“Now, every big thing that was ever accomplished has been the work of some individual who at a critical moment has broken away from plans and made his own orders and acted on them—the kind of thing that Grant did at Appomattox; the kind of thing that Lincoln did in his great proclamation. Bill Hohenzollern would have called it inefficiency.
“Just that kind of thing would have saved Mr. Shote in the critical moment of his career. That moment fell upon him like a thunderbolt out of a dear sky one day.
“If you sow Williamism you are bound to reap it Mr. Shote's lavish crop ripened suddenly.
“The 'Leatherheads' decided one day to meet efficiency with efficiency. They were right Mr. Shote had been running a little kingdom in America and the 'Leatherheads' founded one of their own. They had started a union and appointed an emperor and told him to go ahead and outkaiser the king. They struck for higher wages and fewer hours. Mr. Shote was away at one of his palaces in the South.
“Now all the trouble might have ended in a decent compromise that day if the boss of the 'Leatherheads' on duty at the time had had the power and courage to act on his own judgment and do a really big thing for once in his life. He didn't have it. The wheels stopped.
“The king returned. His irritation was heard in distant places. He would never yield. His men were no longer 'Leatherheads.' They were inversely promoted. It was a critical time in the business. The plant went into default on its contracts. The king stood firm; so did the workers.
“The plant was idle for months. It was the beginning of the end of Mr. Shote's prosperity. His rivals captured his best men and his customers and most of the good will he had enjoyed. The business went down like a house of cards.
“We often say that business is business here in America. It isn't so. Business is more, much more than mere business here in America. It is friendship, it is personality, it is credit—the credit for good sense and square dealing and high character—a character that is shared in some measure by every servant of the enterprise, be he manager or errand boy.
“That cohesive power that flows out of a great personality into the whole structure of a business was not in the warp and woof of Mr. Shote's commercial ramifications. They came to grief. So did Mr. Shote.
“Then we discovered suddenly that Mr. Shote had two wives and two families. As a husband and a father he had enjoyed a success at once unusual and unsuspected. A superman is generally super married. He had acquired imperial morals. The second wife appealed to the courts in a wild yell for her stopped allowance and the result was that, in a short time, Mr. Shote stood alone and universally despised between two family fires. His efficiency had gone too far.