Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great
“The ballot-box?” I ventured.
Perkins took something from his trousers pocket, and waved it in the air. I saw it glitter in the sunlight before he threw it on my desk. I picked it up and examined it. Then I looked at Perkins.
“Perkins,” I said, “this is a can-opener.” He stood with folded arms, and nodded his head slowly.
“Can-opener, yes!” he said. “Wealth-opener; progress-opener!” He put one hand behind his ear, and glanced at the ceiling. “Listen!” he said. “What do you hear? From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon; from the palms of Florida to the pines of Alaska – cans! Tin cans! Tin cans being opened!”
He looked down at me, and smiled.
“The back-yards of Massachusetts are full of old tin cans,” he exclaimed. “The gar-bage-wagons of New York are crowned with old tin cans. The plains of Texas are dotted with old tin cans. The towns and cities of America are full of stores, and the stores are full of cans. The tin can rules America! Take away the tin can, and America sinks to the level of Europe! Why has not Europe sunk clear out of sight? Because America sends canned stuff to their hungry hordes!” He leaned forward, and, taking the can-opener from my hand, stood it upright against my inkstand. Then he stood back and waved his hand at it.
“Behold!” he cried. “The emblem of American genius!”
“Well,” I said, “what are you going to sell, cans or can-openers?”
He leaned over me and whispered.
“Neither, my boy. We are going to give can-openers away, free gratis!”
“They ought to go well at that price,” I suggested.
“One nickel-plated Perkins Can-opener free with every can of our goods. At all grocers,” said Perkins, ignoring my remark.
“Well, then,” I said, for I caught his idea, “what are we going to put in the cans?”
“What do people put in cans now?” asked Perkins.
I thought for a moment.
“Oh!” I said, “tomatoes and peaches and com, sardines, and salmon, and – ”
“Yes!” Perkins broke in, “and codfish, and cod-liver oil, and kerosene oil, and cottonseed-oil, and axle-grease and pie! Everything! But what don’t they put in cans?”
I couldn’t think of a thing. I told Perkins so. He smiled and made a large circle in the air with his right forefinger.
“Cheese!” he said. “Did you ever see a canned cheese?”
I tried to remember that I had, but I couldn’t. I remembered potted cheese, in nice little stone pots, and in pretty little glass pots.
Perkins sneered.
“Yes,” he said, “and how did you open it?”
“The lids unscrewed,” I said.
Perkins waved away the little stone and the little glass pots.
“No good!” he cried. “They don’t appeal to the great American person. I see,” he said, screwing up one eye – “I see the great American person. It has a nickel-plated, patent Perkins Can-opener in its hand. It goes into its grocer shop. It asks for cheese. The grocer shows it plain cheese by the slice. No, sir! He shows it potted cheese. No, sir! What the great American person wants is cheese that has to be opened with a can-opener. Good cheese, in patent, germ-proof, air-tight, water-tight, skipper-tight cans, with a label in eight colors. Full cream, full weight, full cans; picture of a nice clean cow and red-cheeked dairymaid in short skirts on front of the label, and eight recipes for Welsh rabbits on the back.” He paused to let this soak into me, and then continued:
“Individual cheese! Why make cheese the size of a dish-pan? Because grandpa did? Why not make them small? Perkins’s Reliable Full Cream Cheese, just the right size for family use, twenty-five cents a can, with a nickel-plated Perkins Can-opener, free with each can. At all grocers.”
That was the beginning of the Fifth Street Church, as you shall see.
We bought a tract of land well outside of Chicago, and, to make it sound well on our labels, we named it Cloverdale. This was Perkins’s idea. He wanted a name that would harmonize with the clean cow and the rosy milkmaid on our label.
We owned our own cows, and built our own dairy and cheese factory, and made first-class cheese. As each cheese was just the right size to fit in a can, and as the rind would protect the cheese, anyway, it was not important to have very durable cans, so we used a can that was all cardboard, except the top and bottom. Perkins insisted on having the top and bottom of tin, so that the purchaser could have something to open with a can-opener; and he was right. It appealed to the public.
