Man's Country/Chapter 10
SEPTEMBER 30th had come. The assembly floor was empty. The treasury was full. There was not a note in any bank. The last promise was kept—except one. And that was a personal promise of George Judson. The board of directors were gathered in Mr. Morris's office, ready to meet. Outside in the accounting room the Secretary-Treasurer walked to and fro nervously, waiting for the bookkeepers to complete the balance sheet. At length their computations were checked and confirmed to the last decimal, and alert young Percy Mock handed over a sheet with typewritten columns of figures some of which were emphasized by underscores in red.
"Shall I write the dividend checks now, sir?" Percy inquired.
"On the basis I outlined to you," answered George, with an affirmative inflection, and walked toward the inner office, scanning the figures as he went.
About President Morris and the scarred old desk there sat: Aaron Ward, short, thick, bald and fifty; Thomas Pence, balder, bluffer, older, but with a complexion of perennially youthful pink; and S. R. Peattie, ageless, colorless, fleshless, with a hook nose and a sticky kind of eye that appeared to adhere to any person or thing at which he looked. These were three of the friends of Stephen Gilman who had taken advantage of his stipulation and had acquired stock in the Morris-Judson Automobile Company.
"Ahem!—Ah!Reading of the Minutes!" said President Morris, a bit awkwardly, for he was "not much on these legal details," as he was accustomed to confess to his directorate at each meeting.
George read them quickly, probably with not a soul listening but every eye staring at that sheet of paper which, with a sense of dramatic values, had been placed tantalizingly upside down upon the table. S. R. Peattie's sticky eye seemed almost drawing it toward him, as oriental thieves draw money to them by means of wax on the end of a stick.
"Approved!" jerked out Mr. Morris, for he too was anxious to get on, to have that sheet of paper turned over and read.
"Report of the Secretary-Treasurer on year's business, profit and loss," grunted Mr. Morris, and—George turned the paper over.
The respect with which these seasoned business men concentrated their gaze and prepared to listen seemed almost exaggerated, as if they, perceived in this precocious enthusiast an embryonic captain of industry whose genius was about to disclose itself and lead them on to fortune.
"The year's business," George announced, in a voice that tried hard not to sound strained, "shows a total volume of $1,113,492.00; and the profits, after deducting all expenses for operation, payment of interest and other fixed charges and allowing ten per cent. for depreciation on plant, are $214,421.62."
Two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars profit on a capitalization of $250,000.00, not all of which was represented by cash or material! It was unbelievable. For a moment there was silence. They exchanged glances with each other, sidewise or over the tops of glasses, and Uncle Tommy Pence who had believed in George so heartily and financed him so generously, could not repress a chuckle and a sly kick under the table at the sometimes faint-hearted and pessimistic and always covetous Peattie.
George passed the sheet to Aaron Ward, who glanced at it reverently, and passed it to Peattie; Peattie gazed long and stickily and passed it to Uncle Tom who, with scarce a look, handed it on to Milton Morris and drummed impatiently upon the table for the next order.
The sensation was not due to the fact that this total of profits was great. All these men were used to much larger figures; but the percentage of profit—eighty per cent. on their investment—and made on something new and erratic and uncertain, an automobile; that was what stirred them.
"I move you, Mr. President, that a dividend of eighty per cent. be declared upon the capital stock of the Morris-Judson Automobile Company," proposed the Secretary-Treasurer.
"Eighty per cent? George, you're nutty," chided Uncle Tom humorously. "Success has gone to the head. You'll need a big surplus for future operations. Declare a dividend of ten per cent; that'll satisfy everybody; and then go ahead and create a surplus for an operating fund."
"Mr. Pence," said George, rising and indicating by his manner that he was going to make a very important plea, "This is a matter of honor with me, a matter of making good, and making good is just now bigger than any other issue which confronts this youthful and, as I believe, growing company.
"I promised Mr. Gilman, and every other stockholder, yourself included, something like eighty per cent. profit on their investment. Looking back over the year, I shudder to think how hazardous that was, but we happened to make good on it. Now, gentlemen, I want you to authorize me to take to every stockholder to whom I made that promise a check for his dividend on that basis."
George sat down. His plea had been almost personal. He had asked of them nothing but permission to make good on his pledged word, and he had asked it modestly but not without the suggestion of intense emotion. There was an inevitable moment of silence and immobility. Then Milton Morris, rubbing his hands nervously, feeling a bit shy in the presence of these older, richer men who had honored his office with their presence, looked round his board and urged: "George has kind of put this thing over on his own—his own heart, you might say—and I think we ought to let him do about the way he wants to with these profits on the first year. He's probably got some good idea tucked away inthe, tonneau of his brain right now that's better than any we've thought of."
"Hum! Humph!" rumbled Uncle Tommy Pence deep in his lake-fogged throat. "Certainly. We would anyhow. Mr. President, I sO move you."
