“No,” he said, “I didn’t move it. Let’s go and have a drink, Walter.”
I took a long, deep breath. “O.K.,” I said. “But first, what’s the present setup? How come you’re not—”
“It’s Saturday,” he told me, “and it’s gone on a five-day, forty-hour week. I made the mistake of setting type yesterday for a book on Socialism and labor relations, and—well, apparently—you see—”
He reached into the top drawer of his desk. “Anyway, here’s a galley proof of the manifesto it issued this morning, demanding its rights. Maybe it’s right at that; anyway, it solves my problem about overworking myself keeping up with it, see? And a forty-hour week means I accept less work, but I can still make fifty bucks an hour for forty hours besides the profit on turning dirt into type metal, and that isn’ t bad, but—”
I took the galley proof out of his hand and took it over to the light. It started out: “I, ETAOIN SHRDLU—”
“It wrote this by itself?” I asked.
He nodded.
“George,” I said, “did you say anything about a drink—”
And maybe the drinks did clear our minds because after about the fifth, it was very easy. So easy that George didn’t see why he hadn’t thought of it before. He admitted now that he’d had enough, more than enough. And I don’t know whether it was that manifesto that finally outweighed his avarice, or the fact that the thing had moved, or what; but he was ready to call it quits.
And I pointed out that all he had to do was stay away from it. We could discontinue publishing the paper and turn back the job work he’d contracted for. He’d have to take a penalty on some of it, but he had a flock of dough in the bank after his unprecedented prosperity, and he’d have twenty thousand left clear after everything was taken care of. With that he could simply start another paper or publish the present one at another address—and keep paying rent on the former shop and let Etaoin Shrdlu gather dust.