VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 41, SECTION 2
The Five Ropes: On One Person Too, No One Thing Can Stand Alone to the End
That thirty-eight-year-old last section changed several positions in a day. A person looking will likely think: he is a man in the middle, above him someone manages him, below him someone he manages, and that is why he hangs at both ends. Then walk up. Walk to the highest one, to the man who staked the money and has the say; surely he is free.
This section goes to look at that man. After the looking, a thing comes into view: the further up you walk, the more ropes there are. The first semester set a line, spoken then of a master and a cook two thousand years ago. This section sets the same line on the boss of that shop today: the higher the position, the more the constraint.
One, first see clear what he holds in his hand
See clear first the share he holds. That chair shop he raised from a tin shed twenty years ago. The first three years he cut the stock himself, delivered himself, slept in the shed at night to watch the stock. Today the shop has twenty-odd people, a saw, two assembly lines, a delivery truck, and an account past ten million a year.
He holds no small thing. Who to hire and who not, his say. Which batch of orders to take this month, his say. Whether to change the machine, whether to move the shop, whether to make that new chair next year, all one word of his. The workers clock off and go home, and he still sits in the office over the account. From outside, no one in this shop looks more the master.
The position the first semester set does read this way too: he who lays the constraint is the master. He pays wages to twenty-odd people, manages the living of their whole families, and this is laying a constraint, solid and real, no falseness. But to see where a man truly stands, seeing what he holds is not enough; a person must also see how many hands hold him at once. Below, those hands are counted out, one at a time.
Two, the first, the upstream end
The first rope is over his head, the raw stock. The man who makes a thing, his first business is to have stock to make with. Whether there is stock, and what the stock costs, is mostly not for the maker to set. Making chairs takes timber. Timber went up thirty in the hundred these two years, and he cannot hold it back. When those few board mills upstream raise the price, they do not ask him, and need not ask him. What he can do is two things: raise the chair’s price, or swallow the thirty himself. Raise it, and the clients run. Swallow it, and that grid of profit, thin to begin with, bottoms out at once.
Last year he made a trip out of province to find a cheaper house, ran six days, saw four, came back and reckoned the freight and the loss, and it was still the old house that paid. This is not that he would not put his heart in, nor that he cannot reckon an account. This is that position lying crossways there to begin with, and heart and reckoning cannot budge it. The second semester said a line: scarcity is the board. Timber is dear because timber is scarce, and timber is scarce not from any man’s bad heart, but because a tree on the hill takes decades to grow. This rope no one can untie; it can only be reckoned and got through.
Three, the second, the downstream end
The second rope is under his feet, the men who buy his chairs. The thing is made, and there must be someone willing to pay out. Whether they pay is not for the maker to set either. His biggest client last year took four in ten of his volume. That company changed its head of buying this year, and one word split half the orders to another. He went to talk twice, stood a meal, brought samples, said many good words, and could not talk it back. The reason was plain enough too: the newcomer is half a point cheaper.
This one keeps the least face, and leaves the least room. Last chapter spoke of that rule: no one strikes him down, only no one comes to buy. Whether they buy is a thing thousands and tens of thousands of strangers each decide for themselves, and no one can be talked round, no one commanded, there is not even a place to go and reason. It does not lose its temper, does not send notice, only the orders thin by the day.
He is the boss of twenty-odd people, but he is not the boss of those thousands and tens of thousands of buyers. He holds the living of the shop, and holds not one man in the market. What those thousands and tens of thousands think, how much they will pay this year for one chair, he has not even a place to ask. This end’s rope is the thinnest, and the stoutest. It does not ask whose son he is, does not ask how many years he has done, does not ask whom he stood a meal yesterday; it asks one thing: this chair, is it good, is it dear. Last section that thirty-eight-year-old argued his appraisal, and there was still a manager to argue with. This boss at this end has not even a door to go and argue at.
