THE LEATHERHEAD MONARCH.
“There was once a man who was born successful. He inherited success and for many years kept it coming his way. Did you ever hear of a man of the name of Shote? Of course not. Neither did I. That's one reason why I am going to call him Shote—John Shote, if you please. My story is strictly true, but I would ask no one to believe the name of its leading character.
“John was a great success. Some people called him a great man. Indeed, everybody took off his hat and said: 'How do you do, Mr. Shote?' or words to that effect when he came along.
“I suppose you will think that Mr. Shote only nodded and passed on, but he was not so bad as that. No, he answered: 'Very well, thank you,' and went about his business. He failed to return your solicitude but did not wonder at it.
“He lived in a neighboring town—let us call it Shoteville—and was soon, indeed, the principal Shote of Shoteville. The business was there. It had always prospered. When his father died, John took the crown and became a swearing, rantankerous tyrant.
“He inaugurated a system of efficiency. He trusted nobody. There was an indicator at the entrance of the big building and every worker great and small had to touch a button on this indicator when he left or entered the place. He had a kind of guillotine in the office and every day heads fell into the basket. But when a man left Mr. Shote it was a point to his credit in Shoteville. It showed that he was above being sworn at. It was a kind of recommendation—a thing to boast of. Every one in the shop was sooner or later called by Mr. Shote “a damn leather head.” It was a kind of initiation. If he accepted the classification and remained Mr. Shote decided that he was amenable to discipline and thought him a promising man. Outsiders looked down upon him. The men who stayed year after year and endured the insults of Mr. Shote were known in that community as 'the damn leatherheads.'
“Every worker was a wheel or a shaft or a lever in the big machine. When, worn or broken, he was cast aside.
“It will be seen that Mr. Shote was one of the followers of William. In his office were busts of Julius and Augustus Caesar and portraits of Napoleon and Frederick the Great. He worshiped power and kicked the common soldier.
“While he was in America, I am glad to say he was not an American—not really. To be sure he was born here and voted here, but he was really a Prussian and his shop was a little kingdom in the midst of a democracy.
“Mr. Shote really thought himself one of the noblest men that ever lived. He was a great success even as a thinker. A man can think himself into anything he pleases from a lobster to a saint. Just where he got off I leave the reader to judge.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Shote believed his own thoughts—all of them. It is a dangerous habit to acquire—that of believing oneself—believe me. If there's any one that requires careful corroboration it's yourself. Mr. Shote could not help believing his own thoughts—they were so commanding and imperious.
“Whatever else we may say of him he was honest, as men go. He paid his debts promptly and kept his credit high and even gave large sums to charity.
“His great lack was common sense; his great failing an uncontrolled temper. When you become the pivot around which the whole world revolves you are apt to get hot and noisy. The world bears down rather hard. So Mr. Shote squeaked and roared with anger every day of his life.
“His great vice was too much efficiency. No man in the plant had any power of initiative, due to the fact that Mr. Shote had no faith in any one but himself. The plant proceeded on an iron plan.
“Now, every big thing that was ever accomplished has been the work of some individual who at a critical moment has broken away from plans and made his own orders and acted on them—the kind of thing that Grant did at Appomattox; the kind of thing that Lincoln did in his great proclamation. Bill Hohenzollern would have called it inefficiency.
“Just that kind of thing would have saved Mr. Shote in the critical moment of his career. That moment fell upon him like a thunderbolt out of a dear sky one day.
“If you sow Williamism you are bound to reap it Mr. Shote's lavish crop ripened suddenly.
“The 'Leatherheads' decided one day to meet efficiency with efficiency. They were right Mr. Shote had been running a little kingdom in America and the 'Leatherheads' founded one of their own. They had started a union and appointed an emperor and told him to go ahead and outkaiser the king. They struck for higher wages and fewer hours. Mr. Shote was away at one of his palaces in the South.
“Now all the trouble might have ended in a decent compromise that day if the boss of the 'Leatherheads' on duty at the time had had the power and courage to act on his own judgment and do a really big thing for once in his life. He didn't have it. The wheels stopped.
“The king returned. His irritation was heard in distant places. He would never yield. His men were no longer 'Leatherheads.' They were inversely promoted. It was a critical time in the business. The plant went into default on its contracts. The king stood firm; so did the workers.
“The plant was idle for months. It was the beginning of the end of Mr. Shote's prosperity. His rivals captured his best men and his customers and most of the good will he had enjoyed. The business went down like a house of cards.
“We often say that business is business here in America. It isn't so. Business is more, much more than mere business here in America. It is friendship, it is personality, it is credit—the credit for good sense and square dealing and high character—a character that is shared in some measure by every servant of the enterprise, be he manager or errand boy.
“That cohesive power that flows out of a great personality into the whole structure of a business was not in the warp and woof of Mr. Shote's commercial ramifications. They came to grief. So did Mr. Shote.
“Then we discovered suddenly that Mr. Shote had two wives and two families. As a husband and a father he had enjoyed a success at once unusual and unsuspected. A superman is generally super married. He had acquired imperial morals. The second wife appealed to the courts in a wild yell for her stopped allowance and the result was that, in a short time, Mr. Shote stood alone and universally despised between two family fires. His efficiency had gone too far.
“Again I say, success is the worst of teachers—save to those who sit in the grand stand while it is working out its failure. Unfortunately, it gave the laboring men of this country a lesson in Williamism which has spread over America. I wish the workers all success in getting their just share of the fruits of commerce, but let it be done by fair, democratic methods and not through Williamism.
“Above all no man should hitch his conscience to a post as if it were a mule or a nanny-goat and go off and leave it.
“It is to be hoped that the patriotic Samuel Gompers will not abandon his pursuit of Williamism even after the war ends.
“The big point of the whole thing is this: One day the Leatherhead Monarch, came into this office, closed the door behind him, sat down beside me and said:
“'Mr. Potter, I see that I have the intellect of an idiot. What shall I do to be saved?'
“At last he had learned something—a really serviceable and important fact—and he had learned it not by success but by failure.”
As he approached his climax, Mr. Potter had shown a little annoyance at the arrival of the waiter and the hash and the eggs and the pie. Mr. Potter rose, stood his rifle in a corner and said:
“I regret that my climax and this wandering Ganymede with his load of hash should have arrived at the same moment.”
The waiter spread the table in front of the fireplace. Mr. Potter put a coin in his hand and pointing at the door said:
“Go hence and come not back until to-morrow.”
He placed chairs by the table and we sat down.
“Is this pie, apple, that I see before me the handle toward my hand?” he playfully remarked, as he lifted a firm built piece of pie in his hand and began to eat it in the old fashion. “Bread may be the staff of life, but pie is the light in its windows. I don't want to be hurried by its invitation, so I guess I'll get it out of the way.”