Grinding It Out (7 page)

“Ethel, honey,” I said soothingly, “don't worry. I'll find something. We'll get by. I'll go back to playing the piano if I have to.”

That was the wrong thing to say. She had spent too many nights alone while I was off playing piano someplace. I was afraid she was going to go into hysterics, so I agreed to go in and see John Clark the next morning.

When I walked into his office, Clark looked at me with alarm and shouted, “Where have you been?”

“I've been out looking for another job. I told you, I am not going to stay here.”

“Oh, come on, Ray. Close the door. Sit down. You can't leave here. This is where you belong. Admit it. You love your work and you know it.”

“Yes, I do know it. But I can't put up with the kind of treatment I'm getting. I simply will not stand for it.”

“This is only a temporary thing, Ray, just until times get better. Can you afford to be so independent?”

“According to my wife, I can't. But I am. I take the cut as an insult, and I'm not going to be insulted.”

He walked to the window and looked out, hands shoved into his pockets, and was silent for several minutes. Finally, he turned to me and said, “Okay. Give me a couple of days to see what I can work out. Do your job as though nothing had happened. I'll let you know in two or three days.”

“That's fine with me. Two or three days.”

Late in the afternoon of the third day, he called me in again.

“Close the door and sit down,” he said. “Now, Ray, this is absolutely confidential. Here's what we'll do. I've made arrangements for you to get a special expense account that will make up for the ten percent salary cut. It will include the payment balance on your car of $20 a month. Now … will you stay?”

“Thank you very much,” I said. “On that basis I'll stay.”

I felt several inches taller when I left that office. I'd won! This was going to be a fine prize to lay at Ethel's feet.

Of course, the implication of the whole affair was that I would have to work harder than ever and produce more sales for the company. I did it gladly. Clark never told me so, but I knew as time went on that he was well aware that he had made a good deal. We had other run-ins from time to time, usually because of my insistence on protecting my customers. Most of these people trusted me enough that when I went into their stores, they'd simply wave and smile and go on waiting on customers. I would go to their stockrooms and see what their supply of paper cups was like. If they needed more, I'd order them. For the big-volume customers, I made certain they didn't lose by dealing with me instead of a competitor.

I'd tell them, “Look, I think you'd better stock up on paper cups. I believe there's going to be a price increase. I have nothing official, of course, or I wouldn't be able to tell you about it. But there's something in the wind, and I think your prices are going to be going up.”

When Clark found out about that, he was madder than a hornet. But it didn't cost Lily Tulip anything. They had warehouses full of cups made at the existing prices, and it certainly built goodwill among my customers.

I had about fifteen salesmen working for me then, and we had a fine spirit of enthusiasm percolating among us. After work we would get together and talk shop, batting around ideas about how to sell more paper cups. That was fun. I loved to see one of these young fellows catch hold and grow in his job. It was the most rewarding thing I'd ever experienced. I wasn't much older than any of them, and some were older than me. But I felt like a father to them.

It got to the point in the office that I was generating too much business, too much paperwork, to be handled by the clerical pool, so Mr. Clark told me I should hire a secretary.

“I suppose you're right,” I said. “But I want a male secretary.”

“You what?”

“I want a man. He might cost a little more at first, but if he's any good at all, I'll have him doing a lot of sales work in addition to administrative things. I have nothing against having a pretty girl around, but the job I have in mind would be much better handled by a man.”

That set off another series of arguments and closed-door sessions. But finally I won my point. A young fellow named Marshall Reed came in off the street one day looking for a job. He'd gone to business school in California and had come to Chicago hoping to get work at a newspaper. That didn't pan out, so he wandered into our office, and he was sent to me because the people out front knew that I was getting ready to place a classified ad for a male secretary. I liked Reed because he was honest and leveled with me from the start.

“I can type 60 words a minute and take shorthand at 120 words a minute,” he told me solemnly, “but this is my first experience outside of school. I don't know anything about your business.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “I'll explain what I'm doing as we go along. If you have any questions, just ask me.”

