CLAUDE, Who Was Co-operative

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 150, 8 May 1942, Page 16

CLAUDE, Who Was Co-operative

A TALE FOR THE TIMES

(No. 8)

Written for "The Listener" by

M.

B.

(AND FIFI, WHO FIRE-WATCHED)

HEN Claude was 10 years old, his father made him read "Letters of a SelfMade Merchant to His Son." And Claude took all its lessons to heart, so that when the time came for him to take his father’s place as a SelfMade Merchant he was fully equipped with a set of Business Precepts of the highest order. And one of these precepts involved always treating your employees as you would like them to treat you, so he was always very polite to them, and gave them tea-money whenever he made them work overtime. He was fond of telling his fellow business men how all the members of his firm were one big family, and that all that was needed to solve any labour problem was co-opera-tion between employer and employee. And strangely enough, his system worked quite well and none of his staff ever left him unless somebody offered them better wages elsewhere. When the regulations about compulsory fire-watching came in, Claude determined to live up to his reputation as a model Employer, so he set aside a nice room for the __ fire-watchers, equipped with two rimu single beds and mattresses, and one had ag yellow satin eiderdown and one had a pink satin eiderdown. And he also installed a gasring, so that the fire-watchers could heat some nice nourishing soup for themselves if they felt like it. And it all looked so nice and cosy that Claude almost felt like taking a turn there himself,

AFTER the fire-watching had been carried on for a week, one of his employees came to Claude and said that it was lonely fire-watching in the long winter evenings, and could they have a radio in their room? So Claude gave them a radio out of his own office, and felt very virtuous about it. Everything went all right for another week, and then another of his employees

came to him and said he thought the room looked rather bare and not very home-like, and could he do something about it? So Claude had curtains put up, and hung one or two pictures and put a notice on the door outside saying "The Nest." And for another month everybody was perfectly happy. Then one morning Claude’s private secretary, Fifi, came into the office and said that she and her girl-friend were getting a little tired of having hot soup for supper, and would Claude put in a little electric stove so that they could make themselves some hot scones sometimes? And Claude thought he might as well do the job properly, so he built on a little kitchenette with an electric washing-machine and a frigidaire, and also a sitting-room with an electric fireplace.

T was therefore something of a surprise to him when a fortnight after this he was waited on by a delegation of surly-looking employees. They pointed out to him that it was a flagrant injustice, and probably against the regulations laid down by the FireWatchers’ Union, to expect people to sleep on the premises at night unless a bathroom was provided, so that such fire-watchers could have a bath before beginning their new day’s work, and that unless Claude consented to build on a bathroom within the next week, they would pass a resolution at the next union meeting depriving him of the honorary title of Model Employer. So Claude, bowing to necessity, installed a model bathroom featuring a sunken bath and a decorative goldfish bowl. as Bo Ne OR the next few months Claude’s existence was untroubled. Then came catastrophe. It happened to be one of the many nights when Fifi was doing her fire-watching on the premises. She never shirked her duty in this respect, for Fifi found the firewatchers’ flat much more comfortable than her own boarding house, and sometimes she consented to do everyone else’s fire-watching for months at a time. On this particular evening, she had done her washing for the week and then retired to bed early with a book. Soon, however, her book slipped from her hand, and she fell into a dreamless sleep. She struggled awake in the: early hours of the morning. There was an acrid smell in her nostrils. The room was hot, and there were crackling sounds in the next room. Fire! She rushed to the window, threw it up and screamed. A comforting sight met her eyes. Already the streets were crowded with (Continued on next page)

TALE FOR THE TIMES (Continued from previous page) people, and the Emergency Fire Service, in their dashing red and blue uniforms, were there in what was at least three-quarter strength: Already they were raising an extension ladder to her window. A gallant young officer, cap athwart his yellow curls, was already upon its lowest’ rung. Up he climbed and, seizing Fifi in the Emergency Fireman’s Lift, bore her down the ladder to safety amid the plaudits of the throng. * * * N three weeks, Claude’s building was as good as new, thanks to brisk action on the part of painters and paperhangers, but long after the outward signs of the fire had been removed, its inward effect upon the Public Mind remained E.F.S. stocks soared high. For months after the fire, eager recruits stormed the district offices, begging to be allowed to assume the red and blue of the E.F.S. and to do their part in effecting similar rescues of distressed maidens. Even when the official inquiry revealed that the fire had been caused, not by an incendiary bomb, but by Fifi’s carelessness in leaving the electric fire on to dry her washing, the patriotic zeal of the younger citizens knew no bounds. Finally, unable to expand the existing organisation to accommodate such a large number of recruits, the Government was forced to pass a bill preventing any woman below the age of 50 from taking her turn at firewatching, and immediately the number of volunteers dropped to manageable proportions., at By bg o poor Fifi had to go back to her boarding-house and leave the flat in Claude’s building in the careless hands

of masculifie fire-watchers. But every day she would take a few minutes of office time to steal upstairs and feed the goldfish, and dream of the day when the war was over and fire-watching on the premises no longer forbidden; when she and Frederick the Emergency Firemen, would get married and set up house there together. * * * HE war ended quite suddenly, as Mr. Churchill had at one stage said it might, and Fifi moved again into the office flat. But Frederick the Emergency Fireman, could not afford to get married till he had saved up enoygh mogey for a wedding ring, and now that he no longer collected 3/9 per night from the E.F.S., his financial position. was becoming atéadily worse. So meanwhile, Fifi and a_ girl-friend shared the flat, and such was her preoccupation with domestic affairs that even when Claude was in the middle of | dictation, Fifi was quite likely to rush off to put the potatoes on, and she left work regularly half-an-hour early so as to get the dinner on before her roommate got home from work. So that though Claude found her work less and less satisfactory, he could not but admire. her zeal for housewifely duties, and so he decided to marry her himself. And they both lived happily ever after, and Fifi didn’t really mind about Frederick, because she realised afterwards that it was only his uniform and the 3/9 a night that had attracted her, and now he had neither. And Claude continued to earn his title of Model Employer, and in time, he built another room on to the flat, and it was very convenient for Fifi having Claude working in the same building, because she was able to go out every day and leave Claude to divide his time: between the office and the nursery,