Old Gorgon Graham · Chapter 4Contents (4)
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You can buy a lot of home happiness with a mighty small salary, but fashionable happiness always costs just a little more than you're making. You can't keep down expenses when you've got to keep up appearances—that is, the appearance of being something that you ain't. You're in the fix of a dog chasing his tail—you can't make ends meet, and if you do it'll give you such a crick in your neck that you won't get any real satisfaction out of your gymnastics. You've got to live on a rump-steak basis when you're alone, so that you can appear to be on a quail-on-toast basis when you have company. And while they're eating your quail and betting that they're cold-storage birds, they'll be whispering to each other that the butcher told their cook that you lived all last week on a soup-bone and two pounds of Hamburger steak. Your wife must hog it around the house in an old wrapper, because she's got to have two or three of those dresses that come high on the bills and low on the shoulders, and when she wears 'em the neighbors are going to wonder how much you're short in your accounts. And if you've been raised a shouting Methodist and been used to hollering your satisfaction in a good hearty Glory! or a Hallelujah! you've got to quit it and go to one of those churches where the right answer to the question, "What is the chief end of man?" is "Dividend," and where they think you're throwing a fit and sick the sexton on to you if you forget yourself and whoop it up a little when your religion gets to working.
Then, if you do have any children, you can't send them to a plain public school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, because they've got to go to a fashionable private one to learn hog-Latin, hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth. Of course, the rich children are going to say that they're pushing little kids, but they've got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where they're not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora billy-goats. They've got to learn how to bow low to every one in front of them and to kick out at every one behind them. It's been my experience that it takes a good four-year course in snubbing before you can graduate a first-class snob.
Then, when you've sweat along at it for a dozen years or so, you'll wake up some morning and discover that your appearances haven't deceived any one but yourself. A man who tries that game is a good deal like the fellow who puts on a fancy vest over a dirty shirt—he's the only person in the world who can't see the egg-spots under his chin. Of course, there isn't any real danger of your family's wearing a false front while I'm alive, because I believe Helen's got too much sense to stand for anything of the sort; but if she should, you can expect the old man around with his megaphone to whisper the real figures to your neighbors.
I don't care how much or how little money you make—I want you to understand that there's only one place in the world where you can live a happy life, and that's inside your income. A family that's living beyond its means is simply a business that's losing money, and it's bound to go to smash. And to keep a safe distance ahead of the sheriff you've got to make your wife help. More men go broke through bad management at home than at the office. And I might add that a lot of men who are used to getting only one dollar's worth of food for a five-dollar bill down-town, expect their wives to get five dollars' worth of food for a one-dollar bill at the corner grocery, and to save the change toward a pair of diamond earrings. These fellows would plant a tin can and kick because they didn't get a case of tomatoes.
Of course, some women put their husband's salaries on their backs instead of his ribs; but there are a heap more men who burn up their wives' new sealskin sacques in two-bit cigars. Because a man's a good provider it doesn't always mean that he's a good husband—it may mean that he's a hog. And when there's a cuss in the family and it comes down to betting which, on general principles the man always carries my money. I make mistakes at it, but it's the only winning system I've ever been able to discover in games of chance.
You want to end the wedding trip with a business meeting and talk to your wife quite as frankly as you would to a man whom you'd taken into partnership. Tell her just what your salary is and then lay it out between you—so much for joint expenses, the house and the housekeeping, so much for her expenses, so much for yours, and so much to be saved. That last is the one item on which you can't afford to economize. It's the surplus and undivided profits account of your business, and until the concern accumulates a big one it isn't safe to move into offices on Easy Street.
A lot of fool fathers only give their fool daughters a liberal education in spending, and it's pretty hard to teach those women the real facts about earning and saving, but it's got to be done unless you want to be the fool husband of a fool wife. These girls have an idea that men get money by going to a benevolent old party behind some brass bars and shoving a check at him and telling him that they want it in fifties and hundreds.
