The Auerbach Will (27 page)

New York City

April 20, 1913

Dear Nephew:

Y'rs of the 17th inst. quite mystifies me
.

Certainly none of us gave your wife any money, nor would we had she asked. The terms of our arrangement with you remain as agreed upon, with no change in the financial stipulations
.

Our immediate concern, of course, is, since your family has experienced some sort of financial windfall, that the money not be squandered in some fruitless enterprise. It occurs to us, for example, that you might wish to invest this money in Rosenthal stock, which we would make available to you. As you know, our stock is sound as the dollar, and in becoming a shareholder you would not only have a financial equity in our business but would have greater personal incentive to improve our profit picture
.

The book value of our stock is presently $325 per share, and we would offer this to you at a discount of fifteen per centum
.

Let me know your decision as quickly as possible
.

Y'rs, etc
.

Solomon J. Rosenthal

“Well, first of all,” said Charles Wilmont, as the four of them sat around the living room of 5269 Grand Boulevard, “Jake—may I call you Jake?—and Abe, may I call you Abe? First of all, the brains of the business is George Eaton. Cromwell's just a cipher—an ex—watch salesman who put some money into Eaton's idea. Do you know that Eaton writes every single word of that catalogue? And Eaton's got a business philosophy that I rather like. He said to me as he was taking me around the place, ‘I know that honesty is supposed to be the best policy, but I like to try it both ways.' He's certainly been doing that.”

He spread some notes and charts about in front of him on the table. “Now, Eaton admits that his company has some problems—people returning the merchandise, asking for refunds, dealing with complaints from customers who say the product didn't do what it was supposed to do. Let's face it, most of the stuff he's been peddling through the mails is worthless snake oil—water with a little sulfur added to give it a medicinal taste, and that sort of thing. All that would be easy enough to fix—just stick to products that are known to have at least
some
curative powers. It would be easy enough to make this company turn legitimate, and to build up customer trust.

“That isn't the problem, as I see it. The problem, as I see it, is gross inefficiency. Eaton's got about twenty girls working for him, and they're all running around doing everything at once—sending out the catalogues, opening orders, trying to fill orders. Orders get lost or misplaced. The wrong merchandise gets sent out, gets returned, has to be reshipped, and so on. There's absolutely no organization to it. Some customers pay with checks, some with money orders, some with cash, and some even with stamps. The cash and the stamps have had a way of disappearing—into the pockets, I imagine, of some of those girls. Merchandise is sent out before checks have cleared, and checks bounce, and there's no way to get the merchandise back. Also, he often puts merchandise in his catalogue that he hasn't even bought. For instance, he'll advertise a pair of reading glasses for a dollar and a half. A thousand orders come in. Then Eaton has to run around town and try to find somebody who'll make a thousand pairs of reading glasses for seventy cents a pair. It's chaotic. Now, Abe and Jake, are you familiar with what Mr. Henry Ford has been doing in Detroit, with his assembly line?”

The two nodded.

Wilmont took out a pencil and began drawing straight lines across a blank sheet of paper. “Now, what I visualize is something like that, but on a smaller scale,” he said. “A simple conveyor belt system, which wouldn't be expensive to install. An order comes in, goes onto the belt. The first girl slits open the envelope. The second girl removes the order and the money, puts the money on a belt headed straight for the till, checks to see that the money and the figures on the order match, then directs the order to the appropriate department. At the end of the day, if the figures on the orders don't equal the money in the till, who's pinching it? Second girl, of course, and out she goes. Also, I can see the whole operation being done by seven or eight girls, not twenty.

“And so,” he said, putting down his pencil, “that's the way I see it, gentlemen—a twofold task. Offering honest merchandise from an honestly warehoused stock, and efficiency.”

Jake was the first to speak. “Very interesting,” he said.

“And I think, furthermore,” said Charles, “that you have a great opportunity here—to turn a fly-by-night little company into something that will provide a real service. And I think it can be done quickly and inexpensively, and that if it works within two or three years you could both be millionaires.”