"Second," said Aaron Ward, who was rather of a seconding nature.
"All in favor?" questioned the presiding officer.
Everybody nodded, even Peattie, and he rather eagerly, as if he could not get his hands on an eighty per cent dividend too soon.
"So ordered."
George lifted a beckoning hand. Percy Mock, peering through the glass wall and waiting for just that signal, stepped in and laid a package of pink checks before the Secretary-Treasurer, who instantly took them up and feathered their edges lovingly through his fingers. It was a great moment for young George Judson. In these checks he held the final irrefutable evidence that he was not an idle dreamer of dreams but a real doer of deeds. As if lost in thought, forgetful of an audience, he lovingly caressed those perforated edges once more, gloating a little; and it was impossible that the staid business men whose eyes were upon him so intently did not comprehend something of what was passing in the younger man's mind, and sympathize with it.
But before the silence could become more than just noticeable George had recovered himself and began to pass out the checks; to Milton Morris a check for eighty thousand odd, to himself a check for forty thousand odd—money that was now his, not the company's but his own, earned by his own energy, the product of his own investment of money and labor. He hesitated before it, color coming and going in his cheeks, his eyes arrested and clinging to the check almost as Mr. Peattie's adhesive optic might have clung. It was the concrete evidence of his success. Then he found and passed over the checks of Mr. Pence, Mr. Ward and Mr. Peattie.
Peattie snatched at his, noted the exact amount $12,432.12, and was about to slip it into his wallet when George stopped him.
"One moment, Mr. Peattie. I want you to give that back to me," the Secretary-Treasurer exclaimed astonishingly.
Mr. Peattie's mouth was open, and he glared as if a most astounding thing had been proposed. "Give it back!" he crabbed.
"Yes, Mr. Peattie. I want you to endorse it and hand it back to me. The company is going to borrow it from you. I am going to ask Mr. Pence and Mr. Ward to do the same. Mr. Morris and I have already agreed that this is what we will do with our checks. We need the money right now in tying up materials for the next year's business at the most advantageous figures possible."
"Then, why'nt you create a surplus!" demanded Mr. Peattie, querulously. "What's the big idea in a cleanhull dividend if you're going to take it away from us again?"
"Because, as I told you," responded George, "I am determined to make good absolutely now and always on any promise I make—you can keep the dividend or lend it to us, but I've got to have your faith, for what I have asked of you so far in the way of personal faith, is little to what I'm going to ask. Furthermore, this lets me out on promises to you gentlemen in the future. I promise you nothing more in the way of profits. You can make your own estimates based upon your experience of today."
"But the other stockholders?" inquired the tenacious Peattie, glaring less and growing more thoughtful, while he stretched forth a long bony finger and tapped the six or seven remaining checks.
"I am going to deliver every one of those in person," explained the Secretary-Treasurer, "to those gentlemen to whom I sold the stock with an estimated profit of seventy-five per cent. or better."
"And then take them away from them again?" Peattie inquired sarcastically.
This forced a smile from George, although his mood was still serious. "I expect them to give them back to me with the same enthusiasm and upon the same terms as the rest of you."
"Well, I'll be damned!" exploded Seth R. Peattie, glaring once more round the circle. Then, reaching for a pen, he began to endorse his check. "I suppose you've got notes already drawn up, running to each of us for these amounts, and that you've got a resolution all ready for us to pass authorizing the Secretary-Treasurer and the President to sign the notes," he remarked ironically amid the general scratching of pens.
"You have anticipated me precisely," confessed George, and this time his smile was complacent.
"Some day," remarked Mr. Peattie acidly, flinging down the check which had been his for a moment; "Some day young fellow, you're going to stub your toe and fall down hard—being so cock-sure about everything."
George's face portrayed distress and a great humility at this speech. "Really, Mr. Peattie," he protested. "I try not to be cock-sure about any of these things. I only think out the safe way and then I work hard, and I have mighty good help from Mr. Morris, and mighty good advice on everything from you gentlemen. Just think: from the advertising contract forward: have I ever been headstrong about anything? Haven't we always agreed perfectly about each policy?"
"That's because you're so darn smooth, you talk so round."
"Mr. Peattie!" rebuked George. "I insist you do yourself injustice. You do your co-directors injustice. It is merely that your own ripe judgment commends the reasons which I advance. If ever your judgment doesn't commend them, you will refuse to agree, I'm sure."
The young Secretary-Treasurer had a bearing so magnificently modest and respectful as he got off this speech, that Peattie knew he was estopped—in the eyes of his fellow-directors if not in his own. Besides he admired the young fellow greatly. "Oh, you're a wizard right now," he conceded, in mollified tones. "I hope you don't ever get to be a was-ard is all I can say. Most men do though. Sooner or later, the procession gets too fast for 'em."
"I wonder if it will ever get too fast for me!" pondered George that night as he turned upon his pillow.