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Tales of the Road

by Charles N. Crewdson · English · Gutenberg #6103 · 467,520 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Tales of the Road

Author: Charles N. Crewdson


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6103]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6103

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE ROAD ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





[Illustration: "He is the steam--and a big part of the engine too--
that makes business move"]


TALES OF THE ROAD

BY
CHARLES N. CREWDSON

_ILLUSTRATED BY J. J. GOULD_

1905




Dedicated to Alex C. Ritchey, Salesman.
the Author's Friend.




CONTENTS.

I     The square deal wins
II    Clerks, cranks and touches
III   Social arts as salesmen's assets
IV    Tricks of the trade
V     The helping hand
VI    How to get on the road
VII   First experiences in selling
VIII  Tactics in selling--I
IX    Tactics in selling--II
X     Tactics in selling--III
XI    Cutting prices
XII   Canceled orders
XIII  Concerning credit men
XIV   Winning the customer's good will
XV    Salesmen's don'ts
XVI   Merchants the salesman meets
XVII  Hiring and handling salesmen
XVIII Hearts behind the order book




ILLUSTRATIONS

He is the steam--and a big part of the engine too--that makes business
move

Larry let business drop entirely and danced a jig

"Whenever I let go the buggy handle the baby yelled"

"Tonight we dance, tomorrow we sell clothes again"
"I listened to episodes in the lives of all those seven children"

"I braced the old man--It wasn't exactly a freeze but there was a lot
of frost in the air"

"You ought to have seen his place"

"My stomach was beginning to gnaw, but I didn't dare go out"

"In big headlines I read 'Great Fire in Chicago'"

"Well, Woody," said he, "You seem to be taking things pretty easy"

"You'd better write that down with a pencil" said Harry

"Shure, that cigare is a birrd"

"He came in with his before breakfast grouch"
"I'm treed" said the drayman. "They're as heavy as lead"

"What explanation have you to make of this, sir?"

"He tried to jolly her along, but she was wise"




The author wishes to acknowledge his special debt of gratitude to the
SATURDAY EVENING POST, of Philadelphia.




CHAPTER I.

THE SQUARE DEAL WINS.


Salesmanship is the business of the world; it is about all there is to
the world of business. Enter the door of a successful wholesale or
manufacturing house and you stand upon the threshold of an
establishment represented by first-class salesmen. They are the steam
--and a big part of the engine, too--that makes business move.

I saw in print, the other day, the statement that salesmanship is the
"fourth profession." It is not; it is the first. The salesman, when he
starts out to "get there," must turn more sharp corners, "duck"
through more alleys and face more cold, stiff winds than any kind of
worker I know. He must think quickly, yet use judgment; he must act
quickly and still have on hand a rich store of patience; he must work
hard, and often long. He must coax one minute and "stand pat" the
next. He must persuade--persuade the man he approaches that he needs
_his_ goods and make him buy them--yes, _make_ him. He is messenger
boy, train dispatcher, department buyer, credit man, actor, lawyer and
politician--all under one hat!

By "salesman" I do not mean the man who stands behind the counter and
lets the customer who comes to him and wants to buy a necktie slip
away because the spots on the silk are blue instead of green; nor do I
mean the man who wraps up a collar, size 16, and calls "cash;" I mean
the man who takes his grip or sample trunks and goes to hunt his
customer--the traveling salesman. Certainly there are salesmen
_behind_ the counter, and he has much in common with the man on
the road.

To the position of traveling salesman attach independence, dignity,
opportunity, substantial reward. Many of the tribe do not appreciate
this; those do so best who in time try the "professional life." When
they do they usually go back to the road happy to get there again. Yet
were they permanently to adopt a profession--say the law--they would
make better lawyers because they had been traveling men. Were many
professional men to try the road, they would go back to their first
occupation because forced to. The traveling man can tell you why! I
bought, a few days ago, a plaything for my small boy. What do you
suppose it was? A toy train. I wish him to get used to it--for when he
grows up I am going to put him on the road hustling trunks.

My boy will have a better chance for success at this than at anything
else. If he has the right sort of stuff in him he will soon lay the
foundation for a life success; if he hasn't I'll soon find it out. As
a traveling salesman he will succeed quickly or not at all. In the
latter event, I'll set him to studying a profession. When he goes on
the road he may save a great part of his salary, for the firm he will
represent will pay his living expenses while traveling for them. He
will also have many leisure hours, and even months, in which to study
for a profession if he chooses; or, if he will, he may spend his "out
of season" months in foreign travel or any phase of intellectual
culture--and he will have the money _of his own earning_ with which to
do it. Three to six or eight months is as much time as most traveling
men can profitably give to selling goods on the road; the rest is
theirs to use as they please.

Every man who goes on the road does not succeed--not by any means. The
road is no place for drones; there are a great many drops of the honey
of commerce waiting in the apple blossoms along the road, but it takes
the busy "worker" bee to get it. The capable salesman may achieve
great success, not only on the road, but in any kind of activity. "The
road" is a great training school. The chairman of the Transportation
Committee in the Chicago city council, only a few years ago was a
traveling man. He studied law daily and went into politics while he
yet drew the largest salary of any man in his house. Marshall Field
was once a traveling man; John W. Gates sold barbed wire before he
became a steel king. These three men are merely types of successful
traveling men.

Nineteen years ago, a boy of 15, I quit picking worms off of tobacco
plants and began to work in a wholesale house, in St. Louis, at $5 per
week--and I had an even start with nearly every man ever connected
with the firm. The president of the firm today, now also a bank
president and worth a million dollars, was formerly a traveling man;
the old vice-president of the house, who is now the head of another
firm in the same line, used to be a traveling man; the present vice-
president and the president's son-in-law was a traveling man when I
went with the firm; one of the directors, who went with the house
since I did, is a traveling man. Another who traveled for this firm is
today a vice-president of a large wholesale dry goods house; one more
saved enough to go recently into the wholesale business for himself.
Out of the lot six married daughters of wealthy parents, and thirty or
more, who keep on traveling, earn by six months or less of road work,
from $1200 to $6000 each year. One has done, during his period of
rest, what every one of his fellow salesmen had the chance to do--take
a degree from a great university, obtain a license (which he cannot
afford to use) to practice law, to learn to read, write and speak with
ease two foreign languages and get a smattering of three others, and
to travel over a large part of the world.

Of all the men in the office and stock departments of this firm only
two of them have got beyond $25 a week; and both of them have been
drudges. One has moved up from slave-bookkeeper to credit-man slave
and partner. The other has become a buyer. And even he as well as
being a stock man was a city salesman.

Just last night I met, on leaving the street car, an old school boy
friend who told me that he was soon going to try his hand on the road
selling bonds. He asked me if I could give him any pointers. I said:
"Work and be square--never come down on a price; make the price right
in the beginning." "Oh, I don't know about that," said he. I slapped
him on the breast and answered: "I do!"

I would give every traveling man, every business man, _every man_
this same advice. Say what you will, a square deal is the only thing
to give your customer. You can do a little scaly work and win out at
it for a while; but when you get in the stretch, unless you have
played fair, the short horses will beat you under the wire.

The best customer on my order book came to me because I once had a
chance to do a little crooked work, but didn't. I had a customer who
had been a loyal one for many years. He would not even look at another
salesman's goods--and you know that it is a whole lot of satisfaction
to get into a town and walk into a door where you know you are
"solid." The man on the road who doesn't appreciate and care for a
faithful customer is not much of a man, anyway.

My old customer, Logan, had a little trouble with his main clerk. The
clerk, Fred, got it into his head that the business belonged to him,
and he tried to run it. But Logan wouldn't stand for this sort of work
and "called him down." The clerk became "toppy" and Logan discharged
him.

But, still, Fred had a fairly good standing in the town and interested
an old bachelor, a banker, who had a nephew that he wanted to start in
business. He furnished Fred and his nephew with $10,000 cash capital;
the three formed a partnership to open a new store and "buck" Logan.
Well, you know it is not a bad thing to "stand in" with the head clerk
when you wish to do business in an establishment. So I had always
treated Fred right and he liked me and had confidence in me. In fact,
it's a poor rule to fail to treat all well. I believe that the "boys"
on the road are the most tolerant, patient human beings on earth. To
succeed at their business they must be patient and after a while it
becomes a habit--and a good one, too.

You know how it goes! A merchant gets to handling a certain brand of
goods which is no better than many others in the same line. He gets it
into his head that he cannot do without that particular line. This is
what enables a man on the road to get an established trade. The clerks
in the store also get interested in some special brand because they
have customers who come in and ask for that particular thing a few
times. They do not stop to think that the man who comes in and asks
for a Leopard brand hat or a Knock-'em-out shoe does not have any
confidence in this special shoe or hat, but that he has confidence in
the establishment where he buys it.

So, when I was in Logan's town to sell him his usual bill, his clerk
hailed me from across the street and came over to where I stood. He
told me that he had quit his old job and that he was going to put in a
new stock. I, of course, had to tell him that I must stay with Logan,
but that out of appreciation of his past kindness to me I would do the
best I could to steer him right in my line of goods. I gave him a
personal letter to another firm that I had been with before and who, I
knew, would deal with him fairly.

Fred went in to market. When in the city he tried to buy some goods of
my firm. He intended to take these same goods and sell them for a
lower price than Logan had been getting, and thus cut hard into
Logan's trade. But the big manufacturers, you know, are awake to all
of those tricks and a first-class establishment will always protect
its customers. My house told Fred that before they could sell to him
they would have to get my sanction. They wired me about it, and I, of
course, had to be square with my faithful old friend, Logan; I placed
the matter before him. As I was near by, I wrote him, by special
delivery, and put the case before him. He, for self-protection, wired
my house that he would prefer that they would not sell his old clerk
who was now going to become his competitor. In fact, he said he would
not stand for it.

The very next season things came around so that Logan went out of
business, and then I knew that I was "up against it" in his town--my
old customer gone out of business; Fred not wanting, then, of course,
to buy of me. But I took my medicine and consoled myself with the
thought that a few grains of gold would pan out in the wash.

Up in a large town above Logan's I had a customer named Dave, who had
moved out from Colorado. He was well fixed, but he had not secured the
right location. Say what you will, location has a whole lot to do with
business. Of course, a poor man would not prosper in the busy streets
of Cairo, but the best sort of a hustler would starve to death doing
business on the Sahara. A big store in Dave's new town failed. He had
a chance to buy out the, stock at 75 cents on the dollar. He wished to
do so; but, although he was well-to-do, he didn't have the ready cash.

One night I called on Dave and he laid the case before me. He told me
how sorry he was not to get hold of this "snap." I put my wits
together quickly and I said to him: "Dave, I believe I can do you some
good."

The next morning I went to see a banker, who was a brother-in-law of
Logan's and who had made enough money, merchandising and out of wheat,
down in Logan's old town, to move up to the city and go into the
banking business. The banker knew all about the way that I had treated
his brother-in-law, and I felt that because I had been square with
Logan he would have confidence in anything I would say to him. I laid
the case before the banker. I told him I knew Dave to be well fixed,
to have good credit, to be a good rustler and strictly straight.

In a little while I brought Dave to meet the banker. The banker
immediately, upon my recommendation, told him that he could have all
the money he needed-$16,000. The banker also wired to the people who
owned the stock--he was well acquainted with them--and told them he
would vouch for Dave.

The deal went through all right and Dave now buys every cent's worth,
that he uses in my line, from me. He is the best customer I have; I
got him by _being square_.

A great mistake which some salesmen make when they first start on the
road is to "load" their customers. The experienced man will not do
this, for he soon learns that he will "lose out" by it. A merchant
will not long continue to buy from a traveling man in whom he has no
confidence. He, in great measure, depends on the judgment of the
traveling man as to the styles and quantities he should buy. If the
salesman sells him too much of anything it is only a matter of time
when the merchant will buy from some other man. When a storekeeper
buys goods he invests money; and his heart is not very far from his
bank-book.

The time when the traveling man will ram all he can into an order is
when the merchant splits his business in the salesman's line, buying
the same kind of goods from two or more houses. Then the salesman
sells as much as he can, that he may crowd the other man out. But even
this is poor policy.

I once took on a new town. My predecessor had been getting only a
share of his customer's trade; two others had divided the account with
him. I made up my mind to have all of the account or none. The
merchant went to my sample room and gave me an order for a bill of
hats. He bought at random. When I asked him what sizes he wanted, he
said: "Oh, run 'em regular." "Very well," said I, "but will it not be
well to look through your stock and see just what sizes you need?
Maybe you have quite a number of certain sizes on hand and it will be
needless for you to get more of them. Let's go down to the store and
look through your stock."

We went to his store. The first item on the order he had given me was
one dozen black "Columbias." I found that he had five dozen already on
hand. "Look here," said I, "don't you think I would better scratch
that item off of the bill?" I drew my pencil through the "one dozen
Columbias."

"Now let us go through your whole stock and see if there are not other
items you have duplicated," I suggested. We worked together for four
hours--until after midnight. It was the biggest mess of a stock I ever
saw. When we got through I had cut down my order three-fourths.

"See," said I, showing the merchant my order-book and his stock list--
which every merchant should have when he goes to buy goods--"you have
enough of some kinds to last you three years. Others, because they
have gone out of style, are worth nothing. All you can get out of them
will be clear profit; throw them out and sell them for any price.

"Do you know what has been happening to you right along? Three men--
and the one from my firm is just as guilty as the rest--have been
loading you. Why, if I were a judge and they were brought before me,
I'd sentence them to jail."

"And I guess I ought to be made to go along with them," broke in my
friend, "for participating in the crime."

"That I will leave you to judge," said I, "but there is one thing for
sure: You will not see me back here again for a year; it would be a
crime for anyone to take an order from you during that time. And when
I do come I want all of your business, or none; you haven't enough for
three, or even for two. You can buy no more than you can sell to your
customers, unless you go broke some day. Your interest and my interest
are the same. In truth, I stand on the same side of the counter as you
do. It is to my interest to treat you right. My firm is merely the one
from which you and I together select your goods. Ought I not to see
that they give you the right things at the right prices? If I treat
you right, and my firm does not, you will follow me to another; if I
treat you wrong I'll lose both your confidence and my job."

That man today gives me all of his business; I got him by _being
square_.

By being over-conscientious, however, a salesman sometimes will not
let his customer buy enough. This is frequently to the disadvantage of
the merchant. To sell goods a merchant must have goods; to have them
he must buy them. The stingy man has no business in business. Many a
man becomes a merchant and, because he is either too close-fisted or
hasn't enough capital or credit with which to buy goods, is awakened,
some fine morning, by the tapping on his front door of the Sheriff's
hammer. A man may think that if he goes into business his friends will
buy "any old thing, just because it's me"; but he will find out that
when he goes to separate his friends from their coin he must give them
the kind of goods they want. The successful merchant is the man who
carries the stock.

One of my old friends, who was a leading hat salesman of St. Louis,
once told me the following experience:

"Several years ago I was out in western Texas on a team trip. It was a
flush year; cattle were high. I had been having a good time; you know
how it goes--the more one sells the more he wants to sell and can
sell. I heard of a big cattleman who was also running a cross-roads
grocery store. He wanted to put in dry goods, shoes and hats. His
store was only a few miles out of my way so I thought that I would
drive over and see him.

"How I kicked myself when I drove up to his shanty, hardly larger, it
seemed to me, than my straw-goods trunk! But, being there, I thought I
would pick up a small bill anyway. I make it a rule never to overlook
even a little order, for enough of them amount to as much as one big
one. When I went in the old gentleman was tickled to see me and told
me to open up--that he wanted a 'right smart' bill. I thought that
meant about $75.

"I had to leave my trunks outside--the store was so small--so I
brought in at first only a couple of stacks of samples, thinking that
they would be enough. I pulled out a cheap hat and handed it to him.

"'That's a good one for the money,' said I, 'a dollar apiece.' I used
to always show cheap goods first, but I have learned better.

"He looked at my sample in contempt and, pulling a fine Stetson hat
off his head, said: 'Haven't you got some hats like this one?'

"'Yes, but they will cost you $84 a dozen,' I answered, at the same
time handing him a fine beaver quality Stetson.

"'The more they cost the better they suit us cattlemen; we are not
paupers, suh! How many come in a box?'

"'Two.'

"'Two?' said he. 'You must be talking about a pasteboard box; I mean a
wooden box, a case.'

"'Three dozen come in a case, Colonel.'

"'Well, give me a case.'

"I had never sold a case of these fine goods in my life, so I said to
him: 'That's lots more, Colonel, than I usually sell of that kind, and
I don't want to overload you; hadn't we better make it a dozen?'

"'Dozen? Lor', no. You must think that there's nobody in this country,
that they haven't any money, and that I haven't any money. Did you see
that big bunch of cattle as you came in? They're all mine--mine, suh;
and I don't owe the bank a cent on them, suh. No, suh, not a cent,
suh. I want a case of these hats, suh--not a little bundle that you
can carry under yo' arm.'

"I was afraid that I had made the old gentleman mad, and, knowing him
by reputation to be worth several thousand dollars, I thought it best
to let him have his way. I went through the two stacks with him and
then brought in the rest of my samples. He bought a case of a kind
right through--fine hats, medium hats and cheap hats for greasers; he
bought blacks, browns and light colors. I was ashamed to figure up the
bill before his face. But just as soon as I got out of sight I added
up the items and it amounted to $2l00--the best bill I took on that
trip.

"I sent the order in, but I thought that I would not have to call
there again for a long time. The house shipped the bill, and the old
gentleman discounted it.

"Next trip I was intending to give that point the go-by. I really felt
that the old gentleman not only needed no more goods, but that he
would shoot me if I called on him. But when I reached the town next to
his, my customer there, who was a friend of the Colonel's, told me
that the old gentleman had sent him word that he wished to buy some
more goods and for me to be sure to come to see him.

"When I came driving up to the Colonel's store the back end of it
looked peculiar to me. He had got so many goods from me that he had
been obliged to take the wooden cases they were shipped in and make
out of these boxes an addition to his store. Lumber was scarce in that
country. The Colonel came out and shook hands with me before I was out
of my wagon. I was never greeted more warmly in my life.

"'Look heah,' he began, 'I owe you an apology, suh; and I want to make
it to you befo' you pass my threshol', suh. When you were heah befo' I
fear that I allowed my indignation to arise. I am sorry of it, suh,
sorry! Give me yo' hand and tell me that you will pahdon me. I can't
look you square in the face until you do.'

"'Why, Colonel, that's all right,' said I, 'I didn't want to abuse
your confidence, but I fear that I myself was impertinent in trying to
show you that I knew more about your business than you did. I want to
beg your pardon.'

"'No pahdon to grant, suh; and I want you to accept my apology. The
truth is the cowboys in this country have been deviling me to death,
nearly--ever since I started this sto'--to get them some good hats--
good ones, suh. They told me that they couldn't get a decent hat in
this whole country. I promised them that I would buy some of the best
I could find. When yo's came some of the boys saw the wagon bound for
my store, ten miles out of town. They fo'med a sort of a procession,
suh, and marched in with the team. Every one of these boys bought one
of those finest hats you sold me. They spread the news that I had a
big stock and a fine stock, all over this country; and, do you know,
people have come two hundred miles to buy hats of me? Some of my
friends laughed at me, they say, because I bought so many that I had
to use the cases they came in to make an addition to my sto'. But the
more they laughed, suh, the more necessary they made the addition. If
you can only get people to talking about you, you will thrive. Believe
me in this, suh: If they say something good about you, that is good;
if they say something bad about you, that is better--it spreads
faster. Those fool merchants did not know, suh, that they were helping
my business every time that they told about how many hats I had
bought, until one day a fellow, when they were laughing about me,
said: "Well, if that's the case I'll buy my hat from him; I like,
anyway, to patronize the man who carries a good stock." Now you just
come back and see how empty my addition is.'

"I went back into my addition and found that the Colonel's hats were
nearly all gone. He had actually sold--and out of his little shanty--
more of my goods than any other customer I had. When I started to have
my trunks unloaded the Colonel said to me: 'Now just hol' on there;
that's entirely unnecessary. The last ones sold so well, you just
duplicate my last bill, except that you leave out the poah hats. Come,
let's go up to my house and have a julep and rest a while.'"

Although a man's friends will not buy from him if he does not carry
the goods, he will yet get their patronage over the other fellow if he
has the right stock. Here's where a man's personality and adaptability
are his stock in trade when he is on the road; and the good salesman
gets the business over his competitor's head just by being able to
turn the mood of the merchant he meets. The more moods he can turn,
the larger his salary.

