Old English

The drama of business does not always go unrecorded. Sometimes it yields good ore to a professional playmaker. John Galsworthy, for instance, devised a play called "Old English" (which had a successful run in New York and London last year) from a meditation which must have taken shape some-- what like this:

"Old English--he's got to stand for something. A deep--hearted old jingo, tough as an acorn. Hearts of oak--wasn't that an old song? The acorn-heart of England. Ships, of course, and exports; that will be his business. An oak can stand for three hundred years, but this man is old. Have to get a big scene to bring out his fibre. Well, say he's in trouble with his stockholders; they don't like the way he's running the company, want him to resign, but he thinks he can diddle them again. He gets up to speak at a general meeting of shareholders. Catcalls, hoots, hisses. Shouts of 'Sit down!' . . . 'Take a Vacation!' . . He stands at the foot of the table, brown as wood. 'Gentlemen. . . .' His voice is so faint that they can hardly hear. 'Louder, louder!' And then he does it, makes his last bid and gets across. . . . Splendid stuff for the second act. . . ."

Thus that eminent propagandist, Mr. Galsworthy, must have planned his play. Does life plagiarize literature? Only last week, in a noisy director's room in London, the scene was enacted exactly as Mr. Galsworthy planned it. Sir Thomas Lipton was the oaken figure at the foot of the table. The tea business, a shareholder hinted, had far outgrown the ability of its founder. It needed, perhaps, a younger man -- Sir John Ferguson, director of finance. Another share holder pointed out that the company's overdraft at the bank was -L-10,000 in March. He would like to know what it was today.

Slowly, almost painfully, Sir Thomas began to speak. He did not utter exactly the words that Mr. Galsworthy wrote for his "Old English," but the emotion, the gnarled will standing like a beam in the tides, were the same.

". . . sound at the core, I tell you. My life work. . . . I am prepared to sacrifice all ideas of rest and recreation to help the business regain its wonted position. . . ."

The report and accounts were finally adopted by a majority vote.