trong point was
expectation. With apparent recklessness he gave out work two sizes too
large for everybody. If a subordinate was a No. 7 man he handed him a No.
9 job as a matter of course, and usually the latter grew up to it. The
politician had tried this same scheme, but introduced it backward. Taking
a No. 7 man into a corner, he told him impressively that he was a No. 9
and promoted him on the spot, and warned him to say nothing about it to
anybody else. Then the man tried to swell to fit the office instead of
growing to fit the work. But this fourth candidate made everybody see that
doing No. 9 was more creditable than just being it. So everybody became
interested in the work, and nothing else.

There was another suggestive point. Taking charge after three foremen had
failed, the factory was naturally full of nasty cliques, each with its
unhealthy private interest. The new man broke up these cliques by
introducing a new interest so big that it swallowed all the little
interests, like Aaron's rod. That interest was to turn out work of such
quality and in such quantities that the factory could get contracts in
competition with an older rival, and provide steady employment.

That this faculty for putting people under obligation is more the man than
a method, however, is shown in one of Daudet's delightful little sketches,
the story of a head clerk in a French Government bureau who, on getting a
fine promotion, wrote home to his father describing his new chief's homely
appearance with light-hearted raillery. Next morning on his desk lay his
own letter, initialed by his chief. It had been intercepted by the secret
service. The chief allowed him to suffer in apprehension one day, and then
told him that his indiscretion should rest between themselves. 'Try to
make me forget it,' he said, and the incident hung like a dagger over the
clerk's head.

Some time after, the latter caught one of his own subordinates stealing
from the cash box, and repeated his superior's tactics, even to the
formula, 'Try to make me forget it.' With tears in his eyes the
subordinate thanked him for his clemency--and a few days later, rifled the
safe and fled! The moral of which seems to be that, if the clerk had been
enough of a judge of men to use his chief's method effectively, he would
never have fallen into the asininity of writing such a letter.

"Those who complain that it is impossible to win the confidence of
subordinates might observ