One of my musician road friends once told me how he sold a bill to a
well-known old crank, now dead, in the state of Montana.

"When I used to work at the bench, years ago," said he, as we sat in
the smoker, "evenings when I was free, for relaxation, I studied
music. Our shop boys organized a brass band. I played the trombone,
and learned to do so fairly well. I never thought then that my music
would fatten my pocket-book; but since I have been on the road it has
served me a good turn more than once--it has sold me many a bill.

"You've heard of the 'Wild Irishman of Chinook,' haven't you?"

"Old Larry, the crank?" said I.

"Yes, old Larry, the great."

[Illustration: "Larry let business drop entirely and danced a jig."]

"Well, sir, the first evening I ever went into Larry's store, I hadn't
been in a minute until he said to me: 'Oi'm all full up; Oi've got
plinty of it, I doon't give a dom pwhat ye're silling.'

"I paid no attention to him, as I had heard of him; instead of going
out I bought a cigar and sat down by the stove. Although a man may not
wish to buy anything from you, you know, he is always willing to sell
you something, even if it is only a cigar. I've caught many a
merchant's ear by buying something of him. My specialty is bone collar
buttons--they come cheap. I'll bet that I bought a peck of them the
first time I made a trip through this country.

"I had not been sitting by the stove long until I noticed, in a show
case, a trombone. I asked Larry to please let me see it. 'Oi'll lit ye
say the insthrumint,' said he, 'but pwhat's the good of it? Ye can't
play the thromboon, can ye? Oi'm the only mon in this berg that can
bloo that hairn. Oi'm a mimber of the bhrass band.'

"I took the horn and, as I ran the scale a few times, Larry's eyes
began to dance. He wouldn't wait on the customer who came in. The
instrument was a good one. I made 'Pratties and fishes are very foine
dishes for Saint Pathrick in the mairnin'' fairly ring. A big crowd
came in. Larry let business drop entirely and danced a jig. He kept me
playing for an hour, always something 'by special rayquist'--'Molly
Dairlint,' 'Moggie Moorphy's Hoom' and everything he could think of.
Finally he asked me for 'Hairts Booed Doon.'

"As I played 'The Heart Bowed Down,' tears came to the old Irishman's
eyes. When I saw these, I played yet better; this piece was one of my
own favorites. I felt a little peculiar myself. This air had made a
bond between us. When I finished, the old man said to me: 'Thank ye,
thank ye, sor, with all my hairt! That's enoof. Let me put the hairn
away. Go hoom now. But coom aroond in the mairnin' and Oi'll boy a
bill of ye; Oi doon't give a dom pwhat ye're silling. If Oi've got
your loine in my sthore Oi'll boy a bill; if I haven't, Oi'll boy a
bill innyway and stairt a new depairtmint. Good noight, give me yer
hand, sor.'

"Not only did Larry give me a good order, but he went to two more
merchants in the town and made them buy from me. He bought every
dollar's worth of his goods in my line from me as long as he lived."




CHAPTER II.

CLERKS, CRANKS AND TOUCHES.


Many a bill of goods is sold on the road through the influence of the
clerk. The traveling man who overlooks this point overlooks a strong
one. The clerk is the one who gets next to the goods. He checks them
off when they come in, keeps the dust off of them every day, sells
them to the people and often he does the selecting of the goods in the
first place. A merchant usually buys what pleases the clerks in order
to get them interested. In this way he puts a sort of responsibility
upon them. If the business man neglects his clerks, they neglect his
business; if the traveling man ignores the clerks, they ignore the
traveling man.

But in this matter the salesman must go just so far and no farther,
for the moment that the merchant begins to think the traveling man is
influencing the clerks unduly, down comes the hatchet! A hat man once,
as we rode together on the train, told me this incident:

"I once sold a small bill of hats to a large merchant down in
California," said he. "The next season when I came around I saw that
my goods were on the floor-shelf. I didn't like this. If you want to
get your goods sold, get them where they are easy to reach. Clerks,
and merchants too, usually follow the line of least resistance; they
sell that which they come to first. If a man asks me where he ought to
put his case for hats to make them move, I tell him, 'up front.'

"From the base shelf I dug up a box of my goods, knocked the dust off
the lid, took out a hat, began to crease it. One of the clerks came
up. He was very friendly. They usually are. They like to brush up
against the traveling man, for it is the ambition of nineteen clerks
out of every twenty to get on the road.

"My young friend, seeing the hat in my hand, said, 'Gee, that's a
beaut. I didn't know we had a swell thing like that in the house. I
wish I'd got one like that instead of this old bonnet.'

"With this he showed me a new stiff hat. I scarcely glanced at it
before I cracked the crown out of it over my heel, handed him the hat
I had taken out of the box, threw three dollars on the counter and
said, 'Well, we'll swap. Take this one.'

"'Guess I will, all right, all right!' he exclaimed.

"Another one of the boys who saw this incident came up with his old
hat and asked, laughing, 'Maybe you want to swap with me?'

"Crack went another hat; down I threw another three dollars. Before I
got through, eight clerks had new hats, and I had thrown away twenty-
four dollars.

"Thrown away? No, sir. I'll give that much, every day of the week, to
get the attention of a large dealer. Twenty-four dollars are made in a
minute and a half by a traveling man when he gets to doing business
with a first-class merchant.

"The proprietor, Hobson, was not then in. When I dropped in that
afternoon, I asked him if he would see my samples.

"'No, sir, I will not,' he spoke up quickly. 'To be plain with you, I
do not like the way in which you are trying to influence my clerks.'

"There was the critical--the 'psychological'--moment. Weakness would
have put an end to me. But this was the moment I wanted. In fact, I
have at times deliberately made men mad just to get their attention.

"'Hobson,' I flashed back, 'You can do just as you please about
looking at my goods. But I'll tell you one thing: I have no apology to
offer in regard to your clerks. You bought my goods and buried them. I
know they are good, and I want you to find it out. I have put them on
the heads of your men because I am not ashamed to have them wear them
before your face. You can now see how stylish they are. In six months
you will learn how well they wear. I would feel like a sneak had I
stealthily slipped a twenty dollar gold piece into the hand of your
hat man and told him to push my goods. But I haven't done this. In
fact I gave a hat to nearly every clerk you have except your hat man.
He was away. Even your delivery boy has one. You owe me an apology,
sir; and I demand it, and demand it right now! I've always treated you
as a gentleman, sir; and you shall treat me as such.' Then, softening
down, I continued: 'I can readily see how, at first glance, you were
offended at me; but just think a minute, and I believe you'll tell me
you were hasty.'

"'Yes, I was,' he answered quietly. 'Got your stuff open? I'll go
right down with you.' After Hobson had, in a few minutes, given me a
nice order, he said to me: 'Well, do you know, I like your pluck.'

"It sometimes happens that a traveling man meets with a surly clerk, a
conceited clerk, or a bribed clerk who has become buyer," continued my
friend. "Then the thing to do is to go straight to the head of the
establishment. The man I like to do business with is the man whose
money pays for my goods. He is not pulled out of line by guy ropes. It
is well to stand in with the clerks, but it is better to be on the
right side of the boss. When it gets down to driving nails, he is the
one to hammer on the hardest.

"I once took on the territory of a man who had quit the road. About
this same time one of his best customers had, to some extent, retired
from business activity and put on a new buyer in my department. Now,
this is a risky thing, you know, for a merchant to do unless the buyer
gets an interest in the business and becomes, in truth, a merchant
himself. It usually means the promotion of a clerk who gets a swelled
head. The new buyer generally feels that he must do something to show
his ability and one of the ways he does this is by switching lines.

"During the illness of my predecessor, who soon after quit the road,
another man made for him a part of his old trip. In one of the towns
he made he struck the new buyer and, of course, got turned down. Had I
been there, I would have received the same sort of treatment.

"My immediate predecessor, who was turned down, posted me; so when I
went to the town, I knew just what to do--go direct to the proprietor.
I knew that my goods were right; all I needed was unprejudiced
attention. Prejudice anyway buys most of the goods sold; merit is a
minor partner. Were merchandise sold strictly on merit, two-thirds of
the wholesale houses and factories would soon lock up; and the other
third would triple their business.

"When I entered the store, I went straight to the proprietor and told
him without introducing myself (a merchant does not care what your
name is) what my line of business was. It was Saturday afternoon. I
would rather go out making business on Saturday than any other day
because the merchant is doing business and is in a good humor, and you
can get right at the point. Of course, you must catch him when he is
not, for the moment, busy.

"'Can't do anything for you, sir, I fear,' said he. 'Hereafter we are
going to buy that line direct from the factories.'

"I saw that the proprietor himself was prejudiced, and that the one
thing to do was to come straight back at him. 'Where do you suppose my
hats come from?' said I. 'My factory is the leading one in New
Jersey.' I was from Chicago although my goods, in truth, were made in
Orange Valley.

"'Will you be here Monday?' he asked. This meant that he wanted to
look at my samples. The iron was hot; then was the time to strike.

"'Sorry, but I cannot,' I answered. 'But I'll tell you what I'll do.
My line is a specialty line--only fine goods--and I'll bring in a
small bunch of samples tonight about the time you close up.' Merchants
like to deal with a man who is strictly business when they both get to
doing business. Then is the time to put friendship and joking on the
shelf.

"That night at ten o'clock I was back at the store with a bundle under
my arm. The man who is too proud to carry a bundle once in a while
would better never start on the road. The proprietor whispered to the
hat buyer--I overheard the words--'Large Eastern factory'--and
together they began to look at my samples. The new buyer went to the
shelves and got out some of the goods which had come from my house to
compare with my samples,--which were just the same quality. But, after
fingering both, he said right out to the proprietor: 'There's no
comparison. I've told you all along that the factory was the place to
buy.'

"I booked my order--it was a fat one, too--solid case lots.

"'Shall I ship these from Orange Valley or Chicago?' I asked.

"'Why do you ask that?' asked the proprietor.

"'Because you have bought a bill from a firm you have dealt with for
twenty years, Blank and Company of Chicago, that I represent, and I do
not want one who has favored me to pay any extra freight. You will
pardon me, I'm sure, for not telling you the whole truth until now;
but this was the only way in which I could overcome your prejudice.'"

"That's one on me," said the merchant. "Come--boys, you are in on this
too--I'll buy the smokes."

Many traveling men make mistakes by steering shy of cranks. The so-
called crank is the easiest man to approach, if only you go at him
right.

Once I sat at dinner with two other traveling men who were strangers
to me--as strange as one traveling man ever is to another. This is
not, however, very "strange," for the cosmopolitan life of the road
breeds a good fellowship and a sort of secret society fraternity among
all knights of the grip. My territory being new, I made inquiry
regarding the merchants of a certain town to which I intended to go.

"Don't go there," spoke up one of my table companions. "There's no one
there who's any good except old man Duke and he's the biggest crank on
earth. He discounts his bills,--but Lord, it's a job to get near him."

Some men on the road are vulgar; but will not this comment apply to
some few of any class of men?

"My friend," said companion number two, looking straight at the man
who had just made the above remarks, "I've been on the road these many
years and, if my observation counts for anything, those we meet are,
to a great extent, but reflections of ourselves. True, many call Mr.
Duke peculiar, but I have always got along with him without any
trouble. I consider him a gentleman."

I went to the "old crank's" town. As I rode on the train, louder than
the clacking of the car wheels, I heard myself saying over and over
again: "_Those we meet are, to a great extent, but reflections of
ourselves._"

When I went into the old gentleman's store, he was up front in his
office at work on his books. I merely said, "Good morning, sir," and
went back and sat down by the stove. It's never a good thing to
interrupt a merchant when he's busy. He, and he alone, knows what is
most important for him to do. Maybe he has an urgent bill or sight
draft to meet; maybe he has a rush order to get off in the next mail;
maybe he is figuring up his profit or his loss on some transaction.
Then is not the time to state your business if you wish to make your
point. The traveling man must not forget that the merchant's store is
a place of business; that he is on the lookout for good things and
just as anxious to buy good goods advantageously as the salesman is to
sell them; and that he will generally lend an ear, for a moment at
least,--if properly approached--to any business proposition.

After a while, the old gentleman came back to the stove and, as he
approached, politely said to me, "Is there something I can do for you,
suh?"

I caught his southern accent and in a moment was on my guard. I arose
and, taking off my hat--for he was an old gentleman--replied: "That
remains with you, sir," and I briefly stated my business, saying
finally, "As this is my first time in your town and as my house is
perhaps new to you, possibly, if you can find the time to do so, you
may wish to see what I have." Recalling that one of my table
companions had said he considered him a gentleman I was especially
careful to be polite to the merchant. And politeness is a jewel that
every traveling man should wear in his cravat.

"I shall see you at one thirty, suh. Will you excuse me now?" With
this the old gentleman returned to his office. I immediately left the
store. The important thing to get a merchant to do is to consent to
look at your goods. When you can get him to do this, keep out of his
way until he is ready to fulfil his engagement. Then, when you have
done your business, pack your goods and leave town. What the merchant
wants chiefly with the traveling man is to _do business_ with him.
True, much visiting and many odd turns are sometimes necessary to
get the merchant to the point of "looking," but when you get him
there, leave him until he is ready to "look." Friendships, for sure,
will develop, but don't force them.

At one twenty-nine that afternoon I started for the "old crank's"
store. It was just across the street from my sample room. I met him in
the middle of the street. He was a crank about keeping his engagements
promptly. I respect a man who does this. The old gentleman looked
carefully, but not tediously, at my goods, never questioning a price.
In a little while, he said: "I shall do some business with you, suh;
your goods suit me."

I never sold an easier bill in my life and never met a more pleasant
gentleman. Our business finished, he offered me a cigar and asked that
he might sit and smoke while I packed my samples. Yes, offered me a
cigar. And I took it. It was lots better than offering him one. He
enjoyed giving me one more than he would have enjoyed smoking one of
mine. In fact, it flatters any man more to accept a favor from him
than to do one for him. Many traveling men spend two dollars a day on
cigars which they give away. They are not only throwing away money but
also customers sometimes. The way for the salesman on the road to
handle the man he wants to sell goods to in order to get his regard is
to treat him as he does the man of whom he expects no favors. When you
give a thing to a man he generally asks in his own mind, "What for?"

Before I left the town of the "old crank" I met with another of his
peculiarities. I was out of money. I asked him if he would cash a
sight draft for me on my firm for a hundred dollars.

"No, suh," said he. "I will not. I was once swindled that way and I
now make it a rule never to do that."

Needles stuck in me all over.

"But," continued the old gentleman, "I shall gladly lend you a hundred
dollars or any amount you wish."

For the many years I went to the town of the "old crank," our
relationship was most cordial. I believe we became friends. More than
once did he drop business and go out fishing with me. Since the first
day we met I have often recalled the words of my table companion:
"Those we meet are, to a great extent, but reflections of ourselves."

Recalling the predicament I was in for a moment in the town of the
"old crank," reminds me of an experience I once had. As a rule, I
haven't much use for the man on the road who borrows money. If he
hasn't a good enough stand-in with his firm to draw on the house or
else to have the firm keep him a hundred or two ahead in checks, put
him down as no good. The man who is habitually broke on the road is
generally the man who thinks he has the "gentle finger," and that he
can play in better luck than the fellow who rolls the little ivory
ball around a roulette wheel. There are not many of this kind, though;
they don't last long. It's mostly the new man or the son of the boss
who thinks he can pay room rent for tin horns.

Even the best of us, though, get shy at least once in a life time, and
have to call on some one for chips. I've done this a few times myself.
I never refused one of the boys on the road a favor in all my life.
Many a time I've dug up a bill and helped out some chap who was broke
and I knew, at the time, that as far as getting back the money went, I
might just as well chuck it in the sewer. Few of the boys will borrow,
but all of them are ever ready to lend.

The one time I borrowed was in Spokane. When I went down to the depot
I learned that I could buy a baggage prepaid permit and save about
fifty dollars. I did not know until I reached the station that I could
do this in Spokane. Down east they haven't got on well to this system.
You can prepay your excess baggage all the way from a coast point
clear back to Chicago and have the right to drop your trunks off
anywhere you will along the route. This makes a great saving. Well,
when I went to check in I saw that I was short about four dollars. I
did not have time to run back to my customer's up town or to the hotel
and cash a draft. I looked to see if there was somebody around that I
knew. Not a familiar face. I had to do one of three things: Lose a
day, give up by slow degrees over fifty dollars to the Railroad
Company, or strike somebody for four.

Right here next to me at the baggage counter stood a tall, good
natured fellow--I shall always remember his sandy whiskers and pair of
generous blue eyes. He was checking his baggage to Walla Walla.

"Going right through to Walla Walla?" said I.

"Yes," he said, "can I do anything for you?"

"Well, since you have mentioned it, you can," I answered.

I introduced myself, told my new friend--Mason was his name, Billie
Mason--how I was fixed and that I would give him a note to my
customer, McPherson, at Walla Walla, requesting him to pay back the
money.

I gave Mason the order, written with a lead pencil on the back of an
envelope, and he gave me the four dollars.

I got down to Walla Walla in a few days. When I went in to see
McPherson the first thing I said to him, handing him four dollars,
was: "Mac, I want to pay you back that four."

"What four?" said McPherson.

"What four?" said I. "Your memory must be short. Why, that four I gave
a traveling man, named Mason, an order on you for!"

McPherson looked blank; but we happened to be standing near the
cashier's desk, and the matter was soon cleared up.

The cashier, who was a new man in the store, spoke up and said: "Yes,
last week a fellow was in here with an order on you for four dollars,
but it was written with a lead pencil on the back of an envelope. I
thought it was no good. I didn't want to be out the four, so I refused
to pay it."

"The deuce you did," said my friend Mac, "Why, I've known this man
(referring to me) and bought goods of him for ten years."

The thing happened this way: On the very day that Mason presented my
order both McPherson himself and the clerk in my department were out
of town. When the new cashier told Mason that he did not know me,
Mason simply thought he was "done" for four, and walked out thanking
himself that the amount was not more.

But it so happened that Mason himself that night told this joke on
himself to a friend of mine.

My friend laughed "fit to kill" and finally said to Mason: "Why that
fellow's good for four hundred;" and he gave Mason what I had failed
to give him--my address.

I had also failed to take Mason's address. After he made me the loan
in Spokane we sat on the train together chatting. I became well
acquainted with him, and with a friend of his named Dickey, who was
along with us. Yet I did not ask Mason his business, even; for, as you
know, it's only the fresh, new man who wants to know what every man he
meets is selling.

After McPherson's new cashier had told me that he had not paid my
order, I inquired of every man I met about Mason, but could get no
clew on him. He was in a specialty jewelry business and made only a
few large towns in my territory. Every time I boarded a train I would
look all through it for those sandy whiskers. It was lucky that he
wore that color; it made the search easy. I even looked for him after
midnight--not only going through the day coaches, but asking the
Pullman porters if such a man was aboard. I woke up more than one red-
whiskered man out of his slumbers and asked him: "Is your name Mason?"
One of them wanted to lick me for bothering him, but he laughed so
loudly when, in apologizing, I told him the reason for my search that
he woke up the whole car. I never found him this way, and not having
his address, I could only wait.

I had just about given up all hopes of getting a line on my confiding
friend when, several weeks after a letter bearing the pen marks of
many forwardings, caught me. I've got that letter; it reads this way:

 "Walla Walla, Dec. 6th.

"My Dear Sir:

"I called on Mr. McPherson today and unfortunately found him out of
the city. None of his clerks seemed to know you when I presented your
request for an advance. They all began to look askance at me as if I
were a suspicious character. I ought to have put on my white necktie
and clerical look before going in, but unluckily I wore only my
common, everyday, drummer appearance.

"I got your address from a fellow wayfarer here just minute ago. My
train goes soon. I am writing you care of your house as I'm a little
leery of sending it care of your friend McPherson.

"Your order for the four now reposes in the inside pocket of my vest
amongst my firm's cash and will stand as an I. O. U. against me until
I hear from you. Even as I write, my friend Dickey, who sits at my
left, keeps singing into my ear:

"'If I should die tonight and you should come to my cold corpse and
say:

"'"Here, Bill, I've brought you back that four,"

"'"I'd rise up in my white cravat and say: "What's that?" And then
fall dead once more.'

"Beseechingly yours,

"W. L. Mason, "Denver, Box --."

Although I sent Mason a check, it seemed that I was ever doomed to be
in error with him. I wrote him insisting that he wear a new hat on me
and asked him to send me his size.

