As soon as I saw your circular on HOW TO SPEED UP THE EMPLOYEE I felt that it was a big thing. I don’t have any hired help here to work with me, but only father. He cuts the wood and does odd chores about the place. So I realized that the best I could do was to try to speed up father. I started in to speed him up last Tuesday, and I wish you could see him. Before this he couldn’t split a cord of wood without cutting a slice off his boots. Now he does it in half the time.”
“But there,” the Stranger said, getting impatient even with his own reading, “I needn’t read it all. It is the same thing all along the line. I’ve got the Method introduced into the Department Stores. Before this every customer who came in wasted time trying to find the counters. Now we install a patent springboard, with a mechanism like a catapault. As soon as a customer comes in an attendant puts him on the board, blindfolds him, and says, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘Glove counter.’ Oh, all right.’ He’s fired at it through the air. No time lost. Same with the railways. They’re installing the Method, too. Every engineer who breaks the record from New York to Buffalo gets a glass of milk. When he gets a hundred glasses he can exchange them for a glass of beer. So with the doctors. On the new method, instead of giving a patient one pill a day for fourteen days they give him fourteen pills in one day. Doctors, lawyers, everybody,—in time, sir,” said the Stranger, in tones of rising excitement, “you’ll see even the plumbers—”
But just at this moment the door opened. A sturdy-looking man in blue entered. The Stranger’s voice was hushed at once. The excitement died out of his face. His manner all of a sudden was meekness itself.
“I was just coming,” he said.
“That’s right, sir,” said the man; “better come along and not take up the gentleman’s time.”
“Good-bye, then,” said the Stranger, with meek affability, and he went out.
The man in blue lingered behind for a moment.
“A sad case, sir,” he said, and he tapped his forehead.
“You mean—” I asked.
“Exactly. Cracked, sir. Quite cracked; but harmless. I’m engaged to look after him, but he gave me the slip downstairs.”