the complaint or protest that reached
their desk. Hundreds of hands downstairs sorted, stamped,
indexed, filed, after the letter-opening machines had slit
the envelopes. Those letter-openers! Fanny had hung over
them, enthralled. The unopened envelopes were fed into
them. Flip! Zip! Flip! Out! Opened! Faster than eye
could follow. It was uncanny. It was, somehow, humorous,
like the clever antics of a trained dog. You could not
believe that this little machine actually performed what
your eyes beheld. Two years later they installed the sand-
paper letter-opener, marvel of simplicity. It made the
old machine seem cumbersome and slow. Guided by Izzy, the
expert, its rough tongue was capable of licking open six
hundred and fifty letters a minute.
Ten minutes after the mail came in the orders were being
filled; bins, shelves, warehouses, were emptying their
contents. Up and down the aisles went the stock clerks;
into the conveyors went the bundles, down the great spiral
bundle chute, into the shipping room, out by mail, by
express, by freight. This leghorn hat for a Nebraska
country belle; a tombstone for a rancher's wife; a plow,
brave in its red paint; coffee, tea, tinned fruit, bound for
Alaska; lace, muslin, sheeting, toweling, all intended for
the coarse trousseau of a Georgia bride.
It was not remarkable that Fanny Brandeis fitted into this
scheme of things. For years she had ministered to the wants
of just this type of person. The letters she saw at Haynes-
Cooper's read exactly as customers had worded their wants at
Brandeis' Bazaar. The magnitude of the thing thrilled her,
the endless possibilities of her own position.
During the first two months of her work there she was as
unaggressive as possible. She opened the very pores of her
mind and absorbed every detail of her department. But she
said little, followed Slosson's instructions in her position
as assistant buyer, and suggested no changes. Slosson's
wrinkle of anxiety smoothed itself away, and his manner
became patronizingly authoritative again. Fanny seemed to
have become part of the routine of the place. Fenger did
not send for her. June and July were insufferably hot.
Fanny seemed to thrive, to expand like a flower in the heat,
when others wilted and shriveled. The spring catalogue was
to be made up in October, as always, six months in advance.
The first week in August Fanny asked for an interview with
Fenger. Slosson was to be there. At ten o'clock she
entered Fenger's inner office. He was telephoning--
something about dinner at the Union League Club. His voice
was suave, his tone well modulated, his accent correct, his
English faultless. And yet Fanny Brandeis, studying the
etchings on his wall, her back turned to him, smiled to
herself. The voice, the tone, the accent, the English, did
not ring true They were acquired graces, exquisite
imitations of the real thing. Fanny Brandeis knew. She was
playing the same game herself. She understood this man now,
after two months in the Haynes-Cooper plant. These
marvelous examples of the etcher's art, for example. They
were the struggle for expression of a man whose youth had
been bare of such things. His love for them was much the
same as that which impels the new made millionaire to buy
rare pictures, rich hangings, tapestries, rugs, not so much
in the desire to impress the world with his wealth as to
satisfy the craving for beauty, the longing to possess that
which is exquisite, and fine, and almost unobtainable. You
have seen how a woman, long denied luxuries, feeds her
starved senses on soft silken things, on laces and gleaming
jewels, for pure sensuous delight in their feel and look.
Thus Fanny mused as she eyed these treasures--grim, deft,
repressed things, done with that economy of line which is
the test of the etcher's art.
Fenger hung up the receiver.
"So it's taken you two months, Miss Brandeis. I was awfully
afraid, from the start you made, that you'd be back here in
a week, bursting with ideas."
Fanny smiled, appreciatively. He had come very near the
truth. "I had to use all my self-control, that first week.
After that it wasn't so hard."
Fenger's eyes narrowed upon her. "Pretty sure of yourself,
aren't you?"
"Yes," said Fanny. She came over to his desk.
"I wish we needn't have Mr. Slosson here this morning.
