Boss

“ I tell you, gentlemen, this thriving little town needs a canning factory, as we all know; but more than a canning factory it needs a Boss,—one of those strong characters that make tools of their fellow-men, who rule our cities with an iron hand but take care to keep the hand in a velvet glove,—a Boss that is diplomatic, yet an autocrat. ”

“ Your first-class office boy inspires fear. He knows his indispensability; he knows that more than anything else the boss loathes the trouble of hiring an office boy; he knows—oh! what does he not know? You who have never had to do with him, or depend upon him, go sit at the feet of him who has and try to grasp the outer rim of understanding as to the depth and height and width of the wisdom and learning, the profound knowledge of the only human being to whom the Kings of Finance and Commerce (see any daily paper) appear as they really are—just men. ”

“ The boss watched them anxiously, fearful of losing the services of one, and yet knowing the two must fight it out now or be fighting later on, and fighting perhaps with something besides their bare strength. ”

“ Where Leadership Really Shows.—As we watch a skillful boss directing his men through a job, tools and material all at hand, every man moving efficiently, all the parts working smoothly toward the result, how natural it is to exclaim, "What teamwork!" and "What a leader!" ”

“ If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing. ”

“ All right—now doesn’t it dawn on you that you are expecting the Big Boss to be as ridiculous as the suggestion about your doing all the work in your branch, when you voice those one-quarter of one per cent sentiments, criticising him for calling in help to handle a far more complex problem than your little unit? ”

“ So whadda ya want to break your back for the boss for,
When it don't mean life to you?
Do you think it right to struggle day and night,
And plow like Hell for the Parasite?
So whadda ya want to break your back for the boss for,
When there's more in life for you?
Slow up Bill! that's the way to beat the System;
Join the Wobbly Gang, they've got the bosses guessing
So whadda ya want to break your back for the boss for,
When it don't mean life to you? ”

“ The boss, then, governs the largest and the most complex business enterprise in the State; and he is always a man of capacity. He is obliged to conduct it in a cumbersome and antiquated manner, and to proceed at every step according to precedent and by a series of fictions. When we consider that the legislators and governors are, after all, not absolute dummies; that among them are ambitious and rapacious men, with here and there an enemy or a traitor to the boss and to his patrons, we see that the boss must be well equipped with the intellect of intrigue. ”

“ Now just let this thought ooze into that corrugated cast-iron brain of yours—your company isn’t running a peanut stand any more—they might have been small enough one day when the Boss himself could put up the window-shades and sweep out the office every night, but that time has passed, Boy, that day is gone.
Admitting that, doesn’t it occur to you that the Boss has to have a little help in running the business? No one ever made a success of any business if he didn’t attend to it ”

“ The scuddling Chicks cried, "Peep, peep, peep!
For Boss looks high, but not very deep!
It is not a fowl! 'tis the worst of things,—
low, mean beast, with the use of wings,
So noiseless round on the air to skim,
You know not when you are safe from him." ”

“ A clerk's never fresh in letters that the boss is going to see.
The men who stay in the office and plan are the brains of your business; those who go out and sell are its arms; and those who fill and deliver the orders are its legs. There's no use in the brains scheming and the arms gathering in, if the legs are going to deliver the goods with a kick. ”

“ An' remember: while you're Boss, you'll be forced into many things ag'inst your judgment. The head of Tammany is like th' head of a snake, an' gets shoved forward by the tail. Also, like th' head of a snake, th' Boss is th' target for every rock that is thrown.
“Have as many lieutenants as you can; twenty are safer than two. Two might fake up a deal with each other to throw you down; twenty might start, but before they got to you they'd fight among themselves.
“Have people about you who distrust each other an' trust you. Keep th' leaders fightin' among themselves. ”

“ For it requires as unusual a combination of qualities to be a successful boss, as to be a successful merchant or banker. Yet one cannot tell. I myself have never been able to say what elements make a boss, except that he must be in sympathy with the men whom he tries to guide, and that he must be meeting them. ”

