Babbitt
Woods, and the president was appointed minister to a foreign country.
To obtain the options, to tie up one man’s land without letting his
neighbor know, had been an unusual strain on Babbitt. It was necessary
to introduce rumors about planning garages and stores, to pretend that
he wasn’t taking any more options, to wait and look as bored as a
poker-player at a time when the failure to secure a key-lot threatened
his whole plan. To all this was added a nerve-jabbing quarrel with his
secret associates in the deal. They did not wish Babbitt and Thompson to
have any share in the deal except as brokers. Babbitt rather agreed.
“Ethics of the business--broker ought to strictly represent his
principles and not get in on the buying,” he said to Thompson.
“Ethics, rats! Think I’m going to see that bunch of holy grafters get
away with the swag and us not climb in?” snorted old Henry.
“Well, I don’t like to do it. Kind of double-crossing.”
“It ain’t. It’s triple-crossing. It’s the public that gets
double-crossed. Well, now we’ve been ethical and got it out of our
systems, the question is where we can raise a loan to handle some of the
property for ourselves, on the Q. T. We can’t go to our bank for it.
Might come out.”
“I could see old Eathorne. He’s close as the tomb.”
“That’s the stuff.”
Eathorne was glad, he said, to “invest in character,” to make Babbitt
the loan and see to it that the loan did not appear on the books of the
bank. Thus certain of the options which Babbitt and Thompson obtained
were on parcels of real estate which they themselves owned, though the
property did not appear in their names.
In the midst of closing this splendid deal, which stimulated business
and public confidence by giving an example of increased real-estate
activity, Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person
working for him.
The dishonest one was Stanley Graff, the outside salesman.
For some time Babbitt had been worried about Graff. He did not keep his
word to tenants. In order to rent a house he would promise repairs which
the owner had not authorized. It was suspected that he juggled
inventories of furnished houses so that when the tenant left he had to
pay for articles which had never been in the house and the price of
which Graff put into his pocket. Babbitt had not been able to prove
these suspicions, and though he had rather planned to discharge Graff he
had never quite found time for it.
Now into Babbitt’s private room charged a red-faced man, panting, “Look
here! I’ve come to raise particular merry hell, and unless you have that
fellow pinched, I will!”
“What’s-- Calm down, o’ man. What’s trouble?”
“Trouble! Huh! Here’s the trouble--”
“Sit down and take it easy! They can hear you all over the building!”
“This fellow Graff you got working for you, he leases me a house. I was
in yesterday and signs the lease, all O.K., and he was to get the
owner’s signature and mail me the lease last night. Well, and he did.
This morning I comes down to breakfast and the girl says a fellow had
come to the house right after the early delivery and told her he wanted
an envelope that had been mailed by mistake, big long envelope with
‘Babbitt-Thompson’ in the corner of it. Sure enough, there it was, so
she lets him have it. And she describes the fellow to me, and it was
this Graff. So I ’phones to him and he, the poor fool, he admits it! He
says after my lease was all signed he got a better offer from another
fellow and he wanted my lease back. Now what you going to do about it?”
“Your name is--?”
“William Varney--W. K. Varney.”
“Oh, yes. That was the Garrison house.” Babbitt sounded the buzzer. When
Miss McGoun came in, he demanded, “Graff gone out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you look through his desk and see if there is a lease made out to
Mr. Varney on the Garrison house?” To Varney: “Can’t tell you how sorry
I am this happened. Needless to say, I’ll fire Graff the minute he comes
in. And of course your lease stands. But there’s one other thing I’d
like to do. I’ll tell the owner not to pay us the commission but apply
it to your rent. No! Straight! I want to. To be frank, this thing shakes
me up bad. I suppose I’ve always been a Practical Business Man. Probably
I’ve told one or two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called
for it--you know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick, to impress
boneheads. But this is the first time I’ve ever had to accuse one of my
own employees of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps.
Honest, it would hurt me if we profited by it. So you’ll let me hand you
the commission? Good!”
II
He walked through the February city, where trucks flung up a spattering
of slush and the sky was dark above dark brick cornices. He came back
miserable. He, who respected the law, had broken it by concealing the
Federal crime of interception of the mails. But he could not see Graff
go to jail and his wife suffer. Worse, he had to discharge Graff, and
this was a part of office routine which he feared. He liked people so
much, he so much wanted them to like him, that he could not bear
insulting them.
Miss McGoun dashed in to whisper, with the excitement of an approaching
scene, “He’s here!”
“Mr. Graff? Ask him to come in.”
He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair, and to keep his
eyes expressionless. Graff stalked in--a man of thirty-five, dapper,
eye-glassed, with a foppish mustache.
“Want me?” said Graff.
“Yes. Sit down.”
Graff continued to stand, grunting, “I suppose that old nut Varney has
been in to see you. Let me explain about him. He’s a regular tightwad,
and he sticks out for every cent, and he practically lied to me about
his ability to pay the rent-- I found that out just after we signed up.
And then another fellow comes along with a better offer for the house,
and I felt it was my duty to the firm to get rid of Varney, and I was so
worried about it I skun up there and got back the lease. Honest, Mr.
