“I’m not going to,” flashed back the now thoroughly aroused Adv. Mgr., “but YOU are going to pay attention to what I say, and you’re going to remember it the longest day you live.”
“When I came here,” he continued, sticking his fist right up close to the Boss’s olfactory knob, “you told me that your old organization was a bunch of dummies and said you wanted initiative. You SAID it, but you did not MEAN it. You don’t want initiative and independent thinking. You want weakness and sycophancy.
“You could not stand a strong mind in your establishment six months. There would be a constant clash for mental supremacy. THE OLD MEN THAT YOU CANNED ALL HAD WILL POWER OF THEIR OWN ONCE. But you sapped their wills to feed your own rotten gourmand Will. And when they had no more mental pap to give you, you despised them. You despised them for lack of the very thing you robbed them of.
“You are a Mental Leech—the most dangerous class of citizen in the world. And when it so happens that your stripe is an employer, your sin is doubly damnable because the mental resistance of the average employe is weakened against your onslaught through the fear he has of losing his job.
“I’ll concede that you have never before been CONSCIOUS of what you were doing,” roared the Adv. Mgr, “but from this moment you shall be conscious of it, and of your responsibility if you dare ever again to use it—you big blustering mental bully you!”
“You’re fired,” interrupted the Boss in a flannel voice and plainly whipped.
“I decline to quit!” thundered the Advertising Manager.
“All right then, STAY!” said the Boss with a sudden calmness. “We can get along together. We are onto each other.”