V
Monday morning, at 8.30 a.m., H. R. was in his office. At 8.35 he had engaged a stenographer by telephone and told the starter and the elevator-men who H. R. was. Later on the dozen men who answered the advertisement made it impossible for either starter or elevator-men ever to forget who H. R. was without the use of gratuities, profanity, or promises.
H. R.'s first task was to compose memoranda for the use and guidance of Max Onthemaker and Lieutenant Fleming. At 8.45 the first-class advertising canvassers began to appear in numbers. Really efficient men are never modest. Neither are really inefficient men. Efficiency is always a matter of personal judgment. Even efficiency experts will tell you that nobody is really efficient until efficiency experts have said so.
H. R. allowed the applicants to accumulate in the anteroom. The new stenographer had been told to write, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party" two thousand times and to time herself. The spectators thereby realized that this was a busy office.
He was confronting his first crisis—the selection of a man who must not only be highly competent, but must be made to realize that H. R. was a pioneer, a man to whom tradition, precedents, and custom were less than nothing. H. R. studied the situation and then went out to the anteroom and looked at the waiting dozen slowly.
There are a few men in the world who can look a crowd from head to foot and manage to make each man in it feel guilty. After H. R. had so looked at them, he asked, skeptically, "Are all of you first-class men?"
To their honor be it said, not one of them answered No. Men collectively may be cruel or blind, but seldom petty or egotistical. Observe mobs.
H. R. turned his back on the crowd and returned to his private office. He did it on purpose. Men usually follow those who act as if they do not care whether they have a following or not. It is wiser to be wrong and not hesitate than to vacillate and be right. Besides, much quicker.
At the threshold he half turned and, without looking at any one in particular, said: "I need only four first-class men. The others might as well go away."
Twelve men heard him. Twelve men followed him.