An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (i can read book club .TXT) 📕

wouldn’t do to have him live just anywhere. At the same time, he was greatly concerned lest Clyde get the notion that the family was very much concerned as to where he did live, which most certainly it was not, as he saw it. His final feeling was that he could easily place and control Clyde in such a way as to make him not very important to anyone in any way⁠—his father, the family, all the people who worked here.

He reached for a button on his desk and pressed it. A trim girl, very severe and reserved in a green gingham dress, appeared.

“Ask Mr. Whiggam to come here.”

She disappeared and presently there entered a medium-sized and nervous, yet moderately stout, man who looked as though he were under a great strain. He was about forty years of age⁠—repressed and noncommittal⁠—and looked curiously and suspiciously about as though wondering what new trouble impended. His head, as Clyde at once noticed, appeared chronically to incline forward, while at the same time he lifted his eyes as though actually he would prefer not to look up.

“Whiggam,” began young Griffiths authoritatively, “this is Clyde Griffiths, a cousin of ours. You remember I spoke to you about him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, he’s to be put in the shrinking department for the present. You can show him what he’s to do. Afterwards you had better have Mrs. Braley show him where he can get a room.” (All this had been talked over and fixed upon the week before by Gilbert and Whiggam, but now he gave it the ring of an original suggestion.) “And you’d better give his name in to the timekeeper as beginning tomorrow morning, see?”

“Yes, sir,” bowed Whiggam deferentially. “Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all,” concluded Gilbert smartly. “You go with Whiggam, Mr. Griffiths. He’ll tell you what to do.”

Whiggam turned. “If you’ll just come with me, Mr. Griffiths,” he observed deferentially, as Clyde could see⁠—and that for all of his cousin’s apparently condescending attitude⁠—and marched out with Clyde at his heels. And young Gilbert as briskly turned to his own desk, but at the same time shaking his head. His feeling at the moment was that mentally Clyde was not above a good bellboy in a city hotel probably. Else why should he come on here in this way. “I wonder what he thinks he’s going to do here,” he continued to think, “where he thinks he’s going to get?”

And Clyde, as he followed Mr. Whiggam, was thinking what a wonderful place Mr. Gilbert Griffiths enjoyed. No doubt he came and went as he chose⁠—arrived at the office late, departed early, and somewhere in this very interesting city dwelt with his parents and sisters in a very fine house⁠—of course. And yet here he was⁠—Gilbert’s own cousin, and the nephew of his wealthy uncle, being escorted to work in a very minor department of this great concern.

Nevertheless, once they were out of the sight and hearing of Mr. Gilbert Griffiths, he was somewhat diverted from this mood by the sights and sounds of the great manufactory itself. For here on this very same floor, but beyond the immense office room through which he had passed, was another much larger room filled with rows of bins, facing aisles not more than five feet wide, and containing, as Clyde could see, enormous quantities of collars boxed in small paper boxes, according to sizes. These bins were either being refilled by stock boys who brought more boxed collars from the boxing room in large wooden trucks, or were being as rapidly emptied by order clerks who, trundling small box trucks in front of them, were filling orders from duplicate check lists which they carried in their hands.

“Never worked in a collar factory before, Mr. Griffiths, I presume?” commented Mr. Whiggam with somewhat more spirit, once he was out of the presence of Gilbert Griffiths. Clyde noticed at once the Mr. Griffiths.

“Oh, no,” he replied quickly. “I never worked at anything like this before.”

“Expect to learn all about the manufacturing end of the game in the course of time, though, I suppose.” He was walking briskly along one of the long aisles as he spoke, but Clyde noticed that he shot sly glances in every direction.

“I’d like to,” he answered.

“Well, there’s a little more to it than some people think, although you often hear there isn’t very much to learn.” He opened another door, crossed a gloomy hall and entered still another room which, filled with bins as was the other, was piled high in every bin with bolts of white cloth.

“You might as well know a little about this as long as you’re going to begin in the shrinking room. This is the stuff from which the collars are cut, the collars and the lining. They are called webs. Each of these bolts is a web. We take these down in the basement and shrink them because they can’t be used this way. If they are, the collars would shrink after they were cut. But you’ll see. We tub them and then dry them afterwards.”

He marched solemnly on and Clyde sensed once more that this man was not looking upon him as an ordinary employee by any means. His Mr. Griffiths, his supposition to the effect that Clyde was to learn all about the manufacturing end of the business, as well as his condescension in explaining about these webs of cloth, had already convinced Clyde that he was looked upon as one to whom some slight homage at least must be paid.

He followed Mr. Whiggam, curious as to the significance of this, and soon found himself in an enormous basement which had been reached by descending a flight of steps at the end of a third hall. Here, by the help of four long rows of incandescent lamps, he discerned row after row of porcelain tubs or troughs, lengthwise of the room, and end to end, which reached from one exterior wall to the other. And in these, under steaming hot water apparently, were any quantity of those