After all, he's been here for years, and I'm practically an
upstart. He's so much older, too. I--I hate to hurt him.
I wish you'd--"
But Fenger shook his head. "Slosson's due now. And he has
got to take his medicine. This is business, Miss Brandeis.
You ought to know what that means. For that matter, it may
be that you haven't hit upon an idea. In that case, Slosson
would have the laugh, wouldn't he?"
Slosson entered at that moment. And there was a chip on his
shoulder. It was evident in the way he bristled, in the way
he seated himself. His fingers drummed his knees. He was
like a testy, hum-ha stage father dealing with a willful
child.
Fenger took out his watch.
"Now, Miss Brandeis."
Fanny took a chair facing the two men, and crossed her trim
blue serge knees, and folded her hands in her lap. A deep
pink glowed in her cheeks. Her eyes were very bright. All
the Molly Brandeis in her was at the surface, sparkling
there. And she looked almost insultingly youthful.
"You--you want me to talk?"
"We want you to talk. We have time for just three-quarters
of an hour of uninterrupted conversation. If you've got
anything to say you ought to say it in that time. Now, Miss
Brandeis, what's the trouble with the Haynes-Cooper infants'
wear department?"
And Fanny Brandeis took a long breath
"The trouble with the Haynes-Cooper infants' wear department
is that it doesn't understand women. There are millions of
babies born every year. An incredible number of them are
mail order babies. I mean by that they are born to tired,
clumsy-fingered immigrant women, to women in mills and
factories, to women on farms, to women in remote
villages. They're the type who use the mail order method.
I've learned this one thing about that sort of woman: she
may not want that baby, but either before or after it's born
she'll starve, and save, and go without proper clothing, and
even beg, and steal to give it clothes--clothes with lace on
them, with ribbon on them, sheer white things. I don't know
why that's true, but it is. Well, we're not reaching them.
Our goods are unattractive. They're packed and shipped
unattractively. Why, all this department needs is a little
psychology--and some lace that doesn't look as if it had
been chopped out with an ax. It's the little, silly,
intimate things that will reach these women. No, not silly,
either. Quite understandable. She wants fine things for
her baby, just as the silver-spoon mother does. The thing
we'll have to do is to give her silver-spoon models at
pewter prices."
"It can't be done," said Slosson.
"Now, wait a minute, Slosson," Fenger put in, smoothly.
"Miss Brandeis has given us a very fair general statement.
We'll have some facts. Are you prepared to give us an
actual working plan?"
"Yes. At least, it sounds practical to me. And if it does
to you--and to Mr. Slosson--"
"Humph!" snorted that gentleman, in expression of defiance,
unbelief, and a determination not to be impressed.
It acted as a goad to Fanny. She leaned forward in her
chair and talked straight at the big, potent force that sat
regarding her in silent attention.
"I still say that we can copy the high-priced models in low-
priced materials because, in almost every case, it isn't the
material that makes the expensive model; it's the line, the
cut, the little trick that gives it style. We can get that.
We've been giving them stuff that might have been made by
prison labor, for all the distinction it had. Then
I think we ought to make a feature of the sanitary
methods used in our infants' department.
Every article intended for a baby's use should
be wrapped or boxed as it lies in the bin or on the shelf.
And those bins ought to be glassed. We would advertise
that, and it would advertise itself. Our visitors would
talk about it. This department hasn't been getting a square
deal in the catalogue. Not enough space. It ought to have
not only more catalogue space, but a catalogue all its own--
the Baby Book. Full of pictures. Good ones. Illustrations
that will make every mother think her baby will look like
that baby, once it is wearing our No. 29E798--chubby babies,
curly-headed, and dimply. And the feature of that catalogue
ought to be, not separate garments, but complete outfits.
Outfits boxed, ready for shipping, and ranging in price all
the way from twenty-five dollars to three-ninety-eight--"
"It can't be done!" yelled Slosson. "Three-ninety-eight!
