ot to buck into it just like me. There are ten thousand
men out of work in Oakland right now, and sixty thousand more in San
Francisco. Your nephew, and everybody else on your pay-roll, can do as
I say right now or quit. Savvee? If any of them get stuck, you go
around yourself and guarantee their credit with the butchers and
grocers. And you trim down that pay-roll accordingly. I've been
carrying a few thousand folks that'll have to carry themselves for a
while now, that's all."

"You say this filter's got to be replaced," he told his chief of the
water-works. "We'll see about it. Let the people of Oakland drink mud
for a change. It'll teach them to appreciate good water. Stop work at
once. Get those men off the pay-roll. Cancel all orders for material.
The contractors will sue? Let 'em sue and be damned. We'll be busted
higher'n a kite or on easy street before they can get judgment."

And to Wilkinson:

"Take off that owl boat. Let the public roar and come home early to
its wife. And there's that last car that connects with the 12:45 boat
at Twenty-second and Hastings. Cut it out. I can't run it for two or
three passengers. Let them take an earlier boat home or walk. This is
no time for philanthropy. And you might as well take off a few more
cars in the rush hours. Let the strap-hangers pay. It's the
strap-hangers that'll keep us from going under."

And to another chief, who broke down under the excessive strain of
retrenchment:--

"You say I can't do that and can't do this. I'll just show you a few
of the latest patterns in the can-and-can't line. You'll be compelled
to resign? All right, if you think so I never saw the man yet that I
was hard up for. And when any man thinks I can't get along without
him, I just show him the latest pattern in that line of goods and give
him his walking-papers."

And so he fought and drove and bullied and even wheedled his way along.
It was fight, fight, fight, and no let-up, from the first thing in the
morning till nightfall. His private office saw throngs every day. All
men came to see him, or were ordered to come. Now it was an optimistic
opinion on the panic, a funny story, a serious business talk, or a
straight take-it-or-leave-it blow from the shoulder. And there was
nobody to relieve him. It was a case of drive, drive, drive, and he
alone could do the driving. And this went on day after day, while the
whole business world rocked around him