SKILLFUL
STENOGRAPHERS
SEEK
SUBURBAN HOMES
“Universal Utilities promotes health and happiness among its office force by encouraging its employees in every way to lead normal lives. Marriage among the Stenographic force is encouraged and every inducement given the young people to become parents. Stenographic suburban centers are thoroughly equipped with hospitals, day nurseries and kindergartens. For the first time in the history of the business world the lesser employees of a great corporation are being given an opportunity to live the kind of lives that the Creator intended all men and women to live.”
Naturally, children were born in these centers. In fact, many more children were born than were either expected or necessary for the continuation of the experiment, which both Dr. Billings and Jerome Smith were watching with the greatest interest. When, at the end of five years, the scientist reported to the Corporation president that there were now over ten thousand specially bred stenographic children, he anticipated his employer’s question by ending his report with the statement:
“Under the present conditions of life in the stenographic centers, there is no doubt but that there will be many more children born and raised to maturity than there will be needed to carry on the experiment at the end of eighteen years. This is really a necessary part of the programme, especially in the early generations of breeding. There will be many children who will not be true to type. Later, we hope, by a series of carefully conducted measurements, to eliminate the unfit at a very early age. Even now we believe that much can be told by the shape of the hands and the length of the fingers. In this generation, however, a certain number of the children will resemble their grandparents more than their parents. We feel that we shall have to have thirty thousand children born as soon as possible in this generation in order to be sure of ten thousand adults who are perfect enough to carry on the experiment. Realizing the necessity of having as many children born as closely together as possible, we are now giving an extra bonus to stenographers who are twins. In this first generation, we will begin at once to teach stenography and typewriting in the primary grades, and we believe, that by the time the children reach the age of ten, we shall be able to pick out one-third of them as giving promise of special speed and accuracy. These will be trained in separate schools, while the duller ones will gradually be isolated, and in the course of years, be amalgamated with the ordinary city workers. I might add also that the special diet is working favorably; all the children are, on the average, two years in advance of the ordinary child in size, weight and intelligence.”
* * * *
Twenty years passed and eighty percent of the old stenographers were retired on a liberal pension, being replaced in the offices of Universal Utilities by the first generation of specially bred and highly educated office workers. One out of every four of the children in the first generation had been able to pass the necessary tests. These had been sent to special schools where the entire time was spent on spelling, punctuation, grammar, stenography and typewriting. At the age of fourteen, they were working in experimental offices, while at fifteen they were being given positions in the main offices of Universal Utilities. As a rule, they were fine specimens of manhood and womanhood, having been given the best of care in every way since their birth. Irrespective of any ability they possessed, none in this generation were given positions unless they manifested genuine love for the work. Records were carefully kept and every precaution taken for the continuation of the work after the death of Jerome Smith and Dr. Billings. While the actual details of the proposed reform were only known to a few of the higher officials, still it was generally understood that Universal Utilities was sold to the idea that the business success of the future lay in perfect letters, written by errorless stenographers.
In such a company, more like a machine than an organization of human individuals, events moved with the regularity of clockwork. Jerome Smith at seventy-five was still watching the daily curve of errors which was placed routinely on his desk. With grim satisfaction he saw the line indicating the volume of business and the daily number of letters rise steadily towards a peak that could not even be estimated, while at the same time the number of errors per stenographer per day was steadily falling. This record was carefully watched and the results published. A definite scale of advance in salary was the reward for weeks and months of perfection. Some stenographers were able to go an entire month without spoiling their record. The perfect stenographer had not yet been born, but a wonderful advance was already apparent. The gain in speed was as remarkable as the improvement in accuracy. Special inventions had to be devised in order to allow the typewriters to respond rapidly enough to the flying fingers. It was even found advisable to devise an automatic paper feeder so that the typist would not have to stop to insert a fresh sheet of paper. A touch on the button put in a piece of correspondence paper, while pressure on a different button inserted an envelope.
It might seem that with the increasing speed and greater accuracy, the correspondence of Universal Utilities could be carried on with five thousand office workers instead of ten thousand. The truth was that the ten thousand stenographers were doing ten times as much work as the same number had accomplished twenty years before. The business had correspondingly increased. The carefully kept charts showed that the experiment was paying for itself in every way. When the third generation was born, there was a smaller percent to be discarded—the result of the intensive breeding was beginning to show. As an old man, aged in body but still active in mind, Dr. Billings in his annual report to his employer, Jerome Smith, made the interesting statement:
“In the fifth generation, we are finding less than fifteen percent of the babies who are not running true to type.”
* * * *
Two hundred years passed. Universal Utilities, now governed by Hiram Smith, descendent of Jerome Smith, ruled the financial world. During that two hundred years, the basic principle that “better letters produce better business” had never been forgotten. There were new ways of reaching the ultimate consumer: the radio constantly endeavored to furnish new contacts, salesmen in monoplanes reached every small town, but still the great bulk of the business all over the world had to be carried on by correspondence.
