Old Gorgon Graham by George Horace Lorimer
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George Horace Lorimer >> Old Gorgon Graham
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10 [Illustration: Exchanging the grip of the third degree]
OLD GORGON GRAHAM
More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
_by_ George Horace Lorimer
_With pictures by F.R. Gruger and Martin Justice_
1903
FROM A SON TO HIS FATHER
CONTENTS
I. From John Graham, head of the house of Graham & Company, pork
packers, in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as Old Gorgon Graham,
to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards.
_The old man is laid up temporarily for repairs, and Pierrepont
has written asking if his father doesn't feel that he is qualified
now to relieve him of some of the burden of active management_
II. From John Graham, at the Schweitzerkasenhof, Carlsbad, to his
son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_The head of the lard department has died suddenly, and
Pierrepont has suggested to the old man that there is a silver
lining to that cloud of sorrow_
III. From John Graham, at the Schweitzerkasenhof,
Carlsbad, to his son, Pierrepont, at
the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_A friend of the young man has just presented a letter of
introduction to the old man, and has exchanged a large bunch of
stories for a small roll of bills_
IV. From John Graham, at the Hotel Cecil, London, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_The old man has just finished going through the young man's
first report as manager of the lard department, and he finds it
suspiciously good_
V. From John Graham, at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_The young man has hinted vaguely of a quarrel between himself
and Helen Heath, who is in New York with her mother, and has
suggested that the old man act as peacemaker_
VI. From John Graham, at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_The young man has written describing the magnificent wedding
presents that are being received, and hinting discreetly that it
would not come amiss if he knew what shape the old man's was
going to take, as he needs the money_
VII. From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Yemassee-on-the-Tallahassee.
_The young man is now in the third quarter of the honeymoon, and
the old man has decided that it is time to bring him fluttering
down to earth_
VIII. From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Yemassee-on-the-Tallahassee.
_In replying to his father's hint that it is time to turn his
thoughts from love to lard, the young man has quoted a French
sentence, and the old man has been both pained and puzzled by
it_
IX. From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, care of Graham & Company's brokers, Atlanta.
_Following the old man's suggestion, the young man has rounded
out the honeymoon into a harvest moon, and is sending in some
very satisfactory orders to the house_
X. From John Graham, at Mount Clematis, Michigan, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_The young man has done famously during the first year of his
married life, and the old man has decided to give him a more
important position_
XI. From John Graham, at Mount Clematis, Michigan, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_The young man has sent the old man a dose of his own medicine,
advice, and he is proving himself a good doctor by taking it_
XII. From John Graham, at Magnolia Villa, on the Florida Coast, to his
son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_The old man has started back to Nature, but he hasn't gone
quite far enough to lose sight of his business altogether_
XIII. From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, care of Graham & Company, Denver.
_The young man has been offered a large interest in a big thing
at a small price, and he has written asking the old man to lend
him the price_
XIV. From John Graham, at the Omaha branch of Graham & Company, to his
son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago.
_The old man has been advised by wire of the arrival of a
prospective partner, and that the mother, the son, and the
business are all doing well_
No. 1
From John Graham, head of the house of Graham & Company, pork packers,
in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as Old Gorgon Graham, to his
son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards. The old man is laid up
temporarily for repairs, and Pierrepont has written asking if his
father doesn't feel that he is qualified now to relieve him of some of
the burden of active management.
I
CARLSBAD, October 4, 189-.
_Dear Pierrepont_: I'm sorry you ask so many questions that you
haven't a right to ask, because you put yourself in the position of
the inquisitive bull-pup who started out to smell the third rail on
the trolley right-of-way--you're going to be full of information in a
minute.
In the first place, it looks as if business might be pretty good this
fall, and I'm afraid you'll have your hands so full in your place as
assistant manager of the lard department that you won't have time to
run my job, too.