Outfits!"
"It can be done. I've figured it out, down to a packet of
assorted size safety pins. We'll call it our emergency
outfit. Thirty pieces. And while we're about it, every
outfit over five dollars ought to be packed in a pink or a
pale blue pasteboard box. The outfits trimmed in pink, pink
boxes; the outfits trimmed in blue, blue boxes. In eight
cases out of ten their letters will tell us whether it's a
pink or blue baby. And when they get our package, and take
out that pink or blue box, they'll be as pleased as if we'd
made them a present. It's the personal note--"
"Personal slop!" growled Slosson. "It isn't business. It's
sentimental slush!"
"Sentimental, yes," agreed Fanny pleasantly, "but then,
we're running the only sentimental department in this
business. And we ought to be doing it at the rate of a
million and a quarter a year. If you think these last
suggestions sentimental, I'm afraid the next one--"
"Let's have it, Miss Brandeis," Fenger encouraged her
quietly.
"It's"--she flashed a mischievous smile at Slosson--"it's a
mother's guide and helper, and adviser. A woman who'll
answer questions, give advice. Some one they'll write to,
with a picture in their minds of a large, comfortable,
motherly-looking person in gray. You know we get hundreds
of letters asking whether they ought to order flannel bands,
or the double-knitted kind. That sort of thing. And who's
been answering them? Some sixteen-year-old girl in the
mailing department who doesn't know a flannel band from a
bootee when she sees it. We could call our woman something
pleasant and everydayish, like Emily Brand. Easy to
remember. And until we can find her, I'll answer those
letters myself. They're important to us as well as to the
woman who writes them. And now, there's the matter of
obstetrical outfits. Three grades, packed ready for
shipment, practical, simple, and complete. Our drug section
has the separate articles, but we ought to--"
"Oh, lord!" groaned Slosson, and slumped disgustedly in his
seat.
But Fenger got up, came over to Fanny, and put a hand on her
shoulder for a moment. He looked down at her. "I knew
you'd do it." He smiled queerly. "Tell me, where did you
learn all this?"
"I don't know," faltered Fanny happily. "Brandeis' Bazaar,
perhaps. It's just another case of plush photograph album."
"Plush--?"
Fanny told him that story. Even the discomfited Slosson
grinned at it.
But after ten minutes more of general discussion Slosson
left. Fenger, without putting it in words, had
conveyed that to him. Fanny stayed. They did things
that way at Haynes-Cooper. No waste. No delay. That she
had accomplished in two months that which ordinarily takes
years was not surprising. They did things that way, too, at
Haynes-Cooper. Take the case of Nathan Haynes himself. And
Michael Fenger too who, not so many years before, had been a
machine-boy in a Racine woolen mill.
For my part, I confess that Fanny Brandeis begins to lose
interest for me. Big Business seems to dwarf the finer
things in her. That red-cheeked, shabby little schoolgirl,
absorbed in Zola and peanut brittle in the Winnebago
library, was infinitely more appealing than this glib and
capable young woman. The spitting wildcat of the street
fight so long ago was gentler by far than this cool person
who was so deliberately taking his job away from Slosson.
You, too, feel that way about her? That is as it should be.
It is the penalty they pay who, given genius, sympathy, and
understanding as their birthright, trade them for the tawdry
trinkets money brings.
Perhaps the last five minutes of that conference between
Fanny and Michael Fenger reveals a new side, and presents
something of interest. It was a harrowing and unexpected
five minutes.
You may remember how Michael Fenger had a way of looking at
one, silently. It was an intent and concentrated gaze that
had the effect of an actual physical hold. Most people
squirmed under it. Fanny, feeling it on her now, frowned
and rose to leave.
"Shall you want to talk these things over again? Of course
I've only outlined them, roughly. You gave me so little
time."
Fenger, at his desk, did not answer, or turn away his gaze.
A little blaze of wrath flamed into Fanny's face.
