As the days went by Jim Ashe acquired a marked aversion to the upper right-hand drawer of his desk. For it contained the unpaid bills of the Ashe Clothespin Company. When Jim came the drawer had been empty; now it looked as if he would have to add an annex to care for the overflow. There were supply bills, machinery bills, stock bills. And Jim did not dare to pay them, for his account at the bank was running perilously low. Bills may be put off, but the pay-roll must be met on the minute.
From nothing the unsecured indebtedness climbed to five thousand, to ten thousand dollars. Much as it grieved Jim to see discount days pass with discounts not taken, it grieved Grierson more. He had served the company for many years. Never before in his experience had it failed to discount its bills—and to a bookkeeper of Grierson’s type discounts are sacred. Grierson’s type of mind would borrow money at six per cent. to take a two-per-cent. discount.
Finally statements began to arrive, some accompanied by letters setting forth in the polite verbiage of the business world that the creditor would be glad to have the company’s check “for this small amount at its convenience.” Dunning letters! Grierson was shocked. He blushed as he bent over his ledgers. The Ashe Clothespin Company had to be dunned as if it were a dubious individual with an overlarge bill at the corner grocery.
Jim was not yet the complete business man, but he did discover that certain larger creditors were willing to accept notes for the time, notes bearing interest at six per cent. Somehow it relieved his anxiety to issue this paper. At any rate, it postponed the day of reckoning in each case for three or four months. But Grierson was bitterly ashamed. He regarded it as such a makeshift as an unstable enterprise would avail itself of to ward off insolvency. Jim caught the old bookkeeper looking at him accusingly. Such things had never come to pass in his father’s day.
Yet these were the very things Clothespin Jimmy had predicted. He had told Jim there would be sleepless nights and anxious days; he had confessed to milking the business. Now Jim appreciated what his father meant. With the fifty thousand dollars which Clothespin Jimmy had subtracted from the assets the company would be as sound as the Bank of England.
What worried Jim more than the accumulation of bills was the failure to make shipments as rapidly as the necessities required. Where he should have shipped a car-load a day he had been able to bill out an average of less than four cars a week. Customers clamored to have their orders filled; cancellations were threatened; yet the mill failed to produce as it should produce. Somewhere something was wrong. Clothespin-machines that ought to have made their eighty five-gross boxes a day did not climb above sixty. Total shipments that should have amounted to thirty thousand dollars a month faltered and failed at fifteen or sixteen thousand. In short, he was spending every week a great deal more money than he was earning.
Much of this, he knew, was due to breakdowns caused by Kowterski; some of it to poor timber; some to timber spiked by Kowterski’s brother. But aside from that, changes had to be made in machines; the mill did not run smoothly. Where construction should have ceased to lay its expense on the company it continued to demand its thousands of dollars every month.
But Kowterski was gone. Jim did not believe Moran would venture to send down more spiked timber. The mill was slowly but surely rising to a point of efficiency. Jim was confident in it; he placed full dependence on Nels Nelson, his millwright, on Beam, his superintendent. He knew they were doing their intelligent best and that their worries stood shoulder to shoulder with his own. Given time, he would be firm on his feet; given capital to carry him through this dubious period, and the company would pay bigger dividends, reach a more stable credit than it had ever before enjoyed. But the time and the capital!
In his heart he knew that if one creditor lost faith and brought pressure to bear, the whole edifice would come down in ruin. Construction, rebuilding, repairs, had devoured the money that should have paid bills. Bills had multiplied by reason of supplies necessary for construction. One thing was essential—construction must cease. Men employed in construction must be laid off.
“Grierson,” he said, “make me a statement of our condition—a full statement; one that will show everything and show it truly. I’m going to see if there isn’t somebody in the world who will appreciate being told the whole uncolored truth.”