Free I Can Get It for You Wholesale by Jerome Weidman Page A

dresses delivered, cut your costs on it in half, and at the same time you won’t have to give in to the strikers. Does that sound good to you?”
    “It sounds good.”
    Little Pulvy, the skeptic!
    “And it’s even better than it sounds.”
    “Well, let’s hear it.”
    I took his arm and pulled him over to a sofa.
    “Let’s sit down,” I said.
    He pulled out a couple of cigars and handed one to me. I took it, but I didn’t light it. I can’t smoke them. Every time I light a cigar, I have to sew up the bottom of my pants first.
    “How many shipping clerks have you got, Mr. Pulvermacher?” There I go again! I just can’t keep my resolutions.
    “You mean how many did I have.”
    To all my other troubles, he has to turn out to be a wise guy. All right, dope, have it your way.
    “That’s right,” I said. “How many did you have?”
    “Let’s see. Ten, twelve, and the two colored boys—fourteen. I had fourteen.”
    “And how much do you?—excuse me. How much did you pay them a week?”
    “I paid them what they were worth. Nobody that works for us is underpaid. Our wage scale is one of the highest on Seventh Avenue. You can’t expect us to pay a shipping clerk what we’d pay a—”
    “I know they were well paid, Mr. Pulvermacher,” I said. Yeah, I knew it. “I’m just interested in how much you paid them. I want to do a little calculating for you, Mr. Pulvermacher, that’s all. I’m not in any way criticizing you.”
    “Fifteen dollars a week, with fifty cents extra for supper every night they work late. And I’d like to see anybody on the Avenue say that’s a bad salary for a shipping clerk, or that they pay more than—”
    “Fifteen dollars a week for fourteen shipping clerks makes two hundred and ten dollars every week, doesn’t it?”
    “Two hundred and ten? Yeah, yeah. Two hundred and ten. So what?”
    “Just a minute, Mr. Pulvermacher, please. Now, how many times a day would you say each of your shipping clerks goes out with a delivery? I mean, how many trips does each one make? Just roughly, now, just an estimate. I don’t expect you to make it accurate or anything like that, but just an estimate.”
    He rubbed his hand over his bald dome and shrugged.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “How should I know?”
    “Well, I mean roughly, you can make an estimate, just a guess.”
    “Well, I don’t know—three-four times, maybe five—I don’t know. How should I know a thing like that? I don’t sit there watching them.”
    “You’d be surprised how right you are, Mr. Pulvermacher. I know because I’ve made a study of these things. The average shipping clerk goes out four or five times a day. All right, then. You say five times. But for the sake of my figures, just to allow for everything, we shouldn’t take any chances, you know, let’s say six. Let’s say six times. Let’s say every shipping clerk goes out six times a day with a delivery.”
    “All right,” he said.
    “So what’ve we got? We’ve got fourteen shipping clerks going out six times each, means, let’s see, six times ten is sixty, and six times four is twenty-four, twenty-four and sixty—makes eighty-four. That means your shipping clerks make eighty-four trips a day. Right?”
    “If you say it’s right, so it’s right.”
    “But Mr. Pulvermacher, I want you should say it’s right. There’s nothing wrong with my arithmetic, is there? Six times fourteen is—”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s right. It’s right. So what?”
    “Now just one more little bit of figuring, and we’re through,” I said. “You’re open here six days a week, aren’t you?”
    He nodded.
    “So we have eighty-four trips a day, times six days in the week, means—here, wait.” I pulled out a pencil and a pad and did the multiplication so he could see it. “That makes five hundred and four trips a week. So it should be easier to talk about, let’s say five hundred. Five hundred trips a week. Right?”
    He nodded again. Strong