noeuvering to see him; they who studied the lightest
remark of any chief and rushed to allies with the problem of, "Now, what
did he mean by that, do you think?"... A thousand questions of making an
impression on the overlords, and of "House Policy"--that malicious
little spirit which stalks through the business house and encourages
people to refuse favors.

Una's share in the actual work at Pemberton's would have been only a
morning's pastime, but her contact with the high-voltage current of
politics exhausted her--and taught her that commercial rewards come to
those who demand and take.

The office politics bred caste. Caste at Pemberton's was as clearly
defined as ranks in an army.

At the top were the big chiefs, the officers of the company, and the
heads of departments--Mr. Pemberton and his sons, the treasurer, the
general manager, the purchasing-agent, the superintendents of the
soda-fountain-syrup factory, of the soap-works, of the drug-laboratories,
of the toilet-accessories shops, the sales-manager, and Mr. S. Herbert
Ross. The Olympian council were they; divinities to whom the lesser
clerks had never dared to speak. When there were rumors of "a change," of
"a cut-down in the force," every person on the office floor watched the
chiefs as they assembled to go out to lunch together--big, florid,
shaven, large-chinned men, talking easily, healthy from motoring and
golf, able in a moment's conference at lunch to "shift the policy" and to
bring instant poverty to the families of forty clerks or four hundred
workmen in the shops. When they jovially entered the elevator together,
some high-strung stenographer would rush over to one of the older women
to weep and be comforted.... An hour from now her tiny job might be gone.

Even the chiefs' outside associates were tremendous, buyers and
diplomatic representatives; big-chested men with watch-chains across
their beautiful tight waistcoats. And like envoys extraordinary were the
efficiency experts whom Mr. Pemberton occasionally had in to speed up
the work a bit more beyond the point of human endurance.... One of these
experts, a smiling and pale-haired young man who talked to Mr. Ross
about the new poetry, arranged to have office-boys go about with trays
of water-glasses at ten, twelve, two, and four. Thitherto, the
stenographers had wasted a great deal of time in trotting to the battery
of water-coolers, in actually being human and relaxed and gossipy for
ten minu