Playing company

“ We have no assemblies, composed of a promiscuous crowd of gaudy belles and beaux; many of whom we should despise in a private company, and deem unworthy of our notice. But we have genteel balls, the company of which is select, none being admitted but such as do honor to themselves and each other. The amusement is not protracted till the yawning listlessness of the company proclaims their incapacity for enjoyment ”

“ When one is trying to entertain a [86] company, the company should give respectful attention, never annoying the performer by whispering or talking or moving about. When games are proposed, unless there is some reason for not doing so, every one who is invited to join in them should do so with right good will. ”

“ Even to a stranger like myself, it was easy to perceive that the company, as they seated themselves round the table, had herded together in parties and coteries, neither acquainted with each other, nor with much disposition to be acquainted—still, all those invaluable forms of society which connect the guests of any private individual were most strictly observed ”

“ These qualities were due in part, perhaps, to the long and arduous stock company training, where, in the old days, every actor must serve his apprenticeship, and in part to the study of the classic drama which had so large a place in stock company repertoire. ”

“ The manager who successfully pilots a stock company through the shoals and shallows of forty weeks must have uncommon perspicacity. Not alone must he secure players who are likely to become popular, but, more important still, he must select plays that will appeal to all of his patrons all of the time. Too much tragedy and he is quite sure to lose the men in his gallery; too much comedy and the girls in the orchestra begin to thin out. ”

“ Constatons les faits, if I may borrow another phrase from the French. Under what circumstances are we invited? When a play is doing good business? Certainly not. It is when the company are discussing in whispers whether the notice will go up or not, that the Fiery Cross is sent round to us and we come and fill the house. Without us there would be an aching void, and the few paying people, aghast at the gloom, would spread very bad reports. Managers, like nature, abhor a vacuum. Our presence saves the situation and the face of the management. ”

“ You've got to get some diversion, or you'll go all to pieces. And you say it takes competition to get you excited. A stake. All right. Listen to me. In 1915, when I put you in to run the company, the partnership agreement was that you'd be the managing partner, but I'd be the directing partner wasn't it? ”

“ In former times, the only difficult details of an entertainment were in the selection of the guests,—bringing together a company likely to be suitable to each other, and endowed with those various qualities which make up the success of society ”

“ Did you ever think of the responsibility you are carrying as a manager of your company? Do you know that every move, every letter you write, every position you take means that you are portraying your company to someone?
In business a new king arises in the land every day. There’s a new retail grocer—a new jobber—or jobber’s buyer on a thousand corners. They know not Joseph—regardless of how good your product is, or how long you’ve been on the territory, IT TAKES ADVERTISING TO PUT YOU ACROSS IN A BIG WAY.
I’m going to bed, Red, hoping I haven’t bored you. ”

“ With a moderate share of sagacity, you will, before you have been half an hour in their company, easily discover those two principal figures: both by the deference which you will observe the whole company pay them, and by that easy, careless, and serene air, which their consciousness of power gives them. As in this case, so in all others, aim always at the highest; get always into the highest company, and address yourself particularly to the highest in it. ”

“ The companies are generally composed of men in the very prime of life, and they make a very imposing appearance. It is always a great gala day in the town, and terminates with a public dinner; that is followed by a ball in the evening, at which the wives and daughters of the members of the company are expected to appear. ”

“ Another of the party is marked for one of those well-dressed continental adventurers, who, being unable to live in their own country, annually pour into this, and with no other requisites than a quick eye, an adroit hand, and an undaunted forehead, are admitted into what is absurdly enough called good company. ”

“ As the officers of our great corporations come to see more and more that the problem of understanding [Pg 75] their employees and being understood by them is a vital problem, one of the most important with which the management is confronted, they will be convinced not only of the wisdom of devoting far more time to such contact, but of the desirability and the advantage to themselves, and to the employees as well as to the company, of such closer relation and intimate conference in regard to matters of common interest and concern. ”

“ His success is their success, and without favorable results neither he, nor they, can prosper.
Teach ’em, Red—show ’em their responsibility! Fire their minds and hearts with the fact that they’re not working for the company—bless your heart, Boy, they are the company to all intent and purpose on their territory, and either their lackadaisical or their aggressive, businesslike demeanor and actions will be interpreted by their trade exactly as they appear and the company will be so reflected. ”

“ What I mean by low company, which should by all means be avoided, is the company of those, who, absolutely insignificant and contemptible in themselves, think they are honored by being in your company; and who flatter every vice and every folly you have, in order to engage you to converse with them. The pride of being the first of the company is but too common ”

“ He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club. ”

“ Before he can arise to resume the fray, the company receives an accession in the person of a tall, slabsided, awkwardly-made youth, who impetuously elbows the others aside, and makes his way to the centre of the fistic arena. ”

“ Leaving the patriarchs to finish those professions of friendship for each other, in which they are so devoutly engaged, the younger part of the company will shape their course to the ball-room, or the card-table, as their individual inclinations suggest; and the remainder of the evening is spent with the greatest pleasure of which human nature is susceptible. ”

“ Make it therefore your business, wherever you are, to get into that company which everybody in the place allows to be the best company next to their own; which is the best definition that I can give you of good company. But here, too, one caution is very necessary, for want of which many young men have been ruined, even in good company. ”

