Mary Minds Her Business Part 38

"Oh, Archey--don't you think a woman has pride, too?"

"Well, you know what I mean. He feels he ought to be doing the work, instead of the woman."

"Oh, Archey," she said again. "Can't you begin to see that the average woman has always worked harder than the average man? You ask any of the women at the factory which is the easiest--the work they are doing now--or the work they used to do."

"I keep forgetting that. But how about this--I hear it all the time.

Suppose the idea spreads and after a while there are millions of women doing work that used to be done by men--what are the men going to do?"

"That's a secret," she laughed. "But I'll tell you some day--if you're good--"

The friendly words slipped out unconsciously, but for some reason her tone and manner made his heart hammer away like that powerful downward pa.s.sage of the Anvil Chorus. "I'll be good," he managed to say.

Mary hardly heard him.

"I wonder what made me speak like that," she was thinking. "I must be more dignified--or he'll think I'm bold...." And in a very dignified voice indeed, she said, "I must be getting back now. I wish you'd find the contractor and ask him when he'll be through."

She went down the hill alone. On the way a queer thought came to her. I sha'n't attempt to explain it--only to report it.

"Of course it isn't the only thing in life--that's ridiculous," she thought. "But sooner or later ... I guess it becomes quite important...."

CHAPTER x.x.x

A few hours later, Mary was sitting in her office, thinking of this and that (as the old phrase goes) when a knock sounded on the door and the elderly accountant entered.

"We have finished the first part of our work," he said, "that dealing with factory costs. I will leave this with you and when you have read it, I would like to go over it with you in detail."

It was a formidable doc.u.ment, nearly three hundred typewritten pages, neatly bound in hard covers. Mary hadn't looked in it far when she knew she was examining a work of art.

"How he must love his work!" she thought, and couldn't help wondering what accidental turn of life had guided his career into the field of figures.

"How interesting he makes it!" she thought again. "Why, it's almost like a novel."

Brilliant sentences illuminated nearly every page. "This system, admirable in its way, is probably a legacy from the past, when the bookkeepers of Spencer & Son powdered their hair and used quill pens.--"

"Under these conditions, a stock clerk must become a prodigy and depend upon his memory. When memory fails he must become a poet, for he has nothing but imagination to guide him." "Thus one department would corroborate another, like two witnesses independently sworn and each examined in private--"

The back of the volume, she noticed, was filled with tables of figures.

"This won't be so interesting," she told herself, turning the leaves. But suddenly she stopped at one of the open pages--and read it again--and again--

"Comparative Efficiency of Men's Labour and Women's Labour," the sheet was headed. And there it was in black and white, line after line, just how much it had cost to make each Spencer bearing when the men did the work, and just how much it was costing under the new conditions.

"There!" said Mary, "I always knew we could do it, if the women in Europe could! There! No wonder we've been making so much money lately--!"

She took the report home in triumph to show to her aunts, and when dinner was over she carried the volume to her den, and never a young lady in bye-gone days sat down to Don Juan with any more pleasurable antic.i.p.ation than Mary felt when she buried herself in her easy chair and opened that report again.

She was still gloating over the table of women's efficiency when Hutchins appeared.

"Mr. Archibald Forbes is calling."

Archey had news.

"The men had a meeting this afternoon," he said. "They've been getting up a big pet.i.tion, and they are going to send another committee to Washington."

"What for?"

"To press for that boycott. Headquarters put them off last time, but there are so many men out of work now at other factories that they hope to get a favourable decision."

"I'll see Judge Cutler in the morning," promised Mary, and noticing Archey's expression, she said, "Don't worry. I'm not the least alarmed."

"What bothers me," he said, "is to have this thing hanging over all the time. It's like old What's-his-name who had the sword hanging over his head by a single hair all through the dinner."

The sword didn't seem to bother Mary, though. That comparative table had given her another idea--an idea that was part plan and part pride. When she reached the office in the morning she telephoned Judge Cutler and Uncle Stanley.

"A directors' meeting--something important," she told them both; and after another talk with the accountant she began writing another of her advertis.e.m.e.nts. She was finishing this when Judge Cutler appeared. A minute later Uncle Stanley followed him.

Lately Uncle Stanley had been making his headquarters at the bank--his att.i.tude toward the factory being one of scornful amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Women mechanics!" he sometimes scoffed to visitors at the bank. "Women foremen! Women presidents! By Judas, I'm beginning to think Old Ned himself is a woman--the sort of mischief he's raising lately!...

Something's bound to crack before long, though."

In that last sentence you have the picture of Uncle Stanley. Even as Mr.

Micawber was always waiting for something to turn up, so Uncle Stanley was always waiting for something to go wrong.

Mary opened the meeting by showing the accountants' report and then reading her proposed advertis.e.m.e.nt. If you had been there, I think you would have seen the gleam of satisfaction in Uncle Stanley's eye.

"I knew I'd catch her wrong yet," he seemed to be saying to himself. "As soon as she's made a bit of money, she wants everybody to have it. It's the hen and the egg all over again--they've simply got to cackle."

Thus the gleam in Uncle Stanley's eye. Looking up at the end of her reading, Mary caught it. "How he hates women!" she thought. "Still, in a way, you can't wonder at it.... If it hadn't been for women and the things they can do he would have had the factory long ago." Aloud she said, "What do you think of it?"

"I think it's a piece of foolishness, myself," said Uncle Stanley promptly. "But I know you are going to do it, if you've made up your mind to do it."

"I'm not so sure it's foolish," said the judge. "It seems to me it's going to bring us a lot of new business."

"Got all we can handle now, haven't we?"

"Well, we can expand! It wouldn't be the first time in Spencer & Son's history that the factory has been doubled, and, by Jingo, I believe Mary's going to do it, too!"

Mary said nothing, but a few mornings later when the advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared in the leading newspapers throughout the country, she made a remark which showed that her co-directors had failed to see at least two of the birds at which she was throwing her stone.... She had the newspapers brought to her room that morning, and was soon reading the following quarter page announcement:

THE FRUITS OF HER LABOUR

For the past six months, Spencer bearings have been made exclusively by women.

The first result of this is a finer degree of accuracy than had ever been attained before.

The second result is a reduction in the cost of manufacture, this notwithstanding the fact that every woman on our payroll has always received man's wages, and we have never worked more than eight hours a day.