Birsky received the suggestion with a satirical smile.
"You got a real head for business, Zapp, I must say," he said, "when you are going to make a feller like Golnik treasurer."
"Well, then, we could make Golnik secretary, and Kanef, the shipping clerk, treasurer," Zapp suggested. "The feller's got rich relations in the herring business."
"I don't care a snap if the feller's relations own all the herring business in the world, Zapp," Birsky continued. "This afternoon yet we would go to work and get up this here mutual aid society, mit Jacob Golnik president and I. Kanef vice-president."
"And who would be treasurer then?" Zapp asked meekly; whereat Louis Birsky slapped his chest.
"I would be treasurer," he announced; "and for a twenty dollar bill we would get Henry D. Feldman he should fix up the by-laws, which you could take it from me, Zapp, if there's any honour coming to Golnik after me and Feldman gets through, understand me, the feller is easy flattered, Zapp—and that's all I got to say."
It was not until after five o'clock that Birsky returned from Feldman's office with the typewritten constitution and by-laws of a voluntary association entitled the Mutual Aid Society Employees of Birsky & Zapp. Moreover, under the advice of counsel, he had transferred from the firm's balance in the Kosciusko Bank the sum of five hundred dollars to a new account denominated L. Birsky, Treasurer; and the omission of the conjunction "as" before the word "Treasurer" was all that prevented the funds so deposited from becoming the property of the mutual aid society. In short, everything was in readiness for the reception of Jonas Eschenbach the following morning except the trifling detail of notifying Jacob Golnik and the hundred operators that their mutual aid society had come into being; and as soon as Birsky had removed his hat and coat he hastened into the cutting room and beckoned to Golnik.
"Golnik," he said, "kommen Sie mal h'rein for a minute." Golnik looked up from a pile of cloth and waved his hand reassuringly.
"It's all right, Mr. Birsky," he said. "I thought the matter over already; and you and your partner is right, Mr. Birsky. This here mutual aid society is nix, Mr. Birsky. Why should I take from my salary a dollar a week for five weeks, understand me, while a lot of old Schnorrers like them pressers in there is liable to die on us any minute, y'understand, and right away we got to pay out a death benefit for forty or fifty dollars?"