You should take home your salary in actual money for a while, and explain that it's all you got for sweating like a dog for ten hours a day, through six long days, and that the cashier handed it out with an expression as if you were robbing the cash-drawer of an orphan asylum. Make her understand that while those that have gets, when they present a check, those that haven't gets it in the neck. Explain that the benevolent old party is only on duty when papa's daughter has a papa that Bradstreet rates AA, and that when papa's daughter's husband presents a five-dollar check with a ten-cent overdraft, he's received by a low-browed old brute who calls for the bouncer to put him out. Tell her right at the start the worst about the butcher, and the grocer, and the iceman, and the milkman, and the plumber, and the gas-meter—that they want their money and that it has to come out of that little roll of bills. Then give her enough to pay them, even if you have to grab for your lunch from a high stool. I used to know an old Jew who said that the man who carved was always a fool or a hog, but you've got to learn not to divide your salary on either basis.
Make your wife pay cash. A woman never really understands money till she's done that for a while. I've noticed that people rarely pay down the money for foolish purchases—they charge them. And it's mighty seldom that a woman's extravagant unless she or her husband pays the bills by check. There's something about counting out the actual legal tender on the spot that keeps a woman from really wanting a lot of things which she thinks she wants.
When I married your ma, your grandpa was keeping eighteen niggers busy seeing that the family did nothing. She'd had a liberal education, which, so far as I've been able to find out, means teaching a woman everything except the real business that she's going into—that is, if she marries. But when your ma swapped the big house and the eighteen niggers for me and an old mammy to do the rough work, she left the breakfast-in-bed, fine-lady business behind her and started right in to get the rest of the education that belonged to her. She did a mighty good job, too, all except making ends meet, and they were too elastic for her at first—sort of snapped back and left a deficit just when she thought she had them together.
She was mighty sorry about it, but she'd never heard of any way of getting money except asking papa for it, and she'd sort of supposed that every one asked papa when they wanted any, and, why didn't I ask papa? I finally made her see that I couldn't ask my papa, because I hadn't any, and that I couldn't ask hers, because it was against the rules of the game as I played it, and that was her first real lesson in high finance and low finances.
I gave her the second when she came to me about the twentieth of the month and kissed me on the ear and sent a tickly little whisper after it to the effect that the household appropriation for the month was exhausted and the pork-barrel and the meal-sack and the chicken-coop were in the same enfeebled condition.
I didn't say anything at first, only looked pretty solemn, and then I allowed that she'd have to go into the hands of a receiver. Well, sir, the way she snuggled up to me and cried made me come pretty close to weakening, but finally I told her that I reckoned I could manage to be appointed by the court and hush up the scandal so the neighbors wouldn't hear of it.
I took charge of her little books and paid over to myself her housekeeping money each month, buying everything myself, but explaining every move I made, until in the end I had paid her out of debt and caught up with my salary again. Then I came home on the first of the month, handed out her share of the money, and told her that the receiver had been discharged by the court.
My! but she was pleased. And then she paid me out for the scare I'd given her by making me live on side-meat and corn-bread for a month, so she'd be sure not to get the sheriff after her again. Of course, I had to tell her all about it in the end, and though she's never forgotten what she learned about money during the receivership, she's never quite forgiven the receiver.
Speaking of receiving, I notice the receipts of hogs are pretty light. Hold your lard prices up stiff to the market. It looks to me as if that Milwaukee crowd was getting under the February delivery.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
P.S.—You've got to square me with Helen.
No. 6
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.
VI
NEW YORK, December 12, 189-.
Dear Pierrepont: These fellows at the branch house here have been getting altogether too blamed refined to suit me in their ideas of what's a fair day's work, so I'm staying over a little longer than I had intended, in order to ring the rising bell for them and to get them back into good Chicago habits. The manager started in to tell me that you couldn't do any business here before nine or ten in the morning—and I raised that boy myself!
We had a short season of something that wasn't exactly prayer, but was just as earnest, and I think he sees the error of his ways. He seemed to feel that just because he was getting a fair share of the business I ought to be satisfied, but I don't want any half-sports out gunning with me. It's the fellow that settles himself in his blind before the ducks begin to fly who gets everything that's coming to his decoys. I reckon we'll have to bring this man back to Chicago and give him a beef house where he has to report at five before he can appreciate what a soft thing it is to get down to work at eight.
I'm mighty glad to hear you're getting so many wedding presents that you think you'll have enough to furnish your house, only you don't want to fingermark them looking to see it a hundred-thousand-dollar check from me ain't slipped in among them, because it ain't.
