“You bet it’s hard!” he agreed with a beaming smile.
“The bank will miss you,” I assured him, doing my best to make my eyes look round and innocent.
“Miss me!” he cried with enthusiasm. “They’ll know when I’m gone; you see if they don’t.”
From then on I followed that young man’s lead so successfully that I am convinced that the loan clerk was amazed to find after Turpin and Ware left that I actually knew that two and two made four. Turpin taught me nothing. He would not even tell me how he got the figures for making out the daily report of business done in the department.
To Mr. Morton, to Mr. Hartley, and two courteous men in the bookkeeping department I owe all that I know about the inside of a bank and the world of finance. Mr. Morton explained the how and why of a bank balance. By teaching me to read the ticker-tape he interested me in stocks and bonds, and the part played by the Wall Street market in the business of the country.
The two bookkeepers showed me from which of their books Turpin got the figures about which he had made such a mystery. It was as easy as rolling off a log—making out the reports over which Turpin used to sweat and swear—once I had learned from which books to get the figures. A ten-year-old child could have done all the subtracting and adding—that’s all it was, simple addition and subtraction. A man-size job!
To Mr. Hartley I am indebted for much more. He not only taught me enough to enable me to swing my job, but he revolutionized my ideas of men—men in general, business men in particular.
Strange as it now seems, before going to work in the T. Z. I had believed that every business man spent the best part of his time while down-town loafing—in a gentlemanly way, of course, but loafing. Such ideas came to me direct from the wives of the men. Among my circle of intimate acquaintances there are about fifty young married women. The husband of each of these women works to support his family. Of the whole fifty I do not believe there is one who does not suspect her husband of loafing, or having a sort of good time generally during the period known as business hours.
Let any one of them wish to go out of an evening and she proceeds to make her arrangements—always including her husband. If he demurs, expresses a wish to remain at home, she reminds him that it has been a week, or perhaps as much as a month, since they have spent an evening away from home. It’s all very well for him, going to his office every day, but how about her, looking after the children and directing the servants? She must have some sort of recreation, take some rest. It is a one-sided argument, and always ends the same way—the husband takes his wife out.
This is not selfishness on the part of these women. It is because they really do not know that business is another name for work, hard work. I did not know until I went to the T. Z. And how hard those men did work! All day long, and when stocks went off, far into the night. Never a murmur, never a complaint. The hardest worker of them all was Mr. Hartley.