“I’d go to the bank and borrow it!”
“Huh! I suppose you think banks are just lying awake nights hoping I’ll come and ask to relieve them of their surplus? Maybe you’d enjoy knowing that I’ve been to the banks here twice. Each time I’ve been refused, but you’d still keep paying eighteen dollars to eight-dollar girls.”
Nathan felt that he knew why Judge Farmer, president of the People’s Bank, might have refused Johnathan money. But he said nothing.
“Well,” snapped Johnathan. “Answer me!”
“If the bank wouldn’t loan me money, then I’d get out and incorporate this business and put out some seven per cent stock. I’ve got twenty-five girls and four men upstairs. A certain percentage of work must be turned out to carry this overhead,—rent, taxes, depreciation, insurance. It isn’t how little we can do or how much we can do. It’s how much we’re obliged to do, to operate at a profit. And I’ve found that figure exactly. Not a man or girl can be turned off without crippling our output and losing us money by running up our overhead per unit of production. What’s more, if you cut the piece rate, the girls are going to get discouraged and quit, or if they don’t quit, do just enough to hold their jobs. What’s the answer? It’s somebody’s business around here to find orders and I’d say it was up to you. I’ve done my part. Now you do yours.”
Johnathan arose, his face pale.
“We’ll go into that some other time, you saucy young pup,” he snapped. “Just now I’ve got to get to the bank. But I’m marking down the Richards girl to ten dollars. That’s all I’ll give her. Not a cent more. Not a cent less! Ten dollars!”
“But, Pa!” cried the son aghast. “You’re not going to cut her this week—on the work she’s done already?”
“Four times I’ve told you I’ll pay no female eighteen dollars a week. I could get a man—a man as old as me—to work for eighteen dollars!”
“What’s the use of a man—what ice would a man cut anyhow—if a girl can do the work as well and quicker?”