Morris snorted.

“If our line don’t suit you, Mr. Pasinsky,” he began, when Abe interrupted with a wave of his hand.

“Pasinsky is right, Mawruss,” he said.  “You always got it an idee you made up a line of goods what pratically sold themselves, and I always told you differencely.  You wouldn’t mind it if I went around to see B. Gans, Mr. Pasinsky.”

Pasinsky stared superciliously at Abe.

“Go as far as you like,” he said.  “Gans wouldn’t tell you nothing but good of me.  But if I would work for you one week, Mr. Potash, you would know that with me recommendations is nix and results everything.”

He blew his nose like a challenge and clapped his silk hat on his flowing black curls.  Then he bowed to Morris, and the next moment the elevator door clanged behind him.

B. Gans guided himself by the maxim:  “In business you couldn’t trust nobody to do nothing,” and albeit he employed over a hundred workmen he gave practical demonstrations of their duties to all of them.  Thus, on the last of the month he made out statements in the office, and when the shipping department was busy he helped tie up packages.  Occasionally he would be found wielding a pressing iron, and when Abe Potash entered to inquire about Pasinsky’s qualifications B. Gans had just smashed his thumb in the process of showing a shipping clerk precisely how a packing-case ought to be nailed.

“What’s the matter, Gans?” Abe asked.

“Couldn’t you afford it to hire shipping clerks no more?”

“I want to tell you something, Potash,” Gans replied.  “Jay Vanderbilt ain’t got money enough to hire it a good shipping clerk, because for the simple reason there ain’t no good shipping clerks.  A shipping clerk ain’t no good, otherwise he wouldn’t be a shipping clerk.”

“How about drummers?” Abe asked.  “I ain’t come to ask you about shipping clerks, Gans; I come to ask you about a drummer.”

“What should you ask me about drummers for, Potash?” Gans replied.  “You know as well as I do what drummers is, Potash.  Drummers is bluffs.  I wouldn’t give a pinch of snuff for the best drummers living.  The way drummers figure it out nowadays, Potash, there ain’t no more money in commissions.  All the money is in the expense account.”

Abe laughed.

“I guess you got a tale of woe to tell about designers and models, too, Gans,” he said; “but with me, Gans, so long as a salesman could sell goods I don’t take it so particular when it comes right down to the expense account.”

“Oh, if they sell goods, Potash,” Gans agreed, “then that’s something else again.  But the way business is to-day, Potash, salesmen don’t sell goods no more.  Former times a salesman wasn’t considered a salesman unless he could sell a customer goods what the customer didn’t want; but nowadays it don’t make no difference what kind of salesman you hire it, Potash, the goods is got to sell themselves, otherwise the salesman can’t do no business.  Ain’t it?”