"General manager or not," she said, very low-voiced,
"I wish you wouldn't sit and glower at me like that. It's
rude, and it's disconcerting," which was putting it
forthrightly.
"I beg your pardon!" Fenger came swiftly around the desk,
and over to her. "I was thinking very hard. Miss Brandeis,
will you dine with me somewhere tonight? Then to-morrow
night? But I want to talk to you."
"Here I am. Talk."
"But I want to talk to--you."
It was then that Fanny Brandeis saved an ugly situation.
For she laughed, a big, wholesome, outdoors sort of laugh.
She was honestly amused.
"My dear Mr. Fenger, you've been reading the murky
magazines. Very bad for you."
Fenger was unsmiling: "Why won't you dine with me?"
"Because it would be unconventional and foolish. I respect
the conventions. They're so sensible. And because it would
be unfair to you, and to Mrs. Fenger, and to me."
"Rot! It's you who have the murky magazine viewpoint, as
you call it, when you imply--"
"Now, look here, Mr. Fenger," Fanny interrupted, quietly.
"Let's be square with each other, even if we're not being
square with ourselves. You're the real power in this plant,
because you've the brains. You can make any person in this
organization, or break them. That sounds melodramatic, but
it's true. I've got a definite life plan, and it's as
complete and detailed as an engineering blue print. I don't
intend to let you spoil it. I've made a real start here.
If you want to, I've no doubt you can end it. But before
you do, I want to warn you that I'll make a pretty stiff
fight for it. I'm no silent sufferer. I'll say things.
And people usually believe me when I talk."
Still the silent, concentrated gaze. With a little
impatient exclamation Fanny walked toward the door.
Fenger, startlingly light and agile for his great height,
followed.
"I'm sorry, Miss Brandeis, terribly sorry. You see, you
interest me very much. Very much."
"Thanks," dryly.
"Don't go just yet. Please. I'm not a villain. Really.
That is, not a deliberate villain. But when I find
something very fine, very intricate, very fascinating and
complex--like those etchings, for example--I am intrigued.
I want it near me. I want to study it."
Fanny said nothing. But she thought, "This is a dangerously
clever man. Too clever for you. You know so little about
them." Fenger waited. Most women would have found refuge
in words. The wrong words. It is only the strong who can
be silent when in doubt.
"Perhaps you will dine with Mrs. Fenger and me at our home
some evening? Mrs. Fenger will speak to you about it."
"I'm afraid I'm usually too tired for further effort at the
end of the day. I'm sorry----"
"Some Sunday night perhaps, then. Tea."
"Thank you." And so out, past the spare secretary, the
anxious-browed stenographer, the academic office boy, to the
hallway, the elevator, and finally the refuge of her own
orderly desk. Slosson was at lunch in one of the huge
restaurants provided for employees in the building across
the street. She sat there, very still, for some minutes;
for more minutes than she knew. Her hands were clasped
tightly on the desk, and her eyes stared ahead in a puzzled,
resentful, bewildered way. Something inside her was saying
over and over again:
"You lied to him on that very first day. That placed you.
That stamped you. Now he thinks you're rotten all the way
through. You lied on the very first day."
Ella Monahan poked her head in at the door. The Gloves
were on that floor, at the far end. The two women rarely
saw each other, except at lunch time.
"Missed you at lunch," said Ella Monahan. She was a pink-
cheeked, bright-eyed woman of forty-one or two, prematurely
gray and therefore excessively young in her manner, as women
often are who have grown gray before their time.
Fanny stood up, hurriedly. "I was just about to go."
"Try the grape pie, dear. It's delicious." And strolled
off down the aisle that seemed to stretch endlessly ahead.
Fanny stood for a moment looking after her, as though
meaning to call her back. But she must have changed her
mind, because she said, "Oh, nonsense!" aloud. And went
across to lunch. And ordered grape pie. And enjoyed it. _