For a short time after Turpin departed I enjoyed my work in spite of the fact that it was a great nervous strain, and a greater tax on my eyes—continually reading such small figures under electric lights. Then Mr. Hartley went off for a short vacation, and Hoolagan got his chance to fight a woman, who in his stupidity he imagined had her “eye” on his job.
His first method was “correcting” my daily report of the business transacted in our department and those of our branches. It was my duty to make out this report, get it signed by the loan clerk, and into the hands of a certain vice-president not later than eleven o’clock. When Mr. Hartley was in the office I would place the report on his desk; he would glance over it, make sure it was correct, and then sign it. I would then hand it to a messenger who would deliver it to the vice-president. It had become such a matter of routine that I used to ring for the messenger on my way to Mr. Hartley’s desk.
Hoolagan stopped that. There was one day when he spoiled ten copies of the same report, pretending that my figures needed correction. This might have continued until Mr. Hartley’s return had it not been that the bookkeepers discovered so many mistakes in Hoolagan’s figures that they laughed him out of court.
The truth of the matter was that the man did not know how to add or subtract correctly. Having always had kind, hard-working Mr. Hartley to go over his figures and straighten out errors, he did not have sufficient industry to learn—that is, if it was only industry that he needed.
The day he had a half-million-dollar loan to Harris Marson hopping and skipping over five columns of the day-book, I decided that he was a mental defective and could not help making mistakes. I made out my report, the bookkeepers balanced their accounts. Then lo, and behold! the next time we had occasion to consult the day-book that half-million loan had been transferred to another column. Of course our figures had to be changed. When this happened four times the bookkeepers raised a howl.
“For God’s sake, Dennis! What is that half-million? Where does it belong?”
Somebody in our department put on their thinking-cap and recalled that they had heard Hoolagan talking at the window with a Harris Marson messenger about a street call. Even though that incident had escaped Hoolagan, the rate of interest and a half-dozen other features of the loan should have told a man familiar with the T. Z. the character of that loan.
After that he stopped “correcting” my reports, and took to hiding the day-book. When the head of the bookkeeping department put a stop to that performance Hoolagan proceeded to hide himself. Just let him see me coming toward his desk with a report and Hoolagan was up and away. If he possibly could manage it, he remained away until a messenger sent from the front would chase him down and make him sign my report. In a business less vital to our country and humanity Hoolagan would have been a joke. The T. Z. was an important factor in world finance.
The way all other men in that bank worked! I can never forget it. And the little they got out of it! The average American business man, for all his work and worry, gets a home in which to sleep, spend his Sundays and an occasional holiday. In spite of this—perhaps because of it—he is the most idealistic of God’s creatures.
Behind all his work, be it mad hustle or deadly grind, there is a woman—his woman, the one woman in all the world to him. It is of her he thinks, it is for her he slaves. His adored woman, that girl of his dreams must have, shall have everything that he can win for her at any cost to himself. I know, because at the T. Z. I studied the American business man in his natural habitat—I talked with him, rubbed elbows with him while he was hustling and when he was grinding his hardest.