The Perkins cheese made a hit, or at least the Perkins advertising matter did. We boomed it by all the legitimate means, in magazines, newspapers, and street-cars, and on bill-boards and kites; and we got out a very small individual can for restaurant and hotel use. It got to be the fashion to have the waiter bring in a can of Perkins’s cheese, and show the diner that it had not been tampered with, and then open it in the diner’s sight.
We ran our sales up to six hundred thousand cases the first year, and equalled that in the first quarter of the next year; and then the cheese trust came along, and bought us out for a cool eight-hundred thousand, and all they wanted was the good-will and trade-mark. They had a factory in Wisconsin that could make the cheese more economically. So we were left with the Cloverdale land on our hands, and Perkins decided to make a suburb of it.
Perkins’s idea was to make Cloverdale a refined and aristocratic suburb; something high-toned and exclusive, with Queen Anne villas, and no fences; and he was particularly strong on having an ennobling religious atmosphere about it. He said an ennobling religious atmosphere was the best kind of a card to draw to – that the worse a man was, the more anxious he was to get his wife and children settled in the neighborhood of an ennobling religious atmosphere.
So we had a map of Cloverdale drawn, with wide streets running one way and wide avenues crossing the streets at right angles, and our old cheese factory in a big square in the centre of the town. It was a beautiful map, but Perkins said it lacked the ennobling religious atmosphere; so the first thing he did was to mark in a few churches. He began at the lower left-hand corner, and marked in a church at the corner of First Street and First Avenue, and put another at the corner of Second Street and Second Avenue, and so on right up on the map. This made a beautiful diagonal row of churches from the upper right-hand corner to the lower left-hand corner of the map, and did not miss a street. Perkins pointed out the advertising value of the arrangement:
“Cloverdale, the Ideal Home Site.
A Church on Every Street.
Ennobling Religious Atmosphere.
Lots on Easy Payments.”
The old cheese factory was to be the Cloverdale Club-house, and we set to work at once to remodel it. We had the stalls knocked out of the cow-shed, and made it into a bowling-alley, and added a few cupolas and verandas to the factory, and had the latest styles of wall-paper put on the walls, and in a few days we had a first-class club-house.
But we did not stop there. Perkins was bound that Cloverdale should be first-class in every respect, and it was a pleasure to see him marking in public institutions. Every few minutes he would think of a new one and jot it down on the map; and every time he jotted down an opera-house, or a school-house, or a public library, he would raise the price of the lots, until we had the place so exclusive, I began to fear I couldn’t afford to live there. Then he put in a street-car line and a water and gas system, and quit; for he had the map so full of things that he could not put in another one without making it look mussy.
One thing Perkins insisted on was that there should be no factories. He said it would be a little paradise right in Cook County. He liked the phrase, “Paradise within Twenty Minutes of the Chicago Post-office,” so well that he raised the price of the lots another ten dollars all around.
Then we began to advertise. We did not wait to build the churches nor the school-house, nor any of the public institutions. We did not even wait to have the streets surveyed. What was the use of having twenty or thirty streets and avenues paved when the only inhabitants were Perkins and I and the old lady who took care of the Club-house? Why should we rush ourselves to death to build a school-house when the only person in Cloverdale with children was the said old lady? And she had only one child, and he was forty-eight years old, and in the Philippines.
We began to push Cloverdale hard. There wasn’t an advertising scheme that Perkins did not know, and he used them all. People would open their morning mail, and a circular would tell them that Cloverdale had an ennobling religious atmosphere. Their morning paper thrust a view of the Cloverdale Club-house on them. As they rode down-town in the street-cars, they read that Cloverdale was refined and exclusive. The bill-boards announced that Cloverdale lots were sold on the easy payment plan. The magazines asked them why they paid rent when Cloverdale land was to be had for little more than the asking. Round-trip tickets from Chicago to Cloverdale were furnished any one who wanted to look at the lots. Occasionally, we had a free open-air vaudeville entertainment.
Our advertising campaign made a big hit. There were a few visitors who kicked because we did not serve beer with the free lunches we gave, but Perkins was unyielding on that point. Cloverdale was to be a temperance town, and he held that it would be inconsistent to give free beer. But the trump card was our guarantee that the lots would advance twenty per cent, within twelve months. We could do that well enough, for we made the price ourselves; but it made a fine impression, and the lots began to sell like hot cakes.