He wrote back that he was satisfied to get the four dollars; but,
since I pressed the matter, his size was seven and one-fourth.

I wrote my hatter to express a clear beaver to Mason. But somehow he
got the size wrong, for Mason wrote back:

"Dear Brother: Everything that I have to do with you seems at first
all wrong, but finally wiggles out all right. For example, while I
stated that my size was seven and one-fourth your hatter sent a seven
and one-half--two sizes too big under ordinary circumstances. But I
was so tickled to get the unexpected four and a new lid besides that
my head swelled and my bonnet fit me to a T."




CHAPTER III.

SOCIAL ARTS AS SALESMEN'S ASSETS.


Salesmanship has already been defined as the art of overcoming
obstacles, of turning defeat into victory by the use of tact and
patience. Courtesy must become constitutional with the drummer and
diplomacy must become second nature to him. All this may have a very
commercial and politic ring, but its logic is beyond question. It
would be a decided mistake, however, to conclude that the business
life of the skilful salesman is ruled only by selfish, sordid or
politic motives.

In the early nineties, I was going through Western Kansas; it was the
year of the drought and the panic. Just as the conductor called "All
aboard" at a little station where we had stopped for water, up drove
one of the boys. His pair of bronchos fairly dripped with sweat; their
sides heaved like bellows--they had just come in from a long, hard
drive. As the train started the commercial tourist slung his grips
before him and jumped on. He shook a cloud of dust out of his linen
coat, brushed dust off his shoes, fingered dust out of his hair, and
washed dust off his face. He was the most dust-begrimed mortal I ever
saw. His ablutions made, he sat down in a double seat with me and
offered me a cigar.

"Close call," said I.

"Yes, you bet--sixteen miles in an hour and thirty-five minutes. That
was the last time I'll ever make that drive."

"Customer quit you?"

"He hasn't exactly quit me, he has quit his town. All there ever has
been in his town was a post office and a store, all in one building;
and he lived in the back end of that. It has never paid me to go to
see him, but he was one of those loyal customers who gave me all he
could and gave it without kicking. He gave me the glad hand--and that,
you know, goes a long ways--and for six years I've been going to see
him twice a year, more to accommodate him than for profit. The boys
all do lots of this work--more than merchants give them credit for.
His wife was a fine little woman. Whenever my advance card came--she
attended to the post office--she would always put a couple of chickens
in a separate coop and fatten them on breakfast food until I arrived.
Her dinner was worth driving sixteen miles for if I didn't sell a sou.

"But it is all off now. The man was always having a streak of hard
luck--grasshoppers, hail, hot winds, election year or something, and
he has finally pulled stakes. When I reached there this time it was
the lonesomest place I ever saw, no more store and post office, no
more nice little wife and fried chicken--not even a dog or hitching
post. My friend had gone away and left no reminder of himself save a
notice he had lettered with a marking brush on his front door. Just as
a sort of a keepsake in memory of my old friend I took a copy. Here it
goes:

     "'A thousand feet to water!
      A thousand miles to wood!
      I've quit this blasted country
      Quit her! Yes, for good.
      The 'hoppers came abuzzin'
      But I shooed them all away,
      Next blew the hot winds furious;
      Still, I had the grit to stay.
      There's always something hap'ning;
      So, while I've got the pluck--
      Think I'll strike another country
      And see how runs my luck.
      God bless you, boys, I love you.
      The drummer is my friend.
      When I open up my doors again,
      Bet your life, for you I'll send.'

"Wouldn't that cork you? Say, let's get up a game of whist." With this
my friend took a fresh cigar from me, and, whistling, sauntered down
the aisle hunting partners for the game. The long drive, the dust and
the loss of a bill no longer disturbed him.

The man who grieves would better stay off the road. The traveling man
must digest disappointments as he does a plate of blue points, for he
swallows them about as often. One of the severest disappointments for
a road man is to have the pins for a bill all set and then have some
other man get the ball first and knock them down.

A clothing salesman told me this story:

"I have been chasing trunks for a long time but last season I got into
the worst scrape of all my life on the road. I was a little pushed for
time, so I wrote one of my irregular country customers that I would
not be able to go to his town, but that I would pay his expenses if he
would come in and meet me at Spokane.

"When he showed up he brought along his wife; and his wife rolled a
young baby into my sample room. It was a pretty little kid, and struck
me as being the best natured little chap I had ever seen. Of course,
you know that to jolly up my customer a little I had to get on the
good side of the wife, and the best way to do this was to play with
the baby. After I had danced the little fellow around for a while I
put him back into the buggy and supposed that I was going to get down
to business. But the father said he thought he would be in town for a
week or so and that he thought he would go out and find a boarding
house.

"As we were talking, a friend of mine dropped in. He directed my
customer to a boarding house, and then, just for fun, said: 'Why don't
you leave the baby here with us while you're making arrangements. Mr.
Percy has lots of children at home, and he knows how to take care of
them all right.' Imagine how I felt when my country friends fell in
with the shoe man's suggestion!

"Both of us got along first rate with the baby for a while. I really
enjoyed it until my friend left me to go down the street, and a
customer I was expecting came in. I thought the baby would get along
all right by himself, and so I started to show customer No. 2 my line
of goods. But the little chap had been spoiled by too much of my
coddling and wouldn't stand for being left alone. At first he gave a
little whimper. I rolled him for a minute or two with one hand and ran
the other over a line of cheviots and told my customer how good they
were; but the very minute I let go of the buggy, out broke the kid
again. I repeated this performance two or three times, but whenever I
let go the buggy handle the baby yelled. In a few minutes he was going
it good and strong, and I had to take him out and bounce him up and
down. Now, you can imagine just how hard it is to pacify a baby and
sell a bill of clothing. Try it if you don't. I soon began to walk the
floor to keep the kid from howling, and presently I decided I would
rather keep that child quiet than sell a bill of goods. Finally,
customer number two went out, saying he would see me the next morning;
and there I was left all alone with the baby again.

[Illustration: "Whenever I let go the buggy handle the baby yelled"]

"I tried to ring a bell and get a chambermaid to take care of him, but
the bell was broken. Then I began to sing all the songs I knew and
kept it up until I nearly wore out my throat. It seemed as if the
baby's mother never would come back, but I had the happy satisfaction
of knowing, though, that the baby's mother and father would certainly
have to come back and get the little fellow, and I felt sure of
getting a good bill of goods.

"Well, what do you think happened? After two hours the mother came
back and got the baby and I never saw her husband again! A competitor
of mine had 'swiped' him as he came in the hotel office and sold him
his bill of goods."

Although my friend Percy who rolled the baby carriage back and forth
lost out by this operation, I would advise my friends on the road to
roll every baby buggy--belonging to a possible customer--that they
have a chance to get their hands on. When the merchant gives the
traveling man an opportunity to do him some sort of a favor outside of
straight business dealing, he then gives the drummer the best possible
chance to place him under obligations which will surely be repaid
sometime. But don't go too far.

Down in Texas in one of the larger towns, just after the Kishinef
horror, the Hebrew clothing merchants held a charity ball. If you were
to eliminate the Hebrew from the clothing business the ranks of
dealers in men's wearing apparel would be devastated. One of my
friends in the clothing business told me how he and a furnishing goods
friend of his made hay at that charity ball:

"The day that I struck town, one of my customers said to me, 'We want
you to go to the show tomorrow night and open the ball with a few
remarks. Will you?'

"Just for fun I said, 'To be sure I will, Ike.' I did not think I
would be taken in earnest, but the next day I received a program, and
right at the head of it was my name down for the opening speech. Well,
I was up against it and I had to make good. You may take my word for
it that I felt a little nervous that night when I came to the big hall
and saw it full of people waiting for the opening address. I needed to
have both sand on the bottoms of my shoes and sand in my upper story
to keep from slipping down on the waxed floor! But, as I was in for
it, I marched bravely up and sat down for a few minutes in the big
chair.

"Then the first thing I knew I was introduced. Now I was really in
sympathy with the purpose of this gathering and I felt, sincerely, the
atrocity of the Kishinef massacre. Consequently, I was able to speak
from the heart in telling my audience how every human being, without
regard to race, was touched by such an outrage. Had I been running for
Congress there, I would have received every vote in the house. The
women sent special requests by their husbands, asking the honor of a
dance with me.

"Remember that the traveling man must not overlook the wife of his
customer. Generally a man's nearest and truest friend is his wife. The
business man feels that she is his best counselor. If you can get the
good will of the 'women folks' of your customer's household you may be
sure you will be solid with him for keeps.

"But I must not overlook my furnishing goods friend. He had been
trained for an opera singer and would have made a success of it had he
kept up with that profession. His business, however, prospered so well
that he could never go and look the prompter in the face. He had a
rich, full, deep voice which, when he sang the Holy City, made the
chandeliers fairly hum. There is something in the melodious human
voice, anyway, that goes away down deep into the heart. My friend won
everybody there with a song. He with his music and I with my speech
had done a courtesy to those merchants which they and their wives
appreciated. You know you can feel it, somehow, when you are in true
accord with those you meet.

"We really did not think anything about the business side that night.
I forgot it altogether until, upon leaving the hall, my friend Ike
said to me: 'Tonight we dance, tomorrow we sell clot'ing again.' Both
of us did a good business in that town on the strength of the charity
ball, and we have held our friends there as solid customers. I say
'solid customers' but actually there is no such thing as a 'solid
customer.' The very best friend you have will slip away from you
sometime, break out your corral, and you must mount your broncho,
chase him down and rope him in again."

A mighty true saying, that! It is a great disappointment to call upon
a customer with whom you have been doing business for a long time and
find that he has already bought. Ofttimes this happens, however,
because when you become intimate with a merchant you fail to continue
to impress upon him the merits of your merchandise. However tight a
rope the salesman feels that he has upon a merchant, he should never
cease to let him know and make him feel that the goods he is selling
are strictly right; for if he lets the line slacken a little the
merchant may take a run and snap it in two.

One of my hat friends once told me how he went in to see an old
customer named Williams, down in Texas, and found that he had bought a
bill.

"When I reached home," said he, "I handed my checks to a porter,
slipped half a dollar into his hand and told him to rush my trunks
right up to the sample room."

This is a thing that a salesman should do on general principles. When
he has spent several dollars and many hours to get to a town he should
bear in mind that he is there for business, and that he cannot do
business well unless he has his goods in a sample room. The man who
goes out to work trade with his trunks at the depot does so with only
half a heart. If a man persuades himself that there is no business in
a town for him he would better pass it up. When he gets to a town the
first thing he should do is to get out samples.

"When I had opened up my line," continued my friend, "I went over to
Williams' store. I called at the window as usual and said, 'Well,
Williams, I am open and ready for you at any time. When shall we go
over?'

"'To tell the truth, Dickie,' said he, 'I've bought your line for this
season. I might just as well come square out with it.'

"'That is all right, Joe,' said I. 'If that is the case, it will save
us the trouble of doing the work over again.' In truth, my heart had
sunk clear down to my heels, but I never let on. I simply smiled over
the situation. The worst thing I could have done would be to get mad
and pout about it. Had I done so I should have lost out for good. The
salesman who drops a crippled wing weakens himself, so I put on a
smiling front. This made Williams become apologetic, for when he saw
that I took the situation good-naturedly he felt sorry that he could
not give me business and began to make explanations.

"'I tell you,' said he, 'this other man came around and told me that
he could sell me a hat for twenty-one dollars a dozen as good as you
are selling for twenty-four, and I thought it was to my business
interest to buy them. I thought I might as well have that extra
twenty-five cents on every hat as your firm.'

"There! He had given me my chance! 'Williams,' said I, 'you bought
these other goods on your judgment. Do you not owe it to yourself to
know how good your judgment on hats is? You and I have been such good
friends--Heaven knows I have not a better one in this country, Joe--
that I never talk business to you and George, your buyer. Now, I'll
tell you what is a fair proposition. You and George come over to my
sample room this afternoon at 1:30--I leave at four--and I will find
out how good your judgment and George's is when it comes to buying
hats.' Williams said: 'All right, 1:30 goes.'

[Illustration: "To-night we dance. To-morrow we sell clothes again."]

"I immediately left, having a definite appointment. I went to my
sample room and laid out in a line twelve different samples of hats,
the prices of which ranged, in jumps of three dollars per dozen, from
nine dollars to twenty-seven dollars. In the afternoon I went back to
the store and got Williams and George. As we entered the sample room,
I said: 'Now, Williams, we are over here--you, George and myself--to
see what you know about hats. If there is any line of goods in which
you should know values, certainly it is the line you have been
handling for six years. You have fingered them over every day and
ought to know the prices of them. Here is a line of goods right out of
the house from which you have been buying so long. The prices range
from nine dollars to twenty-seven dollars a dozen. Will it not be a
fair test of your judgment and George's for you to examine these goods
very carefully--everything but the brands--for these would indicate
the price--and lay out this line so that the cheaper hats will be at
one end of the bunch and the best ones at the other? Very well! Now
just straighten out this line according to price.'

"'Well, that looks fair to me,' said Williams.

"He and George went to work to straighten out the goods according to
price. They put a nine dollar hat where a twelve dollar hat should
have been, and vice versa. They put a twenty-four dollar hat where a
twenty-four dollar hat belonged, and an eighteen dollar hat right
beside it, indicating that the two were of the same quality. The next
hat I handed them was one worth sixteen dollars and a half a dozen. It
contained considerable chalk that made it feel smooth. After examining
the 'sweat,' name and everything they both agreed that this was a
twenty-seven dollars a dozen hat. When they did this, I said:

"'Gentlemen, I will torture you no longer. Let me preface a few
remarks by saying that neither one of you knows a single, solitary,
blooming thing about hats. Here is a hat that you say is worth twenty-
four dollars a dozen. Look at the brand. You have it on your own
shelves. You have been buying them of this quality for six years at
eighteen dollars a dozen. And, what is worse still, here is a hat the
price of which you see in plain figures is sixteen dollars and a half,
and you say it is worth twenty-seven dollars a dozen.'

"The faces of Williams and George looked as blank as a freshly
whitewashed fence. I saw that I had them. Then was the time for me to
be bold. A good account was at stake, and at stake right then.
Besides, my reputation was at stake. When a salesman loses a good
account the news of it spreads all over his territory, and on account
of losing one customer directly he will lose many more indirectly; for
merchants will hear of it and on the strength of the information, lose
confidence in the line itself. On the other hand, if you can knock
your competitor out of a good account it is often equal to securing
half a dozen more. I did not wish to lose out even for one season, so
I said: 'Now look here, Williams, you have bought this other line of
goods, and perhaps you feel that you have enough for this season and
that you will make the best of a bad bargain. You are satisfied in
your own mind, and you have told me as plainly as you ever told me
anything in your life, that my goods are better than those that you
have bought. I am going to tell you one thing now that I would not say
in the beginning: that you have bought from a line of samples the
goods of which will not equal the samples you have looked at. It is
not the samples that you buy but it is the goods that are _delivered_
to you. Those which will be delivered will not be as good as those
which you looked at. You know full well that my goods have always come
up to samples. You know that they are reliable. Why do you wish to
change? If you wish to change for the sake of making an additional
twenty-five cents on each hat instead of giving it to my firm, why did
you not take the hat which I have been selling you all the time for
$18 a dozen and sell it for three dollars, the price you have always
been getting for my twenty-four dollars a dozen hats? In that way you
would make an additional twenty-five cents. Be logical! If that's not
profit enough, why not sell a $15 or a $12 a dozen hat for $3? Be
logical! If that's not enough, why not hire a big burly duffer to
stand at your front door, knock down every man who comes in so that
you can take all the money he has without giving him anything. You
could bury him in the cellar. Be logical.'

"''Fraid they'd put me in the "pen",' said Williams.

"'If I were a judge and you were brought before me charged with
selling the twenty-one dollars a dozen hat that you have bought to
take the place of mine (for which I charge you twenty-four dollars a
dozen) I would give you a life sentence. Let me tell you, Williams, a
man who is in business, if he expects to remain in the same place a
long time, must give good values to his customers. In the course of
time they will find out whether the stuff he gives them is good or
poor. Go into a large establishment with a good reputation and you
will find out that they give to the people who come to buy merchandise
from them good values. Now, the goods I have sold you have always
given your trade satisfaction. Your business in my department is
increasing, so you say, and the reason is because you are giving to
your customers good values. Why not continue to pursue this same
policy? I am in town to do business and to do business today. I cannot
and I will not take a turn down. If you want to continue to buy my
goods you must buy them and buy them right now, even if you do have to
take them right on top of the other stuff that you have bought. I
shall make no compromise. My price is $1,000--more than you ever
bought from me before.'

"'George,' said Williams, turning to his buyer, 'I guess Dickie has
us. Give him an order for $1,000 and don't let's go chasing the end of
a rainbow in such a hurry any more.'"




CHAPTER IV.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE.


The man who believes that on every traveling man's head should rest a
dunce cap will some fine day get badly fooled if he continues to rub
up against the drummer. The road is the biggest college in the world.
Its classrooms are not confined within a few gray stone buildings with
red slate roofs; they are the nooks and corners of the earth. Its
teachers are not a few half starved silk worms feeding upon green
leaves doled out by philanthropic millionaires, but live, active men
who plant their own mulberry trees. When a man gets a sheepskin from
this school, he doesn't need to go scuffling around for work; he
already has a job. Its museum contains, not a few small specimens of
ore, but is the mine itself.

Let your son take an ante-graduate course of a few years on the road
and he will know to what use to put his book learning when he gets
that. I do not decry book lore; the midnight incandescent burned over
the classic page is a good thing. I am merely saying that lots of good
copper wire goes to waste, because too many college "grads" start
their education wrong end first. They do not know for what they are
working. If I were running a school my way and the object was to teach
a boy _method_, I'd hand him a sample grip before I'd give him a
volume of Euclid. Last night a few ideas struck me when I thought my
day's work was done. I jumped out of bed seven times in twenty minutes
and struck seven matches so I could see to jot down the points. The
man on the road learns to _"do it now."_ Too many traveling men
waste their months of leisure. Like Thomas Moore, in their older days
they will wail:

     "Thus many, like me, who in youth should have tasted
      The fountain that flows by philosophy's shrine,
      Their time with the flowers on its margin have wasted
      And left their light urns all as empty as mine."

Yet many improve their hours of leisure from business; if they do not,
it is their own fault. I met an old acquaintance on the street
yesterday. "My season is too short," said he. "I wish I could find
something to do between trips." I asked him why he did not write for
newspapers or do a dozen other things that I mentioned. "I'm
incapable," he replied. "Well, that isn't my fault," said I. "No," he
answered, _"it's mine!"_

I know one man on the road who found time to learn the German
language. And, by the way, he told me how it once served him a good
turn.

"Once," said he, "when I was up in Minnesota, a few years ago, I got a
big merchant to come over and look at my goods. That, you know, was
half of the battle."

And so it is! When a merchant goes into a drummer's sample room, he is
on the field of Liao Yang and, if he doesn't look out, the drummer
will prove himself the Jap!

"It was my first trip to the town," continued my friend. "The first
thing my prospective customer picked up after he came into my room was
a sample of a 'Yucatan' hat. You know how it goes--when a merchant
comes into your sample room for the first time he picks up the things
he knows the price of. If the prices on these are high, he soon leaves
you; if they seem right to him he has confidence in the rest of your
line and usually buys if the styles suit him. The way to sell goods is
either to have lower prices or else make your line show up better than
your competitor's. Even though your prices be the same as his, you can
often win out by _displaying_ your goods better than your competitor
does. Many a time he is too lazy to spread his goods and show what he
really has; and his customer thinks the line 'on the bum' when, in
truth, it is not.

"The merchant, Alex Strauss was his name, couldn't have picked up a
luckier thing for me than this Yucatan hat. The year previous, my
house had imported them finished, but that year we had had them
trimmed in our own shop. The duty was much less on the unfinished body
than on the trimmed hat; therefore, the price had dropped
considerably.

"'How much do you vant for dis?' said Strauss, picking up the Yucatan.

"Nine dollars a dozen," said I, without explaining why the price was
so low. It would have been as foolish for me to do this, you know, as
to play poker with my cards on the table face up.

"Strauss turned to his clerk Morris, who was with him. They both
examined the hat, and Alex said in German to Morris: _'Den selben
Hut haben wir gehabt. Letzes Jahr haben wir sechzehn und ein halb den
Dutzen bezahlt. Das ist sehr billig!'_ (The same hat we had. Last
year we paid sixteen and a half a dozen. This is very cheap.)