“ The vital problem now is whether the boss will rise again, or whether a new one will come in his stead. To know the answer we must understand the causes and conditions which bring the boss into existence.
The supposition that the boss arises by virtue of his strong personality; that he is an organizer, a general, one born to command; that the “machine” is the product of his skill and genius, and that no one who does not possess the same elements of character can follow him, is wrong. ”

“ He should be willing to grant an audience to an employe and should work with him.
The boss should say we rather than I. He should talk with the employes and not down to them. He should make each individual under him feel that he is part of the institution and an element in its success.
Remember this—employes watch the boss and they copy him. Where you find hard working employes you will find a hard working boss.
The boss cannot run the whole business himself; he is dependent upon willing hands, and, in order to get willing hands, he must have willing hands himself. ”

“ Not until I started the tea for our luncheon did he speak. “Say, boss, about that big wop.”
“Well?”
“He's a good guy, ain't he?”
“He is.”
“But—say. A little bit on the slant here?” He knuckled his head. “Huh?”
“Perhaps. What have you been saying to him?”
“Nothin'. I been listenin'. A great line of talk about the little lady. But—say, boss. What's his kink?” ”

“ So at headquarters I am looked up to and consulted. Now do you understand why and what a boss is?”
“Yes, Peter. Except why bosses are bad.”
“Don’t you see that it depends on what kind of men they are, and what kind of voters are back of them. A good man, with honest votes back of him, is a good boss, and vice versa.”
“Then I know you are a good boss. It’s a great pity that all the bosses can’t be good?” ”

“ I never was boss of anything but the cayuse I happened to have under me, and I'm going to extract all the honey there is in the situation. Maybe I'll never be boss again—but at present I'm it. I want you fellows to remember that important fact, and treat me with proper respect. ”

“ The boss knows every man in his district who can control any number of votes: an influential saloon-keeper, the owner of a large livery stable, the leader among a set of horse-car drivers, a foreman in a machine-shop who has a taste for politics,—with all alike he keeps up constant and friendly relations. ”

“ Your immejit boss—the office-manager—is all right, but the secretary of the company is always pussy-footing around, and if you’re ever having any trouble with your stuff when old plush-ears is in sight, keep on typing fast, no matter what you put down. ”

“ In a crisis the boss was able to spur them on to their best—though even then they wasted strength in frantic endeavor—but he could not keep them up to a consistent level of steady work. And that's what counts. As in a Marathon race the men who maintain a steady plugging pace from start to finish are the ones who accomplish.
The question may be asked how such a boss could keep his job. ”

“ The Boss thought he knew too much. It is well to make your own governor, but to make him too well is ill. It was this one's drawback that he had passed the No Admittance sign of the workshop and got the trade secrets of the boss business at his finger ends. The pupil smiled sometimes when he recalled the first great rencounter with the master. The birch and frown no longer terrified. Evidently the Boss knew this, and failing the birch, dangled a prize.
What Shelby did not divine was the incentive force of pique. ”

“ I'll do anything you want, and I'll be dreadful good, but don't hit my poor sore nose.'
"But man is the boss, and he can't afford to be so easy. Drive the lesson home that you're boss. Rub it in. Don't stop when he quits. Make him swallow the medicine and lick the spoon. Make him kiss your foot on his neck holding him down in the dirt. ”

“ Employes deeply appreciate consideration, and especially the little kindnesses which are not what might be called business practice.
The boss should not be too far aloof; he should be just head and shoulders above those working under him; he should be just far enough above that he stands out as a commander. ”

“ Always do business with the boss. Refuse to talk to all office boys, get friendly with the lady stenographer, if there is one, but do all business with the one at the head—and no other! This motto has saved me no end of time which has been spent in healthy exercise under my own roof and Ma's eagle eye, which otherwise might have wore out the seats of outside-office chairs. ”