There were ten streets in Cloverdale (on paper) and ten avenues (also on paper); and Perkins used to walk up and down them (not on the paper, but between the stakes that showed their future location), and admire the town of Cloverdale as it was to be. He would stand in front of the plot of weeds that was the site of the opera-house, and get all enrapt and enthusiastic just thinking how fine that opera-house would be some day; and then he would imagine he was on our street-car line going down to the library. But the thing Perkins liked best was to go to church. Whenever he passed one of the corner lots that we had set aside for a church, he would take off his hat and look sober, as a man ought when he has suddenly run into an ennobling religious atmosphere.
One day a man came out from Chicago, and, after looking over our ground, told us he wanted to take ten lots; but none suited him but the ten facing on First Avenue at the corner of First Street. Perkins tried to argue him into taking some other lots, but he wouldn’t. Perkins and I talked it over, and, as the man wanted to build ten houses, we decided to sell him the lots.
We thought a town ought to have a few houses, and so far Cloverdale had nothing but the Club-house. As we had previously sold all the other lots on First Street, we had no place on that street to put the First Street Church, so Perkins rubbed it off the map, and marked it at the corner of First Avenue and Fifth Street.
The next day a man came down who wanted a site for a grocery. We were glad to see him, for every first-class town ought to have a grocery; but Perkins balked when he insisted on having the lot at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Sixth Street that we had set aside for the First Methodist Church. Perkins said he would never feel quite himself again if he had to think that he had been taking off his hat to a grocery every time he passed that lot. It would lower his self-respect. I was afraid we were going to lose the grocer to save Perkins’s self-respect. Then we saw we could move the church to the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifth Street.
When we once got those churches on the move, there seemed to be no stopping. We doubled the price, but still people wanted those lots, and in the end they got them; and as soon as we sold out a church lot, we moved the church up to Fifth Street, and in a bit Perkins got enthusiastic over the idea, and moved the rest of the churches there on his own accord. He said it would be a great “ad.” – a street of churches; and it would concentrate the ennobling religious atmosphere, and make it more powerful.
All this time the lots continued to sell beyond our expectations; and by the end of the year we had advanced the price of lots one hundred per cent., and were considering another advance. We did not think it fair to the sweltering Chicago public to advance the price without giving it a chance to get the advantage of our fresh air and pure water at the old price, so we told them of the contemplated rise. We let them know it by means of bill-boards and newspapers and circular letters and magazines; and a great many people gladly availed themselves of our thoughtfulness and our guarantee that we would advance the price twenty-per cent, on the first day of June.
So many, in fact, bought lots before the advance that we had none left to advance. Perkins came to me one morning, with tears in his eyes, and explained that we had made a promise, and could not keep it. We had agreed to advance the lots twenty per cent., and we had nothing to advance.
“Well, Perky,” I said, “it is no use crying. What is done is done. Are you sure there are no lots left?”
“William,” he said, seriously, “we think a great deal of these churches, don’t we?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “We do! We think an ennobling religious atmosphere – ” But he cut me short.
“William,” he said, “do you know what we are doing? We talk about our ennobling religious atmosphere, but we are standing in the path of progress. A mighty wave of reform is sweeping through Christendom. The new religious atmosphere is sweeping out the old religious atmosphere. I can feel it. Brotherly love is knocking out the sects. Shall Cloverdale cling to the old, or shall it stand as the leader in the movement for a reunited Church?”
I clasped Perkins’s hand.
“A tabernacle!” I cried.
“Right!” exclaimed Perkins. “Why ten conflicting churches? Why not one grand meeting-place – all faiths – no creeds! Bring the people closer together – spread an ennobling religious atmosphere that is worth talking about!”
“Perkins,” I said, “what you have done for religion will not be forgotten.”
He waved my praise away airily.
“I have buyers,” he said, “for the nine church lots at the advanced price.” Considering that the land practically cost us nothing, we made one hundred and six thousand dollars on the Cloverdale deal. Perkins and I were out that way lately; and there is still nothing on the land but the Club-house, which needs paint and new glass in the windows. When we reached the Fifth Street Church, we paused, and Perkins took off his hat. It was a noble instinct, for here was one church that never quarrelled with its pastor, to which all creeds were welcome, and that had no mortgage.