Then I don't propose to break any quick-promotion records with you,
just because you happened to be born into a job with the house. A fond
father and a fool son hitch up into a bad team, and a good business
makes a poor family carryall. Out of business hours I like you better
than any one at the office, but in them there are about twenty men
ahead of you in my affections. The way for you to get first place is
by racing fair and square, and not by using your old daddy as a
spring-board from which to jump over their heads. A man's son is
entitled to a chance in his business, but not to a cinch.
It's been my experience that when an office begins to look like a
family tree, you'll find worms tucked away snug and cheerful in most
of the apples. A fellow with an office full of relatives is like a sow
with a litter of pigs--apt to get a little thin and peaked as the
others fat up. A receiver is next of kin to a business man's
relatives, and after they are all nicely settled in the office they're
not long in finding a job for him there, too. I want you to get this
firmly fixed in your mind, because while you haven't many relatives to
hire, if you ever get to be the head of the house, you'll no doubt
marry a few with your wife.
For every man that the Lord makes smart enough to help himself, He
makes two who have to be helped. When your two come to you for jobs,
pay them good salaries to keep out of the office. Blood is thicker
than water, I know, but when it's the blood of your wife's second
cousin out of a job, it's apt to be thicker than molasses--and
stickier than glue when it touches a good thing. After you have found
ninety-nine sound reasons for hiring a man, it's all right to let his
relationship to you be the hundredth. It'll be the only bad reason in
the bunch.
I simply mention this in passing, because, as I have said, you ain't
likely to be hiring men for a little while yet. But so long as the
subject is up, I might as well add that when I retire it will be to
the cemetery. And I should advise you to anchor me there with a pretty
heavy monument, because it wouldn't take more than two such statements
of manufacturing cost as I have just received from your department to
bring me back from the graveyard to the Stock Yards on the jump. And
until I do retire you don't want to play too far from first base. The
man at the bat will always strike himself out quick enough if he has
forgotten how to find the pitcher's curves, so you needn't worry about
that. But you want to be ready all the time in case he should bat a
few hot ones in your direction.
Some men are like oak leaves--they don't know when they're dead, but
still hang right on; and there are others who let go before anything
has really touched them. Of course, I may be in the first class, but
you can be dead sure that I don't propose to get into the second, even
though I know a lot of people say I'm an old hog to keep right along
working after I've made more money than I know how to spend, and more
than I could spend if I knew how. It's a mighty curious thing how many
people think that if a man isn't spending his money their way he isn't
spending it right, and that if he isn't enjoying himself according to
their tastes he can't be having a good time. They believe that money
ought to loaf; I believe that it ought to work. They believe that
money ought to go to the races and drink champagne; I believe that it
ought to go to the office and keep sober.
When a man makes a specialty of knowing how some other fellow ought to
spend his money, he usually thinks in millions and works for hundreds.
There's only one poorer hand at figures than these over-the-left
financiers, and he's the fellow who inherits the old man's dollars
without his sense. When a fortune comes without calling, it's apt to
leave without asking. Inheriting money is like being the second
husband of a Chicago grass-widow--mighty uncertain business, unless a
fellow has had a heap of experience. There's no use explaining when
I'm asked why I keep on working, because fellows who could put that
question wouldn't understand the answer. You could take these men and
soak their heads overnight in a pailful of ideas, and they wouldn't
absorb anything but the few loose cuss-words that you'd mixed in for
flavoring. They think that the old boys have corralled all the chances
and have tied up the youngsters where they can't get at them; when the
truth is that if we all simply quit work and left them the whole range
to graze over, they'd bray to have their fodder brought to them in
bales, instead of starting out to hunt the raw material, as we had to.
When an ass gets the run of the pasture he finds thistles.
I don't mind owning up to you, though, that I don't hang on because
I'm indispensable to the business, but because business is
indispensable to me. I don't take much stock in this indispensable man
idea, anyway. I've never had one working for me, and if I had I'd fire
him, because a fellow who's as smart as that ought to be in business
for himself; and if he doesn't get a chance to start a new one, he's
just naturally going to eat up yours. Any man can feel reasonably well
satisfied if he's sure that there's going to be a hole to look at when
he's pulled up by the roots.