And that correspondence, carried on by Universal Utilities, was now approaching a state of wonderful perfection. Errors might be made in dictation, addresses might be wrong, but a mistake made by the ten thousand stenographers, was now so unusual that the heads of departments were always inclined to blame the mistake on the other portions of the official force. Year after year the stenographers approached the perfection of beautifully adjusted machinery, with this difference: they could think, reason, evaluate, differentiate. To their finely coordinated muscles were added harmonious and specially trained minds. And most important of all was the pleasure that they took in their work. They were content only when working, they were happy only in the office. Nothing but severe illness might keep them from their machines. Their homes were simply miniature offices, where they talked over the work of the day, helped their children write letters and vied with each other in speed contests.
The increased love for their work influenced their social contacts. Those who were recognized as being ninety-nine percent efficient hesitated in seeking the society of the eighty-five percenters. An unmarried girl who was ninety-seven percent perfect in accuracy and speed was willing to keep company only with a young man who was as brilliant as she was—she certainly would not consider matrimony with one who was rated at ninety percent. Their one-track minds ceased to consider personal wealth, beauty, fame or sexual allure as reasons for marriage. All they could think, talk and dream of was their work and the possibility of some one, some time, working a whole year without making an error.
Sundays and holidays were observed but were always followed by days of increased production, as the ten thousand workers carefully rested, avoided every form of fatigue during th
eir hours off duty, and in every way conserved their energy for the hours of production following the holidays.
One afternoon Hiram Smith was entertaining a young lady in his office. In fact, it was his daughter, recently returned from one of the most fashionable colleges in Massachusetts. Hiram Smith was disturbed, even though he tried to conceal his annoyance. His only daughter, in fact, his one and only child, had been dismissed from college on account of complete failure to make the necessary grades. The father had tried to keep her in college, but even his great wealth and unusual power had been insufficient to bribe the President of the college, who had simply said that the young lady was unwilling to study and could not stay.
There was nothing in the general appearance of the late collegian to indicate mental deficiency. In fact, she looked unusually alert and mentally active as she sat on the other side of the central table.
“Well?” grunted her father, savagely smoking a cigar.
“Well!” answered the daughter. “Is this the way you welcome your only-only?”
“You have disgraced me!” Hiram Smith replied. “Only my position has kept it out of the afternoon papers. All of New York knows about it. My daughter, Mirabella Smith, great, great, etc., granddaughter of Jerome Smith, thrown out of college, because she could not pass the necessary examinations.”
“That is wrong, Dad!” protested the girl; “I could have passed them, but I did not want to—I told you that I did not want to go to college: I simply abominate mathematics and languages. I did not try to study.”
“What are you going to do? Marry at eighteen?”
“No. I want to be a stenographer.”
Hiram Smith nearly swallowed his cigar.
“A stenographer?” he whispered weakly.
“Yes. Your hearing is all right, is it not? You heard me the first time, didn’t you? I have been practicing on a machine for over a year and can do some shorthand. I want a job in Universal Utilities.”
It was then that the great man laughed—so heartily that his daughter began to blush, in anger.
“I don’t see anything funny,” she protested.
Finally the man controlled his laughter.
“Have you ever seen one of our central offices?” he asked.
“No. Of course, not. You never let me know anything about your business: and you should, because some day I am going to run it!”
He looked at her in astonishment, but this time he did not laugh. He simply stood up as he asked her to come with him.
Walking through long halls, they finally went by elevator to the tenth floor of the building, which cared for much of the clerical activities of Universal Utilities. They entered a large room where, in glass enclosed, sound proof, individual offices, five hundred men were apparently talking into telephone receivers, though not a sound could be heard. As they walked slowly around the room the father explained the system to the daughter.
“In order to handle our tremendous volume of mail it is necessary to employ ten thousand specially trained clerks who do nothing except dictate answers to the hundreds of thousands of letters we receive daily. Years ago these letters were all dictated and taken down in shorthand. Now each clerk is connected by telephone to a stenographer, and as fast as a letter is dictated, it is written. Some of our men talk at the rate of one hundred and fifty to two hundred words a minute, but we have never found one who could talk faster than one of our average stenographers could write. Our business is a peculiar one, and we take great pride in our letters. They have to be absolutely individualistic. For over one hundred years we have tried to avoid the semblance of anything like a form letter. When John Jones of Honolulu receives a letter from us, it is a highly personal one from Universal Utilities to John Jones. He likes it. Our millions of customers like it. We are able to establish an individual contact and our customers stay with us. We have the world divided into ten thousand districts, and the mail from each district is answered by a man we have familiarized with that particular district: a man who is keenly alive to the special needs of the people, who seem to be his neighbors. He understands their habits, thoughts and reactions. Of course, we write letters in many languages, but eighty-five percent of all our correspondence is conducted in English. We try to answer every letter within two days of the time it is received. Of course, some days are very heavy—Mondays and the days following holidays for instance—but we never fall very far behind. Each one of these ten thousand letter clerks dictates eight hours a day. There is a fifteen minute rest period after every forty-five minutes of work and an hour off at noon—a fairly long day.”
