Jeff Manheimer, who
superintended the work, was a commonplace man, with more
method and system than taste or initiative.
Chaikin was the heart and the actual master of the establishment.
Yet all this really wonderful designer received was forty-five
dollars a week. He knew his value, and he saw that the two
brothers were rapidly getting rich, but he was a quiet man,
unaggressive and unassuming, and very likely he had not the
courage to ask for a raise
As I now looked at him, with my heart full of rancor for
Manheimer, I exclaimed to myself, "What a fool!"
He appeared to me in a new light, as the willing victim of
downright robbery. It seemed obvious that the Manheimers could
not do without him, that he was in a position to dictate terms to
them, even to make them accept him as a third partner. And once
the matter had presented itself to me in that light it somehow
began to vex me. It got on my nerves, as though it were an affair
of my own. I complimented myself upon my keen sense of justice,
but in reality this was my name for my disgust with Chaikin's
passivity and for the annoyance and the burning ill-will which the
rapid ascent of the firm aroused in me.
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