“Some of these days,” said Perkins, “we will build the tabernacle. We will come out and carry on our great work of uniting the sects. We will build a city here, surrounded by an ennobling religious atmosphere – a refined, exclusive city. The time is almost ripe. By the time these lot-holders pay another tax assessment, they will be sick enough. We can get the lots for almost nothing.”
V. THE ADVENTURE IN AUTOMOBILES
PERKINS and I sat on the veranda of one of the little road-houses on Jerome Avenue, and watched the auto-mobiles go by. There were many automobiles, of all sorts and colors, going at various speeds and in divers manners. It was a thrilling sight – the long rows of swiftly moving auto-vehicles running as smoothly as lines of verse, all neatly punctuated here and there by an automobile at rest in the middle of the road, like a period bringing the line to a full stop. And some, drawn to the edge of the road, stood like commas. There were others, too, that went snapping by with a noise like a bunch of exclamation-points going off in a keg. And not a few left a sulphurous, acrid odor, like the after-taste of a ripping Kipling ballad. I called Perkins’s attention to this poetical aspect of the thing, but he did not care for it. He seemed sad. The sight of the automobiles aroused an unhappy train of thought in his mind.
Perkins is the advertising man. Advertising is not his specialty. It is his life; it is his science. That is why he is known from Portland, Me., to Portland, Oreg., as Perkins the Great. There is but one Perkins. A single century could never produce two such as he. The job would be too big.
“Perky,” I said, “you look sad.”
He waved his hand toward the procession of horseless vehicles, and nodded.
“Sad!” he ejaculated. “Yes! Look at them. You are looking at them. Everybody looks at them. Wherever you go you see them – hear them – smell them. On every road, in every town – everywhere – nothing but automobiles; nothing but people looking at them – all eyes on them. I’m sad!”
“They are beautiful,” I ventured, “and useful.”
Perkins shook his head.
“Useless! Wasted! Thrown away! Look at them again. What do you see?” He stretched out his hand toward the avenue. I knew Perkins wanted me to see something I could not see, so I looked long enough to be quite sure I could not see it; and then I said, quite positively, —
“I see automobiles – dozens of them.”
“Ah!” Perkins cried with triumph. “You see automobiles! You see dozens of them! But you don’t see an ad. – not a single ad. You see dozens of moving things on wheels that people twist their necks to stare at. You see things that men, women, and children stand and gaze upon, and not an advertisement on any of them! Talk about wasted opportunity! Talk about good money thrown away! Just suppose every one of those automobiles carried a placard with ‘Use Perkins’s Patent Porous Plaster,’ upon it! Every man, woman, and child in New York would know of Perkins’s Patent Porous Plaster by this evening! It would be worth a million cold dollars! Sad? Yes! There goes a million dollars wasted, thrown away, out of reach!”
“Perkins,” I said, “you are right. It would be the greatest advertising opportunity of the age, but it can’t be done. Advertising space on those automobiles is not for sale.”
“No,” he admitted, “it’s not. That’s why Perkins hates the auto. It gives him no show. It is a fizzle, a twentieth-century abomination – an invention with no room for an ad. I’m tired. Let’s go home.”
We settled our small account with the waiter, and descended to the avenue, just as a large and violent automobile came to a full stop before us. There was evidently something wrong with the inwardness of that automobile; for the chauffeur began pulling and pushing levers, opening little cubby-holes, and poking into them, turning valves and cocks, and pressing buttons and things. But he did not find the soft spot.
I saw that Perkins smiled gleefully as the chauffeur did things to the automobile. It pleased Perkins to see automobiles break down. He had no use for them. They gave him no opportunity to display his talents. He considered them mere interloping monstrosities. As we started homeward, the chauffeur was on his back in the road, with his head and arms under his automobile, working hard, and swearing softly.
I did not see Perkins again for about four months, and when I did see him, I tried to avoid him; for I was seated in my automobile, which I had just purchased. I feared that Perkins might think my purchase was disloyal to him, knowing, as I did, his dislike for automobiles; but he hailed me with a cheery cry.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “The automobile! The greatest product of man’s ingenious brain! The mechanical triumph of the twentieth century! Useful, ornamental, profitable!”