I started business in a shanty, and I've expanded it into half a mile
of factories; I began with ten men working for me, and I'll quit with
10,000; I found the American hog in a mud-puddle, without a beauty
spot on him except the curl in his tail, and I'm leaving him nicely
packed in fancy cans and cases, with gold medals hung all over him.
But after I've gone some other fellow will come along and add a
post-graduate course in pork packing, and make what I've done look
like a country school just after the teacher's been licked. And I want
you to be that fellow. For the present, I shall report at the office
as usual, because I don't know any other place where I can get ten
hours' fun a day, year in and year out.
After forty years of close acquaintance with it, I've found that work
is kind to its friends and harsh to its enemies. It pays the fellow
who dislikes it his exact wages, and they're generally pretty small;
but it gives the man who shines up to it all the money he wants and
throws in a heap of fun and satisfaction for good measure.
A broad-gauged merchant is a good deal like our friend Doc Graver,
who'd cut out the washerwoman's appendix for five dollars, but would
charge a thousand for showing me mine--he wants all the money that's
coming to him, but he really doesn't give a cuss how much it is, just
so he gets the appendix.
I've never taken any special stock in this modern theory that no
fellow over forty should be given a job, or no man over sixty allowed
to keep one. Of course, there's a dead-line in business, just as there
is in preaching, and fifty's a good, convenient age at which to draw
it; but it's been my experience that there are a lot of dead ones on
both sides of it. When a man starts out to be a fool, and keeps on
working steady at his trade, he usually isn't going to be any Solomon
at sixty. But just because you see a lot of bald-headed sinners lined
up in the front row at the show, you don't want to get humorous with
every bald-headed man you meet, because the first one you tackle may
be a deacon. And because a fellow has failed once or twice, or a dozen
times, you don't want to set him down as a failure--unless he takes
failing too easy. No man's a failure till he's dead or loses his
courage, and that's the same thing. Sometimes a fellow that's been
batted all over the ring for nineteen rounds lands on the solar plexus
of the proposition he's tackling in the twentieth. But you can have a
regiment of good business qualities, and still fail without courage,
because he's the colonel, and he won't stand for any weakening at a
critical time.
I learned a long while ago not to measure men with a foot-rule, and
not to hire them because they were young or old, or pretty or homely,
though there are certain general rules you want to keep in mind. If
you were spending a million a year without making money, and you hired
a young man, he'd be apt to turn in and double your expenses to make
the business show a profit, and he'd be a mighty good man; but if you
hired an old man, he'd probably cut your expenses to the bone and show
up the money saved on the profit side; and he'd be a mighty good man,
too. I hire both and then set the young man to spending and the old
man to watching expenses.
Of course, the chances are that a man who hasn't got a good start at
forty hasn't got it in him, but you can't run a business on the law of
averages and have more than an average business. Once an old fellow
who's just missed everything he's sprung at gets his hooks in, he's a
tiger to stay by the meat course. And I've picked up two or three of
these old man-eaters in my time who are drawing pretty large salaries
with the house right now.
Whenever I hear any of this talk about carting off old fellows to the
glue factory, I always think of Doc Hoover and the time they tried the
"dead-line-at-fifty" racket on him, though he was something over
eighty when it happened.
After I left Missouri, Doc stayed right along, year after year, in the
old town, handing out hell to the sinners in public, on Sundays, and
distributing corn-meal and side-meat to them on the quiet, week-days.
He was a boss shepherd, you bet, and he didn't stand for any church rows
or such like nonsense among his sheep. When one of them got into trouble
the Doc was always on hand with his crook to pull him out, but let an old
ram try to start any stampede-and-follow-the-leader-over-the-precipice
foolishness, and he got the sharp end of the stick.
There was one old billy-goat in the church, a grocer named Deacon
Wiggleford, who didn't really like the Elder's way of preaching.
Wanted him to soak the Amalekites in his sermons, and to leave the
grocery business alone. Would holler Amen! when the parson got after
the money-changers in the Temple, but would shut up and look sour when
he took a crack at the short-weight prune-sellers of the nineteenth
century. Said he "went to church to hear the simple Gospel preached,"
and that may have been one of the reasons, but he didn't want it
applied, because there wasn't any place where the Doc could lay it on
without cutting him on the raw. The real trouble with the Deacon was
that he'd never really got grace, but only a pretty fair imitation.
