I FILLED my Third Avenue order and went on soliciting other business. The season was waning, but I obtained a number of small orders and laid foundations for future sales. Our capital was growing apace, but we often lacked working cash
After I paid the debt I owed Meyer Nodelman I obtained other favors from him. He took a sponsorial interest in my business and often offered me the benefit of his commercial experience in the form of maxims
"Don't bite off more than you can chew, Levinsky," he would tell me.
"Finding it easy to get people to trust you is not enough. You must also find it easy to pay them."
Some of his other rules were: "Be pleasant with the man you deal with, even if he knows you don't mean it.
He likes it, anyway."
"Take it from me, Levinsky: honesty is the best policy. There is only one line of business in which dishonesty pays: the burglar business, provided the burglar does not get caught. If I thought lying could help my business, I should lie day and night. But I have learned that it hurts far more than it helps. Be sure that the other fellow believes what you say. If you have his confidence you have him by the throat."
It was not always easy to comply with Meyer's tenets, however. The inadequacy of my working capital often forced me to have recourse to subterfuges that could not exactly be called honorable. One day, when we had some bills to meet two days before I could expect to obtain the cash, I made out and signed checks, but inclosed each of them in the wrong envelope—this supposed act of inadvertence gaining me the needed two days of grace. On another occasion I sent out a number of checks without my signature, which presumably I had forgotten to affix. There were instances when I was so hard pressed for funds that the fate of our factory hinged on seventy-five or a hundred dollars. In one of these crises I bought two gold watches on the instalment plan, for the express and sole purpose of pawning them for fifty dollars. I bought the watches of two men who did not know each other, and returned them as soon as I could spare the cash to redeem them, forfeiting the several weekly payments which I had made on the pretended purchases.
There were instances, too, when I had to borrow of my employees a few dollars with which to buy cotton. Needless to say that all this happened in the early stages of my experience as a manufacturer. I have long since been above and beyond such methods. Indeed, business honor and business dignity are often a luxury in which only those in the front ranks of success can indulge. But then there are features of the game in which the small man is apt to be more honorable and less cruel than the financial magnate
I was continually consulting Max on my affairs. Not that I needed his advice or expected to act upon it. These confidential talks seemed to promote our intimacy and to enhance the security of the welcome I found in his house. A great immigrant city like New York or Chicago is full of men and women who are alone amid a welter of human life. For these nothing has a greater glamour than a family in whose house they might be made to feel at home. I was one of these desolate souls. I still missed my mother. The anniversary of her death was still a feast of longing agony and spiritual bliss to me. I scarcely ever visited the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir these days, but on that great day I was sure to be there. Forgetful of my atheism, I would place a huge candle for her soul, attend all the three services, without omitting a line, and recite the prayer for the dead with sobs in my heart. I had craved some family who would show me warm friendship. The Margolises were such a family (Meyer Nodelman never invited me to his house). They were a godsend to me