ould be swung out of the storerooms and
run right along into the cars, and two or three men do the work of a
gang. It was just as I thought. Jim was lazy, but he had put the house
in the way of saving so much money that I couldn't fire him. So I raised
his salary, and made him an assistant timekeeper and checker. Jim kept
at this for three or four months, until his feet began to hurt him, I
guess, and then he was out of a job again. It seems he had heard
something of a new machine for registering the men, that did away with
most of the timekeepers except the fellows who watched the machines, and
he kept after the Superintendent until he got him to put them in. Of
course he claimed a raise again for effecting such a saving, and we just
had to allow it.

I was beginning to take an interest in Jim, so I brought him up into the
office and set him to copying circular letters. We used to send out a
raft of them to the trade. That was just before the general adoption of
typewriters, when they were still in the experimental stage. But Jim
hadn't been in the office plugging away at the letters for a month
before he had the writer's cramp, and began nosing around again. The
first thing I knew he was sicking the agents for the new typewriting
machine on to me, and he kept them pounding away until they had made me
give them a trial. Then it was all up with Mister Jim's job again. I
raised his salary without his asking for it this time, and put him out
on the road to introduce a new product that we were making--beef
extract.

Jim made two trips without selling enough to keep them working overtime
at the factory, and then he came into my office with a long story about
how we were doing it all wrong. Said we ought to go for the consumer by
advertising, and make the trade come to us, instead of chasing it up.

That was so like Jim that I just laughed at first; besides, that sort of
advertising was a pretty new thing then, and I was one of the old-timers
who didn't take any stock in it. But Jim just kept plugging away at me
between trips, until finally I took him off the road and told him to go
ahead and try it in a small way.

Jim pretty nearly scared me to death that first year. At last he had got
into something that he took an interest in--spending money--and he just
fairly wallowed in it. Used to lay awake nights, thinking up new ways of
getting rid of the old man's profits. And he found them. Seemed as if I
couldn't get away fr