Well, one time after the Deacon got back from his fall trip North to
buy goods, he tried to worry the Doc by telling him that all the
ministers in Chicago were preaching that there wasn't any super-heated
hereafter, but that each man lived through his share of hell right
here on earth. Doc's face fell at first, but he cheered up mightily
after nosing it over for a moment, and allowed it might be so; in
fact, that he was sure it was so, as far as those fellows were
concerned--they lived in Chicago. And next Sunday he preached hell so
hot that the audience fairly sweat.
He wound up his sermon by deploring the tendency to atheism which he
had noticed "among those merchants who had recently gone up with the
caravans to Babylon for spices" (this was just his high-toned way of
describing Deacon Wiggleford's trip to Chicago in a day-coach for
groceries), and hoped that the goods which they had brought back were
better than the theology. Of course, the old folks on the mourners'
bench looked around to see how the Deacon was taking it, and the
youngsters back on the gigglers' bench tittered, and everybody was
happy but the Deacon. He began laying for the Doc right there. And
without meaning to, it seems that I helped his little game along.
Doc Hoover used to write me every now and then, allowing that hams
were scarcer in Missouri and more plentiful in my packing-house than
they had any right to be, if the balance of trade was to be
maintained. Said he had the demand and I had the supply, and he wanted
to know what I was going to do about it. I always shipped back a
tierce by fast freight, because I was afraid that if I tried to argue
the point he'd come himself and take a car-load. He made a specialty
of seeing that every one in town had enough food and enough religion,
and he wasn't to be trifled with when he discovered a shortage of
either. A mighty good salesman was lost when Doc got religion.
Well, one day something more than ten years ago he wrote in,
threatening to make the usual raid on my smoke-house, and when I
answered, advising him that the goods were shipped, I inclosed a
little check and told him to spend it on a trip to the Holy Land which
I'd seen advertised. He backed and filled over going at first, but
finally the church took it out of his hands and arranged for a young
fellow not long out of the Theological Seminary to fill the pulpit,
and Doc put a couple of extra shirts in a grip and started off. I
heard the rest of the story from Si Perkins next fall, when he brought
on a couple of car-loads of steers to Chicago, and tried to stick me
half a cent more than the market for them on the strength of our
having come from the same town.
It seems that the young man who took Doc's place was one of these
fellows with pink tea instead of red blood in his veins. Hadn't any
opinions except your opinions until he met some one else. Preached
pretty, fluffy little things, and used eau de Cologne on his language.
Never hit any nearer home than the unspeakable Turk, and then he was
scared to death till he found out that the dark-skinned fellow under
the gallery was an Armenian. (The Armenian left the church anyway,
because the unspeakable Turk hadn't been soaked hard enough to suit
him.) Didn't preach much from the Bible, but talked on the cussedness
of Robert Elsmere and the low-downness of Trilby. Was always wanting
everybody to lead the higher life, without ever really letting on what
it was, or at least so any one could lay hold of it by the tail. In
the end, I reckon he'd have worked around to Hoyle's games--just to
call attention to their wickedness, of course.
The Pillars of the church, who'd been used to getting their religion
raw from Doc Hoover, didn't take to the bottle kindly, and they all
fell away except Deacon Wiggleford. He and the youngsters seemed to
cotton to the new man, and just before Doc Hoover was due to get back
they called a special meeting, and retired the old man with the title
of pastor emeritus. They voted him two donation parties a year as long
as he lived, and elected the Higher Lifer as the permanent pastor of
the church. Deacon Wiggleford suggested the pastor emeritus extra. He
didn't quite know what it meant, but he'd heard it in Chicago, and it
sounded pretty good, and as if it ought to be a heap of satisfaction
to a fellow who was being fired. Besides, it didn't cost anything, and
the Deacon was one of those Christians who think that you ought to be
able to save a man's immortal soul for two bits.
