e's nothing
to it.

Well, after a while I went one day to Mr. Evans's office
and I said, "Mr. Evans, I want you to dismiss Mr. Thompson,
the general manager." "Why, what's he done?" he says.
"Nothing," I said, "but I can take over his job on top
of mine and you can pay me the salary you give him and
save what you're paying me now." "Sounds good to me," he
says.

So they let Thompson go and I took his place. That, of
course, is where I got my real start, because, you see,
I could control the output and run the costs up and down
just where I liked. I suppose you don't know anything
about costs and all that--they don't teach that sort of
thing in colleges--but even you would understand something
about dividends and would see that an energetic man with
lots of character and business in him, If he's general
manager can just do what he likes with the costs, especially
the overhead, and the shareholders have just got to take
what he gives them and be glad to. You see they can't
fire him--not when he's got it all in his own hands--for
fear it will all go to pieces.

Why would I want to run it that way for? Well, I'll tell
you. I had a notion by that time that the business was
getting so big that Mr. Evans, the managing director,
and most of the board had pretty well lost track of the
details and didn't understand it. There's an awful lot,
you know, in the shoe business. It's not like ordinary
things. It's complicated. And so I'd got an idea that I
would shove them clean out of it--or most of them.

So I went one night to see the president, old Guggenbaum,
up at his residence. He didn't only have this business,
but he was in a lot of other things as well, and he was
a mighty hard man to see. He wouldn't let any man see
him unless he knew first what he was going to say. But
I went up to his residence at night, and I saw him there.
I talked first with his daughter, and I said I just had
to see him. I said it so she didn't dare refuse. There's
a way in talking to women that they won't say no.

So I showed Mr. Guggenbaum what I could do with the stock.
"I can put that dividend," I says, "clean down to zero--and
they'll none of them know why. You can buy the lot of
them out at your own price, and after that I'll put the
dividend back to fifteen, or twenty, in two years."

"And where do _you_ come in?" says the old man, with a
sort of hard look. He had a fine business head, the old
man, at least in those days.

So I e