I intend to give you a present, all right, but there's a pretty wide margin for guessing between a hundred thousand dollars and the real figures. And you don't want to feel too glad about what you've got, either, because you're going to find out that furnishing a house with wedding presents is equivalent to furnishing it on the installment plan. Along about the time you want to buy a go-cart for the twins, you'll discover that you'll have to make Tommy's busted old baby-carriage do, because you've got to use the money to buy a tutti-frutti ice-cream spoon for the young widow who sent you a doormat with "Welcome" on it. And when she gets it, the young widow will call you that idiotic Mr. Graham, because she's going to have sixteen other tutti-frutti ice-cream spoons, and her doctor's told her that if she eats sweet things she'll have to go in the front door like a piano—sideways.
Then when you get the junk sorted over and your house furnished with it, you're going to sit down to dinner on some empty soap-boxes, with the soup in cut-glass finger-bowls, and the fish on a hand-painted smoking-set, and the meat on dinky, little egg-shell salad plates, with ice-cream forks and fruit knives to eat with. You'll spend most of that meal wondering why somebody didn't send you one of those hundred and sixteen piece five-dollar-ninety-eight-marked-down-from-six sets of china. While I don't mean to say that the average wedding present carries a curse instead of a blessing, it could usually repeat a few cuss-words if it had a retentive memory.
Speaking of wedding presents and hundred-thousand-dollar checks naturally brings to mind my old friend Hamilton Huggins—Old Ham they called him at the Yards—and the time he gave his son, Percival, a million dollars.
Take him by and large, Ham was as slick as a greased pig. Before he came along, the heft of the beef hearts went into the fertilizer tanks, but he reasoned out that they weren't really tough, but that their firmness was due to the fact that the meat in them was naturally condensed, and so he started putting them out in his celebrated condensed mincemeat at ten cents a pound. Took his pigs' livers, too, and worked 'em up into a genuine Strasburg pâté de foie gras that made the wild geese honk when they flew over his packing-house. Discovered that a little chopped cheek-meat at two cents a pound was a blamed sight healthier than chopped pork at six. Reckoned that by running twenty-five per cent. of it into his pork sausage he saved a hundred thousand people every year from becoming cantankerous old dyspeptics.
Ham was simply one of those fellows who not only have convolutions in their brains, but kinks and bow-knots as well, and who can believe that any sort of a lie is gospel truth just so it is manufactured and labeled on their own premises. I confess I ran out a line of those pigs' liver pâtés myself, but I didn't do it because I was such a patriot that I couldn't stand seeing the American flag insulted by a lot of Frenchmen getting a dollar for a ten-cent article, and that simply because geese have smaller livers than pigs.
For all Old Ham was so shrewd at the Yards, he was one of those fellows who begin losing their common-sense at the office door, and who reach home doddering and blithering. Had a fool wife with the society bug in her head, and as he had the one-of-our-leading-citizens bug in his, they managed between them to raise a lovely warning for a Sunday-school superintendent in their son, Percival.
Percy was mommer's angel boy with the sunny curls, who was to be raised a gentleman and to be "shielded from the vulgar surroundings and coarse associations of her husband's youth," and he was proud popper's pet, whose good times weren't going to be spoiled by a narrow-minded old brute of a father, or whose talents weren't going to be smothered in poverty, the way the old man's had been. No, sir-ee, Percy was going to have all the money he wanted, with the whisky bottle always in sight on the sideboard and no limit on any game he wanted to sit in, so that he'd grow up a perfect little gentleman and know how to use things instead of abusing them.
I want to say right here that I've heard a good deal of talk in my time about using whisky, and I've met a good many thousand men who bragged when they were half loaded that they could quit at any moment, but I've never met one of these fellows who would while the whisky held out. It's been my experience that when a fellow begins to brag that he can quit whenever he wants to, he's usually reached the point where he can't.
Naturally, Percy had hardly got the pap-rag out of his mouth before he learned to smoke cigarettes, and he could cuss like a little gentleman before he went into long pants. Took the four-years' sporting course at Harvard, with a postgraduate year of draw-poker and natural history—observing the habits and the speed of the ponies in their native haunts. Then, just to prove that he had paresis, Old Ham gave him a million dollars outright and a partnership in his business.