Abe Litsky cleared his throat. “Mr. Wilmont—Charles—would you be willing to come to work for us? As our plant manager?”

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I'd like nothing better. I happen to be a fellow who enjoys a challenge.”

Essie had said nothing, but now she spoke up. “I have one idea,” she said.

“Out with it, young lady.”

“Most of the merchandise goes out to people in little towns—farmers and their wives?”

“Correct.”

“Well, I was thinking of something that farmers and their wives might like—just a little something different that could be added to the catalogue.”

“Essie, what do you know about fanners and their wives?” her brother said. “You've never met a farmer, and you've never set foot on a farm.”

“Hold on,” said Charles, “let's see what she has to say.”

“Well, going to New York and back on the train, and passing all those little farms—Ohio, Indiana—they looked so lonely. Acres and acres of empty fields between each farmhouse—each one so isolated. I tried to imagine what each little house was like inside. I saw plain little rooms, bare walls. I thought of art.”

“Art?” said Abe. “Essie, you're talking nonsense.”

Charles Wilmont held up his hand. “Hold on, let her finish,” he said.

“I thought that if a farmer and his wife could have a really beautiful picture to hang on their walls—not just cheap calendar art, but a really beautiful, famous work of art by an Old Master—a reproduction, of course—”

“Like Leonardo's ‘The Last Supper'?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly. “Suppose, on the last page of each catalogue, you offered a reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci's ‘The Last Supper'—it would come as such a surprise after all the medicines that it would certainly be noticed. Offer it, in a pretty frame, for a few dollars—a copy of a painting that they'd have to travel to some great museum in Europe to see—would that give the farmer and his wife a sense of importance, a sense of belonging to something bigger than a little farm?”

“Rubbish, Essie!” said Abe.

“Now wait … now wait,” Charles said. He hooked his thumbs in his vest, frowned, and lowered his chin to his chest. “Do you know,” he said, “that I like it? I like it because it has
class
. That's something your company is going to need a lot of, gentlemen—class. Lord knows it doesn't have much now. Jake, I suggest that you make your wife vice-president in charge of class.”

April 27, 1913

Dear Uncle Sol:

This letter is to inform you that I have decided to leave your employ and embark upon a new business venture of my own as a general partner in the firm of Eaton & Cromwell & Company here in Chicago
.

This decision was a painful one for me to make, because it means that I will be leaving the family business. But I am sure you know that I have never really felt “cut out for” the men's retailing business. Though I do not expect you to greet this decision with pleasure, it is irrevocable, and I humbly ask that you give my new venture your blessing, however reluctantly.…

I plan to depart from Rosenthal's six weeks from this date, in order to give you time to locate a suitable replacement. Once you have found him, I will gladly spend whatever time is necessary to break him in, and if I can aid you in this search please let me know.…

Esther and the children join me in love to all the family
.

Sincerely
,

Jacob

“Well, that does it,” said Uncle Sol, crumpling Jake's letter into the little ball on the dinner table. “We've squandered enough on his foolishness, and this is the end of it. We call in his loan, and he goes out of the will.”

“Out of the will,” repeated Uncle Mort.

“And yours, too, Lily?” said Uncle Sol.

Lily Auerbach said nothing.

“Lily?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Lily said, and got up and left the table.

And now it was a month later, and Jake Auerbach and Charles Wilmont were in the small waiting room outside George Eaton's office. The final partnership-agreement documents were stacked on a small table in front of them, ready for signatures. The two had been a few minutes early for the meeting, and now Abe Litsky was a few minutes late, and Jake had begun pacing the floor, his hands folded behind his back. “Tell me something, Charles,” he said. “Do you really think I can make something of this?”

Charles smiled. “Last-minute doubts?”

“Not exactly. But tell me something—what was that business school you went to?”

“Wharton.”

“And before that?”

“Harvard.”

“In any of those courses that you took, didn't they tell you that it was important to know where an investor's money came from?”