Mirabella Smith looked with interest around the room. There were fifty offices on each side, and above them, in four rows, were four hundred more. In each cell a man was dictating to an invisible stenographer.
“We will now go into the next room,” said her father. “Here you will find five hundred glass enclosed rooms in a similar arrangement, but in each of these rooms is a stenographer, connected in every instance with a letter clerk. They each have one of our noiseless, self-feeding electrical machines, which automatically discharge the letters, with envelopes attached, into wide tubes. These letters are then carried by endless conveyors back to the dictator, who takes the fifteen minute rest period to sign the letters he has dictated in the previous forty-five minutes. All he has to do is to sign them as they come to him, and another machine blots them, folds and seals the envelope. During the fifteen minutes he is thus occupied, his special stenographer sits motionless, eyes closed, relaxing every muscle, ready to spring into intense activity, when the dictating again begins. Of course, we have some stenographers, who still take dictation in shorthand, but only from the higher officers, who have not learned to dictate at the high speed necessary to make the most of this highly trained mechanical ability.”
Mirabella looked at her father as he closed this sentence with the words, “mechanical ability.” As though understanding her questioning glance, he went on, rather rapidly, seemingly defending himself from an implied accusation.
“You know, my dear, that is what these stenographers are—simply human machines. We take very good care of them—feed, house and clothe them nicely and provide for their every need. They are really very expensive to produce, but well worth all they cost.”
“You mean they are slaves?”
“Not at all—go near that glass window and look at them. You will see they are human beings.”
Mirabella stifled a swelling groan-like scream, mingled with nausea, as she looked into the cell of human machines. Live beings—god-like with the most lovely, most perfect, long-tapering fingers she had ever seen—hands, the sight of whose beauty summoned worship; but ere the sacred rite was completed, those emaciated faces, bulging foreheads, staring eyes, hideous expressions met the view. She was sick. Her ancestors had done it—martyred humanity for commercial greed.
But, grasping a plan, like a flash she covered her feelings and enthusiastically answered:
“Oh! Father, it’s all so wonderful—this working plan of Universal Utilities.”
“Yes. It is a great plan. They have bodies very similar to ours, only there is a slight bulging to the forehead, and the hands are larger and the fingers longer than in the average individual. Their shoulders are broader and their arms longer and more muscular. Our medical department says there is a shrinking of the body and lower limbs, but only slight. You see, they take practically no exercise, except what they have at their machines. We send them back to their community homes in special passenger planes. Once home, they relax. They go to bed early and have practically no amusements or sports. All they know, or want to know, is how to write a perfect letter. We have ten thousand human machines like that, almost evenly divided between the sexes—for two hundred years we have bred stenographers—we have raised them on an intensive scale, specially fed and educated them. I will tell you something that few realize, because we have thoroughly bribed and controlled all sources of information. These
human machines mature at the age of nine years, marry at ten and produce baby stenographers at eleven years of age. In other words, we have bred stenographers on a scientific scale as race horses or blooded cattle. Your great-number-some-odd grandfather started the plan—we are reaping the benefit. Before his time, they had a great deal of trouble with their office force—now we have no trouble whatever. They are simply wonderful pieces of living machinery. Now you understand why you cannot be one of our stenographers. You are a wonderfully beautiful young woman. These living beings you see in these glass cells are simply machines—living, capable of some emotions, able to reproduce other generations of machines, but absolutely incapable of doing any other kind of work. They are human beings so highly differentiated in their heredity and development that they are no longer to be considered on the same level with the rest of humanity. They have gained efficiency in one direction at the loss of initiative in every other plane of human endeavor.” The girl frowned.
“And Universal Utilities did this to these people and their ancestors without their consent?” she asked.
“Certainly. It would never have been done, if we had waited for their approval. They were mentally our inferiors—they made no attempt to progress by their own efforts. We took them and made them worth while, to themselves and to Universal Utilities—”
“I do not want to be that kind of a stenographer,” said the girl hastily. “I want to be one of the old-fashioned kind I have read about, the gossiping, gum-chewing, error-making, soda-water-drinking, flirtatious kind of a girl, who went into the business world for the thrill she received. I want to be a stenographer, but not like those poor things. I think I will go back to college and graduate.”
Her father really meant to check up on her movements, but he was so busy with a new side line, which Universal Utilities had absorbed, that he had absolutely no time to think about his family. This new project was nothing less than assuming a directing control of all the Protestant Churches of the world by welding them into one gigantic merger. The plan had long been dreamed of, but no one force had been powerful enough to bring it about. Now, with Universal Utilities to finance it, the scheme was accomplished, and there were no longer Baptists, Methodists or Presbyterians, but over four hundred and twenty sects, united to form the University Protestant Church. In every small town the little churches were torn down to be replaced by one beautiful chapel or cathedral. Hiram Smith attended personally to many of the details. In the meantime he neglected his daughter.
The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack, Volume 5 Page 21