It wasn't long before he was a real working member of my team. My decision to hire a male secretary paid off when I was hospitalized for a gall bladder operation and later for a goiter operation. Marshall worked between our office and my hospital room, and we kept things humming as briskly as when I was in the office every morning.

We were doing well despite the depression. I had bought a Buick automobile, which I got secondhand for about the same price I would have had to pay for a new Model-A Ford, and I shined it up until it looked like it had just rolled out of the factory. Ethel's Scotch thrift and my Bohemian prudence meshed well, and our savings grew steadily. We were able to afford a live-in maid now, a girl we hired for $4 a week plus room and board. We treated her like part of the family.

I took care not to be ostentatious (I detest snobs), but my style kind of dazzled my staff at the office. They were eager to follow my examples. I stressed the importance of making a good appearance, wearing a nicely pressed suit, well-polished shoes, hair combed, and nails cleaned. “Look sharp and act sharp,” I told them. “The first thing you have to sell is yourself. When you do that, it will be easy to sell paper cups.” I also counseled them on handling money, encouraging them to spend wisely and save some for a rainy day.

One morning as I was sending the boys out for a day of selling, I got a call that I was to report to Mr. Clark's office. When I walked in he looked at me darkly, ignoring my friendly greeting.

“Close the door, Ray, I have a very serious matter to discuss with you.”

When I was seated, he leaned back in his chair and glared at me over tented fingertips.

“I hear that you've been telling your salesmen how to make money on their expense accounts.”

“That's right,” I said. “I have.”

“Get out!” he exploded. “Get out of here and stay out!”

I nodded and walked carefully to the door. I put my hand on the knob and turned slowly to face him. It was deathly still, and I think he was feeling shocked at his own abruptness.

Our eyes locked and I said, “May I say something?”

He nodded grimly.

“Here is exactly what I told my men: Each of you gets a certain amount per diem for your expenses on the road. You get so much for a room, so much for travel, and so much for food. Instead of staying in a room with a bath, take a walk down the hall. You'll be just as clean, and you'll save some money. When you take the train, get an upper berth, you'll sleep just as well as in a lower and it will cost you less. Don't eat breakfast in the fancy hotel restaurant, go to the YMCA cafeteria. Have prunes and oatmeal; it's filling and it's good for you; it keeps you being a regular guy.”

By this time, Mr. Clark was grinning in embarrassed relief. He couldn't say anything. He just turned his palms up and waved me out. I walked away feeling tall again, although I had half a notion to quit over his unjust accusation.

My battles with the boss were beginning to get me down, and I might have told him to go to hell once and for all if I hadn't been having so much fun selling. There were interesting developments popping up all over. An engineer from Sterling, Illinois, named Earl Prince had a coal and ice business he was phasing out, and he was building little castles in towns all around Illinois in partnership with a boyhood buddy of his named Walter Fredenhagen. They called them Prince Castle ice cream parlors, and they sold cones and bulk ice cream and a few sundaes, for which they bought paper cups from me. I kept my eye on them, I thought their operation had a lot of promise.

Over in Battle Creek, Michigan, I had a customer named Ralph Sullivan who had put a dairy bar up in front of his creamery, and he had invented a drink that was pulling in an astounding business. Ralph had come up with the idea of reducing the butterfat content in a milk shake by making it with frozen milk. The traditional method of making a shake was to put eight ounces of milk into a metal container, drop in two small scoops of ice cream, add flavoring, and put the concoction onto a spindle mixer. Ralph's formula was to take regular milk, add a stabilizer, sugar, cornstarch, and a bit of vanilla flavoring and freeze it. The result was ice milk. He would put four ounces of milk in a metal container, drop in four scoops of this ice milk, and finish it off in the traditional way. The result was a much colder, much more viscous drink, and people loved it. The lines around his store in the summertime were nothing less than amazing. This ice-milk shake had a lot of advantages over regular milk shakes. Instead of being a thin, semicool drink, it was thick and very cold. Since it had substantially less butterfat, it would be digested more easily, or as we say in the food service business, it
wore
better: People didn't go around belching and burping for half an hour after drinking one. I was selling Ralph Sullivan a lot of paper cups. This started in about 1932, and it kept growing and growing until I was selling him 100,000 sixteen-ounce cups at a time.

