Jacob August Riis - The Making of an American

"What is it you want?" he asked, when I had ceased speaking and waited for an answer.

"Work," I said.

"Work!" said he, waving me haughtily away with the shears; "we don't work here. This is a newspaper office."

I went, abashed. I tried the Express next. This time I had the editor pointed out to me. He was just coming through the business office. At the door I stopped him and preferred my request. He looked me over, a lad fresh from the shipyard, with horny hands and a rough coat, and asked:—

"What are you?"

"A carpenter," I said.

The man turned upon his heel with a loud, rasping laugh and shut the door in my face. For a moment I stood there stunned. His ascending steps on the stairs brought back my senses. I ran to the door, and flung it open. "You laugh!" I shouted, shaking my fist at him, standing halfway up the stairs, "you laugh now, but wait—" And then I got the grip of my temper and slammed the door in my turn. All the same, in that hour it was settled that I was to be a reporter. I knew it as I went out into the street.

Somewhat suddenly and quite unexpectedly, a business career opened for me that winter. Once I had tried to crowd into it uninvited, but the result was not good. It was when I had observed that, for the want of the window reflectors which were much in use in the old country, American ladies were at a disadvantage in their homes in not being able to make out undesirable company at a distance, themselves unseen, and conveniently forgetting that they were "in." This civilizing agency I set about supplying forthwith. I made a model and took it to a Yankee business man, to whom I explained its use. He listened attentively, took the model, and said he had a good mind to have me locked up for infringing the patent laws of other lands; but because I had sinned from ignorance he would refrain. His manner was so impressive that he really made me uneasy lest I had broken some kind of a law I knew not of. From the fact that not long after window reflectors began to make their appearance in Buffalo, I infer that, whatever the enactment, it did not apply to natives, or else that he was a very fearless man, willing to take the risk from which he would save me—a sort of commercial philanthropist. However, by that time I had other things to think of, being a drummer and a very energetic one.

It came about in this way: some countrymen of mine had started a cooperative furniture-factory in Jamestown, where there were water-power and cheap lumber. They had no capital, but just below was the oil country, where everybody had money, slathers of it. New wells gushed every day, and boom towns were springing up all along the Allegheny valley. Men were streaming into it from everywhere, and needed furniture. If once they got the grip on that country, reasoned the furniture-makers, they would get rich quickly with the rest. The thing was to get it. To do that they needed a man who could talk. Perhaps they remembered the creation of the world the year before. At all events, they sent up to Buffalo and asked me if I would try.

I slammed my tool-box shut and started for Jamestown on the next train. Twenty-four hours later saw me headed for the oil country, equipped with a mighty album and a price-list. The album contained pictures of the furniture I had for sale. All the way down I studied the price-list, and when I reached Titusville I knew to a cent what it cost my employers per foot to make ash extension tables. I only wish they had known half as well.

My first customer was a grumpy old shopkeeper who needed neither tables nor bedsteads, so he said. But I had thought it all over and made up my mind that the first blow was half the battle. Therefore I knew better. I pushed my album under his nose, and it fell open at the extension tables. Cheap, I said, and rattled off the price. I saw him prick up his ears, but he only growled that probably they were no good.

What! my extension tables no good? I dared him to try them, and he gave me an order for a dozen, but made me sign an agreement that they were to be every way as represented. I would have backed my tables with an order for the whole shop, so sure was I that they could not be beaten. The idea! With the fit of righteous indignation upon me, I went out and sold every other furniture-dealer in Titusville a bill of tables; not one of them escaped. At night, when I had sent the order home, I set out for Oil City, so as to lose no valuable time.

It was just the same there. For some reason they were suspicious of the extension tables, yet they wanted nothing else. I had to give ironclad guarantees that they were as represented, which I did impatiently enough. There was a thunder storm raging at the time. The lightning had struck a tank, and the burning oil ran down a hill and set the town on fire. One end of it was burning while I was canvassing the other, mentally calculating how many extension tables would be needed to replace those that were lost. People did not seem to have heard of any other kind of furniture in that country. Walnut bed-steads, marble-top bureaus, turned washstands—they passed them all by to fall upon the tables with shrill demand. I made out their case to suit the facts, as I swept down through that region, scattering extension tables right and left. It was the excitement, I reasoned, the inrush of population from everywhere; probably everybody kept boarders, more every day; had to extend their tables to seat them. I saw a great opportunity and resolutely grasped it. If it was tables they wanted, tables it should be. I let all the rest of the stock go and threw myself on the tables exclusively. Town after town I filled with them. Night after night the mails groaned under the heavy orders for extension tables I sent north. From Allegheny City alone an order of a thousand dollars' worth from a single reputable dealer went home, and I figured in my note-book that night a commission of $50 for myself plus my salary.

I could know nothing of the despatches that were hot on my trail ever since my first order came from Titusville, telling me to stop, let up on the tables, come home, anything; there was a mistake in the price. They never overtook me. My pace was too hot for that. Anyhow, I doubt if I would have paid any attention to them. I had my instructions and was selling according to orders. Business was good, getting better every day. The firm wrote to my customers, but they merely sent back copies of the iron-clad contract. They had seen my instructions, and they knew it was all right. It was not until I brought up, my last penny gone, in Rochester, near the Ohio line, that the firm established communication with me at last. Their instructions were brief: to come home and sell no more tables. They sent $10, but gave me no clew to their curious decision, with things booming as they were.

Being in the field I considered that, whatever was up, I had a better command of the situation. I decided that I would not go home,—at least not until I had sold a few more extension tables while they were in such demand. I made that $10 go farther than $10 ever went before. It took me a little way into Ohio, to Youngstown, and then back to Pennsylvania, to Warren and Meadville and Corry. My previous training in going hungry for days came in handy at last. In the interests of commerce, I let my dinners go. So I was enabled to make a final dash to Erie, where I planted my last batch of tables before I went home, happy.

I got home in time to assist in the winding up of the concern. The iron-clad contracts had done the business. My customers would not listen to explanations. When told that the price of those tables was lower than the cost of working up the wood, they replied that it was none of their business. They had their contracts. The Allegheny man threatened suit, if I remember rightly, and the firm gave up. Nobody blamed me, for I had sold according to orders; but instead of $450 which I had figured out as my commission, I got seventy-five cents. It was half of what my employer had. He divided squarely, and I could not in reason complain.