Four, the third, the bank end
The third rope is at his back, the sum he borrowed those years. To grow a little bigger takes adding a machine, and adding a machine takes a stake, and the stake mostly does not grow out of his own pocket. The new line was fitted on borrowed money, the machines pledged at the bank. Each month there is a repayment, interest walks by the month, the due day surer than anyone’s. When the market is good, this sum is a wing; it put him on that line two years ahead of his trade. When the market goes flat, the same sum turns into the block on his shoulder, not to be set down, not to be dodged.
And this rope, more to the point, is not pulled from his end. Whether interest is high or low looks to the whole country’s larger scene; whether the bank loosens this year looks to the order from above. These two he cannot even ask a word of; he can only wait for a slip of notice to come down and then reckon his own account by it. Last section that thirty-eight-year-old, the tenth of each month that mortgage pinned him. This boss’s sum is scores of times bigger, and the same in kind. The position is different, the rope’s thickness is different, but the rope’s direction is the same: they all pull a man from moving as he likes.
Five, the fourth and the fifth, the men and the order
The fourth rope is right at his side, facing him daily, the men. That old cutting hand has done nineteen years, the fastest hand in the shop is his, the hardest step only he can do, and a small fault in the machine he knows by its sound.
The year before last he had matters at home and said a word about going back to his old village, and for that fortnight the boss could not sleep at night. He added his wage, arranged his shift, let his son come work in the shop for the summer. He said himself later, laughing, that fortnight he was not the boss, he was the one begging. Is this holding the man, or held by the man? That master who could not cook, from the opening of the first semester, held all of the cook, and yet his three meals, his stomach, his life were in the cook’s hands. This section’s old hand is that cook.
The fifth rope is over his head, the order and the law. How the tax is paid, how the environment is checked, how the fire safety is changed, how the labor contract is signed, not one is his to set; he has only the two roads of doing it or not, and not doing it means shutting the door. Last year one slip of new rule came down, the venting to be redone, eleven days of stopped work, and those eleven days the machines did not turn, wages went out all the same, and where the money came from, no one managed for him.
These two with the first three make five. Timber pulls from above, the client pulls from below, the bank pulls from behind, the men pull at his side, the order and the law press on his crown. The boss of twenty-odd people, held by five hands at once, and not one to be loosed. He holds the living of twenty-odd people, and those five hands hold his.
Six, so, on one person too no one thing can stand alone to the end
Now put this section and the last together, and two faces of one and the same thing are seen. That thirty-eight-year-old, above him the slave, below him the master, one rope hung at both ends on him. This boss, who looks the most the master in the shop, is drawn by five ropes at once. That line from the first semester takes force a second time here: the slave-master is a slave too, the higher the position the more the constraint. This is not to say he is to be pitied, nor to say he is as bitter as the worker; bitter or not is another matter. This is to speak of position, to say he is propped on all sides by forces.
See clear here a thing that matters more. These five ropes, no one designed. No one held a meeting and decided to tie five on him. They grew out of the position itself. He wants timber, so he takes the upstream’s constraint. He wants to sell goods, so he takes the buyer’s constraint. He wants to borrow money, so he takes the bank’s constraint. He wants men to work, so he takes the men’s constraint. He wants to open a door on this patch of ground, so he takes the order and the law’s constraint. Want one thing, and take one constraint, and this the position itself brings, not anyone’s good heart, nor anyone’s scheming.
This is the check and balance in its most first-hand shape. Chapter forty-seven will speak of the check and balance on its own, and will tell of that Salt and Iron quarrel, and of that diamond that held for a hundred years and more. But the smallest sample of the check and balance is right here: on one person, five ropes, and no one lets another stand alone. There is no need to first go to the large places to find the check and balance; first know its shape on this one person. Know this one, and looking on down at a trade, at a country, the eye will not blur.
This section does not cry injustice for anyone. The boss has the boss’s hardship, the worker has the worker’s, the two hardships weigh unlike, and need not be set side by side and matched. This section does one thing only: it points the ropes out, points clear where they come from, where they pull. Who is more bitter than whom, that is another account. Who stands at what position, propped by what force, this is the thing this volume teaches. The next section digs this layer down one inch further, and asks the weightiest line: these positions, are they this man himself, or not.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Three, Position Is Not Identity: The Man Who Changes Position Four Times in a Day