Percy started in to learn the business at the top—absorbing as much of it as he could find room for between ten and four, with two hours out for lunch—but he never got down below the frosting. The one thing that Old Ham wouldn't let him touch was the only thing about the business which really interested Percy—the speculating end of it. But everything else he did went with the old gentleman, and he was always bragging that Percy was growing up into a big, broad-gauged merchant. He got mighty mad with me when I told him that Percy was just a ready-made success who was so small that he rattled round in his seat, and that he'd better hold in his horses, as there were a good many humps in the road ahead of him.
Old Ham was a sure-thing packer, like myself, and let speculating alone, never going into the market unless he had the goods or knew where he could get them; but when he did plunge into the pit, he usually climbed out with both hands full of money and a few odd thousand-dollar bills sticking in his hair. So when he came to me one day and pointed out that Prime Steam Lard at eight cents for the November delivery, and the West alive with hogs, was a crime against the consumer, I felt inclined to agree with him, and we took the bear side of the market together.
Somehow, after we had gone short a big line, the law of supply and demand quit business. There were plenty of hogs out West, and all the packers were making plenty of lard, but people seemed to be frying everything they ate, and using lard in place of hair-oil, for the Prime Steam moved out as fast as it was made. The market simply sucked up our short sales and hollered for more, like a six-months shoat at the trough. Pound away as we would, the November option moved slowly up to 8½, to 9, to 9½. Then, with delivery day only six weeks off, it jumped overnight to 10, and closed firm at 12¼. We stood to lose a little over a million apiece right there, and no knowing what the crowd that was under the market would gouge us for in the end.
As soon as 'Change closed that day, Old Ham and I got together and gave ourselves one guess apiece to find out where we stood, and we both guessed right—in a corner.
We had a little over a month to get together the lard to deliver on our short sales or else pay up, but we hadn't had enough experience in the paying-up business to feel like engaging in it. So that afternoon we wired our agents through the West to start anything that looked like a hog toward Chicago, and our men in the East to ship us every tierce of Prime Steam they could lay their hands on. Then we made ready to try out every bit of hog fat, from a grease spot up, that we could find in the country. And all the time the price kept climbing on us like a nigger going up a persimmon tree, till it was rising seventeen cents.
So far the bull crowd had managed to keep their identity hidden, and we'd been pretty modest about telling the names of the big bears, because we weren't very proud of the way we'd been caught napping, and because Old Ham was mighty anxious that Percy shouldn't know that his safe old father had been using up the exception to his rule of no speculation.
It was a near thing for us, but the American hog responded nobly—and a good many other critters as well, I suspect—and when it came on toward delivery day we found that we had the actual lard to turn over on our short contracts, and some to spare. But Ham and I had lost a little fat ourselves, and we had learned a whole lot about the iniquity of selling goods that you haven't got, even when you do it with the benevolent intention of cheapening an article to the consumer.
We got together at his office in the Board of Trade building to play off the finals with the bull crowd. We'd had inspectors busy all night passing the lard which we'd gathered together and which was arriving by boat-loads and train-loads. Then, before 'Change opened, we passed the word around through our brokers that there wasn't any big short interest left, and to prove it they pointed to the increase in the stocks of Prime Steam in store and gave out the real figures on what was still in transit. By the time the bell rang for trading on the floor we had built the hottest sort of a fire under the market, and thirty minutes after the opening the price of the November option had melted down flat to twelve cents.
We gave the bulls a breathing space there, for we knew we had them all nicely rounded up in the killing-pens, and there was no hurry. But on toward noon, when things looked about right, we jumped twenty brokers into the pit, all selling at once and offering in any sized lots for which they could find takers. It was like setting off a pack of firecrackers—biff! bang! bang! our brokers gave it to them, and when the smoke cleared away the bits of that busted corner were scattered all over the pit, and there was nothing left for us to do but to pick up our profits; for we had swung a loss of millions over to the other side of the ledger.