"Then Alex turned to me--he was a noted bluffer--and said in English:
'Hefens alife! Nine tollars! Vy, I pought 'em last year for sefen and
a half!'

"I never saw such a bold stand in my life. The expression on his face
would have won a jackpot on a bob-tailed flush. But I was in position
to call his bluff. _His_ cards were on the table face up.

"I merely repeated his own words in his own tongue: _'Den selben Hut
haben wir gehabt. Letzes Jahr haben wir sechzehn und ein halb den
Dutzen bezahlt. Das ist sehr billig.'_

"'Hier, dake a seecar on me,' said Alex, offering me a smoke. He
bought a good bill from me and has been a good customer ever since.

"Just to let you know what a hard proposition Strauss was, I'll tell
you another incident in connection with him:

"'After I had known Alex for two years I went into his store one
morning, when I was on my fall trip. He came from behind the counter
to meet me, wearing upon his face a smile of triumph. He had never
approached me before; I always had to hunt him down.

"I said, 'Hello, Alex, how goes it?'

"'Dis is how choes id,' said he, handing me a card. 'Dot's de way id
choes mit ev'rypody dis season.'

"On the card which he handed me--and to every traveling man who, came
in--were these words: 'Don't waste your time on me; I will not buy any
goods until I go to market. Alex.'

"Reading the card quickly, I said to him: 'Thank you, Alex, may I have
another one of these cards?'

"He handed me another one, saying, 'Vot you vant mit anudder vun?'

"'I want one to hold as a keepsake of the man, of all men, who is
gladdest to see me when I get around; the other I shall pin to the
order I shall take from you today and send to my firm.'

"With a sweeping bow, I said, 'Adieu, Alex; _Auf wiedersehen,'_
and left the store.

"I knew Alex's habits. He always went to dinner when the town clock
struck twelve. A deaf shoemaker in the next block regulated his watch,
they say, by Alex's movements. A few minutes past twelve I went back
to the store and left on the front show case a bunch of samples done
up in a red cloth. On some of them were large green tags telling the
quantity I had of each and the price. I also wrote on the green tags
the words 'Job Lot.'

"I knew that Alex would see the bundle; and I knew that he would open
it--a merchant will always look at samples if you take them to his
store. I also knew that Alex, when he saw the mystic words 'Job Lot,'
would be half crazy. Adam and Eve were not more tempted by the
forbidden fruit than is the Yehuda (Hebrew) merchant by a
_metziah_ (bargain).

"I went back to the hotel. After luncheon I sent out my advance cards
and took up a book. My mind was perfectly easy, because I knew just
exactly what was going to happen.

"At a quarter to six, Abie, Alex's boy, disturbed me while I was in
the middle of a chapter and said: 'Papa wants to see you right away.
The store closes at six.'

"I knew that meant business, but I said to Abie: 'Tell your papa if
he'll excuse me I'll not come over. Won't you please say goodbye to
him for me? And won't you, Abie, like a good boy--bring me a bundle I
left on the show case. It has a red cloth around it.'

"Finishing my chapter, I started slowly toward Alex's store. I met
Abie. But he didn't have the red bundle--I knew he wouldn't.

"'Papa says, come over. He wants to see you,' said Abie.

"As I went into the store a minute before six, Alex was pacing up and
down the floor. My samples were spread upon the show case.

"'Eff you vant your samples, dake 'em avay yourself. Do you subbose I
raice poys to vait on draveling men?' said Alex. He was keeping up his
bluff well.

"With this I began to stack together my samples.

"'Vait! Vait!' said Alex, 'Aind you choing to gif a man a jance to puy
some choots?'

"'Sure,' said I, 'if you want to, but I thought you were going to wait
until you went into market.'

"'Vell, you vas a taisy,' said Alex; and in three minutes--he was the
quickest buyer I ever saw--I booked an order for six hundred dollars.

"'Now, I see,' said Alex, as he shook hands and started home, 'Vot you
vanted mit dot udder cart.'"

Strategy will win out in business, but not deception. The traveling
man who wishes to win in the race of commerce, if he plays sharp
tricks, will get left at the quarter post. It is rather hard,
sometimes, to keep from plucking apples that grow in the garden of
deception, especially if they hang over the fence. I sat one night
beside one of the boys who was sending out his advance cards. He was
making his first trip over a new territory.

"Blast it!" said he, tearing up a card he had written.

"Don't swear, or you'll not catch any fish," said I.

"Yes, but I did such a fool thing. I addressed a card to a merchant
and then turned it over and signed his name--not mine--to it. Wasn't
that a fool thing to do?"

"No, not at all," I replied, laughing. "If you had sent that card to
him, he would have read it. Otherwise, he will chuck the one you do
send into the basket."

"Bright idea!" quoth my friend.

A few months afterward I met this same man. "Say," said he, "that was
a straight tip you gave me on that advance card scheme. It worked like
a charm. Half of the men I went to see had kept the cards on their
desks and I had no trouble getting their ears. Some were expecting a
long lost relative. When they showed me my cards with their names on
them I was always amazed at such a queer mistake. There was one
exception. I told one man why I did it, and he nearly threw me out of
his store."

When I was told this I felt ashamed to think I had taught duplicity to
an innocent. I did not know to what it might lead him.

Stolen fruits may look like they are sweet, but taste them, and they
are bitter. I knew a man who sold shoes in the State of Washington. He
was shrewd and sharp. He learned of an old Englishman who, although
his store was in an out of the way town, did a large business. The
shoeman wrote half a dozen letters to himself care of the old
Englishman, addressing them as "Lord" So and So. When he reached the
town the Englishman most graciously handed him the letters, and to all
questions of the shoeman, who commanded a good British accent,
answered, "Yes, my lord," or "No, my lord."

The shoe man explained that, like the merchant, he had hated to leave
the old country, but that America--sad to state--was a more thrifty
country and he had invested in a large shoe factory in Boston. He said
he was merely out traveling for his health and to look over the
country with a view to placing a traveling salesman on the territory.
The Englishman gave him a large open order, supposing, of course, that
a lord would carry no samples. The old merchant was so tickled at
having a chance to buy from a lord that, notwithstanding his reserve,
he one day told his dry goods man about it. This was shortly before
the goods arrived.

"Why, that fellow," said the dry goods man, "is no more of a lord than
I am. He is not even an Englishman." He did not know that he was
"queering" a bill, for this is one thing that one traveling man will
never deliberately do to another. He knows too well what a battle it
is to win a bill, and he will not knowingly snatch from the victor the
spoils of war.

The old Englishman returned the "lord's" goods without opening the
cases.

Although the lord did not steal a base on his sharp run, I know of one
instance where a shrewd traveling man sold a bill by a smart trick.

In Ohio there was a merchant notoriously hard to approach. He was one
of the kind who, when you told him your business, would whistle and
walk away and who would always have something to do in another part of
the store when you drew near him the second time. What an amount of
trouble a man of that kind makes for himself! The traveling man is
always ready to "make it short." When he goes into a store the thing
he wishes to know, and how quickly, is: "Can I do any business here?"
The merchant will have no trouble getting rid of the drummer if he
will only be frank. All he must do is to give a fair reason why he
does not wish to do business. He can say: "I have bought"--that is the
best one, if it is true; it is the index finger pointing out a short
route for the salesman straight to the front door. Or, he can say: "I
have all in that line I can use for some time." "I have an old
personal friend to whom I give my trade for these goods--he treats me
squarely" is a good answer. So, too, is the statement, "I have an
established trade on this brand, my customers ask for it, and it gives
them entire satisfaction--what's the use of changing?" Any one of
these statements will either rid the merchant of the traveling man or
else raise an issue soon settled.

I will let my friend himself tell how he got the ear of the whistling
merchant.

"The boys had told me old Jenkins was hard to get next to, but I made
up my mind to reach him. It's lots more fun anyway to land a trout in
swift water than to pull a carp out of a muddy pond; besides the game
fish is better to eat. When I went into his store, Jenkins fled from
me, and going into his private office, slammed the door behind him. I
made for the office. I had not come within ten feet from the window
before the old man said gruffly: 'I don't want to buy any goods; I
don't want even to _listen_ to a traveling man this morning.'

"This did not stop me. I walked to the window, took a pad of paper out
of my pocket and wrote on a slip: 'I have some samples I would like to
show you. I will bring them over.' I handed the slip to old Jenkins
and left him. The man who can do the odd, unexpected thing, is the one
who gets the ear.

"When I brought my samples in--I sell a specialty line of baby shoes--
I spread them on the counter. The old man was curious to see what a
'deaf and dumb man' was selling, I suppose, for up he marched and
looked at my line. He picked up a shoe and wrote on a piece of paper:
'How much?' I wrote the price and passed the slip back to him. 'What
are your terms?' he wrote back. 'Bill dated November 1st, 5% off, ten
days,' I replied on paper. 'Price your line right through,' he
scribbled.

"With this I wrote the price of each shoe on a slip and put it under
the sample. Old Jenkins called his shoe man. They both agreed that the
line was exceptional--just what they wanted--and that the prices were
low. But the old man wrote: 'Can't use any of your goods; the line I
am buying is cheaper.'

"I made no answer to this but began packing my grip. The old man tried
to write me so fast that he broke the points off his pencil and the
clerk's. While he sharpened his pencil I kept on packing. He took hold
of my hand and made a curious sign, saying, 'Wait.' But I went right
on until the old man had written: 'Don't pack up. I will buy some
goods from you because I feel sorry for you.'

"'Thank you, sir,' I wrote, 'but I am no charity bird; I want to sell
goods only to those who appreciate my values. Charity orders are
always small ones and a small one will not be sufficient for me to
give you the exclusive sale.' That was a clincher, for when a merchant
sees a good thing he will overbuy, you know, just to keep his
competitor from having a chance at it. I started again packing.

"'I really like your goods and will buy a nice bill if you will sell
no one else in town,' wrote the old man nervously. 'I was only joking
with you.'

"Just as I had finished writing down my order, never having spoken a
word to old Jenkins, a traveling man friend came in and said, in his
presence: 'Hello, Billy! How are you?'

"'Pretty well, thank you,' said I.

"'What! Can you hear and talk?' half yelled the old man.

"'To be sure,' I wrote back, 'but it would have been impolite to talk
to you; because you said, as I drew near the window, you didn't wish
to _listen_ to a traveling man this morning. Thank you for your order.
Good-bye.'

"The old man never forgot that day. The last time I was around, he
said, 'Confound you, Billy! What makes you ask me if I want any baby
shoes? You know I do and that I want yours. I believe, though, if you
were to die I'd have to quit handling the line; it would seem so
strange to buy them from any but a deaf and dumb man.'"

It is all right for the traveling man to put his wit against the
peculiarities of a wise, crusty old buyer, but it is wrong to play
smart with a confiding merchant who knows comparatively little of the
world. The innocent will learn.

A clothing man once told me of a sharp scheme he once worked on a
Minnesota merchant.

"When I was up in Saint Paul on my last trip," said he, "a country
merchant--what a 'yokel' he was!--came in to meet me. He had written
my house he wanted to see their line. But when he reached the hotel
another clothing man grabbed him and got him to say he would look at
_his_ line after he had seen mine. When he came into my room, I
could see something was wrong. I could not get him to lay out a single
garment. When a merchant begins to put samples aside, you've got him
sure. After a while, he said: 'Well, I want to knock around a little;
I'll be in to see you after dinner.'

"'I am expecting you to dine with me,' said I. 'It's after eleven now;
you won't have time to go around any. You'd better wait until this
afternoon.' I smelt a mouse, as there were other clothing men in town;
so I knew I must hold him. But he was hard to entertain. He wouldn't
smoke and wouldn't drink anything but lemonade. Deliver me from the
merchant who is on the water wagon or won't even take a cigar! He's
hard to get next to. After we finished our lemonade, I brought out my
family photographs and kept him listening to me tell how bright my
children were--until noon.

"When we finished luncheon I suggested that we go up and do our
business as I wanted to leave town as soon as I could. Then he told me
he felt he ought to look at another line before buying and that he had
promised another man he would look at his line.

"Had I 'bucked' on that proposition it would have knocked me out, so I
said: 'To be sure you should. I certainly do not wish you to buy my
goods unless they please you better than any you will see. We claim we
are doing business on a more economical scale than any concern in the
country. We know this, and I shall be only too glad to have you look
at other goods; then you will be better satisfied with ours. I'll take
pleasure even in introducing you to several clothing men right here in
the house.'

"This line of talk struck ten. My yokel friend said: 'Well, you talk
square and I want to buy of you. I like a man who thinks lots of his
family, anyway; I've got a big family myself--seven children--baby's
just a month old and a fine boy. But I promised my partner I'd look
around if I had a chance, and I think I ought to keep my word with
him.'

"Luckily there was another salesman from my firm in town and opened up
that same day in the hotel. I sent for him, never letting my yokel
friend get away from me a foot. I saw the other man, at whose line my
friend wished to look, sitting in the office; but I knew he would obey
the rule of the road and not come up to the merchant until I had let
him go.

[Illustration: "I listened to episodes in the lives of all those seven
children"]

"My partner was a deuce of a long time coming. I listened to episodes
in the lives of all of those seven children. I took down notes on good
remedies for whooping cough, croup, measles, and all the ills that
flesh is heir to--and thanked Heaven we had struck that subject!
Finally my partner, Sam, came. As he drew near I gave him the wink,
and, introducing my friend to him, said: 'Now, Mr. Anderson is in town
to buy clothing. I have shown him my line, but he feels he ought to
look around. Maybe I haven't all the patterns he wants, and if I can
get only a part of the order there is no one I'd rather see get the
other than you. Whatever the result, you'll bring Mr. Anderson to my
room, 112, when you get through. Show him thoroughly. I'm in no
hurry.'

"Sam marched Anderson up to his room. He caught onto my game all
right. I knew he would hold him four hours, if necessary, and tell him
all about his family history for seven generations.

"When Sam left, I went over to the cigar stand, pulled out my order
book and figured about long enough to add up a bill. I filled my cigar
case and going over to my competitor, at whose line Anderson had
promised to look, offered him one. He had made a sort of 'body snatch'
from me anyway and was ashamed to say anything about Anderson, but he
asked: 'How's business?'

"'Coming in carriages today,' said I. 'My city customer was over early
this morning and, no sooner had he gone than a man from the country
came in. Two clothing bills in one day is all right, isn't it? I just
turned my country customer over to Sam, as he has a few new patterns
in his line I want him to show. Guess I'll go pack up shortly.'

"I hadn't told a point blank lie, and my competitor had no right to
ask about my affairs, anyway. He also went to pack up.

"I let Sam entertain Anderson until I knew my competitor was out of
the way. Then I sent a note up to him. In due time he brought the
merchant down and soon excused himself.

"'That's a mighty nice fellow,' said Anderson, 'but my! his goods are
dear. Why, his suits are two to three dollars higher than yours.
You'll certainly get my bill. I told my partner I believed your house
would be all right to buy from.'

"I took the order from Anderson, but I was half glad when I heard that
he had died a few months afterward; for if he had lived he would have
been sure to catch up with me when Sam and I were both in market. And
then my goose would have been cooked for all time with him, sure."

And so it would.




CHAPTER V.

THE HELPING HAND.


The helping hand is often held out by the man on the road. Away from
home he is dependent upon the good will of others; he frequently has
done for him an act of kindness; he is ever ready to do for others a
deed of friendship or charity. Road life trains the heart to
gentleness. It carries with it so many opportunities to help the
needy. Seldom a day passes that the traveling salesman does not loosen
his purse strings for some one in want--no, not that; he carries his
money in his vest pocket. Doing one kind act brings the doer such a
rich return that he does a second generous deed and soon he has the
habit. The liberality of the traveling man does not consist wholly of
courting the favor of his merchant friends--he is free with them, but
mainly because it is his nature; it is for those from whom he never
expects any return that he does the most.

A friend of mine once told this story:

"It was on the train traveling into Lincoln, Nebraska, many years ago.
It was near midnight. It was, I believe, my first trip on the road.
Just in front of me, in a double seat, sat a poor woman with three
young children. As the brakeman called 'Lincoln, the next station! Ten
minutes for lunch!' I noticed the woman feeling in her pockets and
looking all around. She searched on the seats and on the floor. A
companion, Billie Collins, who sat beside me leaned over and asked:
'Madam, have you lost something?'

"Half crying, she replied, 'I can't find my purse--I want to get a cup
of coffee; it's got my ticket and money in it and I'm going through to
Denver.'

"'We'll help you look for it,' said Billy.

"We searched under the seats and up and down the aisle, but could not
find the pocket book. The train was drawing near Lincoln. The poor
woman began to cry.

"'It's all the money I've got, too,' she said pitifully. 'I've just
lost my husband and I'm going out to my sister's in Colorado. She says
I can get work out there. I know I had the ticket. The man took it at
Ottumwa and gave it back to me. And I had enough money to buy me a
ticket up to Central City where my sister is. They won't put me off,
will they? I know I had the ticket. If I only get to Denver, I'll be
all right. I guess my sister can send me money to come up to her. I've
got enough in my basket for us to eat until she does. I can do without
coffee. They won't put me off, wi--ll--?'

"The woman couldn't finish the sentence.

"One of the boys--Ferguson was his name--who sat across the aisle
beside a wealthy looking old man, came over. 'Don't you worry a bit,
Madam,' said he. 'You'll get through all right. I'll see the
conductor.' The old man--a stockholder in a big bank, I afterward
learned--merely twirled his thumbs.

"The conductor came where we were and said: 'Yes, she had a ticket
when she got on my division. I punched it and handed it back to her.
That's all I've got to do with the matter.'

"'But,' spoke up Collins, 'this woman has just lost her husband and
hasn't any money either. She's going through to Colorado to get work.
Can't you just say to the next conductor that she had a ticket and get
him to take care of her and pass her on to the next division?' "'Guess
she'll have to get off at Lincoln,' answered the conductor gruffly,
'our orders are to carry no one without transportation.' All railroad
men have not yet learned that using horse sense and being polite means
promotion.

"The poor woman began to cry but my friend Billie, said: 'Don't cry,
Madam, you shall go through all right. Just stay right where you are.'

"The conductor started to move on. 'Now, you just hold on a minute,
sir,' said Collins. 'When this train stops you be right here--_right
here, I say_--and go with me to the superintendent in the depot. If
you don't you won't be wearing those brass buttons much longer. It's
your business, sir, to look after passengers in a fix like this and
I'm going to make it my business to see that you attend to yours.'

"The conductor was lots bigger than my friend; but to a coward a mouse
seems as big as an elephant and 'brass buttons' said: 'All right, I'll
be here; but it won't do no good.'

"As the conductor started down the aisle, Ferguson turned to the woman
and said: 'You shall go through all right, Madam; how much money did
you have?'

"'Three dollars and sixty-five cents,' she answered--she knew what she
had to a penny--three dollars and sixty-five cents; And I'll bet she
knew where every nickel of it came from! A cruel old world this to
some people, for a while!

"The train had whistled for Lincoln. Ferguson took off his hat,
dropped in a dollar, and passed it over to Billie and me. Then he went
down the aisle, saying to the boys, 'Poor woman, husband just died,
left three children, going to hunt work in Colorado, lost her purse
with ticket and all the money she had.' He came back with nearly
enough silver in his hat to break out the crown--eighteen dollars!

"'Will you chip in, Colonel?' said Ferguson to the old man who had
been his traveling companion?

"'No,' answered the old skinflint, 'I think the railroad company ought
to look after cases of this kind. Ahem! Ahem!'

"'Well,' said Ferguson, snatching the valise out of his seat--I never
saw a madder fellow--'We've enough without yours even if you are worth
more than all of us. You're so stingy I won't even let my grip stay
near you.' "When the train stopped at Lincoln, Billie and Ferguson
took the conductor to the superintendent's office. They sent me to the
lunch counter. I got back first with a cup of coffee for the mother
and a bag for the children. But pretty soon in bolted Billy and
Ferguson. Billie handed the woman a pass to Denver, and Ferguson
dumped the eighteen dollars into her lap.

"'Oh, that's too much! I'll take just three dollars and give me your
name so that I can send that back,' said the woman, happier than any
one I ever saw.

"But we all rushed away quickly, Billy saying: 'Oh, never mind our
names, madam. Buy something for the children; Good-bye, God bless
you!'"

Not the poor widow, alone, but even the big, able-bodied, hungry tramp
comes in often to share the drummer's generosity. A friend once told
me of a good turn he did for a "Weary Willie" in Butte.

