The Genius by Theodore Dreiser

“Certainly. I’m not busy now,” returned the president. “Come right down. What is it you want to see me about?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Eugene, when they had reached the former’s office and he had closed the door. “I’ve had an offer that I feel that I ought to talk to you about. It’s a pretty fascinating proposition and it’s troubling me. I owe it to you as well as to myself to speak about it.”

“Yes; what is it?” said Kalvin considerately.

“Mr. Colfax of the United Magazines Corporation came to me not long ago and wanted to know if I would not come with him. He offers me eighteen thousand dollars a year as advertising manager to begin with, and a chance to take charge of all the art and editorial ends as well a little later at twenty-five thousand dollars. He calls it the managing-publishing end of the business. I’ve been thinking of it seriously, for I’ve handled the art and advertising ends here and at the Summerfield Company, and I have always imagined that I knew something of the book and magazine business. I know it’s a rather large proposition, but I’m not at all sure that I couldn’t handle it.”.

Mr. Kalvin listened quietly. He saw what Colfax’s scheme was and liked it as a proposition. It was a good idea, but needed an exceptional man for the position. Was Eugene the man? He wasn’t sure of that, and yet perchance he might be. Colfax, he thought, was a man of excellent financial if not publishing judgment. He might, if he could get the proper person, make an excellent success of his business. Eugene interested him, perhaps more at first flash than he would later. This man before him had a most promising appearance. He was clean, quick, with an alert mind and eye. He could see how, because of Eugene’s success here, Colfax was thinking of him being even more exceptional than he was. He was a good man, a fine man, under direction. Would Colfax have the patience, the interest, the sympathy, to work with and understand him?

“Now, let’s think about that a little, Witla,” he said quietly. “It’s a flattering offer. You’d be foolish if you didn’t give it careful consideration. Do you know anything about the organization of that place over there?”

“No,” replied Eugene, “nothing except what I learned by casually going over it with Mr. Colfax.”

“Do you know much about Colfax as a man?”

“Very little. I’ve only met him twice. He’s forceful, dramatic, a man with lots of ideas. I understand he’s very rich, three or four millions, someone told me.”

Kalvin’s hand moved indifferently. “Do you like him?”

“Well, I can’t say yet absolutely whether I do or don’t. He interests me a lot. He’s wonderfully dynamic. I’m sure I’m favorably impressed with him.”

“And he wants to give you charge eventually of all the magazines and books, the publishing end?”

“So he says,” said Eugene.

“I’d go a little slow if I were saddling myself with that responsibility. I’d want to be sure that I knew all about it. You want to remember, Witla, that running one department under the direction and with the sympathetic assistance and consideration of someone over you is very different from running four or five departments on your own responsibility and with no one over you except someone who wants intelligent guidance from you. Colfax, as I understand him, isn’t a publisher, either by tendency or training or education. He’s a financier. He’ll want you, if you take that position, to tell him how it shall be done. Now, unless you know a great deal about the publishing business, you have a difficult task in that. I don’t want to appear to be throwing cold water on your natural ambition to get up in the world. You’re entitled to go higher if you can. No one in your circle of acquaintances would wish you more luck than I will if you decide to go. I want you to think carefully of what you are doing. Where you are here you are perfectly safe, or as nearly safe as any man is who behaves himself and maintains his natural force and energy can be. It’s only natural that you should expect more money in the face of this offer, and I shall be perfectly willing to give it to you. I intended, as you possibly expected, to do somewhat better for you by January. I’ll say now that if you want to stay here you can have fourteen thousand now and possibly sixteen thousand in a year or a year and a half from now. I don’t want to overload this department with what I consider an undue salary. I think sixteen thousand dollars, when it is paid, will be high for the work that is done here, but you’re a good man and I’m perfectly willing to pay it to you.

The thing for you to do is to make up your mind whether this proposition which I now make you is safer and more in accord with your desires than the one Mr. Colfax makes you. With him your eighteen thousand begins at once. With me sixteen thousand is a year away, anyhow. With him you have promise of an outlook which is much more glittering than any you can reasonably hope for here, but you want to remember that the difficulties will be, of course, proportionately greater. You know something about me by now. You still—and don’t think I want to do him any injustice; I don’t—have to learn about Mr. Colfax. Now, I’d advise you to think carefully before you act. Study the situation over there before you accept it. The United Magazines Corporation is a great concern. I have no doubt that under Mr. Colfax’s management it has a brilliant future in store for it. He is an able man. If you finally decide to go, come and tell me and there will be no hard feelings one way or the other. If you decide to stay, the new salary arrangement goes into effect at once. As a matter of fact, I might as well have Mr. Fredericks credit that up to you so that you can say that you have drawn that sum here. It won’t do you any harm. Then we can run along as before. I know it isn’t good business as a rule to try and keep a man who has been poisoned by a bigger offer, and because I know that is the reason why I am only offering you fourteen thousand dollars this year. I want to be sure that you are sure that you want to stay. See?”

He smiled.

Eugene arose. “I see,” he said. “You are one of the best men I have ever known, Mr. Kalvin. You have constantly treated me with more consideration than I ever expected to receive anywhere. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work for you. If I stay, it will be because I want to because I value your friendship.”

“Well,” said Kalvin quietly, “that’s very nice, I’m sure, and I appreciate it. But don’t let your friendship for me or your sense of gratitude stop you from doing something you think you ought to do. Go ahead if you feel like it. I won’t feel the least bit angry with you. I’ll feel sorry, but that’s neither here nor there. Life is a constant condition of readjustment, and every good business man knows it.”

He took Eugene’s extended hand.

“Good luck,” he said, “whatever you do”—his favorite expression.

Chapter 40

The upshot of Eugene’s final speculation was that he accepted the offer of the United Magazines Corporation and left Mr. Kalvin. Colfax had written one day to his house asking him what he thought he would do about it. The more he had turned it over in his mind, the more it had grown in attraction. The Colfax company was erecting a tremendous building, eighteen stories high, in the heart of the middle business district in New York near Union Square, to house all their departments. Colfax had said at the time Eugene took dinner with him that the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth floors would be devoted to the editorial, publication, circulation, art, and advertising departments. He had asked Eugene what he had thought would be a good floor arrangement, and the latter, with his usual facility for scheming such things, had scratched on a piece of paper a tentative layout for the various departments. He had put the editorial and art departments on the topmost floor, giving the publisher, whoever he might eventually prove to be, a commanding position in a central room on the western side of the building which overlooked all the city between the Square and Hudson River, and showed that magnificent body of water as a panorama for the eye to feast upon. He had put the advertising and some overflow editorial rooms on the seventeenth floor, and the circulation with its attendant mailing and cabinet record rooms on the sixteenth. The publisher’s and editor’s rooms he laid out after an old Flemish scheme he had long had in mind, in which green, dark blue, blood-red and black walnut shades contrasted richly with the flood of light which would be available.