Babbitt, I didn’t intend to pull anything crooked. I just wanted the
firm to have all the commis--”
“Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but I’ve been having a lot of
complaints about you. Now I don’t s’pose you ever mean to do wrong, and
I think if you just get a good lesson that’ll jog you up a little,
you’ll turn out a first-class realtor yet. But I don’t see how I can
keep you on.”
Graff leaned against the filing-cabinet, his hands in his pockets, and
laughed. “So I’m fired! Well, old Vision and Ethics, I’m tickled to
death! But I don’t want you to think you can get away with any
holier-than-thou stuff. Sure I’ve pulled some raw stuff--a little of
it--but how could I help it, in this office?”
“Now, by God, young man--”
“Tut, tut! Keep the naughty temper down, and don’t holler, because
everybody in the outside office will hear you. They’re probably
listening right now. Babbitt, old dear, you’re crooked in the first
place and a damn skinflint in the second. If you paid me a decent salary
I wouldn’t have to steal pennies off a blind man to keep my wife from
starving. Us married just five months, and her the nicest girl living,
and you keeping us flat broke all the time, you damned old thief, so you
can put money away for your saphead of a son and your wishywashy fool of
a daughter! Wait, now! You’ll by God take it, or I’ll bellow so the
whole office will hear it! And crooked-- Say, if I told the prosecuting
attorney what I know about this last Street Traction option steal, both
you and me would go to jail, along with some nice, clean, pious, high-up
traction guns!”
“Well, Stan, looks like we were coming down to cases. That deal-- There
was nothing crooked about it. The only way you can get progress is for
the broad-gauged men to get things done; and they got to be rewarded--”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, don’t get virtuous on me! As I gather it, I’m
fired. All right. It’s a good thing for me. And if I catch you knocking
me to any other firm, I’ll squeal all I know about you and Henry T. and
the dirty little lickspittle deals that you corporals of industry pull
off for the bigger and brainier crooks, and you’ll get chased out of
town. And me--you’re right, Babbitt, I’ve been going crooked, but now
I’m going straight, and the first step will be to get a job in some
office where the boss doesn’t talk about Ideals. Bad luck, old dear, and
you can stick your job up the sewer!”
Babbitt sat for a long time, alternately raging, “I’ll have him
arrested,” and yearning “I wonder-- No, I’ve never done anything that
wasn’t necessary to keep the Wheels of Progress moving.”
Next day he hired in Graff’s place Fritz Weilinger, the salesman of his
most injurious rival, the East Side Homes and Development Company, and
thus at once annoyed his competitor and acquired an excellent man. Young
Fritz was a curly-headed, merry, tennis-playing youngster. He made
customers welcome to the office. Babbitt thought of him as a son, and in
him had much comfort.
III
An abandoned race-track on the outskirts of Chicago, a plot excellent
for factory sites, was to be sold, and Jake Offut asked Babbitt to bid
on it for him. The strain of the Street Traction deal and his
disappointment in Stanley Graff had so shaken Babbitt that he found it
hard to sit at his desk and concentrate. He proposed to his family,
“Look here, folks! Do you know who’s going to trot up to Chicago for a
couple of days--just week-end; won’t lose but one day of school--know
who’s going with that celebrated business-ambassador, George F. Babbitt?
Why, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt!”
“Hurray!” Ted shouted, and “Oh, maybe the Babbitt men won’t paint that
lil ole town red!”
And, once away from the familiar implications of home, they were two men
together. Ted was young only in his assumption of oldness, and the only
realms, apparently, in which Babbitt had a larger and more grown-up
knowledge than Ted’s were the details of real estate and the phrases of
politics. When the other sages of the Pullman smoking-compartment had
left them to themselves, Babbitt’s voice did not drop into the playful
and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses children but
continued its overwhelming and monotonous rumble, and Ted tried to
imitate it in his strident tenor:
“Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot when he got flip
about the League of Nations!”
“Well, the trouble with a lot of these fellows is, they simply don’t
know what they’re talking about. They don’t get down to facts.... What
do you think of Ken Escott?”
“I’ll tell you, dad: it strikes me Ken is a nice lad; no special faults
except he smokes too much; but slow, Lord! Why, if we don’t give him a
shove the poor dumb-bell never will propose! And Rone just as bad.
Slow.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right. They’re slow. They haven’t either one of ’em
got our pep.”
“That’s right. They’re slow. I swear, dad, I don’t know how Rone got
into our family! I’ll bet, if the truth were known, you were a bad old
egg when you were a kid!”
“Well, I wasn’t so slow!”
“I’ll bet you weren’t! I’ll bet you didn’t miss many tricks!”
“Well, when I was out with the girls I didn’t spend all the time telling
’em about the strike in the knitting industry!”
They roared together, and together lighted cigars.
“What are we going to do with ’em?” Babbitt consulted.
“Gosh, I don’t know. I swear, sometimes I feel like taking Ken aside and
putting him over the jumps and saying to him, ‘Young fella me lad, are
you going to marry young Rone, or are you going to talk her to death?
Here you are getting on toward thirty, and you’re only making twenty or
twenty-five a week. When you going to develop a sense of responsibility
and get a raise? If there’s anything that George F. or I can do to help