Now if there is any place on earth where a man is justified in being
mean, it is in Butte. It is a mining camp. It rests upon bleak, barren
hills; the sulphuric fumes, arising from roasting ores, have long
since killed out all vegetation. It has not even a sprig of grass.
This smoke, also laden with arsenic, sometimes hovers over Butte like
a London fog. More wealth is every year dug out of the earth in Butte,
and more money is squandered there by more different kinds of people,
than in any place of its size on earth. The dictionary needs one
adjective which should qualify Butte and no other place. Many a time
while there I've expected to see Satan rise up out of a hole. Whenever
I start to leave I feel I am going away from the domain of the devil.

"One morning I went down to the depot before five o'clock," said my
friend. "I was to take a belated train. It was below zero, yet I paced
up and down the platform outside breathing the sulphur smoke. I was
anxious to catch sight of the train. Through the bluish haze, the lamp
in the depot cast a light upon a man standing near the track. I went
over to him, supposing he was a fellow traveling man. But he was only
a tramp who had been fired out of the waiting room. I wore a warm
chinchilla, but it made my teeth chatter to see this shivering 'hobo'
--his hands in his pockets and his last summer's light weight pinned
close around his throat.

"'Fine morning, old man,' said I.

"'Maybe you t'ink so, Major,' replied the hobo, 'but you stan' out in
de breeze long's I have in Fourt' of Chuly togs an' you'll have to
have a long pipe dream to t'ink it's a fine mornin'. Say, pard, cup o'
coffee an' a sinker wouldn't go bad.'

"I took the tramp to the lunch counter. I was hungry myself and told
the waiter to give him what he wanted.

"'Cup o' coffee an' a sand'ich--t'ick slab o' de pig, Cap'n, please,'
said my hobo friend. "I saw some strawberries behind the counter and I
said to the waiter: 'Just start us both in on strawberries and cream,
then let us have coffee and some of that fried chicken.'

"'Sport, you are in on this,' said I to the tramp.

"He unpinned his coat and looked with longing eyes on the waiter as he
pulled the caps off the berries; he never said a word, merely
swallowing the secretion from his glands. When he had gulped his
berries, I told the waiter to give him some more.

"'Ever hungry, Major?' said the hobo. 'Dat's kind a feather weight for
my ap'tite. Let me have a ham sand'ich 'stead.

"'No, go on, you shall have a good square meal. Here, take some more
berries and have this fried chicken,' I answered, shoving over another
bowl of fruit and a big dish with a half a dozen cooked chickens on
it. 'Help yourself like it all belonged to you.'

"The hobo ate two halves of chicken, drained his cup of coffee and
started to get down from his stool. But: he cast a hungry look at the
dish of chicken.

"'Have some more, old man,' said I.

"'It's been s'long since I had a good square that I could stan' a
little more, Major; but let me go up against a ham sand'ich--it's got
a longer reach.'

"'No, have chicken--all the chicken you want--and some more coffee,'
said I.

"Eat! How that fellow did go for it--five pieces of chicken! I'd
rather see him repeat that performance than go to a minstrel show. He
slid off his stool again, saying: 'Major, I guess I'm all in. T'anks.'

"'Oh, no; have some pie,' I said.

"'Well,' he replied, 'Major, 's you shift the deck, guess I will play
one more frame.'

"'Gash o' apple,' said Weary to the waiter.

"When I insisted upon his having a third piece of pie, the hobo said:
'No, Major, t'anks, I got to ring off or I'll break de bank.'

"He, for once, had enough. I gave him a cigar. He sat down to smoke--
contented, I thought. I paid the bill; things are high in Montana, you
know--his part was $2.85. My hobo friend saw $3.55 rung up on the cash
register. Then I went over and sat down beside him.

"'Feeling good?' said I.

"'Yep, but chee! Dat feed, spread out, would a lasted me clean to
Sain' Paul.'"

Although the traveling man will feed the hungry tramp on early
strawberries and fried chicken when ham sandwiches straight would
touch the spot better, all of his generosity is not for fun. A drug
salesman told me this experience:

"A few years ago," said he, "I was over in one of the towns I make in
Oregon. I reached there on Saturday evening. I went to my customer's
store. Just before he closed he said to me: 'I'll take you to-night to
hear some good music.'

"'Where is it?' said I. 'I'll be glad to go along.'

"'It's down the street a couple of blocks; it's a kind of garden. A
family runs it. The old man serves drinks and the rest of the family--
his wife and three daughters--play, to draw the crowd. I want you to
hear the oldest girl play the violin.'

"Now, traveling men are ready any time to go anywhere. Sometimes they
fly around the arc light, but they can buzz close and not get their
wings scorched. They must keep their heads clear and they do,
nowadays, you know. It's not as it was in the old days when the man
who could tell the most yarns sold the most goods; the old fashioned
traveling man is as much behind the times as a bobtailed street car.
Well, of course, I told my friend Jerry that I'd go along. I should
have put in my time working on new trade, but he was one of the best
fellows in the world and one of my best friends. Yet he would not give
me much of his business; we were too well acquainted.

"When we went to the garden--Jerry, his partner ner and myself--we sat
up front. We could look over the crowd. It was a place for men only.
The dozen tables were nearly all full, most of the seats being
occupied by men from the mines--some of them wearing blue flannel
shirts. But the crowd was orderly. The music made them so. The oldest
daughter was only seventeen, but she looked twenty-three. She showed
that she'd had enough experience in her life, though, to be gray.
There was a tortured soul behind her music. Even when she played a
ragtime tune she would repeat the same notes slowly and get a chord
out of them that went straight to the heart. The men all bought rounds
of drinks freely between the numbers, but they let them remain
untasted; they drank, rather, the music.

"We listened for two hours. The music suited my mood. I was a long way
from home. Most of the men there felt as I did. Twelve o'clock came,
yet no one had left the garden. More had come. Many stood. All were
waiting for the final number, which was the same every night, 'Home,
Sweet Home.'

"There is something more enchanting about this air than any other in
the world. Perhaps this is because it carries one back when he once
has 'passed its portals' to his 'Childhood's Joyland--Little Girl and
Boyland.' It reminds him of his own happy young days or else recalls
the little ones at home at play with their toys. I know I thought of
my own dear little tots when I heard the strain. How that girl did
play the splendid old melody! I closed my eyes. The garden became a
mountain stream, the tones of the violin its beautiful ripples--
ripples which flowed right on even when the sound had ceased.

"'Home, Sweet Home!' I thought of mine. I thought of the girl's--a
beer garden!

"'Boys,' said I to Jerry and his partner, 'I am going up to shake
hands with that girl; I owe her a whole lot. She's a genius.' I went.
And I thanked her, too, and told her how well she had played and how
happy she had made me.

"'I'm glad somebody can be happy,' she answered, drooping her big,
blue eyes.

"'But aren't you happy in your music?' I asked.

"'Yes,' she replied in such a sad way that it meant a million nos.

"When I went back to my friends they told me the girl's father was not
of much account or otherwise he would send her off to a good teacher.

"'Now, that's going to take only a few hundred dollars,' said I. 'You
are here on the spot and there surely ought to be enough money in the
town to educate this girl. I can't stay here to do this thing, but you
can put me down for fifty.'

"Well, sir, do you know the people in the town did help that girl
along. When the women heard what a traveling man was willing to do,
they no longer barred her out because, for bread, she played a violin
in a beer garden, but they opened their doors to her and helped her
along. The girl got a music class and with some assistance went to a
conservatory of music in Boston where she is studying today."

Traveling men are not angels; yet in their black wings are stuck more
white feathers than they are given credit for--this is because some of
the feathers grow on the under side of their wings. Much of evil,
anyway, like good, is in the thinking. It is wrong to say a fruit is
sour until you taste it; is it right to condemn the drummer before you
know him?

Days--and nights, too--of hard work often come together in the life of
the road man. Then comes one day when he rides many hours, perhaps
twenty-four, on the train. He needs to forget his business; he does.
Less frequently, I wager, than university students, yet sometimes the
drummer will try his hand at a moderate limit in the great American
game.

A year or more ago a party of four commercial travelers were making
the trip from Portland to San Francisco, a ride of thirty-six hours--
two nights and one day. They occupied the drawing room. After
breakfast, on the day of the journey, one of the boys proposed a game
of ten cent limit "draw." They all took part. There is something in
the game of poker that will keep one's eyes open longer than will the
fear of death, so the four kept on playing until time for luncheon.
About one o'clock the train stopped for half an hour at a town in
Southern Oregon. The party went out to take a stretch. Instead of
going into the dining room they bought, at the lunch counter, some
sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, doughnuts and pies and put them in their
compartment. On the platform an old man had cider for sale; they
bought some of that. Several youngsters sold strawberries and
cherries. The boys also bought some of these. In fact, they found
enough for a wholesome, appetizing spread.

The train was delayed longer than usual. The boys, tired of walking,
came back to their quarters. They asked me to have some lunch with
them. Just as one of the party opened a bottle of cider a little,
barefoot, crippled boy, carrying his crutch under one arm and a basket
half full of strawberries under the other, passed beneath the window
of their drawing room.

"Strawberries. Nice fresh strawberries, misters--only a dime a box,"
called out the boy. "Three for a quarter if you'll take that many."

There he was, the youthful drummer, doing in his boyish way just what
we were--making a living, and supporting somebody, too, by finding his
customer and then selling him. He was bright, clean and active; but
sadly crippled.

"Let's buy him out," said the youngest of our party--I was now one of
them.

"No, let's make a jackpot, the winner to give all the winnings to the
boy for his berries," spoke up the oldest.

The pot was opened on the first hand. The limit had been ten cents,
but the opener said "I'll 'crack' it for fifty cents, if all are
agreed."

Every man stayed in--for the boy! Strangely enough four of us caught
on the draw.

"Bet fifty cents," said the opener.

"Call your fifty," said numbers two and three, dropping in their
chips.

"Raise it fifty," spoke up number four.

The other three "saw the raise."

"Three Jacks," said the opener.

"Beats me," said number two.

"Three queens here," said number three.

"Bobtail," spoke up number four.

"Makes no difference what you have," broke in number three. "I've the
top hand, but the whole pot belongs to the boy. The low hand, though,
shall go out and get the berries."

As the train pulled out, the little barefoot drummer with $6.50
hobbled across the muddy street, the proudest boy in all Oregon; but
he was not so happy as were his five big brothers in the receding car.

Brethren, did I say. Yes, Brethren! To the man on the road, every one
he meets is his brother--no more, no less. He feels that he is as good
as the governor, that he is no better than the boy who shines his
shoes. The traveling man, if he succeeds, soon becomes a member of the
Great Fraternity--the Brotherhood of Man. The ensign of this order is
the Helping Hand.

I once overheard one of the boys tell how he had helped an old
Frenchman.

"I was down in Southern Idaho last trip," said he. "While waiting at
the station for a train to go up to Hailey, an old man came to the
ticket window and asked how much the fare was to Butte. The agent told
him the amount--considerably more than ten dollars.

"'_Mon Dieu!_ Is it so far as that?' said the old man. '_Eh bien!_
(very well) I must find some work.'

"But he was a chipper old fellow. I had noticed him that morning
offering to run a foot race with the boys. He wasn't worried a bit
when the agent told him how much the fare to Butte was. He was really
comical, merely shrugging his shoulders and smiling when he said:
'Very well, I must find some work.' Cares lighten care.

"The old man, leaving the ticket window, sat down on a bench, made the
sign of a cross and took out a prayer book. When he had finished
reading I went over and sat beside him. I talked with him. He was one
of Nature's noblemen without a title. He was a French Canadian. He
came to Montana early in the sixties and worked in the mines. Wages
were high, but he married and his wife became an invalid; doctors and
medicines took nearly all of his money. He struggled on for over
thirty years, taking money out of the ground and putting it into pill
boxes. Finally he was advised to take his wife to a lower altitude. He
moved to the coast and settled in the Willamette Valley, in Oregon.
His wife became better at first; then she grew sick again. More
medicine!

"Well, sir, do you know that old man--over seventy years of age--was
working his way back to Butte to hunt work in the mines again. I spoke
French to him and asked him how much money he had. 'Not much,' said
he--and he took out his purse. How much do you suppose the old man had
in it? Just thirty-five cents! I had just spent half a dollar for
cigars and tossed them around. To see that old man, separated from his
wife, having to hunt for work to get money so he could go where he
could hunt more work that he might only buy medicine for a sick old
woman and with just three dimes and a nickel in his purse--was too
much for me! I said to myself: 'I'll cut out smoking for two days and
give what I would spend to the old man.'

"I put a pair of silver dollars into the old man's purse to keep
company with his three dimes and one nickel. It made them look like
orphans that had found a home. '_Mon Dieu! Monsieur, vous etes un
ange du ciel. Merci. Merci._' (My God, sir, you are an angel from
Heaven. Thank you. Thank you.) said the old man. 'But you must give me
your address and let me send back the money!'

"I asked my old friend to give me his name and told him that I would
send him my address to Butte so he would be _sure_ to get it; that he
might lose it if he put it in his pocket.

"He told me his name. I gave him a note to the superintendent at
Pocatello, asking him to pass the old Frenchman to Butte. We talked
until my train started. Every few sentences, the old man would say:
'_Que Dieu vous benisse, mon enfant!_' (May God bless you, my boy!)

"As I stood on the back end of my train, pulling away from the
station, the old man looked at me saying:

"'Adieu! Adieu!' Then, looking up into the sky, he made a sign of the
cross and said: '_Que Dieu vous protege, mon enfant!_' (May God
protect you, my boy!)

"That blessing was worth a copper mine."




CHAPTER VI.

HOW TO GET ON THE ROAD.


Since starting on the road many have asked me: "How can I get a job on
the road?"

Young men and old men have asked me this--clerks, stock boys,
merchants and students. Even wives have asked me how to find places
for their husbands.

Let's clear the ground of dead timber. Old men of any sort and young
men who haven't fire in their eyes and ginger in their feet need not
apply. The "Old Man," who sits in the head office sizes up the man who
wishes to go out on the road and spend a whole lot of the firm's money
for traveling expenses with a great deal more care than the dean of a
college measures the youth who comes to enter school. The dean thinks:
"Well, maybe we can make something out of this boy, dull as he is.
We'll try." But the business man says: "That fellow is no good. He
can't sell goods. What's the use of wasting money on him and covering
a valuable territory with a dummy?"

On the other hand, the heads of wholesale houses are ever on the watch
for bright young men. This is no stale preachment, but a live fact!
There are hundreds of road positions open in every city in America.
Almost any large firm would put on ten first class men to-morrow, but
they _can't find the men_.

The "stock" is the best training school for the road--the stock boy is
the drummer student. Once in a while an old merchant, tiring of the
routine of the retail business, may get a "commission job"--that is,
he may find a position to travel for some firm, usually a "snide
outfit"--if he will agree to pay his own traveling expenses and accept
for his salary a percentage of his sales shipped. Beware, my friend,
of the "commission job!" Reliable firms seldom care to put out a man
who does not "look good enough" to justify them in at least
guaranteeing him a salary he can live on. They know that if a man
feels he is going to _live_ and not lag behind, he will work better.
The commission salesman is afraid to spend his own money; yet, were he
to have the firm's money to spend, many a man who fails would succeed.
Once in a while a retail clerk may get a place on the road, but the
"Old Man" does not look on the clerk with favor. The clerk has had
things come his way too easy. His customers come to him; the man on
the road must _go after his customers_. It is the stock boy who has
the best show to get on the road.

The stock boy learns his business from the ground up or better, as the
Germans say, "from the house out." If one young man cannot become a
surgeon without going through the dissecting room, then another cannot
become a successful drummer without having worked in stock. The
merchant, who oft-times deals in many lines, wishes to buy his goods
from the man who knows his business; and unless a man knows his
business he would better never start on the road.

But, my dear boy, to merely know your business is not all. You may
know that this razor is worth $12.00 a dozen and that one $13.50; that
this handle is bone and that one celluloid; but that won't get you on
the road. _You must have a good front._ I do not mean by this that you
must have just exactly 990 hairs on each side of the "part" on your
head; that your shoes must be shined, your trousers creased, your
collar clean and your necktie just so. Neatness is a "without-which-
not;" but there must be more--a boy must work hard, be polite, honest,
full of force, bright, quick, frank, good-natured. The "Old Man" may
keep to sweep the floor a lazy, shiftless, stupid, silly, grouchy
"stiff"; but when he wants some one to go on the road he looks for a
live manly man. When you get in stock it is _up to you;_ for eyes are
on you, eyes just as anxious to see your good qualities as you are to
show them, eyes that are trying to see you make good.

[Illustration: "I braced the old man--it wasn't exactly a freeze. But
there was a lot of frost in the air."]

How can I get "in stock?" That's easy. If you are in the city you are
on the spot; if you are in the country, "hyke" for the city! See that
you haven't any cigarette stains on your fingers or tobacco in the
corners of your mouth. Go into the wholesale houses, from door to
door--until you find a job. If you are going to let a few or a hundred
turn-downs dishearten you, you'd better stay at home; _for when you
get on the road, turn-downs are what you must go up against every
day._ If you know some traveling man, or merchant, or manager, or
stock boy, maybe he can get you a "job in stock." But remember one
thing: When you get there, you must depend upon Number One. Your
recommendation is worth nothing to you from that hour on. This is the
time when the good front gets in its work.

The city is a strong current, my boy, in which there are many
whirlpools ready to suck you under; yet if you are a good swimmer you
can splash along here faster than anywhere else. A successful
traveling man once told me how he got on the road.

"I was raised in a little town in Tennessee," said he. "A traveling
man whose home was in my native town took me along with him, one day,
when he made a team trip to Bucksville, an inland country town,
fourteen miles away. That was a great trip for me--fourteen miles, and
staying over night in a hotel!--the first time I had ever done so in
my life. And for the first time I knew how it felt to have a strange
landlord call me "mister." It was on that trip that I caught the fever
for travel, and that trip put me on the road!

"When, the next morning after reaching Bucksville, my drummer friend
had finished business and packed his trunks, he said to me: 'Billie, I
guess you may go and get the team ready.' I answered him, saying, 'The
team _is_ ready and backed up, sir, for the trunks.' In three minutes
the trunks were loaded in and we were off.

"'Billie,' said my friend--I shall never forget it for it was the dawn
of hope for me, as I had never had any idea what I was going to do in
after life!--'I'll tell you, Billie, you would make a good drummer,
suh. When we drove down yesterday you counted how many more horseflies
lit on the bay mare than on the white horse. You reasoned out that the
flies lit on the bay because the fly and the mare were about the same
color and that the fly was not so liable to be seen and killed as if
it had lit on the white. That showed me you notice things and reason
about them. To be a good traveling man you must make a business of
noticing things and thinking about them. Real good hoss sense is a
rare thing. Then, this mo'nin', when I said "Get the team ready," you
said "It is ready, suh," and showed me that you look ahead, see what
ought to be done and do it without being told. Generally any fool can
do what he is told to; but it takes a man of sense to find things to
do, and if he has the grit to do them he will get along. I'm just
going to see if I can't get a place in our house for you, Billie.
You've got the stuff in you to make a successful drummer, suh. Yes,
suh! Hoss sense and grit, suh--hoss sense and grit!'

"Sure enough the next Christmas night--I wasn't then sixteen--I struck
out for the city in company with my older traveling man friend. He had
got me a place in his house. The night I left, my mother said to me:
'Son, I've tried to raise you right. I'll soon find out if I have. I
believe I have and that you will get along.' My father then gave me
the only word of advice he ever gave me in his life: 'Son, be polite,'
said he; 'this will cost you nothing and be worth lots.'

"Well, sir, with those words ringing in my ears: 'Use hoss sense; have
grit;' 'Be polite;' 'Son, I've tried to raise you right,' I struck out
for the city. As I think it over now, the thing that did me the most
good was my father's advice: 'Son, be polite, this will cost you
nothing and be worth lots.' The boy can never hope to be much if he
does not know that he should tip his hat to a lady, give his seat to a
gray-haired man, or carry a bundle for an old woman.

"How strange it was for me that night, to sleep with my friend in a
bed on wheels! How strange, the next morning, to wash in a bowl on
wheels! and to look out of the Pullman windows as I wiped my face! I
was _living_ then! And when I reached the city! Such a bustle I've
never seen since. As I walked up a narrow street from the depot,
I fell on the slippery sidewalk. 'Better get some ashes on your feet'
said my friend. And, indeed, I did need to keep ashes on my feet for a
long time. I had before me a longer and more slippery sidewalk than I
then dreamed of. Every boy has who goes to the city. But, when he gets
his sled to the top, he's in for a long, smooth slide!