“ I have heard of a manager who was very proud of a Wall which was made of Real Bricks; it would be better to boast of a company composed of Real Actors.
Players, in spite of their miseries and misfortunes, are in the main good-tempered folk; they grumble and bear it if they cannot always grin and bear it. ”

“ It is food for the company a whole night, and may be again and again brought above board for their amusement. But it much more frequently happens that there is no exciting event to talk about, and then the condition of the company is truly miserable. There being ladies present, or there being two factions in the room, politics are proscribed. Every attempt at getting up a topic failing, the company look into the fire, or in each other’s faces, or begin to examine with much interest the pattern of the carpet ”

“ Too many of the company are sometimes more intent upon their own pleasures than mindful of their business, roving about in scattered parties; while others exhibit, in their attention, a pattern of correctness and decorum ”

“ The company must have done pretty well, if Guy founded with his share of the profits the family which later became one of viscounts. I fear dramatic and musical companies nowadays have not the same success. ”

“ Two visible persons constitute the firm, for it takes a double team to do the work, and if the amiable gentleman just referred to makes a third in the concern, he is a silent partner who merely furnishes capital, while his name is not known in the business. ”

“ After eleven o'clock he left the ICP headquarters building for a ten-block ride to an exclusive men's athletic club whose clientele consisted entirely of high-level executives. Typically, the club arranged rotating squash and racquetball matches between executives in similar positions from different companies and industries. A president of an insurance company, for example, might be paired with a CEO from an advertising agency; a TV executive with a restaurant magnate...or the chairman of the world's largest computer manufacturer with chairman of the world's largest food manufacturer. ”

“ The company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization. We educated our own men; we trained many of them from boyhood; we strove to keep them loyal by providing them full scope for their ability; they were given opportunities to buy stock, and the company itself helped them to finance their purchases. ”

“ A manager of one of the branches gets well acquainted with all the politicians in his town or district by the judicious use of the company’s entertainment fund, then, when there is some exceptional contract coming up, he gets some of these politicians to go into a new company, obtains funds from his friends, and the Barber Company not only loses the contract but there is an opposition formed with strong political backing which must eventually be beaten or bought out. ”

“ Now, if I were you, I’d never leave the house without a pocketful of tickets, and I’d never come back to the house without having sold them.
“‘Vou’re the boss of a big organization,’ I told him, ‘and what you want to do is get everybody in your shop together and make them work. Sell the proposition to your employees. ”

“ We are such social creatures that we easily identify ourselves with our block, our street, our town, our social set, our party, our firm, or our department in the firm. Like teams in any game or sport, these groups may be rendered self-conscious and thus made units for competition.
It is possible to create such units for competition in business organizations. In some instances individual employees of one firm are pitted against those of a competing firm, the contest proving stimulating to the men in both. ”

“ "My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company." ”

“ On the other hand, the qualifications which go to make a successful manager of a cooperative store, namely, steadiness, conservatism of judgment, attention to detail and business punctuality always will be in great demand in the business world. ”

“ Since the organization of the firm, five partners have retired with fortunes, to make room for younger men, thus affording opportunities for others to profit by the experience and success of the house. ”

“ It is only for short intervals that the customers in broking offices can be busy. At other times they must lounge, and smoke; and chat, and read, and watch the board. A good-sized concern may easily have two hundred running accounts. Can you imagine a livelier, more entertaining place of gossip? You can have stocks, horses, commerce, law, medicine, small talk, art, science, the theater and religion in fifteen minute causeries, every day if you like. You have the milieu of every club in New York and the Waldorf café massed in one elegant composition in more than one broker’s parlor. ”

“ If in the conduct of industry, therefore, the manager ever keeps in mind that in dealing with employees he is dealing with human beings, with flesh and blood, [Pg 39] with hearts and souls; and if, likewise, the workmen realize that managers and investors are themselves also human beings, how much bitterness will be avoided!
Are the interests of these human beings with labor to sell and with capital to employ necessarily antagonistic or necessarily mutual? ”

“ As to the stay of the players' living, the view, which must surely have gone back some decades for its justification, is put forward that in times past it had not been thought meet that players should look to playing for a living, 'but men for their lyvings using other honest and lawfull artes, or reteyned in honest services, have by companies learned some enterludes for some encreasce to their profit by other mens pleasures in vacant time of recreation'. ”

“ The organizer or manager of a capitalistic enterprise is as truly a trustee of the interests of others—viz., both stockholders and employes—as is the guardian of an orphan, or the receiver of an insolvent corporation, or the master of a passenger steamship on the Atlantic. The business is created by the union of many men ”

“ Cricket with walking-sticks and paper balls, football with a tall hat, a lighted newspaper under the seat of a dozing jobber, sweepstakes and raffles, a labelled back—all these things are common enough. Sometimes the spirit of play is closely linked with the spirit of business; when, for instance, a susceptible member is induced by his conspiring friends to deal in Chartered Second Debentures, or some other stock which does not exist, only to find, when he has made something like a fortune or half ruined himself, that all bargains are of necessity off. ”

“ Not by the pay envelope, I venture to say, and that is why I suggested team play. And I am not thinking about co-operative schemes of management, either. Some way must be found to interest the fellows in their job, in the work itself, as distinct from the financial returns. Unless the chaps are interested in the game, they won't get the goals.”
“My boy,” said his father wearily, “that old interest in work is gone. That old pride in work which we used to feel when I was at the job myself, is gone. We have a different kind of workman nowadays.”
“Dad, don't believe that,” said Jack. ”