"You work for me—for instance, now, if every day you make stuff there's a profit of five dollars on, I get five dollars out of you. If I can push you to make stuff there's a profit of six dollars on, I get six dollars—a dollar more. Clear extra gain, isn't it? Now multiply a dollar by the number of hands, and you'll see what it amounts to."
"I see," said Susan, nodding thoughtfully.
"Well! How did I get up? Because as a foreman I knew how to work the hands. I knew how to get those extra dollars. And how do I keep up? Because I hire forepeople that get work out of the hands."
Susan understood. But her expression was a comment that was not missed by the shrewd Matson.
"Now, listen to me, Lorny. I want to give you a plain straight talk because I'd like to see you climb. Ever since you've been here I've been laughin' to myself over the way your forelady—she's a fox, she is!—makes you the pacemaker for the other girls. She squeezes at least twenty-five cents a day over what she used to out of each hand in your room because you're above the rest of them dirty, shiftless muttonheads."
Susan flushed at this fling at her fellow-workers.
"Dirty, shiftless muttonheads," repeated Matson. "Ain't I right? Ain't they dirty? Ain't they shiftless—so no-account that if they wasn't watched every minute they'd lay down—and let me and the factory that supports 'em go to rack and ruin? And ain't they muttonheads? Do you ever find any of 'em saying or doing a sensible thing?"
Susan could not deny. She could think of excuses—perfect excuses. But the facts were about as he brutally put it.
"Oh, I know 'em. I've dealt with 'em all my life," pursued the box manufacturer. "Now, Lorny, you ought to be a forelady. You've got to toughen up and stop bein' so polite and helpful and all that. You'll never get on if you don't toughen up. Business is business. Be as sentimental as you like away from business, and after you've clum to the top. But not in business or while you're kickin' and scratchin' and clawin' your way up."
Susan shook her head slowly. She felt painfully young and inexperienced and unfit for the ferocious struggle called life. She felt deathly sick.