The Pillars were mighty hot next day when they heard what had
happened, and were for calling another special meeting; but two or
three of them got together and decided that it was best to lay low and
avoid a row until the Doc got back.
He struck town the next week with a jugful of water from the River
Jordan in one hand and a gripful of paper-weights made of wood from
the Mount of Olives in the other. He was chockful of the joy of having
been away and of the happiness of getting back, till they told him
about the Deacon's goings on, and then he went sort of gray and old,
and sat for a minute all humped up.
Si Perkins, who was one of the unregenerate, but a mighty good friend
of the Doc's, was standing by, and he blurted right out: "You say the
word, Doc, and we'll make the young people's society ride this rooster
out of town on a rail."
That seemed to wake up the Elder a bit, for he shook his head and
said, "No nonsense now, you Si"; and then, as he thought it over, he
began to bristle and swell up; and when he stood it was to his full
six feet four, and it was all man. You could see that he was boss of
himself again, and when a man like old Doc Hoover is boss of himself
he comes pretty near being boss of every one around him. He sent word
to the Higher Lifer by one of the Pillars that he reckoned he was
counting on him to preach a farewell sermon the next Sunday, and the
young man, who'd been keeping in the background till whatever was
going to drop, dropped, came around to welcome him in person. But
while the Doc had been doing a heap of praying for grace, he didn't
propose to take any chances, and he didn't see him. And he wouldn't
talk to any one else, just smiled in an aggravating way, though
everybody except Deacon Wiggleford and the few youngsters who'd made
the trouble called to remonstrate against his paying any attention to
their foolishness.
The whole town turned out the next Sunday to see the Doc step down. He
sat beside the Higher Lifer on the platform, and behind them were the
six deacons. When it came time to begin the services the Higher Lifer
started to get up, but the Doc was already on his feet, and he
whispered to him:
"Set down, young man"; and the young man sat. The Doc had a way of
talking that didn't need a gun to back it up.
The old man conducted the services right through, just as he always
did, except that when he'd remembered in his prayer every one in
America and had worked around through Europe to Asia Minor, he
lingered a trifle longer over the Turks than usual, and the list of
things which he seemed to think they needed brought the Armenian back
into the fold right then and there.
[Illustration: "We'll make the young people's society ride this
rooster out of town on a rail"]
By the time the Doc got around to preaching, Deacon Wiggleford was
looking like a fellow who'd bought a gold brick, and the Higher Lifer
like the brick. Everybody else felt and looked as if they were
attending the Doc's funeral, and, as usual, the only really calm and
composed member of the party was the corpse.
"You will find the words of my text," Doc began, "in the revised
version of the works of William Shakespeare, in the book--I mean
play--of Romeo and Juliet, Act Two, Scene Two: 'Parting is such sweet
sorrow that I shall say good-night till it be morrow,'" and while the
audience was pulling itself together he laid out that text in four
heads, each with six subheads. Began on partings, and went on a still
hunt through history and religion for them. Made the audience part with
Julius Caesar with regret, and had 'em sniffling at saying good-by to
Napoleon and Jeff Davis. Made 'em feel that they'd lost their friends
and their money, and then foreclosed the mortgage on the old homestead
in a this-is-very-sad-but-I-need-the-money tone. In fact, when he had
finished with Parting and was ready to begin on Sweet Sorrow, he had
not only exhausted the subject, but left considerable of a deficit in
it.
They say that the hour he spent on Sweet Sorrow laid over anything
that the town had ever seen for sadness. Put 'em through every stage
of grief from the snuffles to the snorts. Doc always was a pretty
noisy preacher, but he began work on that head with
soft-pedal-tremolo-stop preaching and wound up with a peroration like
a steamboat explosion. Started with his illustrations dying of
consumption and other peaceful diseases, and finished up with railroad
wrecks. He'd been at it two hours when he got through burying the
victims of his last illustration, and he was just ready to tackle his
third head with six subheads. But before he took the plunge he looked
at his watch and glanced up sort of surprised:
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