BOOK II
BREAD
CHAPTER I
§ 1
The Chandler P. Corey Company was moving its offices. A twenty-year lease had been taken on a building especially designed to fit its needs in the East Thirties. The new home was a great cavernous concrete structure of eight spacious floors. On the ground floor were to be the new presses destined to print the magazines, and perhaps some of the books in the future; the next two floors were to house the bindery, the composing room and typesetting machines; the editorial rooms were to be located on the fourth floor, and above these would come in order the advertising, circulation and pattern departments, each with a stratum in the great concrete block to itself. The eighth floor was to be given over to surplus stock, and it would also serve as a store-room for paper and supplies.
Both Corey’s Commentary and The Wheel of Fortune had made money for their owners during the past three years. It was the day of the “muck-raking” magazine, and Cavendish had unearthed a Wall Street scandal that sent the circulation of Corey’s Commentary climbing by leaps and bounds. The Wheel of Fortune had been rechristened The Ladies’ Fortune, and its contents were now devoted to women’s interests and fashions. The pattern business, that had been launched in connection with it, had proven from the outset immensely successful. Horatio Stephens was now its editor, and Miss Reubens conducted the special departments appearing among the advertising in its back pages, always referred to in the office as “contaminated matter.” The circulation of both periodicals had increased so rapidly that Mr. Featherstone had been obliged to announce an advance in their advertising rates every three months.
Other branches of the business, too, had grown and shown a profit. Francis Holme, who was head of the Book Sales Department, and now a member of the firm, had developed the manufacture and sale of book premiums and school books. He sold large quantities of the former to the publishers of other magazines, for use in their subscription campaigns, and was even more successful with the latter among private schools and some public ones throughout the country. One or two recent novels had sold over the hundred thousand mark, and the general standing of the Chandler B. Corey publications had improved. It was conceded in the trade they had now a better “line.” Something was being done, too, in the Mail Order Department, in charge of Walt Chase, and more and more sets of standard works were being sold by circularizing methods.
The installation and operation of their own presses had been a grave undertaking. Mr. Kipps had strenuously opposed it, arguing that the new building was enough of a responsibility, and that they should mark time for awhile and see how they stood, rather than incur a new loan of half a million dollars which the new presses involved. Mr. Corey was convinced, however, that a tide had arrived in their affairs which demanded a rapid expansion of the business, and if he and his partners were to make the most of the opportunity thus presented, they must rise to the occasion, and show themselves able to expand with it.
“There’s no use of our trying to crowd back into our shells after we’ve outgrown them, is there, Miss Sturgis?” he said to his secretary, with an amused twinkle in his eye, after a heated conference with the other members of the firm, during which Kipps in high dudgeon had left the room.
Jeannette smiled wisely. She believed that her chief was one of those few men who had far-seeing vision, and could look with keen perception and unfaltering eye into the future, and that he would carry Mr. Kipps, Mr. Featherstone, the office, his family, herself, everybody who attached themselves to him, to fame and fortune in spite of anything any one of them might do. When he was right, he knew it, and knew it with conviction, and nothing could shake him.