Just as we were sending word to our brokers to steady the market so as to prevent a bad panic and failures, the door of the private office flew open, and in bounced Mr. Percy, looking like a hound dog that had lapped up a custard pie while the cook's back was turned and is hunting for a handy bed to hide under. Had let his cigarette go out—he wore one in his face as regularly as some fellows wear a pink in their buttonhole—and it was drooping from his lower lip, instead of sticking up under his nose in the old sporty, sassy way.
"Oh, gov'ner!" he cried as he slammed the door behind him; "the market's gone to hell."
"Quite so, my son, quite so," nodded Old Ham approvingly; "it's the bottomless pit to-day, all right, all right."
I saw it coming, but it came hard. Percy sputtered and stuttered and swallowed it once or twice, and then it broke loose in:
"And oh! gov'ner, I'm caught—in a horrid hole—you've got to help me out!"
"Eh! what's that!" exclaimed the old man, losing his just-after-a-hearty-meal expression. "What's that—caught—speculating, after what I've said to you! Don't tell me that you're one of that bull crowd—Don't you dare do it, sir."
"Ye-es," and Percy's voice was scared back to a whisper; "yes; and what's more, I'm the whole bull crowd—the Great Bull they've all been talking and guessing about."
Great Scott! but I felt sick. Here we'd been, like two pebbles in a rooster's gizzard, grinding up a lot of corn that we weren't going to get any good of. I itched to go for that young man myself, but I knew this was one of those holy moments between father and son when an outsider wants to pull his tongue back into its cyclone cellar. And when I looked at Ham, I saw that no help was needed, for the old man was coming out of his twenty-five-years' trance over Percy. He didn't say a word for a few minutes, just kept boring into the young man with his eyes, and though Percy had a cheek like brass, Ham's stare went through it as easy as a two-inch bit goes into boiler-plate. Then, "Take that cigaroot out of your mouth," he bellered. "What d'ye mean by coming into my office smoking cigareets?"
Percy had always smoked whatever he blamed pleased, wherever he blamed pleased before, though Old Ham wouldn't stand for it from any one else. But because things have been allowed to go all wrong for twenty-five years, it's no reason why they should be allowed to go wrong for twenty-five years and one day; and I was mighty glad to see Old Ham rubbing the sleep out of his eyes at last.
"But, gov'ner," Percy began, throwing the cigarette away, "I really—"
"Don't you but me; I won't stand it. And don't you call me gov'ner. I won't have your low-down street slang in my office. So you're the great bull, eh? you bull-pup! you bull in a china shop! The great bull-calf, you mean. Where'd you get the money for all this cussedness? Where'd you get the money? Tell me that. Spit it out—quick—I say."
"Well, I've got a million dollars," Percy dribbled out.
"Had a million dollars, and it was my good money," the old man moaned.
"And an interest in the business, you know."
"Yep; I oughter. I s'pose you hocked that."
"Not exactly; but it helped me to raise a little money."
"You bet it helped you; but where'd you get the rest? Where'd you raise the money to buy all this cash lard and ship it abroad? Where'd you get it? You tell me that."
"Well, ah—the banks—loaned—me—a—-good deal."
"On your face."
"Not exactly that—but they thought—inferred—that you were interested with me—and without—" Percy's tongue came to a full stop when he saw the old man's face.
"Oh! they did, eh! they did, eh!" Ham exploded. "Tried to bust your poor old father, did you! Would like to see him begging his bread, would you, or piking in the bucket-shops for five-dollar bills! Wasn't satisfied with soaking him with his own million! Couldn't rest when you'd swatted him with his own business! Wanted to bat him over the head with his own credit! And now you come whining around—"
"But, dad—"
"Don't you dad me, dad-fetch you—don't you try any Absalom business on me. You're caught by the hair, all right, and I'm not going to chip in for any funeral expenses."
Right here I took a hand myself, because I was afraid Ham was going to lose his temper, and that's one thing you can't always pick up in the same place that you left it. So I called Ham off, and told Percy to come back in an hour with his head broker and I'd protect his trades in the meanwhile. Then I pointed out to the old man that we'd make a pretty good thing on the deal, even after we'd let Percy out, as he'd had plenty of company on the bull side that could pay up; and anyway, that the boy was a blamed sight more important than the money, and here was the chance to make a man of him.