“Perky!” I cried, for I could scarcely believe my ears. “Is it possible? Have you so soon changed your idea of the auto? That isn’t like you, Perky!”
He caught his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and waved his fingers slowly back and forth. “My boy,” he said, “Perkins of Portland conquers all things! Else why is he known as Perkins the Great? Genius, my boy, wins out. Before genius the automobile bows down like the camel, and takes aboard the advertisement. Perkins has conquered the automobile!”
I looked over my auto carefully. I had no desire to be a travelling advertisement even to please my friend Perkins. But I could notice nothing in the promotion and publicity line about my automobile. I held out my hand. “Perkins,” I said heartily, “I congratulate you. Is there money in it?” He glowed with pleasure. “Money?” he cried. “Loads of it. Thousands for Perkins – thousands for the automobile-makers – huge boom for the advertiser! Perkins put it to the auto-makers like this: ‘You make automobiles. All right. I’ll pay you for space on them. Just want room for four words, but must be on every automobile sent out. Perkins will pay well.’ Result – contract with every maker. Then to the advertiser: ‘Mr. Advertiser, I have space on every automobile to be made by leading American factories for next five years. Price, $100,000!’ Advertiser jumped at it! And there you are!”
I do not know whether Perkins meant his last sentence as a finale to his explanation or as a scoff at my automobile. In either case I was certainly “there,” for my auto took one of those unaccountable fits, and would not move. I dismounted and walked around the machine with a critical, inquiring eye. I poked gingerly into its ribs and exposed vitals; lifted up lids; turned thumb-screws, and shook everything that looked as if its working qualities would be improved by a little shaking, but my automobile continued to balk.
A few small boys suggested that I try coaxing it with a lump of sugar or building a fire under it, or some of the other remedies for balking animals; but Perkins stood by with his hands in his pockets and smiled. He seemed to be expecting something.
I am not proud, and I have but little fear of ridicule, but a man is only human. Fifth Avenue is not exactly the place where a man wishes to lie on the fiat of his back. To be explicit, I may say that when I want to lie on my back in the open air, I prefer to lie on a grassy hillside, with nothing above me but the blue sky, rather than on the asphalt pavement of Fifth Avenue, with the engine-room of an automobile half a foot above my face.
Perkins smiled encouragingly. The crowd seemed to be waiting for me to do it. I felt, myself, that I should have to do it. So I assumed the busy, intense, oblivious, hardened expression that is part of the game, and lay down on the top of the street. Personally, I did not feel that I was doing it as gracefully as I might after more practice; but the crowd were not exacting. They even cheered me, which was kind of them; but it did not relieve me of the idiotic sensation of going to bed in public with my clothes on.
If I had not been such an amateur I should doubtless have done it better; but it was disconcerting, after getting safely on my back, to find that I was several feet away from my automobile. I think it was then that I swore, but I am not sure. I know I swore about that time; but whether it was just then, or while edging over to the automobile, I cannot positively say.
I remember making up my mind to swear again as soon as I got my head and chest under the automobile, not because I am a swearing man, but to impress the crowd with the fact that I was not there because I liked it. I wanted them to think I detested it. I did detest it. But I did not swear. As my eyes looked upward for the first time at the underneath of my automobile, I saw this legend painted upon it: “Don’t swear. Drink Glenguzzle.”
Peering out from under my automobile, I caught Perkins’s eye. It was bright and triumphant. I looked about and across the avenue I saw another automobile standing.
As I look back, I think the crowd may have been justified in thinking me insane. At any rate, they crossed the avenue with me, and applauded me when I lay down under the other man’s automobile. When I emerged, they called my attention to several other automobiles that were standing near, and were really disappointed when I refused to lie down under them.
I did refuse, however, for I had seen enough.
This automobile also bore on its underside the words: “Don’t swear. Drink Glenguzzle.” And I was willing to believe that they were on all the automobiles.
I walked across the avenue again and shook hands with Perkins. “It’s great!” I said, enthusiastically.
