"Yes, I know," interrupted Perner; "but Frisby's scheme was new then, and might not work so well now. We've got another and a better one than Frisby or anybody else ever had before. Even if it does take a little more money at the start, any one of us can earn more in a week than it takes to pay all the clerks we'll need."
"Why, yes," said Livingstone; "and we'll do most of the paper ourselves, so we'll save that."
"We've got a great combination, boys," said Barrifield—"great!"
In the brief lull that followed this statement, which so fully expressed the feeling of all present, Perner took occasion to go somewhat into detail.
"In the first place," he said, "we're going to be flooded with names. We'll have our paper all made up and start the presses running at the rate of a hundred thousand a day the week before our advertising appears—not sooner than that, because we want money to be coming in as soon as possible after the papers are printed."
Perner paused to appreciate the admiring glances of the others. His ten years' business experience was crystallizing itself into a beautiful system.
"We'll have our clerks," he continued, "all ready with the books—a book for each State—to enter the names as soon as the answers begin to come. We must have one distributing clerk with a little post-office arrangement to assort the letters and cards into States and give them to the others. These will enter them and turn them over to another set of clerks, who will address wrappers from the letters and cards themselves. Then the wrappers will go to another set of clerks, who will wrap the papers and mail them."
The admiration for Perner grew. It seemed simplicity itself.
"One hundred thousand a day," he continued, "will give us two million papers in about three weeks. That'll be the first round of the first issue. Before those are half out we will be getting subscriptions like hot cakes, and we'll have to double our force to handle them. But subscriptions mean money, and with twenty or thirty thousand dollars a day coming in, we'll have money to double them up with."
"If the subscriptions don't come it will double us up," laughed Van Dorn.