The lecture might continue at some length particularly if Miss Stenicke, Mrs. M’Ardle or little Miss Lacy was within earshot.
For a long time this Mail Order branch of the business of which she was the head had called forth Jeannette’s great pride. She had felt it was all hers,—her work. But of late, she had been stirred less and less. After all what had been accomplished? For nearly ten years she had bent her energies to making this phase of the activities of the Corey Publishing Company aboundingly successful. There no longer remained any question as to whether or not she had achieved her purpose. A year or two ago a recalcitrant spirit among her girls had immediately aroused in her a determination to break it; the discovery of an error at once had challenged her to trace it to its source; the questioning of her authority or trespassing upon her prerogatives had stirred her upon the instant to battle. One of the keenest pleasures of her days had been to draft laws that should govern her girls and to see that these were enforced. She had begun to detect in herself within the last year or two an increasing indifference to all such things,—she did not care as she once had cared. She was no longer hampered or troubled by those “downstairs”; her assistants and her girls gave her small occasion for supervision; the work of the department ran on well-oiled wheels. With opposition eliminated, the task of organization perfected, the maximum volume of business attained, there remained nothing to fire her spirit or brain, to stimulate fresh effort. And she was distressed by a suspicion that more and more persistently obtruded itself upon her consciousness that perhaps she was getting old, that the indifference to what went on about her and to her work was merely a sign of approaching age!
She rebelled at the idea; she put it from her vigorously; she refused to entertain it. Why, she was only forty-three! She was in the heyday of her powers. Her judgment, her mind, her capacities were never so keen as now. She was equal to far more exacting, more difficult work. Disturbed by this fear, she decided to look about her for fresh fields of endeavor. There was no higher position in the Corey Publishing Company open to her; more important places were all filled by members of the firm, and it was not likely that any one of them would step aside and give her a chance at his work. No,—though proud of her long years of service and her record with the publishing company,—she decided that neither was of sufficient importance to keep her indefinitely on its pay-roll until she was ready to follow in Miss Holland’s footsteps. She let it be known in mail order circles that she was looking for a job.
Of Walt Chase she continued to think enviously. She had heard he was now one of the big men in Sears, Roebuck & Company, a fact that exasperated her, because she felt herself to be cleverer than he, more able in every respect. He was getting ten thousand—twelve thousand—fifteen thousand,—whatever it was,—a year and climbing the ladder of success rung after rung, while she was doing the work he had left behind him at the Corey Publishing Company in a far more efficient, economical, and profitable way and was being paid fifty dollars a week!
One day she learned of a vacancy in the American Suit & Cloak Company, where they were looking for someone familiar with mail order work. She wrote and applied for the position. A conference with the General Manager followed. It developed he was in search of a man,—a woman, it was feared, was not qualified to do the work,—but the Manager admitted he knew Miss Sturgis by reputation and would be glad to make a place for her in his organization if she was dissatisfied where she was,—and he could promise her,—well, he could pay her thirty-five dollars a week. Jeannette declined and eased her mind by writing a coldly worded letter of thanks and regret; the General Manager of the American Suit & Cloak Company must have a poor opinion of her sense of values, if he expected her to resign from a position where she was the head of a department and receiving fifty dollars a week to accept an underling’s place at a smaller salary! But fifty dollars a week from the Corey Publishing Company was far below what she was worth, Jeannette considered. It infuriated her to think that while Mr. Allister and those “downstairs” were glib with their commendation of her work, there was never any talk of expressing this appreciation by a raise in salary.
§ 6
Her first business in the mornings upon reaching her desk was to fasten a sheet of paper about each of her wrists and pin another to the front of her shirtwaist as a protection against dirt. It was almost impossible to go through half a day and keep one’s linen clean without these shields. Dust from the street filtered in through the windows, that must be kept open at the top for ventilation and occasionally little feathery balls of soot made their appearance. Contact with office furniture always held the risk of a smudge. Jeannette had her desk and chair thoroughly wiped off by one of her girls before she reached the office in the morning and again when she went to lunch but in an hour or two after these protective measures, she would begin to feel grit under the tips of her fingers and observe a fine gray layer on the surfaces of white paper.
She usually arrived five or ten minutes before nine o’clock at which hour the business of the day was supposed to begin. Never late herself, she had trained her girls to be equally punctual. It was a matter of pride with her that in the Mail Order Department work began promptly on the stroke of the hour. There was no formality about the way it commenced. Without sign or sound from Jeannette the girls set about their various duties with simultaneous accord, the noise of chatter and laughter died away, there was a general scraping of chair legs on the cement floor, and the buzz of typewriters, like the chirping of marsh frogs, began slowly to gather volume.
First Jeannette turned her attention to her “Incoming” basket, neatly stacked the clipped correspondence, memorandums and communications before her, and, armed with a thick blue pencil, began their disposal, marking certain letters and papers a vigorous “No” or “O.K.-J.S.”—pinning a sheet of scratch pad to others and scribbling thereon a brief direction or query. Most of the pile before her disappeared into her “Outgoing” basket, but in an upper corner of her desk was a folder inscribed: “Mr. Allister,” and into this she would occasionally slip a letter or memorandum. Its contents would go to him by boy later in the day; once in a while she carried some important matter to him herself but she troubled him as little as possible. She tried to keep the affairs of her department to herself; the less she attracted the attention of the Directors, the less they were likely to ask for reports or feel called upon to supervise or investigate her work; she preferred to let the monthly statements of sales speak for her.
By ten o’clock the “Incoming” basket would be empty, and she could begin the preparation of copy for an advertisement, a circular letter, or the arrangement of a leaflet setting forth the features of a new set of books. This was the work she loved best to do, knowing she was unusually good at it; there were daily evidences her copy “pulled,” that the touches she gave her advertisements were productive of sales. No one “downstairs” appreciated how clever she was, though there were the reports of sales to attest to her ability.