George A. Birmingham

“ I said. “On strict business principles, altruism apart, why not take what we can get out of Tim Gorman’s invention and let the thing itself drop into the dustheap?”
“On business principles,” said Ascher, “on the strictest business principles, it would be foolish to do that. From time to time men hit on some improvement in the way of making things or in the way of dealing with things after they are made, that is to say in business methods. Every such improvement increases the wealth of the world, tends to make everybody richer. This invention which we have got hold of is a small thing. ”

“ Business principles as he explained them were not the business principles I was accustomed to, certainly not the business principles on which Gorman acted. After a minute’s silence Ascher went on.
“The mistake which is most often made in business,” he said, “is to suppose that we grow rich by taking riches from other men, or that nations prosper by depriving other nations of prosperity. That would be true if riches consisted of money, and if there were just so much money and no more in the world. ”

“ The men who are in the best position to know about cash registers, who are most interested in their future——”
“The makers of the existing machines?”
“Exactly. That is to say, if I am right about my visitor.”
“But how did they—how could any one know about Tim Gorman’s invention?”
Ascher shrugged his shoulders.
“Surely,” I said, “Gorman can’t have been such a fool as to talk to newspaper reporters.”
“We need not suppose so,” said Ascher. “My experience is that anything worth knowing always is known. The world of business is a vast whispering gallery. There is no such thing as secrecy.” ”

“ It’s only going to do a little, a very little to make the world richer, but it is going to do something for it is going to lessen the labour required for certain results and therefore is going to increase men’s power, a little, just a little. That is why we must make the thing available, if we can; in order to add to the general wealth, and therefore to our own wealth. Those are business principles.”
Ascher paused. ”

“ Coded telegrams fluttered from their hands and went vibrating across thousands of miles of land or through the still depths of oceans, over unlighted tracts of ooze on the sea-bottom. In London the words were read and men set free pent up, dammed streams of money. ”

“ We had got to money, to business in the strictest sense of the word. My opportunity had plainly come for attacking the subject of the cash register. Yet I hesitated. A banker ought to be the easiest man in the world to talk business to. There is no awkwardness about the subject of toothache in a dentist’s parlour. He expects to be talked to about teeth. It ought to have been an equally simple thing to speak to Ascher about the future of a company in which we were both interested. ”

“ In politics men of that sort are very useful; but I somehow had the idea that business methods are more straightforward.”
“All negotiations,” said Ascher, “whether in politics or business are carried on in much the same way. But before I go into his suggestions I had better tell you how the matter stands. Mildmay sent us his report and it was entirely favourable to the new machine. I think the invention is likely to turn out a valuable property. We have made inquiries and find out that the patent rights are duly protected here and in all the chief European countries. ”