"I know," he said. "Of course, the 'hands' are mostly Russian Hebrews, but some of them have gone into manufacturing, and I don't doubt but they'll make a success of it."
"Why, they are making a success of it, Mr. Huntington."
I felt that I was treading on risky gound, that he might smell a rat at any moment; but I felt, also, that when he heard why manufacturers of my type were able to undersell the big old firms he would find my talk too tempting to cut it short. And so I rushed on. I explained that the Russian cloak-manufacturer operated on a basis of much lower profits and figured down expenses to a point never dreamed of before; that the German-American cloak-manufacturer was primarily a merchant, not a tailor; that he was compelled to leave things to his designer and a foreman, whereas his Russian competitor was a tailor or cloak-operator himself, and was, therefore, able to economize in ways that never occurred to the heads of the old houses.
"I see," Huntington said, with a queer stare at me
"Besides, our people content themselves with small profits," I pursued. "We are modest."
Here I plagiarized an epigram I had heard from Meyer Nodelman: "Our German co-religionists will spend their money before they have made it, while we try to make it first."
I expected Huntington to smile, but he did not. He was listening with sphinx-like gravity. When I paused, my face and my ears burning, he said, with some embarrassment: "What is your business, may I ask?" "I am in the same line. Cloaks." "Are you?" With another stare
Tense with excitement, I said, with daredevil recklessness: "The trouble is that successful men like yourself are so hard to get at, Mr.
Huntington."
"What do you mean?" he said, with a cryptic laugh