ld the confidence of the public
you must do it. Do you think they're going to intrust their investments
to a firm headed by a two-hundred-dollar-a-month man?"

"But I AM a two-hundred-dollar-a-month man. In fact, I'm not sure I'm
worth quite that much. I've got no more muscle, and no more sense, and
very little more experience than I had a month ago, when in the open
market my services commanded a hundred and board."

"When a man is big enough--or his job is big enough--" Jones argued, "he
arises above the ordinary law of supply and demand. In fact, in a sense,
he controls supply and demand. He puts himself in the job and dictates
the salary. You have a perfect right to pay yourself what other men in
similar positions are getting. Besides, as I said, you'll have to do
so for the credit of the firm. Do you call a doctor who lives in a
tumble-down tenement? You do not. You call one from a fine home; you
select him for his appearance of prosperity, regardless of the fact that
he may have mortgaged his future to create that appearance, and of the
further fact that he will charge you a fee calculated to help pay
off the mortgage. When you want a lawyer, do you seek some garret
practitioner? You do not. You go to a big building, with a big name
plate"--the pugnacious moustache gave hint of a smile gathering
beneath--"and you pay a big price for a man with an office full of
imposing-looking books, not a tenth part of which he has ever read, or
intends ever to read. I admit there's a good deal of bunco in the game,
but if you sit in you've got to play it that way, or the dear public
will throw you into the discard. Many a man who votes himself a salary
in five figures--or gets a friendly board of directors to do it for
him--if thrown unfriended between the millstones of supply and demand
probably couldn't qualify for your modest hundred dollars a month
and board. But he has risen into a different world; instead of being
dictated to, he dictates. That is your position, Grant. Look at it
sensibly."

"Nevertheless, I shall get along on two hundred a month. If I find it
necessary in order to protect the interests of the business to take a
membership in an expensive club, or commit any other extravagance, I
shall do so, and charge it up as a business expense. Besides, I think I
can be happier that way."

"And in the meantime your business is piling up profits. What are you
going to do with them? Give them away?"

"No. That, to