“She’s earned it!”
“Before she came here she worked in the process works and was content with eight dollars. But you get her down here and the first thing I know, she’s run eight dollars up to eighteen. Eighteen dollars! For a woman! I’ll not pay it. You can go and tell her so.”
“You mean you’ll cut the rate?”
“I mean I won’t pay any female eighteen dollars for six days’ work! That’s what I mean and it stands!”
“You made a bargain with me for three and a half cents a box. I get the cost down to a cent and a half and you want to break your promise.”
“I’ll not pay any girl eighteen dollars for six days’ work!” This outrageous thing had become an obsession with Johnathan. “Why, you obstreperous young dolt, you’ve gone and gathered an organization here that’s making so much stuff I can’t get materials or orders to keep it going! And you want to pay one girl eighteen dollars a week!”
“I should think the proper thing would be to hustle out and put in your valuable time getting more orders—not waste it worrying over the high wages one clever girl has managed to make by applying herself to her job.”
“Don’t give me any lip, young man! I know how much business I want to do. And you’ve built an organization to do too much! Another phase of your youthful indiscretion, the same that made you write that obscene poem about slaves before you knew your own mind and I stopped it. If I gave you a free rein here, you’d wreck the place!”
“If you gave me a free rein here I’d build a sales force that would find firms who would consume our boxes,” the lad answered grimly.
“And where would the money come from to swing all that business?”