"I started in to work for twenty dollars a month--not five dollars a
week! I found there was a whole lot of difference, especially when I
had to pay $4.50 a week for board and forty cents for laundry. I was
too proud to send home for money and too poor to spend it out of my
own purse. Good training this! One winter's day a friend told me there
was skating in the park. I asked a gentleman where the park was. 'Go
three blocks and take the car going south,' said he. I went three
blocks and when the car came along I _followed_ it, for I could not
afford a single nickel for car fare. What a fortune I had when, during
busy season, I could work nights and get fifty cents extra for supper
money! None of this did I spend, as my boarding house wasn't far away.
The only money that I spent in a whole year was one dollar for a
library ticket--the best dollar I ever spent in my life! Good books,
and there are plenty of them free in all cities, are the best things
in the world, anyway, to keep a boy out of devilment. The boy who will
put into his head what he will get out of good books will win out over
the one who gets his clothes full of chalk from billiard cues. One day
the "Old Gentleman" saw me at the noon hour as I was going to the
library with a book under my arm. 'So you read nights, do you,
Billie,' said he. 'Well, you keep it up and you will get ahead of
the boys who don't.'

"Work? I worked like a beaver. I was due at seven in the morning. I
was always there several minutes before seven. One morning the old
gentleman came in real early and found me at work, while a couple of
the other boys were reading the papers and waiting for the seventh
strike, and before most of the stock boys had shown up. At noon I
would wrap bundles, take a blacking pot and mark cases, run the
elevator or do anything to "keep moving." I did not know that an eye
was on me all the time; but there was. At the end of a year the old
gentleman called me into the office and said: 'Billie, you've done
more this year than we have paid you for; here's a check for sixty
dollars, five dollars a month back pay. Your salary will be $25.00 a
month next year. You may also have a week's vacation.

"How big that sixty was! Rockefeller hasn't as much to-day as I had
then. What he has doesn't make him happy; he wants more. I had enough.
Why, I was able to buy a new rig-out. I can see that plaid suit of
clothes to this day! I could afford to go home looking slick, to visit
my mother and father; I could buy a present for my sweetheart, too.
The good Lord somehow very wisely puts 'notions' into a young man's
head about the time he begins to get on in the world, and the best
thing on earth for him when he is away from home is to have some girl
away back where he came from think a whole lot of him and send him a
crocheted four-in-hand for a Christmas present. This makes him loathe
foul lips and the painted cheek. When a boy 'grows wise' he stands,
sure's you're born, on the brink of hell. It's a pity that so many,
instead of backing away when they get their eyelashes singed a little,
jump right in.

"All during my first year I had helped the sample clerk, who had the
best job in the house, get out samples for the salesmen. It was not
"my business" to do this; but I did it during spare time from my
regular work. When I came back from my visit home, the old gentleman
found me on the floor one day while I was tagging samples. 'Billie,'
said he, 'Fritz (the sample clerk) is going out on the road for us
next week. I have decided to let you take his place here in the house.
You are pretty young but we think you can do it.'

"I tried to answer back, 'I'll do my best,' but I couldn't say a word.
I only choked. The old gentleman had to turn away from me; it was too
much for him, too. After he stepped on the elevator, he turned around
and smiled at me. I heard him blow his nose after the elevator sunk
out of sight. I knew then that he believed in me and I said to myself,
'He shall never lose his faith.'

"In a few days Fritz had gone out on his trip and I was left alone to
do his work, the old gentleman handed me a sample book one afternoon
near closing time. 'Billie,' says he, 'Gregory is in a hurry for his
samples. Express them to Fayetteville.' He had merely written the
stock numbers in the book. It was up to me to fill in on the sample
book the description of the goods and the prices. This I did _that
night at home_ from memory. I had learned the stock that well. I
also wrote the sample tickets. It took me until after midnight. Next
morning I was waiting at the front door when the early man came to
unlock it. That night the samples went to Fayetteville.

"Two days afterward the old gentleman called me to the office and
asked me: 'When can Gregory expect his samples? He's in a big hurry.'

"'I sent them Wednesday night, sir,' said I.

"'Wednesday night! Why it was Tuesday night when I gave you the sample
book!'

"'I'm sure they went,' said I, 'because I saw the cases go into the
express wagon.'

"'All right,' said the old gentleman; and he smiled at me again the
same way he did the morning he made me the sample clerk, a smile which
told me I had his heart, and I have it to this day.

"Next morning he sent up to me a letter from Gregory, who wrote that
the samples came to him in better shape than ever before. At the end
of that year I got a check for $150 back pay, and my salary was raised
again. At the end of the third year the old gentleman gave me more
back pay and another raise, saying to me: 'Billie, I have decided to
put you on the road over Moore's old territory. He is not going to be
with us any more. Be ready to start January 1st.' I was the youngest
man that firm ever put out. I was with them sixteen years and it
almost broke my heart to leave them."

"You bet," said I, "the stock boy has a chance if he only knows it."

"Yes," answered my friend, "sure he has. My mother put in my trunk
when I left home a Sunday School card on which were the words: 'Thy
God seeth thee, my son.' Without irreverence I would advise every
stock boy who wants to get on the road to write these words and keep
them before him every day: 'The eyes of the old man are upon me.'"

I once heard one of the very successful clothing salesmen of Chicago
tell how he got on the road.

"I had been drudging along in the office making out bills for more
than a year, at ten a week," said he. "My father traveled for the firm
but he never would do anything to get me started on the road. He
thought I would fall down. I was simply crazy to go. I had seen the
salesmen get down late, sit around like gentlemen, josh the bosses,
smoke good cigars and come and go when they pleased for eight months
in the year. This looked better to me than slaving away making out
bills from half past seven in the morning until half past six at
night, going out at noon hungry as a hound and having to climb a
ladder after a ham sandwich, a glass of milk and a piece of apple pie.

"I had kept myself pretty well togged up and, as my father wouldn't do
anything to get me started, I made up my mind to go straight to the
boss myself. He was a little fat sawed-off. He wore gold-rimmed
glasses and whenever he was interested in anybody, he would look at
him over his specs. He did not know much about the English language,
but he had a whole lot more good common sense than I gave him credit
for then. It never hurts a boy in the house, you know, who wants to go
on the road to go square up and say so. He may get a turn-down, but
the boss will like his spunk, and he stands a better show this way
than if he dodges back and waits always for the boss to come to him.
Many a boy gets out by striking the 'Old Man' to go out. If the boy
puts up a good talk to him the old man will say: 'He came at me pretty
well. By Jove, he can approach merchants, and we will give him a
chance.'

"One day, pretty soon after I had braced the old man to send me out, a
merchant in Iowa wrote in that he wanted to buy a bill of clothing.
They looked him up in Dun's and found that he was in the grocery
business. My father didn't wish to go out--the town was in his
territory. I overheard the old man in the office say to him: 'Let's
send Chim.'

"Well, Jim started that night. They told me to take a sleeper, but I
sat up all night to save the two dollars. I didn't save much money,
though, because in the middle of the night I got hungry and filled up
on peanuts and train bananas. The town was up on a branch and I didn't
get there until six o'clock the next day. When I reached there, I went
right up to my man's store. You ought to have seen his place! The town
was about seven hundred, and the store just about evened up with it--
groceries and hardware. I got a whiff from a barrel of sauer kraut as
I went in the door; on the counter was a cheese case; frying pans and
lanterns hung down on hooks from the ceiling; two farmers sat near the
stove eating sardines and crackers. No clothing was in sight and I
said to myself: 'Well, I'm up against it; this man can't buy much; he
hasn't any place to put it if he does.' But I've since learned one
thing: You never know who is going to buy goods and how many on the
road must learn that the man who has _nothing_ in his line is the very
man who can and will buy the most, sometimes, _because he hasn't any_.
And besides, the _little_ man may be just in the notion of spreading
himself.

[Illustration: "You ought to have seen his place"]

"A young man was counting eggs back near the coal oil can. He was the
only one around who seemed to have anything to do with the store. I
walked up to him and told him who I was. He said, 'Yes, we are glad to
see you. I'm just out of school and father wants to put me in business
here. He is going to put in all his time in the bank. He wants me to
take charge of the store. I've told him we could sell other things
besides groceries--they are dirty, anyway, and don't pay much profit;
so we have started to build on another room right next door and are
going to put in other lines. I've told father we ought to put in
clothing, but he hasn't fully made up his mind. I'll ask him to come
down after supper and you can talk to him.'

"'Hasn't fully made up his mind, and here I am my first time out, 24
hours away, and a big expense,'--all this went through me and I
couldn't eat any supper.

"The old banker that evening was just tolerably glad to see me. It
wasn't exactly a freeze, but there was lots of frost in the air. He
said, after we had talked the thing over, that he would look at my
samples the next morning, but that he would not buy unless my line was
right and the prices were right. I was sure my 'prices were right.' I
had heard the bosses talk a whole year about how cheaply they sold
their goods. I had heard them swear at the salesmen for cutting prices
and tell them that the goods were marked at bare living profit; and I
was green enough to believe this. I also knew that my line was the
best one on the road. I had not stopped to figure out how my bosses
could stay under their own roof all the time and know so much about
other houses' goods and be absolutely sure that their own line was
bound to be the best ever. I had heard the road-men many times tell
the bosses to 'wake up,' but I did not believe the salesmen. You know
that a young fellow, even if he is with a weak house, starts out on
his first trip feeling that his house is the best one. Before he gets
through with his maiden trip, even though his house is a thoroughbred,
he will think it is a selling plater.

"That night I worked until two o'clock opening up. I did not know the
marks so I had to squirm out what the characters meant and put the
prices on the tickets in plain figures so I would know what the goods
were worth. But this was a good thing. The salesman or the firm that
has the honesty and the boldness to mark samples in plain figures and
stick absolutely to their marked price, will do business with ease.
Merchants in the country do not wish to buy cheaper than those in
other towns do; they only wish a square deal. And, say what you will,
they are kind o' leery when they buy from samples marked in
characters--not plain figures. They often use a blind mark to do scaly
work on their own customers and they don't like to have the same game
worked on themselves. Honest merchants, and I mean by this those who
make only a reasonable profit, mark their goods in plain figures, cut
prices to nobody--prefer to do business with those who do it their
way. The traveling man who breaks prices soon loses out.

"That night I couldn't sleep. I was up early next morning and had a
good fire in my sample room. I had sense enough to make the place
where I was going to show my goods as comfortable as I could. I sold a
bill of $2,500 and never cut a price.

"When I got home I put the order on the old man's desk and went to my
stool to make out bills. The old man came in. He picked up the order
and looked over it carefully, then he asked one of the boys: 'Vere's
Chim? Tell him to com heer. I vant to see him.'

"I walked into the office. The old man was looking at me over his
specs as I went in. He grabbed me by the hand and said so loud you
could hear him all over the house: 'Ah, Chim, dot vas tandy orter. How
dit you do id mitoud cotting prices, Chim? You vas a motel for efery
men we haf in der house. I did nod know we hat a salesman in der
office. By Himmel! you got a chob on der roat right avay, Chim.'"




CHAPTER VII.

FIRST EXPERIENCES IN SELLING.


I sat with a group of friends around a table one evening not long ago,
in one of the dining rooms of the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. The
dining room was done in dark stained oak, the waiters whispered to
each other in foreign tongues, French and German; on the walls of the
room were pictures of foreign scenes painted by foreign hands; but,
aside from this, everything about us was strictly American. We had
before us blue points with water-cress salad, mountain trout from the
Rockies, and a Porterhouse three inches thick. We had just come out of
the brush and were going to "Sunday" in Denver. It was Saturday night,
A man who has never been on the road does not know what it is to get a
square meal after he has been "high-grassing it" for a week or two,
and when such can become the pleasure of a drummer, he quickly forgets
the tough "chuck" he has been chewing for many days.

We were all old friends, had known each other in a different territory
many years before; so, when we came together again, this time in
Denver, not having seen each other for many years, we talked of old
times and of when we met with our first experiences on the road.

When a man first begins to hustle trunks he has a whole lot to learn.
Usually he has been a stock-boy, knowing very little of the world
beyond the bare walls in which he has filled orders. To his fellow
travelers the young man on the road is just about as green as they
make them, but the rapid way in which he catches on and becomes an
old-timer, is a caution.

A great many decry the life of the traveling man, even men on the road
themselves are discontented, but if you want to get one who is truly
happy and satisfied with his lot, find one who, after having enjoyed
the free and independent (yes, and delightful!) life of the road, and
then settled down for a little while as a merchant on his own hook,
insurance agent, or something of that kind, and finally has gone back
to his grips, and you will find a man who will say: "Well, somebody
else can do other things, but, for my part, give me the road."

After we had finished with the good things before us and had lighted
cigars, we could all see in the blue curls of smoke that rose before
us visions of our past lives. I asked one of my friends, "How long
have you been on the road, Billy?"

"Good Lord!" he yawned, "I haven't thought of that for a long time,
but I sure do remember when I first started out. I left St. Louis one
Sunday night on the Missouri Pacific. It was nearly twenty years ago.
I remember it very well because that night I read in a newspaper that
there was such a thing as a phonograph and, as I was traveling through
Missouri, I didn't believe it. I had to wait until I could see one.
The next day noon I struck Falls City, Nebraska. It had taken me
eighteen hours to make the trip. To me it seemed as if I were going
into a new world and I was surprised to find, when I reached Nebraska,
that men way out there wore about the same sort of clothes that they
did in St. Louis. I would not have been surprised a bit if some Indian
had come out of the bushes and tried to scalp me. The depot was a mile
and a half from the hotel. Here I took my first ride in an omnibus.
The inside of that old bus, the red-cushioned seats and the
advertisements of a livery stable, a hardware store, and "Little
Jake's Tailor Shop" were all new to me. Mud? I never saw mud so deep
in my life. It took us an hour to get up town. The little white hotel
with the green shutters on it was one of the best I ever struck in my
life. Many a time since then I have wished I could have carried it--
the good friend, chicken and all--along with me in all my travels. My
best friend and adviser, an old road man himself, had told me this:
'When you get to a town, get up your trunks and open them and then go
and see the trade. You might just as well hunt quail with your shells
in your pocket as to try to do business without your samples open.'

"I opened up that afternoon. It took me three hours. I put my samples
in good shape so that I knew where to lay my hands on anything that a
customer might ask for--and you know if you go out to sell anything
you'd better know what you have to sell! My samples open, I went down
the street and fell into the first store I came to. The proprietor had
been an old customer of the house, but I now know that the reason he
gave me the ice pitcher was that he had been slow in paying his bills
and the house had drawn on him. A wise thing, this, for a house to do
--when they want to lose a customer! This was a heart-breaker to me
right at the start, but it was lucky, because, if I had sold him, I
would have packed up and gone away without working the town. A man on
the road, you know, boys, even if he doesn't do business with them,
should form the acquaintance of all the men in the town who handle his
line. The old customer may drop dead, sell out, or go broke, and it is
always well to have somebody else in line. Of course there are
justifiable exceptions to this rule, but in general I would say: 'Know
as many as you can who handle your line.'

"After the old customer turned me down I went into every store in that
town and told my business. I found two out of about six who said they
would look at my goods. By this time everybody had closed up and I
came back to the hotel and went to bed, having spent the first day
without doing any business.

"Five men from my house in this same territory had fallen down in five
years and I, a kid almost, was number six--but not to fall down! I
said to myself, '_I am going to succeed.'_ The will to win means
a whole lot in this road business, too, boys. You know, if you go at a
thing half-heartedly you are sure to lose out, but if you say 'I
will,' you cannot fall down.

"Next morning I was up early and, before the clerks had dusted off the
counters, I went in to see the old gentleman who had said he would
look at my goods.

"'Round pretty early, aren't you, son?' said the old gentleman.

"'Yes, sir; but I'm after the worm,' said I.

"'All right. Go up to your hotel and I'll be there in half an hour.'

"Instead of waiting until he was ready for me, I went to the hotel.
After the half hour was up I began to get nervous. It was an hour and
a half before he came. I hadn't then learned that the best way to do
is to go with your customer from his store to yours, instead of
sitting around and waiting for him to come to you. This gives him a
chance to get out of the notion.

"I sold the old gentleman a pretty fair bill of hats, but it was sort
of a hit and miss proposition. He would jump from this thing to that
thing. I hadn't learned that the real way to sell goods is to lay out
one line at a time and finish with that before going to another.
Pretty soon, though, good merchants educated me how to sell a bill.
This is a thing a beginner should be taught something about before he
starts out.

"Customer No. 2 was a poke. But I suppose this was the reason I sold
him, because most of the boys, I afterwards learned, passed him up and
had nicknamed him 'Old Sorgum-in-the-Winter.' It is a pretty good idea
to let a slow man have his way, anyhow, if you have plenty of time,
because when you are selling goods in dozen lots, no matter how slow a
man is, you can get in a pretty good day's work in a few hours.

"When I got through with 'Old Sorgum' I had several hours left before
my train went west. Did I pack up and quit? Bet your life not! I
didn't have sense enough then, I suppose, to know that I had placed my
goods in about as many stores as I ought to. I then did the 'bundle
act.'

"I did up a bunch of stuff in a cloth and went down the street with
the samples under my arm. I did have sense enough, though, to tuck
them under my coat as I passed by the store of the man I had sold. I
didn't know, then, of the business jealousy--which is folly, you know
--there is between merchants; but I felt a little guilty just the
same.

The only thing I sold, however, was a dozen dog-skin gloves to the big
clothing merchant on the corner. That night I took the two o'clock
train out of town and had my first experience of sleeping in two beds
in two towns in one night--but this, in those days, was fun for me.

"Do you know, I had a bully good week? I was out early that season,
ahead of the bunch. By Saturday afternoon I had worked as far west as
Wymore. I went up to see a man there on Saturday afternoon. He said,
'I'll see you in the morning.' Well, there I was! I had been raised to
respect the Sabbath and between the time that he said he would see me
in the morning and the time that I said all right--which was about a
jiffy--I figured out that it would be better to succeed doing business
on Sunday than to fail by being too offensively good. For a stranger
in a strange place work is apt to be less mischievous than idling,
even on the Sabbath Day.

"Heavens! how I worked those days! After I had made the appointment
for Sunday morning I went back to the hotel and threw my stuff into my
trunks quickly--by this time I had learned that to handle samples in a
hurry is one of the necessary arts of the road--and took a train to a
little nearby town which I could double into without losing any time.
I even had the nerve to drag a man over to my sample room _after he
had closed up on Saturday night!_ I didn't sell him anything that
time, but afterwards he became one of my best customers. It pays to
keep hustling, you know.

"Whew! how cold it was that night. The train west left at 3 a.m.
Heavens! how cold my room was. A hardware man had never even slept in
it, to say nothing of its ever having known a stove. The windows had
whiskers on them long as a billy goat's; the mattress was one of those
thin boys. I hadn't then learned that the cold can come through the
mattress under you just about as fast as it can through the quilts on
top. I hadn't got onto the lamp chimney trick."

"Why, what's that?" spoke up one of the boys.

"Aren't you onto that?" said Billy. "You can take a lamp chimney, wrap
it up in a towel and put it at your feet and it will make your whole
bed as warm as toast.

"Well, I went back to Wymore the next morning and sold my man. I cut
the stuffing out of prices because I had been told that the firm he
bought from was the best going, and I remembered the advice that my
old friend had given me: 'It's better, Billy, to be cussed for selling
goods cheap than to be fired for not selling them at all.' Of course I
don't agree with this now, but I slashed that bill just the same.

"Next morning, when I reached Beatrice, the first thing I saw in the
old hotel (I still recall that dead, musty smell) was a church
directory hanging on the wall. In the center of the directory were
printed these words:

     "'A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content
        And plenty of health for the morrow;
      But a Sabbath profaned, no matter what gained,
        Is a certain forerunner of sorrow.'

"Down in the corner, where the glass was broken, one of the boys who
had without doubt profaned the Sabbath, had written these words:

     "'A man who's thrifty on Sunday's worth fifty
        Of a half-sanctimonious duck;
      He will get along well if he does go to dwell
        Where he'll chew on Old Satan's hot chuck.'

"My business the week before had been simply out of sight. The old man
in the house wrote me the only congratulatory letter I ever got from
him in my life. He was so well pleased with what I had done that he
didn't kick very hard even on the bill that I had slashed. But that
next week--oh, my! I didn't sell enough to buy honeysuckles for a
humming bird. I began to think that maybe that Sunday bill had
'queered' me."

