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took for granted chiseling in others, so he always quoted chisel-proof
prices, and then came down to the regular prices. It made his
customers feel good. It pleased them to think that they had put one
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over on Harry , but he always had a quiet laugh to himself.
One year the whole valley was nearly ruined by a severe frost
that destroyed most of a great crop of grapes and oranges. Harry got
into his Studebaker and drove into the country. Frost-bitten oranges
were absolutely worthless because the Board of Health wouldn't
allow them to be marketed, but Harry had an idea. He went out to the
orange groves, and looked at the trees loaded with fruit that was now
worthless. He talked to the farmers and told them how sorry he was.
Then he said:
"But maybe I can help you out a little. I can use your frost-
bitten oranges... for hog and cattle feed. Hogs don't care if an orange
is frost-bitten, and the juice is good for them the same way it's good
for people.... vitamines. You don't have to do anything. I'll have the
oranges picked and taken away, and I'll give you a check for twenty-
five dollars, spot cash." That year he sent over twenty trucks loaded
with frost-bitten oranges to Los Angeles for the orange-juice stands,
and he cleaned up another small fortune.
Everyone said he could turn anything into money. He could
figure a way of making money out of anything. When the rest of the
world was down in the mouth, Harry was on his toes, working on the
Los Angeles way of disposing of bad oranges.
He never bothered about having an office. The whole town was
his office, and whenever he wanted to sit down, he would go up to the
eighth floor of Cory Building and sit in M. Peter's office, and chew
the rag with the attorney. He would talk along casually, but all the
time he would be finding out about contracts, and how to make
people come through with money, and how to attach property, and so
on. A lot of people were in debt to him, and he meant to get his
money.
He had sold electric refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, radios, and
a lot of other modern things to people who couldn't afford to buy
them, and he had sold these things simply by talking about them, and
by showing catalogue pictures of them. The customer had to pay
freight and everything else. All Harry did was talk and sell. If a man

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