“ We make other profits from wagon-trains. I'm free, you see, to tell you much. But there's one thing you must remember; I'm boss here. Brother Joaquin is a big man, but I shall be in the saddle long after he's made his last ride. He mixes vengeance with business. Now I'm all business. To be boss I have to have discipline. ”

“ The Boss seemed to be getting interested, and Steelman gained confidence and proceeded to identify and classify the different 'stratas and layers,' and fix their ages, and describe the conditions and politics of Man in their different times, for the Boss's benefit. ”

“ Truth will out as sure as the sun will shine, and the manager cannot conceal his subordinates' abilities and pass them off as his own for any length of time.
The good manager will say a kind word to the boss about the employe, if he is the right sort. ”

“ Thus in hundreds of ways a boss, great or small, is able to grant favors that cost him nothing, thereby blurring the vision of those he places under obligations to the means by which he gains his power. ”

“ BILL—"Hush, man. I'm foolin' the boss. I've carried this same hodful up an' down all day, and he thinks I've been workin'."
Said a teacher of much erudition,
"I deplore the poor workman's condition."
When he learned what they earned,
His profession he spurned,
And became a high-paid mechanician.
"And how is your husband keeping?"
"'E ain't keeping; 'e's on strike, and I'm doing the keeping."
BOSS—"No; we have all the men we need."
LABORER—"Seems like you could take one more, the little bit of work I'd do."—Judge.
FARMER—"I'll give you $5 a month and your board!"
APPLICANT—"Aw, shucks! ”

“ Naturally, in a dozen or twenty men, there will be grades, and very often a single man will be able to dominate them all, just as the smaller bosses dominate the smaller men. And this man the papers call a boss of a ward. Then when these various ward bosses endeavor to unite for general purposes, the strongest man will sway them, and he is boss of the city. ”

“ We are bossed by men. My boss is kind, and, seeing that I am ambitious, he comes now and then and prints a few hundred bill-heads for me. There is some complaining sotto voce of the other boss, who, it appears, is a hard taskmaster. Both are very young, both chew tobacco and expectorate long, brown, wet lines of tobacco juice on to the floor. While waiting for new type I get into conversation with the boss of ill-repute. He has an honest, serious face; his eyes are evidently more accustomed to judging than to trusting his fellow beings. He is communicative.
"Do you like your job?" ”

“ Now, I have not the least desire to glorify the boss in this. He is not glorious to me. He is simply human. Often enough he is a coarse and brutal fellow, in his morals as in his politics. Again, he may have some very engaging personal traits that bind his friends to him with the closest of ties. ”

“ Now, as the boss has to find nourishing things for his henchmen, so he wants, of course, everybody that is put into a high place which has any patronage to it, with his co-operation to dispose of that patronage so as to take care of his creatures as matter of course. ”

“ Above all, the manager, like the boss, must know how to do things he hires others to do, and the things we have said concerning the boss is likewise true of the manager, for the manager is the next step below the boss. The successful boss would not have obtained his present position if he had not been a good manager previously. ”

“ When one boss steps out, another will inevitably take his place. And that boss will be most efficient and most satisfactory to the organization who permits himself least to be hampered by considerations of principle or of public interest, and who secures to his followers or dependents the greatest personal benefit at the public cost. What the chances of good government are with such an organized appetite in power it is needless to discuss. ”

“ And democracy has nothing to do with the question, "Who ought to be boss?"
That is very much like asking: "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" ”

“ Toil in one guise or another but always with the same harsh voice and the same frowning eyes, bossing some job in a manner which would cost him his boss-ship right off the reel in these times when union labor is so touchy. ”

“ You deal square and honorable with the boss, standing up to what you've done like you was a trooper at your gun, and he'll deal square and honorable with you. But go to hoodwinking and imposing on him and instead of a lamb you'll find you've got a rattlesnake at your heels. ”