EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES
"You want more money? Why, my boy, I worked three years for $11 a month
right in this establishment, and now I'm owner of it."
"Well, you see what happened to your boss. No man who treats his help
that way can hang on to his business."
EARNEST YOUNG MAN--"Have you any advice to a struggling young employee?"
FRANK OLD GENTLEMAN--"Yes. Don't work."
EAR
EST YOUNG MAN--"Don't work?"
FRANK OLD GENTLEMAN--"No. Become an employer."
General Benjamin F. Butler built a house in Washington on the same plans
as his home in Lowell, Mass., and his studies were furnished in exactly
the same way. He and his secretary, M. W. Clancy, afterward City Clerk
of Washington for many years, were constantly traveling between the two
places.
One day a senator called upon General Butler in Lowell and the next day
in Washington to find him and his secretary engaged upon the same work
that had occupied them in Massachusetts.
"Heavens, Clancy, don't you ever stop?"
"No," interposed General Butler,
"'Satan finds some michief still
For idle hands to do.'"
Clancy arose and bowed, saying:
"General, I never was sure until now what my employer was. I had heard
the rumor, but I always discredited it."
W.J. ("Fingy") Conners, the New York politician, who is not precisely a
Chesterfield, secured his first great freight-handling contract when he
was a roustabout on the Buffalo docks. When the job was about to begin
he called a thousand burly "dock-wallopers" to order, as narrated by one
of his business friends:
"Now," roared Conners, "yez are to worruk for me, and I want ivery man
here to understand what's what. I kin lick anny man in the gang."
Nine hundred and ninety-nine swallowed the insult, but one huge,
double-fisted warrior moved uneasily and stepping from the line he said
"You can't lick me, Jim Conners."
"I can't, can't I?" bellowed "Fingy."
"No, you can't" was the determined response.
"Oh, well, thin, go to the office and git your money," said "Fingy."
"I'll have no man in me gang that I can't lick."
Outside his own cleverness there is nothing that so delights Mr. Wiggins
as a game of baseball, and when he gets a chance to exploit the two,
both at the same time, he may be said to be the happiest man in the
world. Hence it was that the other day, when little red headed Willie
Mulligan, his office boy, came sniffing into his presence to ask for the
afternoon off that he might attend his grandfather's funeral, Wiggins
deemed it a masterly stroke to answer:
"Why, certainly, Willie. What's more, my boy, if you'll wait for me I'll
go with you."
"All right, sir," sniffed Willie as he returned to his desk and waited
patiently.
And, lo and behold, poor little Willie had told the truth, and when he
and Wiggins started out together the latter not only lost one of the
best games of the season, but had to attend the obsequies of an old lady
in whom he had no interest whatever as well.
CHIEF CLERK (to office boy)--"Why on earth don't you laugh when the boss
tells a joke?"
OFFICE BOY--"I don't have to; I quit on Saturday."--_Satire_.
James J. Hill, the Railway King, told the following amusing incident
that happened on one of his roads:
"One of our division superintendents had received numerous complaints
that freight trains were in the habit of stopping on a grade crossing in
a certain small town, thereby blocking travel for long periods. He
issued orders, but still the complaints came in. Finally he decided to
investigate personally.
"A short man in size and very excitable, he went down to the crossing,
and, sure enough, there stood, in defiance of his orders, a long freight
train, anchored squarely across it. A brakeman who didn't know him by
sight sat complacently on the top of the car.
"'Move that train on!' sputtered the little 'super.' 'Get it off the
crossing so people can pass. Move on, I say!'
"The brakeman surveyed the tempestuous little man from head to foot.
'You go to the deuce, you little shrimp,' he replied. 'You're small
enough to crawl under.'"