Ten days more, then, and I should receive a big check from that firm. That would enable me to start new operations. Accordingly, I went out to look for more orders
Whether my first success had put new confidence in me, or whether my past experiences had somewhat rounded off my rough edges and enabled me to speak to business people in a more effective manner than I could have done before, the proprietor of a small department store on upper Third Avenue let me show him my samples. My prices made an impression on him. My cloaks were five dollars apiece lower than he was in the habit of paying. He looked askance at me, as though my figures seemed too good to be true, until I found it the best policy to tell him the unembellished truth.
"The big manufacturers of whom you buy have big office expenses," I explained. "They make a lot of fuss, and you've got to pay for it. My principle is not to make fuss at the retailer's expense. Our office costs us very, very little. We are plain people. But that isn't all. Your big manufacturer pays for union labor, so he takes it out of you. Now, we don't bother about these things. We get the best work done for the lowest wages. The big men in the business wouldn't even know where hands of this kind could be got. We do."
I took my departure with an order for three hundred cloaks, expecting to begin work on them as soon as I received that check "from out West." Things seemed to be coming my way.
As I sat in an Elevated train going down-town I figured the profits on the two orders and pictured other orders coming in. I beheld our little factory crowded with machines, I heard their bewitching whir-r, whir-r. Chaikin would have to leave the Manheimers, of course
In the afternoon of the sixth day, when I called at one of the purchasing offices I have mentioned, I received the information that the firm whose check I was awaiting so impatiently had failed!
CHAPTER VI
THE failure of the Western firm seemed to have nipped my commercial career in the bud. The large order I had received from its representative was apparently to be the death as well as the birth of my glory. In my despair, I tried to make a virtue of necessity. I was telling myself that it served me right; that I had had no business to abandon my intellectual pursuits. I was inclined to behold something like the hand of Providence in the bankruptcy of that firm. At the same time I was casting about in my mind for some way of raising new money with which to pay the kindly commission merchant, get a new bill of goods from him, and fill my new order.
When I explained the matter to Mrs. Chaikin she was on the brink of a fainting spell
"You're a liar and a thief!" she shrieked. "There never was a Western firm in the world. It's all a lie. You sold the goods for cash."