Chapter XXII: Kansas City

Kansas City is growing vain and beautiful. She has, within recent years, spent ten million dollars on her looks--not to increase her terminal facilities or make her transit rapider--but simply and solely on her looks, to clear up her complexion and improve her figure.

Beauty pays dividends to towns, as to women and gardeners. Since Kansas City put in its park and boulevard system for ten million, adjoining real estate has advanced twelve, or according to the inhabitants, fifteen million.

Mason Stevens decided he would like to get transferred to Kansas City, with a raise of salary. Then he could pick out a small house in the trees at the end of one of the new macadam roads, and eventually go back and forth in a Panno Six just as he had planned. He put in a good many odd hours with the maps and prospectuses of proposed, suggested or hoped for subdivisions.

If he could arrange with Mr. Silverman to shift him, he would send for Georgia and they would scout for a lot near a boulevard end. The land out there was bound to appreciate in value as the town built up and the parkways were still further extended. He would like to buy one lot for himself and another for investment. He would have to buy on time, but that's an incentive to a young business man.

He felt confident of Georgia's enchantment with the project. The view from the bluffs was finer than anything one could get in Chicago for the same money. Besides the process of social stratification was not so far along. Kansas City was to Chicago as Chicago to New York, and New York to London. Comers-up, like himself and Georgia, would be more important more quickly in the smaller city.

Mason soon found out that there was not much to be said against Mr. Plaisted, the local agent in chief, except that he was getting old. In routine matters and methods he was excellent, but had ceased to be creative. In the terminology of a great art, he had lost his wallop.

It was the time when the big life companies were beginning their drive to get business in block; to insure for one large premium paid in a lump sum, the entire working force of a bank or business house. When the employe was honorably retired, say at sixty or sixty-five, after a stipulated number of years of steady work, he would be pensioned until he died, which pension might in whole or in part be continued to his wife if she survived him. Or he might receive, upon superannuation, an endowment equaling three years' salary. If he died before retirement his relict might become the beneficiary of an ordinary life policy. There were still other plans and combinations and permutations thereof, whose details were more or less veiled in a haze of actuarial figures, but whose broad effects were alike calculated to incite fidelity in the employe by holding out to him the prospect of a comfortable decline if he stuck to his employer through youth and middle age.

Mason quickly reported to Mr. Silverman that within six months the New England Life had written two such block policies for corporations and that three other rival companies had secured one each, while the Eastern had obtained none.

Silverman telegraphed sharply to Plaisted, "Why don't you get any corporation business in bulk! Our competitors do."

Mr. Plaisted responded with a laborious letter of explanation.

Then it developed that the New England Life had things already in shape for a third big deal--the Phosphate National Bank. Mason got the first wind of it, not in Kansas City, but by a direct tip from Mr. Silverman in New York, with instructions to investigate promptly. Within six hours he was able to report back that the proposed premium would exceed five thousand dollars a year, and furthermore that the Phosphate Trust & Savings, being controlled by the same parties as the Phosphate National, was preparing to follow its lead. That would make four banks for the New England in half a year and greatly increase its already disturbing prestige.

Silverman answered, "Immediately use all proper methods secure Phosphate business for us. We must maintain prestige. Authorize you act independently Plaisted your discretion. Draw on me in reason."

Mason drew on him for one thousand dollars, and obtained two five hundred dollar bills, one of which, after duly cautious preliminaries, he handed to the cashier, the other to the auditor of the Phosphate National. Again, after duly cautious preliminaries, they accepted. These two gentlemen had been detailed a committee to draw up for the convenience of the bank's Board of Directors an analytical syllabus of the differing propositions offered by the competing insurance companies. The Eastern Life got the Phosphate National's business, followed by that of its subsidiary, the Trust & Savings Bank, and Mason got Mr. Silverman's congratulations.

Two days later Silverman walked unexpectedly into Plaisted's office. Plaisted, who had just that instant signed his name to a letter addressed to his visitor in New York, was rattled.

"Mr. Plaisted," said Mr. Silverman, biting off the end of a three-for-a-dollar, "I have found out what is the trouble, that is, the main trouble with your agency here."

Plaisted winced. He hadn't realized that there was any trouble, and certainly not any main trouble with his agency. "Yes, Mr. Silverman."

"You're undermanned."

"Why, yes--perhaps. I've thought of breaking in a few new agents this winter."

"No," said Silverman, "I mean you're undermanned at the top. Weak on the executive side."

"Oh," said Plaisted.

"You need new blood, new ideas, new life, hustle," he snapped his fingers with each successive word--"speed--force--energy--vigor-- enterprise--vitality--dynamics--do you get me?"

"I--yes--I'm sure I do," answered Plaisted, in considerable apprehension.

"I suggest therefore that you appoint young Stevens--you have met him?"

"Yes," answered Plaisted, who detested the ground Mason walked on, "I have met him."

"I suggest you appoint him as your first assistant," remarked Mr. Silverman, calmly eyeing Plaisted. "He will take the burden of details off your shoulders."

"I--ah--don't know, Mr. Silverman, if that would be entirely wise. You see our methods--his and mine--"

"I have made my suggestion, Mr. Plaisted," answered Silverman slowly. "In my judgment that would be the best thing to do."

The two men looked at each other until at last Plaisted dropped his eyes murmuring, "I will think it over."

"I leave at two. I should like to know your decision before then."

Plaisted yielded by telephone within half an hour.

He wasn't deprived of the corner room; he would continue to sign _General Agent_ after his name. But he realized bitterly that he had left to him only the shadow of his long authority. The substance had passed to the young stranger.

At the beginning of the following year Plaisted was granted a six months' leave of absence with pay, and soon after his return resigned. He now travels peevishly from Palm Beach to Paris and back again in company with a valet-nurse.

Georgia's letter of farewell came in the afternoon mail, just after Mr. Silverman's departure. Mason read it over every night for a month and found it bad medicine for sleep. The lines in his shrewd face deepened perceptibly. Finally he locked the letter up in his safe deposit vault, and seemed to rest better afterwards.

He dickered with the hotel for room and bath by the year and got thirty-three per cent off. He was known by his office force as a hard man to please.