He turned to his desk and drew out the papers which had the figures and estimates on that popple.  He would see if the Warner woodlot had as much popple and basswood on it as they thought.  It would, of course, be easiest to get it off that lot, if there were enough of it to fill the order for casters.  The Hemmingway lot and the Dornwood lot oughtn’t to be lumbered except in winter, with snow for the sleds.  But you could haul straight downhill from the Warner lot, even on wheels, using the back lane in the Eagle Rocks woods.  There was a period of close attention to his papers, when he heard nothing at all of what went on in the rooms next his study.  His mind was working with the rapid, trained exactitude which was a delight to him, with a sure, firm grasp on the whole problem in all its complicated parts.

Finally he nodded with satisfaction, pushed the papers away, and lighted his pipe, contentedly.  He had it by the tail.

He leaned back in his chair, drawing on the newly lighted pipe and ruminating again.  He thought to himself that he would like to see any other man in the valley who could make an estimate like that, and be sure of it, who would know what facts to gather and where to get them, on the cost of cutting and hauling in different seasons, on mill-work and transportation and overhead expenses, and how to market and where, and how to get money and how to get credit and how to manage these cranky independent Yankees and the hot-tempered irresponsible Canucks.  It was all very well for advanced radicals to say that the common workmen in a business were as good as the head of the concern.  They weren’t and that was all there was to be said about it.  Any one of them, any single one of his employees, put in his place as manager, would run the business into a hole as deep as hell inside six months.  And if you put the whole lot of them at it, it would only be six weeks instead of six months before the bust-up.

There again, what people kept saying about life, things clever people said and that got accepted as the clever things to say, how awfully beside the mark they seem to you, when you found out actual facts by coming up against them.  What a difference some first-hand experience with what you were talking about, did make with what you said.  What clever folks ought to say was not that the workmen were as good as the head or the same sort of flesh and blood, because they weren’t; but that the head exploited his natural capacities out of all proportion, getting such an outrageous share of the money they all made together, for doing what was natural to him, and what he enjoyed doing.  Take himself for instance.  If by some freak, he could make more money out of being one of the hands, would he go down in the ranks, stand at a machine all day and cut the same wooden shapes, hour after hour:  or drive a team day after day where somebody else told him to go?  You bet your life he wouldn’t!  He didn’t need all the money he could squeeze out of everybody concerned, to make him do his job as manager.  His real pay was the feeling of managing, of doing a job he was fitted for, and that was worth doing.