Text № 12 Survival of the Finkiest

By Mike Quin (1903-1947)

Jonatan Bones was not in business for his health. If you asked him he would tell you so frankly. His object was to take money, and to do that you had to be just a little smarter than the next fellow.

Take that fellow across the street. He’d never get anywhere in the business world. Too much of a dreamer. An easy mark for anyone.

Bones had no use for dreamers. He had fired many of them. They’d never get any place in this world.

Dark spots on the pavement told him it was beginning to rain. He took the iron rod from under the counter, went outside and cranked down the awning. The words “JONATAN BONES, MERCHANDISE”, extended over the sidewalk on a canvas flap.

A bit of paper caught his eye. He picked it up, walked to the curb and carefully droped it in the gutter.

Across the street his competitor had comr out and was also cranking down the awning. The words “ELLSWORTH SPOTTS, MERCHANDISE,” moved slowly downward, like a cannon maneuvering into position.

Damn that man! For two years now the bitter contest had gone on. There was no room for two merchandise stores. One was all the neighborhood could support. Which would prove himself the better business man of the two? Which one would succeed in bankrupting the other?

Jonatan Bones was the first to cut the staff down to three clerks and make up the difference by increasing their hours. That enabled him to run special sales every week.

Ellsworth Spotts was quick enough to imitate the special sales and even went one better by running ads in the neighborhood-paper. It was a bold answer to the challenge, but costly. The heavier overhead was a drag on competition. Within three months, he too had to cut his staff down to three.

Stout, good natured and inclined to pal with his employees, Ellsworth Spotts took this hard. Bones was right. He wasn’t much of a business man – too emotional. It took him three days to screw up courage for the firing and then he went out and got drink.

Bones was not long in finding this out, and he knew he had his competitor on the run. It was time for another push.

Young men and women who live at home need little money. Anxious to get a start in the world, they are glad for a chance to learn some business. An ad in the paper brought twenty smiling and pleading for a chance.

Soon the three old clerks were gone and their places filled by youngsters at very trivial pay. Two of them took it all right, if a little sadly. But the third stood in front of the door and called him every dirty name in the book.

“It only goes to show”, Bones remarks later, “how easily you can be fooled on a man’s character and how careful you have to be. The man was with me for a year and a half and in all that while I never suspected he such a bad actor.”

The youngsters caught on very rapidly. They were very intelligent. He showed

them which was the good merchandise and which were worthless items he had been stuck with. The good merchandise they didn’t have to bother about. That would sell itself in due time. It was the bad items they must get rid of. Greet the customers with a smile, win their confidence by your pleasing personality, make them feel you are a friend whom you can trust, then lead them to the rotten merchandise. Tell them it is very good value and try to take their money away from them in ecxhange for it. That was the gist of Bones’ training.

Ellsworth Spotts was soon taking the bumps. Every time he looked across the street his competitor’s storewas blazing with sale banners. One after another he was forced to fire his clerks and replace them with young girls. He got used to firing people and soon thought nothing os it. He was obliged to extend the closing hour to 9 o’clock at night and stay open Saturday until midnight.

For two years the battle raged until both men were hanging by a thread over the pit of bankrupcy. Ellsworth had lost his weight and much of his good nature vanished with it. His face had a tired, haggard look and a trace of meanness was beginning to appear on it.

As he finished cranking down his awning, he turned and looked across the street at where Jonathan Bones was still standing. The sky had clouded, the street was gloomy and the rain was coming dowm now in full volume.

There they stood; each under his own awning, gazing across the melancholy street in mutual hatred – and both of them doomed and damned. For little did they realized the lot on the corner had been purchased that morning by Jones and Hardbottom, Inc., the largest chain store, cut-rate merchandise firm in the country.