"But how about Sunday now, Bill?" spoke up one of the boys. "Do you
think you'd like to take a good fat order to-morrow?"

"Yes, I've grown not to mind it out in this country," said Billy. "You
know we've a saying out here that the Lord has never come west of
Cheyenne."

"I shall never forget my first experience," said my old friend Jim, as
we all lighted fresh cigars--having forgotten the Dutch pictures and
the black oak furnishings.

"I had made a little flyer for the house to pick up a bill of opening
stock out in Iowa. They all thought in the office that the bill wasn't
worth going after, so they sent me; but I landed a twenty-five hundred
dollar order without slashing an item, a thing no other salesman up to
that time had ever done, so the old man called me in the office and
gave me a job just as soon as I came back.

"I started out with two hundred dollars expense money. The roll of
greenbacks the cashier handed me looked as big as a bale of hay. I
made a couple of towns the first two days and did business in both of
them, keeping up the old lick of not cutting a price.

"The next town I was booked for was Broken Bow, which was then off the
main line of the 'Q,' and way up on a branch. To get there I had to go
to Grand Island. Now, you boys remember the mob that used to hang out
around the hotel at Grand Island. That was the time when there were a
lot of poker sharks on the road. When I was a bill clerk in Chicago I
used to meet with some of the other boys from the store on Saturday
nights, play penny ante, five-cent limit, and settle for twenty-five
cents on the dollar when we got through--I was with a clothing firm,
you know. I had always been rather lucky and I had it in my head that
I could buck up against anybody in a poker game. I had no trouble
finding company to sit in with. In fact, they looked me up. In those
days there were plenty of glass bowls full of water setting 'round for
suckers. My train didn't leave until Monday morning and I had to
Sunday at Grand Island.

"We started in on Saturday night and played all night long. By the
time we had breakfast--and this we had sent up to the room--I was out
about forty dollars. I wanted to quit them and call it off. I thought
this was about as much as I could stand to lose and 'cover' in my
expense account, but all of the old sharks said, 'By jove, you have
got nerve, Jim. You have the hardest run of luck in drawing cards that
I ever saw.' They doped me up with the usual words of praise and,
after I had put a cup of coffee or two under my belt, I went at it
again, making up my mind that I could stand to lose another ten. I
figured out that I could make a team trip and 'break a wheel' to even
up on expenses.

"Well, you know what that means. The time for you to quit a poker game
(when you have money in your pocket) is like to-morrow--it never
comes. By nightfall I was dead broke. Then I began to think. I felt
like butting my brains out against a lamp-post; but that wouldn't do.
I ate supper all alone and went to thinking what I'd do.

"I wasn't a kitten, by any means, so I went up to my shark friends and
struck one of them for enough to carry me up to Broken Bow and back.
He was a big winner and came right up with the twenty. They wanted to
let me in the game again on 'tick,' but then I had sense enough to
know that I'd had plenty. I went to my room and wrote the house. I
simply made a clean breast of the whole business. I told them the
truth about the matter--that I'd acted the fool--and I promised them
I'd never do it any more; and I haven't played a game of poker since.
The old man of the house had wired me money to Grand Island by the
time I returned there and in the first mail he wrote me to keep right
on.

"Business was bum with me for the next three days. I didn't sell a
cent. One of the boys tipped me on an Irishman down in Schuyler who
had had a squabble with his clothing house. I saw a chance right there
and jumped right into that town. I got the man to look at my goods. He
looked them all through from A to Z, but I couldn't start that
Hibernian to save my life.

"He said, 'Well, your line looks pretty good; but, heavens alive! your
prices are away too high.' Then he said, picking up a coat: 'Look
here, young man, you're new on the road and I want to figure out and
show you that you're getting too much for your goods. Now, you put
down there, here is a suit that you ask me $12 for. Just figure the
cloth and the linings, and the buttons, and the work. All told they
don't cost you people over seven dollars. You ought to be able to--and
you can--make me this suit for $10. That's profit enough. You can't
expect to do business with us people out here in Nebraska and hold us
up. We're not in the backwoods. People are civilized out here. Your
house has figured that we're Indians, or something of that kind. You
know very well that they sell this same suit in Illinois, where
competition is greater, for ten dollars. Now I won't stand for any
high prices like you're asking me. I'm going to quit the old firm that
I've been buying goods from. I've got onto them. Now I'm going to give
my business to somebody and you're here on the spot. Your goods suit
me as far as pattern and make and general appearance go, and I'll do
business with you, and do it right now, if you'll do it on the right
sort of basis.'

"Well, there I was. I hadn't sold a bill for three days and I felt
that this one was slipping right away from me, too. I had come
especially to see the man and he had told me that he would buy goods
from me if I would make the price right. So I lit in to cut. I sold
him the twelve dollar suit for ten dollars. He took a dozen of them.
It was a staple. I didn't know anything about what the goods were
worth, but he had made his bluff good. I sold him the bill right
through at cut prices on everything. The house actually lost money on
the bill. I have long since learned that the only way to meet a
bluffer is with a bluff. This man had laid out a line of goods which
he fully intended, I know now, to buy from me at the prices which I
had first asked him for them, but he thought he would buy them cheaper
from me if he could.

"Many a time after that, when I had got onto things better, has this
old Irishman laughed at me about how he worked me into giving him a
bill of goods, and enjoyed the joke of it--Irishmanlike--more, I
believe, than he did getting the bill at low prices.

"Well, my nerve was gone and I thought the only way I could do
business then was by cutting the stuffing out of prices. I kept it up
for a few days--until I received my next mail at Omaha. Whew! how the
old man did pour it into me. He wrote me the meanest letter that a
white man ever got. He said: 'Jim, you can go out and play all the
poker that you want to, but don't cut the life out of goods. You can
lose a hundred and fifty dollars once in a while, if you want to,
playing cards, that will be a whole lot better than losing a hundred
and fifty every day by not getting as much as goods are worth. Now
we're going to forget about the hundred and fifty dollars you lost
gambling, instead of charging it to your salary account, as you told
us to do. We had made up our minds because you were starting out so
well and were keeping up prices, to charge this hundred and fifty
dollars to your expense account. We were going to forget all about
that, Jim; but if you can't get better prices than you have been for
the last week, just take the train and come right on in to the house.
We can't afford to keep you out on the road and lose money on you;'
and so on.

"I was scared to death. I didn't know that the Old Man in the house
was running a bigger bluff on me than the Irishman to whom I made cut
prices on the bill.

"But that letter gave me my nerve back and I ended up with a pretty
fair trip. At that time I hadn't learned that this road business is
done on confidence more than on knowledge. A salesman must feel first
within himself that his goods and prices are right, and then he can
sell them at those prices. If you feel a thing yourself you can make
the other man feel it, especially when he doesn't know anything about
the values of the goods he buys.

"When I reached the house one of the boys in stock patted me on the
back and said; 'Jim, the old man is tickled to death about what you've
done. He says you're making better profits for him than any man in the
house.'"

"Well, I guess you held your job, all right, then, didn't you, Jim?"

"Oh my, yes. I stayed with them--that was my old firm, you know--for
fifteen years, and I was a fool for ever leaving them. I would have
been a partner in the house to-day if I hadn't switched off."

"How long have you been out, Arthur?" said my friend Jim, after ending
his story.

"Well, so long that I've almost forgotten it, boys, but I shall never
forget my start, either. The firm that I worked for had a wholesale
business, and they were also interested in a retail store. I was stock
man in the retail house but I wasn't satisfied with it. I was crazy to
go out and try my luck on the road. I braced the old man several times
before he would let me start; but he finally said to me: 'Well,
Arthur, you're mighty anxious to go out on the road, and I guess we'll
let you go. It won't do much harm because I think that, after a little
bit, you will want to get back to your old job. Then you'll be
satisfied with it. I kind o' feel, though, that in sending you out
we'll be spoiling a good retail clerk to make a poor traveling man.
You've done pretty well selling gloves a pair at a time to people who
come in and ask for them, but you're going to have a good deal harder
time when you go to selling a dozen at a clip to a man who hasn't been
in the habit of buying them from you. But, as you're bent on going,
we'll start you out this season. You can get yourself ready to go
right away.'

"My territory was Iowa. In the first town I struck was the meanest
merchant I've ever met in my life. But I didn't know it then. He was
one of the kind who'd tell you with a grunt that he would not go to
your sample room but if you had a few good sellers to bring them over
and he'd look at them. The old hog! Then about the time you'd get your
stuff over to his store something would have turned up to make him hot
and he'd take out his spite on you.

"Well, this old duck said he'd look at my samples of unlined goods. I
rather thought that if I could get him started on unlined goods I
could sell him on lined stuff and mittens. So I lugged over my whole
line myself. I didn't have sense enough to give the porter a quarter
to carry my grip over to his store and save my energy, but, instead, I
picked up the old grip myself. It was all right for the first block,
but then I had to sit down and rest. The store was four blocks away.
On the home stretch I couldn't go twenty steps before I had to sit
down and rest. It was so heavy that it almost pulled the cords in my
wrist in two. When I finally landed the grip at the front of the old
man's store, my tongue was hanging out. He had then gone to dinner.

"I thought I wouldn't eat anything but that I would get my line ready
for him by the time he came back, get through with him and take
luncheon later. I carried the grip to the back end of the store and
spread out my line on the counter. About one o'clock he came in and I
said to him, 'I'm ready for you.' He walked away and didn't say a word
but took out a newspaper and read for half an hour. He did it for pure
meanness, for not a single customer came into the store while he sat
there.

"I was beginning to get a little hungry but I didn't mind that then.
When the young lady on the dry goods side came back from dinner I
sidled up to her and talked about the weather for another half hour.
My stomach was beginning to gnaw but I didn't dare go out. The old man
by this time had gone to his desk and was writing some letters. I
waited until I saw him address an envelope and put a stamp on it, and
then I braced him a second time.

"'No, I guess I don't want any gloves.'

"'Well, I've my goods all here and it'll be no trouble to show them to
you,' I said.

"'Nope,' said he, and then started to write another letter.

"When he finished that one, I said: 'Now, I don't like to insist but
as my goods are all here it won't do any harm to look at them.'

"With this the old man turned on me and said:

"'Looker here, young man, I've told you twict that I don't want to buy
any of your goods. Now, you just get them in your grip and get them
out of here right quick; if you don't I'll throw them out and you with
them.'

"Well, the old duffer was a little bigger than I was, and I didn't
want to get into any trouble with him; not that I cared anything about
having a scrap with him, but I thought that the firm wouldn't like it,
and if they got onto me they'd fire me. So, without saying a word, I
began to pack my goods together.

"About that time a customer came in who wanted to buy a pair of shoes.
Some of my samples were still on the counter near the shoe shelves.
The old man, with a sweep of his hand, just cleaned the counter of my
samples and there I was, picking them up off the floor and putting
them into my grip. I felt like hitting him over the head with a nail
puller but I buckled up the straps and started sliding the grip
along,--it was so infernally heavy--to the front door.

"Before I got to the front door, he came up and took the grip out of
my hand and piled it out on the sidewalk and gave me a shove. Then he
went back to show the customer the pair of shoes.

"I was just a boy then--was just nineteen--and this was the first man
I'd called on.

"'If they're all like this,' thought I to myself, 'I believe I'll go
back home and sell them a pair at a time to the boys I know who "come
in" for them.'

"I lugged that grip back to the hotel, hungry as I was. There was ice
on the sidewalk but I was sweating like a mule pulling a bob-tailed
street car full of fat folks. I was almost famished but I went to my
room and cried like a child. My heart was broken.

[Illustration: "My stomach was beginning to gnaw, but i didn't dare go
out"]

"But after awhile my nerve came back to me, and I thought, surely all
the merchants I call on won't be like that man,--and I washed up and
went down to supper. After eating something I felt better. At the
supper table I told an old traveling man, who was sitting at the table
with me, about the way I'd been treated.

"'Well, come on, my boy, and I'll sell you a bill tonight. That old
fellow is the meanest dog in Iowa. No decent traveling man will go
near him. As a rule, you'll find that merchants will treat you like a
gentleman. The best thing you can do is to scratch that old whelp off
the list. Of course you know,' said he, giving me advice which I
needed very much, 'you'll often run up against a man who is a little
sour, but if you sprinkle sugar on him in the right kind of way, you
can sweeten him up.'

"You know how it is, boys, even now, all of us like to give a helping
hand to the young fellow who's just starting out. I would almost hand
over one of my customers to a young man to give him encouragement, and
so would you. We've all been up against the game ourselves and know
how many things the young fellow runs up against to dishearten him.

"As I think of my early experiences, I recall with a great deal of
gratitude in my heart the kind deeds that were done for me when I was
the green first-tripper, by the old timers on the road. My new friend
took me down the street to one of his customers and made him give me
an order. That night I went to bed the happiest boy in Iowa."

With this one of the boys called a waiter. As we lit our cigars my
friend Moore, who was next to tell his story, said, "Well, boys,
here's to Our First Experiences."




CHAPTER VIII.

TACTICS IN SELLING.


The man on the road is an army officer. His soldiers are his samples.
His enemy is his competitor. He fights battles every day. The "spoils
of war" is _business_.

The traveling man must use tactics just the same as does the general.
He may not have at stake the lives of other men and the success of his
country; but he does have at stake--and every day--his own livelihood,
a chance for promotion--a partnership perhaps--and always, the success
of his firm.

Many are the turns the salesman takes to get business. He must be
always ready when his eyes are open, and sometimes in his dreams, to
wage war. If he is of the wrong sort, once in a while he will give
himself up to sharp practice with his customer; another time he will
fight shrewdly against his competitor. Sometimes he must cajole the
man who wishes to do business with him and at the same time,
especially when his customer's credit is none too good, make it easy
for him to get goods shipped; and, hardest of all, he must get the
merchant's attention that he may show him his wares. Get a merchant to
_looking_ at your goods and you usually sell a bill.

In the smoking room of a Pullman one night sat a bunch of the boys
who, as is usual with them when they get together, were telling of
their experiences. The smoker is the drummer's club-room when he is on
a trip. On every train every night are told tales of the road which,
if they were put in type, would make a book of compelling interest.
The life of the traveling man has such variety, such a change of
scene, that a great deal more comes into it than mere buy and sell.
Yes, on this night of which I speak, the stories told were about
tussles that my friends had had to get business.

As the train rounded a sharp curve, one of the boys, who was standing,
bumped his head against the door post. A New York hat man who saw the
"broken bonnet," said, "Your cracked cady reminds me of one time when
I sold a bill of goods that pleased me, I believe, more than any other
order that I ever took. I was over in the mining district of Michigan.
That's a pretty wide open country, you know. My old customer had quit
the town. He couldn't make a 'stick' of it somehow. I had been selling
him exclusively for so long that I thought I was queered with every
other merchant in the town. But the season after my customer Hodges
left there, much to my surprise, two men wrote into the house saying
they would like to buy my goods. My stuff had always given Hodges'
customers satisfaction. After he left, his old customers drifted into
other stores and asked for my brand. Now, if you can only get a
merchant's customers to asking for a certain brand of goods, you
aren't going to have trouble in doing business with him. This is where
the wholesale firm that sells reliable merchandise wins out over the
one that does a cut-throat business. Good stuff satisfies and it
builds business.

"Well, when I went into this town I thought I would have easy sailing
but I felt a little taken back when I walked down the street and sized
up the stores of the merchants who wished to buy my goods. They both
looked to me like tid bits. Both of them were new in the town, one of
them having moved into Hodges' old stand. I said to myself that I
didn't wish to do business with either one of these pikers. 'I'll see
if I can't go over and square myself with Andrews, the biggest man in
town,' I said. 'While I've never tried to do business with him, he
can't have anything against me. I've always gone over and been a good
fellow with him, so I'll see if I can't get him lined up.'

"Three or four more of the boys had come in with me on the same train.
When I went into Andrews' store, two of them were in there. Pretty
soon afterwards I heard one of them say: 'Well, Andy, as you want to
get away in the morning, I'll fall in after you close up. It'll suit
me all the better to do business with you tonight.' Andrews spoke up
and said, 'All right, eight o'clock goes.'

"This man saw that I had come in to see him and, having made his
engagement, knew enough to get out of the way. The boys, you know,
especially the old timers, are mighty good about this. I don't believe
the outsiders anyway know much about the fellowship among us.

"The other man who was in the store was out on his first trip. He was
selling suspenders. It was then, say, half past five. I joshed with
the boys in the store for a few minutes. Andrews, meantime, had gone
up to his office to look over his mail and get off some rush letters.
The new man, who sold suspenders, was a good fellow but he had lots to
learn. He trailed right along after Andrews as if he had been a dog
led by a string. He stood around up in the office for a few minutes
without having anything to say. Had he been an old-timer, you know, he
would have made his speech and then moved out of the way. After a few
minutes he came down and said to me, 'That fellow's a tough
proposition. I can't get hold of him. I can't find out whether he
wants to look at my goods or not. He joshes with me but I can't get
him down to say that he will look. I don't know whether I ought to
have my trunks brought up and fool with him or not.'

"'Let me tell you one thing, my boy,' said I, 'if you want to do
business, get your stuff up and do it quickly. If he doesn't come to
look at your goods, bring 'em in. Bring 'em in. Go after him that
way.'

"'All right, I guess I will,' said he, and out he went.

"As soon as Andrews came down from his office, I said 'Hello,' but
before I could put in a word about business, in came a customer to
look at a shirt. Well, sir, that fellow jawed over that four-bit shirt
for half an hour. I'd gladly have given him half a dozen dollar-and-a-
half shirts if he would only get out of my way and give me a chance to
talk business. Just about the time that Andrews wrapped up the shirt,
back came the new man again, having had his trunks brought up to the
hotel. I knew then that my cake was all dough. So I skipped out,
saying I would call in after supper. I felt then that, as Andrews was
going away the next morning, I wouldn't get a chance at him so, being
in the town, I thought the best thing to do was to go over and pick up
one of the other fellows who was anxious to buy from me.

"I went over to see the man who had taken Hodges' old stand. As soon
as I went in he said: 'Yes, I want some goods. I have just started in
here. I haven't much in the store but I'm doing first rate and am
going to stock up. When can I see you? It would suit me a good deal
better tonight after eight o'clock than any other time. I haven't put
on a clerk yet and am here all alone. If you like, we'll get right at
it and take sizes on what stock we have. Then you can get your supper
and see me at eight o'clock and I'll be ready for you. I want to buy a
pretty fair order. I've had a bully good hat trade this season. I've
been sending mail orders into your house--must have bought over four
hundred dollars from, them in the last three months. I s'pose you got
credit for it all right.'

"Well, this was news to me. The house hadn't written me anything about
having received the mail orders and I'll say right here, that the firm
that doesn't keep their salesmen fully posted about what's going on in
his territory makes a great big mistake. If I'd known that this man
had been buying so many goods, I wouldn't have overlooked him. As it
was, I came very near passing up the town. And I'll tell you another
thing: A man never wants to overlook what may seem to him a small bet.
This fellow gave me that night over seven hundred dollars--a pretty
clean bill in hats, you know, and has made me a first-class customer
and we have become good friends.

"But I'm getting a little ahead of my story! After supper, that night,
I dropped into Andrews' store again. The suspender man was still
there. He had taken my tip and brought in some of his samples. While
Andrews was over at the dry goods side for a few minutes, the
suspender man said to me:

"'I don't believe I can sell this fellow. He says he wants to buy some
suspenders but that mine don't strike him somehow--says they're too
high prices. I've cut a $2.25 suspender to $1.90 but that doesn't seem
to satisfy him, and I'll give you a tip, too--you've been so kind to
me--I heard him say to his buyer that he wasn't going to look you
over. He said to let you come around a few times and leave some of
your money in the town, and then maybe he'd do business with you. I
just thought I'd tell you this so that you'd know how you stood and
not lose any time over it.'

"'Thank you very much,' I said. Now, this sort of thing, you know,
makes you whet your Barlow on your boot leg. I did thank the suspender
man for the tip but I made up my mind that I was going to do business
with Andrews anyway. You know there's lots more fun shooting quail
flying in the brush than to pot-hunt them in a fence corner.