Walter Fredenhagen was running the Prince Castles in my area from his office in Naperville. I'd never met Earl Prince. But I started working on Walter, trying to talk him into looking at Ralph Sullivan's operation.

“Ray, you are a nice guy, and I like you. But I do not want to get into the milk shake racket,” he said. “We do a nice clean ice cream trade here, and the last thing I want is a big clutter of milk bottles to handle. It's too messy.”

“Walter, I am amazed that a forward-looking guy like you who keeps himself informed about the dairy business can be ignorant of the latest developments,” I said. “Now they are making a milk dispenser that takes a five-gallon can and keeps it refrigerated. You draw the milk from a spigot just like draught beer. You can make the ice milk in your plant right here in Naperville. It's cheaper than making ice cream, and you'll see profits you never dreamed possible.”

At last, one day, Walter talked it over with Earl Prince, and they agreed to drive into Chicago and meet me. Then I'd drive them over to Battle Creek. We would return that same evening. I liked Earl immediately. He was a very plain-spoken, straight-forward guy. In later years the girls in my office would laugh about his frugality. Here was this highly successful, wealthy man who wore a musty old hat and somewhat seedy looking clothes. He could afford to take the entire staff out to lunch at the Pump Room, but he steadfastly refused to pay the prices at
any
Chicago restaurant. Instead, he'd send out for a peanut butter sandwich. I never knocked his frugality, of course; I respected it although he may have carried it to extremes.

Both Earl and Walter had their eyes opened on that trip to Battle Creek. They were sold on the frozen milk shake and wanted to start with their own version immediately. The whole trip back to Chicago was spent planning for the new operation with the shake that Earl announced he was going to call the “One-in-a-Million.” As they chattered on about it, I waited for my opportunity to put in an idea of my own.

“It sounds great,” I said at last, “but there is one thing I want you to do.”

“What is it?” asked Earl expansively.

“I want you to charge twelve cents for this drink instead of a dime.”

“Huh?” I could tell that both of them were genuinely flabbergasted.

“That's right. Sell it for twelve cents. You'll still be giving people a hell of a value, and it will actually increase interest and sales.”

“Ray, I respect your ability as a salesman,” Walter said gently. “But obviously you are out of touch with the retail end. People just don't want to be bothered with extra change, counting pennies, you see? It is a big inconvenience for a cashier, too. So forget it.”

That taken care of, they were prepared to go on talking about other matters in setting up “One-in-a-Million.” But I kept insisting on the twelve-cent price, and it caused a pretty heated discussion. Finally Earl turned around to Walter and said, “Son of a bitch, I am going to teach this guy a lesson! I'm going to sell it for twelve cents in our first store and let him watch the thing fall on its face. Then, when we get it perfected, we can go into all the stores and sell it for a dime.” Walter didn't answer. I think I'd worn them out.

The record books of Prince Castles show that they did indeed start selling the “One-in-a-Million” at twelve cents. They never reduced the price. It took off like a barn fire. Earl Prince was not unhappy that he failed to teach me a lesson, either. I sold him five million sixteen-ounce cups that first year, so by adding on the two cents as I insisted, he made an extra $100,000.

That kind of volume made Earl Prince's creative juices start flowing. Prince Castle mixed shakes ahead and kept the sinks full of metal containers being rinsed. During busy periods, it was almost impossible to keep up with the demand for metal cans. Earl invented a collar made from the upper half of a metal shake can. The cylinder had been compressed or tapered at the bottom, and he took a sixteen-ounce paper cup and fitted the metal ring on top of it. The tapered part extended down into the paper cup like a sleeve. The upper portion sat on the rim of the cup, extending up to make the whole thing exactly the same height as a regular metal can—six and seven-eighths inches. He demonstrated it to me by putting together a “One-in-a-Million” shake in a paper cup with the metal collar and stuck it on the mixer. It worked!