I want that cash. From now
on, stand everybody off and draw down a hundred. I'll pay you
interest on the rest till this blows over."
Two weeks later, with the pay-roll before them, it was:--
"Matthewson, who's this bookkeeper, Rogers? Your nephew? I
thought so. He's pulling down eighty-five a month. After--this
let him draw thirty-five. The forty can ride with me at
interest."
"Impossible!" Matthewson cried. "He can't make ends meet on
his salary as it is, and he has a wife and two kids--"
Daylight was upon him with a mighty oath.
"Can't! Impossible! What in hell do you think I'm running? A
home for feeble-minded? Feeding and dressing and wiping the
little noses of a lot of idiots that can't take care of
themselves? Not on your life. I'm hustling, and now's the time
that everybody that works for me has got to hustle. I want no
fair-weather birds holding down my office chairs or anything
else. This is nasty weather, damn nasty weather, and they've got
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.
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