Charles made a steeple of his fingers. “When that can be ascertained, yes, it's a good idea.”

“Well, you know where my share came from.”

“Yes.”

“From Essie. But where did
she
get the money? That's what I'd like to know.”

“At this point, I'd suggest not looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

“She's lying to me. I know she is. She says she won it in a sweepstakes. That's got to be a lie.”

“It might help your peace of mind, Jake, if you took her word for it. After all, what difference does it make? The money's here.”

“But the point is, she's lying. God knows I've wanted to get out of the haberdashery business, and God knows the money's useful. But
where did she get it?
And why is she lying to me?”

“She may have her reasons. If she
is
lying.”

“But you don't know my wife the way I do. She comes from—nothing. She's a simple, immigrant Russian girl I plucked out of the Lower East Side. From absolute nothing. Pretty, yes. And clever. But where would a girl like Essie find fifty thousand dollars? She talks about a miracle. That's rubbish, Charles. Fifty thousand dollars doesn't land in the lap of a woman like Essie through a miracle. She's ambitious, yes—”

“Ambitious for you, I think.”

Jake turned angrily on his heel. “Yes, and I'm getting a little sick and tired of her being ambitious for me. Trying to run me, trying to run my life. Interfering. Making suggestions like art reproductions. I'm sick of it. If anyone's going to run this business, it's going to be me. Not her. That's got to be made clear to her. Can that be made clear to her?”

“I'm sure it is,” Charles said quietly. “Already.”

“But now she feels she has to lie to me. Why? What does she want now?”

“Perhaps just your happiness and success. Why not leave it at that?”

“Do you think—whoring? Do you think she got the money whoring with some rich man?”

“No, I do not think that.”

“Neither do I. She's a simple immigrant girl. She doesn't know any rich men, and where would she meet one? She was only in New York for a week. How would someone like Essie meet a rich man?”

“Jake, I think you should trust your wife.”

“She's clever with her pen. She does sketches. Do you think—art forgery? I was reading about a man who forged Old Masters, and palmed them off as the real thing. But he did it for years. How could she forge fifty thousand dollars' worth of Old Masters in a week?”

“I agree,” Charles said dryly. “She couldn't have.”

“But it's got to have been something like that. Something illegal.”

Charles Wilmont was smiling again. “You know,” he said carefully, “I haven't known you very long, and I've known your wife only a little longer. But I've just made an interesting discovery about Jake Auerbach. It's not
how
your wife got the money that's upsetting you. It's that she got it at all. You're upset because the money came from a woman.”

“I'm upset because she's never lied to me before. And now she is!”

“I also think that if you and I are going to work together, Jake, we should not be having this sort of conversation.”

But at that moment Abe Litsky burst into the waiting room, all enthusiasm, rubbing his hands. “Just think,” he whispered, “in half an hour we're going to own half of this company!”

From the Eaton & Cromwell 1913 Fall Catalogue:

PROBABLY THE WORLD
'
S GREATEST

ART MASTERPIECE

LEONARDO DA VINCI
'
S
“
THE LAST SUPPER
”

Perfectly Reproduced

in color on heavy-duty board

to hang in your home

36 by 60 inches
just $4.95

(includes genuine walnut frame)

During the first few months with the new business, Jake Auerbach was almost never home. He worked late into the night, and through weekends, and often slept at the office. Charles Wilmont kept the same long hours, and that was why, one September afternoon, Essie was surprised to answer her doorbell on Grand Boulevard and find Charles standing there. It was a Saturday, and Essie had been drying the children's lunch dishes, and still carried the blue dishtowel in her hand. “Would you believe it?” he cried. “More than forty thousand orders for ‘The Last Supper,' and they're still coming in! Don't tell Jake I told you, but I wanted you to be the first to know—” Seizing the dishtowel, he swung it around her waist, and, holding both ends, began propelling her in a kind of impromptu gypsy dance on the front doorstep, in full view of the busy street. “Miracle worker!”