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Help Wanted–Male, Female
by
He got several replies, as I said, to his replies to want “ads,” this man. One was a postcard which read: “Call to-morrow morning about work, Room 954, Horseshoe Building, X. Y. Z. Co.” Considering himself a gentleman, and being touchy about such things, he was annoyed at this manner of addressing him on a postcard. However he went to the Horseshoe Building. Room 954 had a great many names on the door, names there stated to be those of “attorneys,” “syndicates,” and “corporations, limited.” Among these names was that of the X. Y. Z. Co. Within, one side of Room 954 was partitioned off into many little alcoves. An antique, though youthfully dressed, typist, by the railing near the door, showed our friend to the X. Y. Z. Co., who was seated at a bleak-looking desk in one of the little alcoves. The alcove contained, besides the “Co.” (a little whiskered man, wearing his hat and overcoat) and the desk, an empty waste basket, and one unoccupied chair.
It was a “demonstrator” that was wanted, on a commission basis, for a fluid to cleanse silver. This alcove, it developed, was merely one of many thousand branch offices of the “Co.” scattered across the country. The “Co’s.” “factory,” he said, was over in New Jersey, a very large affair.
Mr. Bivens, that is the name of the gentleman of whom I have just been speaking, was invited, too, this time in a letter politely beginning “My Dear Sir,” to call at the offices of a moving-picture “corporation.” Asking to see “M. T. Cummings,” who had signed the letter, he was presented to an efficient-looking person, evidently an elderly, retired show-girl, who directly proved him wofully deficient in knowledge of “the screen.”
His next experience was with a portly, prosperous-looking gentleman who had elaborate offices in a very swell skyscraper. This man wrote an excellent business-like letter; he unfolded to H. T. (I always affectionately call Bivens “H. T.”) admiration-compelling plans for large business enterprises, which included a project of taking five hundred American business men on a trip through Europe after the war at a cost to each one of only four dollars and a half, the balance of the expenses of each to be paid for in local business co-operation.
Bivens was taken right into this energetic and enterprising man’s confidence. He did considerable outside work for his employer for ten days. On the eleventh day, reporting at the office, he found the promoter’s secretary and office boy awaiting him, in company with his office furniture, outside the locked door.
Bivens next answered an advertisement for a strike-breaker to light street lamps, and for a person to distribute handbills at a pay of seventy-five cents a day. But his luck had changed; he never got another reply to any answer to a help-wanted “ad.”
He thinks this is strange, because he believes (and I know this is true) that he writes a letter which would instantly mark him as a man of high merit among the multitude.
But I once knew a man who put a help-wanted “ad” in the paper. He ran a hotel, and he advertised for a clerk. I was stopping at his place at the time, I and my three brothers. And the five of us, Mr. Snuvel (the hotel man), I, and my three brothers, used to bring up from the village every night for a week (the place was in the country) the mail, which consisted of replies to this help-wanted advertisement. We used large sacks for this purpose.