"After I'd sold my other man that night, I sat down in the office of
the hotel. Andrews was still in the sample room, just behind the
office, looking over goods. I knew he'd have to pass out that way, so
I sat down to wait for him. It was getting pretty late but I knew that
he was a night-hawk and if he got interested he would stay up until
midnight looking at goods. After a little bit out came Andrews, his
buyer and my other traveling man friend. He asked me up with them to
have cigars. He was wise. Only that morning we'd had to double up
together in a sample room in the last town. We were pretty much
crowded but were going to 'divvy' on the space. The boys, you know,
are mighty good about this sort of thing; but when I went down the
street I learned that my man was out of town--I sold only one man in
that place. So I went right back up to the sample room and rolled my
trunks out of his way so that my friend could have the whole thing to
himself. There's no use being a hog, you know. This didn't hurt me
any, and it was as much on account of this as anything else that I was
asked up to take a cigar where I could get in a word with Andrews.

"As the clerk was passing out the cigars, Andrews took off his hat. As
he dropped it on the cigar case, he rubbed his hand over his head and
said, 'Gee! but I've got a headache!'

"I picked up his hat. Quick as a flash I saw my chance. It was from my
competitor's house. I could feel, in a second, that it was a poor one.
Getting the brim between my fingers, I said to Andrews, 'Why, you
shouldn't get the headache by wearing such a good hat as this. Why,
this is a splendid piece of goods!'

"With this, I tore a slit in the brim as easily as if it had been
blotting paper. Then I gave the brim a few more turns, ripping it
clear off the crown. In a minute or two I tore up the brim and made it
look like black pasteboard checkers.

"'The cigars are on me!' said Andrews, as everybody around gave him
the laugh.

"I went up to my room soon leaving Andrews that night to wear his
brimless hat. But I knew then that I could get his attention when I
wanted it, next morning, about nine o'clock,--for my train and his
left at 11:30. This would give plenty of time to do business with him
if we had any business to do, as he was a quick buyer when you got him
interested. I went into his store with two hats in my hand. They were
good clear Nutrias and just the size that Andrews wore. I'd found this
out by looking at his hat the night before.

"'I don't want to do any business with you, Andrews,' said I, 'but I'm
not such a bad fellow, you know, and I want to square up things with
you a little. Take one of these.'

"The hats were 'beauts.' Andrews went to the mirror and put on one and
then the other. He finally said, 'I guess I'll hang onto the brown
one. By Jove, these are daisies, old man!'

"'Yes,' said I, striking as quickly as a rattlesnake, 'and there are
lots more where these came from! Now, look here, Andrews, you know
mighty well that my line of stuff is a lot better than the one that
you're buying from. If you think more of the babies of the man you are
buying your hats from than you do of your own, stay right here; but if
you don't, get Jack, your buyer, and come up with me right now. I'm
going out on the 11:30 train.' This line of talk will knock out the
friendship argument when nothing else will.

"'Guess I'll go you one, old man,' said Andrews.

"He bought a good sized bill and, as I left him on the train where I
changed cars, he said, 'Well, good luck to you. I guess you'd better
just duplicate that order I gave you, for my other store.'"

"That," spoke up one of the boys, "is what I call salesmanship. You
landed the man that didn't want to buy your goods. The new man let him
slip off his hook when he really wanted to buy suspenders."

"I once landed a $3,400 bill up in Wisconsin," said a clothing man as
we lighted fresh cigars, "in a funny way. I'd been calling on an old
German clothing merchant for a good many years, but I could never get
him interested. I went into his store one morning and got the usual
stand-off. I asked him if he wouldn't come over and just _look_ at my
goods, that I could save him money and give him a prettier line of
patterns and neater made stuff than he was buying.

"'Ach! Dat's de sonk dey all sink,' said the old German. 'I'm
sotisfite mit de line I haf. Sell 'em eesy und maig a goot brofit.
Vat's de use uf chanching anyvay, alretty?'

[Illustration: In big headlines I read, "GREAT FIRE IN CHICAGO."]

"I'd been up against this argument so many times with him that I knew
there was no use of trying to buck up against it any more, so I
started to leave the store. The old man, although he turned me down
every time I went there, would always walk with me to the front door
and give me a courteous farewell. In came a boy with a Chicago paper
just as we were five steps from the door. What do you suppose stared
me in the face? In big head lines I read: GREAT FIRE IN CHICAGO in big
type. The paper also stated that flames were spreading toward my
house. I at once excused myself and went down to the telegraph office
to wire my house exactly where I was so that they could let me know
what to do. As I passed to the operator the telegram I wrote, he said,
'Why, Mr. Leonard, I've just sent a boy up to the hotel with a message
for you. There he is! Call him back!' The wire was from the house
stating, 'Fire did us only little damage. Keep right on as if nothing
had happened.'

"My samples were all opened up and I had to wait several hours for a
train anyway, so an idea struck me. 'I believe I'll fake a telegram
and see if I can't work my old German friend with it.' I wrote out a
message to myself, 'All garments on the second floor are steam heated.
They are really uninjured but we will collect insurance on them. Sell
cheap.'

"Armed with this telegram I walked into the old German's store again.
'Enny noos?' said he.

"'Yes; here's a telegram I've just received,' said I, handing over the
fake message.

"'Sdeam heatet,' said the old man, 'Vell dey gan be bresst oud, nicht?
Veil, I look ad your goots.'

"He dropped in right after dinner. I had laid out on one side of the
sample room a line of second floor goods.

"Among them were a lot of old frocks that the house was very anxious
to get rid of. When I got back to the old man's store, he was pacing
the floor waiting for me to come. He had on his overcoat ready to go
with me.

"'Vell,' said he, before giving me a chance to speak, 'I go right down
mit you.'

"He was the craziest buyer I ever saw. It didn't take me more than
twenty minutes to sell the $3,400."

"But how did you get on afterwards?" asked one of the boys.

"Don't speak of it," said Leonard. "The joke was so good that I gave
it away to one of the boys after the bill had been shipped, and do you
know, the old man got onto me and returned a big part of the bill. Of
course, you know I've never gone near him since. Retribution, I
suppose! That cured me of sharp tricks."

"A sharp game doesn't work out very well when you play it on your
customer," spoke up one of the boys who sold bonds, "but it's all
right to mislead your competitor once in a while, especially if he
tries to find out things from you that he really hasn't any business
to know. I was once over in Indiana. I had on me a pretty good line of
six per cents. They were issued by a well-to-do little town out West.
You know, western bonds are really A-1 property, but the people in the
East haven't yet got their eyes open to the value of property west of
the Rockies.

"Well; when I reached this town, one of my friends tipped me onto one
of my competitors who, he said, was going to be in that same town that
afternoon. There were three prospective customers for us and we were
both in the habit of going after the same people. Two of them were
bankers,--one of them was pretty long winded; the other was a retired
grain dealer who lived about a mile out of town. He was the man I
really wished to go after. His name was Reidy and he was quite an old
gentleman, always looking for a little inside on everything. I didn't
wish to waste much time on the bankers before I'd taken a crack at the
old man. I knew he'd just cashed in on some other bonds that he had
bought from my firm and that he was probably open for another deal. I
merely went over and shook hands with the bankers. One of them--the
long winded one--asked me if I had a certain bond. I told him I didn't
think I had,--that I'd 'phone in and find out. I got on the line with
my old grain dealer friend and he said he'd be in town right after
dinner. I would have gone out to see him but he preferred doing his
business in town. By this time I knew my competitor would reach town
so I ate dinner early and took chances on his still being in the
dining room when Reidy would drive in. I knew that my competitor, if
he got into town, would go right after the old gentleman just as
quickly as he could.

"After dinner I sat down out in the public square smoking, and
apparently taking the world at ease,--but I was fretting inside to
beat the band! My competitor saw me from the hotel porch. He came over
and shook hands--you know we're always ready to cut each other's
throats but we do it with a smile and always put out the glad hand.

"'Well, Woody,' said he, 'you seem to be taking the world easy.
Business must have been good this week.'

"'Oh, fair,' I answered,--but it had really been rotten for several
days.

"'Come and eat,' said he.

"'No, thanks, I've just been in. I'll see you after. I'll finish my
cigar.'

"My competitor went in to dinner. About the time I knew he was getting
along toward pie, I began to squirm. I lighted two or three matches
and let them go out before I fired up my cigar. Still no Reidy had
shown up. Pretty soon out came my competitor over into the park where
I was. I knew that if he got his eyes on Reidy I would have to
scramble for the old man's coin. So I managed to get him seated with
his back toward the direction from which Reidy would come to town. The
old man always drove a white horse. As I talked to my competitor I
kept looking up the road--I could see for nearly half a mile--for that
old white horse.

"'Well, have you left anything in town for me, Woody,' said he
directly.

"About that time I saw the old man's horse jogging slowly but surely
toward us.

"'Well, now, I'll tell you,' I said to him, 'I believe that if you'll
go over to the bank just around the corner, you can do some business.
I was in there this morning and they asked me for a certain kind of
paper that I haven't any left of. If you can scare up something of
that kind, I think you can do some business with them there. I'll take
you over, if you like.'

"I didn't want him to turn around because I knew that he, too, would
see that old white horse and that I'd never get him to budge an inch
until he had spoken with Reidy if he did,--and the old horse was
coming trot! trot! trot!--closer every minute.

"'Well, say, that'll be good of you. I hate to leave you out here all
alone resting and doing nothing,' said he.

"'Oh, that's all right. Come on,'--and with this I took him by the arm
in a very friendly manner, keeping his back toward that old white
horse, and walked him around the corner to the bank where I knew that
he would be out of sight when the old man reached the public square.

"Just as I came around the corner after leaving my competitor Richards
in the bank, there came plodding along the old man. Luckily he went
down about a block to hitch his horse. I met him as he was coming back
and carried him up to my room in the hotel. I laid my proposition
before him and he said:

"'Well, that looks pretty good to me, but I'd like to go over here to
the bank and talk to one of my friends there and see what he thinks of
the lay-out.'

"'Which bank?' thought I. Well, as luck would have it, it was the
other bank. 'Very well,' I said, 'I'll drop over there myself in a few
minutes and have the papers all with me. We can fix the matter up over
there. I'm sure the people in the bank will give this their hearty
endorsement.'

"As the old man walked across the park, two or three people met him
and stopped him. My heart was thumping away because, even though the
banker around the corner was long winded, it was about time for him to
get through with Richards; but the old man went into the bank all
right before Richards came out. Then I went over and sat down in the
park. In a few minutes Richards came over where I was.

[Illustration: "Well, Woody," said he, "you seem to be taking the
world pretty easy."]

"'Say, that was a good tip you gave me, Woody, I think I'll be able to
do some business all right. I want to run into the hotel a few
minutes, if you'll excuse me, and get into my grip. Say; but you're
taking things easy! I wish I could get along as well as you do without
worrying.'

"Richards left me and went into the hotel. I wanted to get him off as
quickly as I could because I didn't know but that, any minute, the old
gentleman would come out of the bank door. I hit a pretty lively pace
to get in where he was. By that time, he had investigated my bonds and
found that he wanted them. I took his check and gave him a receipt for
it, and then walked with him over to where his horse was. I wanted to
get him out of town as quickly as I could and keep my competitor from
seeing him, if possible.

"Well, sir, everything worked smooth as a charm. As the old man's
buggy was just crossing the bridge, out came Richards from the hotel.
I was again sitting in the park.

"'Heavens! you're taking it easy,' said he to me. 'How is it the firm
can afford to pay you to go around these towns, sit in parks and smoke
cigars, Woody?'

"'Oh, a man has to take a lay-off once in a while,' said I.

"I went over to the bank where the old man had been, and in a few
minutes sold them some bonds. Then I came out and again sat down in
the park a few minutes, waiting for Richards to get through so that I
could go and see the other people where he was dickering. Pretty soon
he came out and he was swearing mad. He said, 'I've been wrangling
with these people for a couple of hours and I can't get them into
anything to save my life. I might just as well have been out here with
you all this time, taking the world easy, for all the good I've done.'

"'Well, I guess I'll go over and take a crack at them again,' said I.

"'All right. Go ahead. I guess I'll skip the town,' but he didn't do a
thing but get on the trolley which passed out by old man Reidy's
house, where he was, of course, too late. I went in where he had not
been able to do business, and, now that my mind was easy, I took
plenty of time and made a nice sale in there, too.

"About a week afterwards I met Richards, and he said, 'Well, Woody,
you've got one coming on me. You weren't so idle as I thought all the
time you were out there in the park.'"

"First call for dinner in the dining car," drawled out the white-
aproned darkey as Woody finished his story.

"Boys, shall we all go in?" said Woody.

"I'm not very hungry," spoke up Leonard, "I took luncheon pretty late
today. I think I'll wait a little bit unless you all are in a hurry."

"You know what you were telling me about running your competitor into
a bank around the corner," spoke up a necktie man, "goes to show this:
That you must have a man's attention before you can do business with
him. I really believe that your friend, Woody, would have done
business if he hadn't struck his man at the busy time of day. I know
that I can usually do business if I get a man when his mind is easy
and I can get him to look at my goods.

"But I bumped into the hardest proposition the other day that I've put
my shoulder against for a long time. There's a merchant that I call
on, over near Duluth, that is the hardest man to get into a sample
room I ever saw. I have been calling on him for several seasons but I
couldn't get him away from the store. Once he had a clerk that stole
from him and after he got onto this fellow he never leaves the store
unless one of his own sons is right there to take his place. Even
then, he doesn't like to go out, and he only does so to run up home
and back right quickly for a bite to eat. I had sold him a few little
jags by lugging stuff in and was getting tired of this sort of
business. I wanted either to get a decent order or quit him cold. It
is all very good, you know, to send in one or two little jags from a
new man, but the house kicks and thinks you are n. g. if you keep on
piking with the same man.

"This time, I went into his store and said to myself, 'Well, if I
can't get this old codger to go down to my sample room, I'm not going
to do any business with him at all.'

"When I went into his store I shook hands with him and offered him a
cigar. He said, 'Vell, I vont smoke dis now. I lay it avay.'

"If there is anything on earth that makes me mad it is to offer a
cigar to a merchant or a clerk who, in truth, doesn't smoke, and have
him put it aside and hand it to somebody else after I have left town;
but, you know, you bump into that kind once in a while.

"The old man was back in the office. He shook hands pretty friendly,
and said, 'How's peezness?'

"'Best ever,' said I. It's always a good thing to be cheerful. All
traveling men who go around the country saying that business is poor
ought to be knocked in the head. Even if they are not doing a great
deal, they should at least say, even in the dullest of times, that
business might be a 'lot worse.' It's these croakers on the road who
really make business dull when there is every reason for it to be
good. I never kick and I don't think any up-to-date man will.

"Well, sir, when the old man had asked me how business was and I'd
told him that it was strictly good, I went right square at him. I
said: 'Now, look here, Brother Mondheimer, I have been selling you a
few goods right along and you've told me that they were satisfactory,
but I haven't been doing either myself or you justice. I want you,
this time, to come right down with me and see what a line of goods I
really have. My stuff is strictly swell. The patterns are up-to-date
and I've styles enough to line the whole side of your house. Now,
don't let me run in with just a handful of samples and sell you a
little stuff, but come down and give me a square chance at a decent
order.'

"'Dot's all ride,' said he, 'but I can't get avay. I must stay hier.
Ven cost'mers com in, somebody must be hier to vait on 'em.'

"'That's all right,' said I, 'but all your clerks are idle now. There
isn't a customer in the store. Things are quiet just now. Suppose you
come on down with me.'

"'No, I can't do dot,' said the old man. 'I'd like to but I can't.
Von't you breeng op a leedle stoff?'

"I didn't answer his question directly, but I said, 'Now, look here,
Brother Mondheimer, suppose a man were to come into your store and
want to buy a good suit of clothes. How much profit would you make?'

"'Aboud fife tollars,' said he.

"'Well, how long would you, yourself, spend on that man, trying to
make a sale with him?'

"'Vell, I vood nod led him go until I solt him,' said he.

"'All right,--by the way--', said I. 'Can you give me two tens for a
twenty?'

"He handed me out two ten dollar gold pieces.

"'Here' said I, slapping down one of the slugs and shoving it over to
him, 'Here's ten dollars for ten minutes of your time. That's yours
now,--take it! I've bought your time and I dare you come down to my
sample room. If you do, I'll make that ten back in less than ten
minutes and you'll stay with me an hour and buy a decent bill of
goods.'

"Well, sir, the old man wouldn't take the ten--but he did get his hat
and he's been an easy customer ever since!"

"Second and last call for dinner," called the dining car boy again.

"Guess this is our last chance," spoke up one of the boys. Then,
stretching a little, we washed our hands and went in to dinner.




CHAPTER IX.

TACTICS IN SELLING--II.


After we had finished dinner, all of the party came back to our "road
club room," the smoker.

"The house," said the furnishing goods man, sailing on our old tack of
conversation, "sometimes makes it hard for us, you know. I once had a
case like this: One of my customers down in New Orleans had failed on
me. I think his _muhulla_ (failure) was forced upon him. Even a tricky
merchant does not bring failure upon himself if business is good and
he can help it, because, if he has ever been through one, he knows
that the bust-up does him a great deal more harm than good. It makes
'credit' hard for him after that. But, you find lots of merchants who,
when business gets dull, and they must fail, will either skin their
creditors completely or else settle for as few cents on the dollar as
possible.

"Well, I had a man in market, once, when I was traveling out of
Philadelphia, who had 'settled' for 35 cents on the dollar. He had
come out of his failure with enough to leave him able to go into
business again, and, with anything like fair trade, discount all his
bills. I knew the season was a fairly good one and felt quite sure
that, for a few years anyway, my man would be good. What was lost on
him was lost, and that was the end of it. The best way to play even
was on the profits of future business.

"But our credit man, a most upright gentleman, wasn't particular about
taking up the account again. However, there I was on a commission
basis! I knew the man would pay for his goods and that it was money in
my pocket--and in the till of the house--to sell it.

"I had seen my man at the hotel the evening before and he'd said he
would be around the next morning about ten o'clock. I went down to the
store before that time and talked the thing over with the credit man.

"Don't want to have anything to do with that fellow,' he said. 'He
skinned us once and it's only a matter of time until he'll do it
again.'

"The head man of the firm came by about that time and I talked it over
with him. He had told me only the day before that he had some 'jobs'
he was very anxious to get rid of.

"'Now,' said I to him, 'I believe I have a man from New Orleans who
can use a good deal of that plunder up on the sixth floor if you're
willing to sell it to him. He uses that kind of "Drek" and is now
shaped up so that he'll not wish for more than sixty day terms, and
I'm sure he'd be able to pay for it. He's just failed, you know.'

"Well, let him have it--let him have it,' said the old man. 'Anything
to get the stuff out of the house. If he doesn't pay for it we won't
lose much.'

"'All right, if you both say so, I'll go ahead and sell him.'

"This was really building a credit on 'jobs,' for I believed that my
man would after that prove a faithful customer,--and this has been the
case for many years.

"Well, when he came in, I took him up to the 'job' floor and sold him
about five hundred dollars. This was the limit that the credit man had
placed on the account. Then came the rub. I had to smooth down my
customer to sixty day terms and yet keep him in a good humor. He
thought a great deal of me--I had always been square with him--and he
wasn't such a bad fellow. He had merely done what many other men would
have done under the same circumstances. When he had got into the hole,
he was going to climb out with as many 'rocks' in his pocket as he
could. He couldn't pay a hundred cents and keep doing business, and it
was just as much disgrace to settle for sixty cents on the dollar,
which would leave him flat, as it was to settle for thirty-five. So he
argued!

"I brought him up to the credit window and said to the credit man--
Gee! I had to be diplomatic then--'Now, this is Mr. Man from New
Orleans. You know that cotton has been pretty low for the past season
and that he has had a little misfortune that often comes into the path
of the business man. He, you also know, has squared this with
everybody concerned in an honorable way,--although on account of the
dull times he was unable to make as large a settlement as he wished
to--isn't that the case, Joe?' said I. He nodded.

"'Yes, but things are picking up with me, you know,' said he.

"'Yes; so they are,' said I, taking up the thread, 'cotton is
advancing and times are going to be pretty good down in the south next
season. Now, what I've done,' said I to the credit man, as if I had
never spoken to him about the matter before, 'is this: Joe, here, has
learned a lesson. He has seen the folly, and suffered for it, of
buying so many goods so far ahead. What he aims to do from this time
on is to run a strictly cash business, and to buy his goods for cash
or on very short terms. We have picked out five hundred dollars' worth
of goods--I've closed them pretty cheap--and you shall have your money
for this, the bill fully discounted, within sixty days. Then in
future, Joe, here, does not wish to buy anything from you or anybody
else that 

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