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Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son

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[Pg 125] <div class="centerbox1 bbox"> <div class="centerbox bbox">No. 10</div> <div class="centerbox2 bbox">FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Commercial House, Jeffersonville, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has been promoted to the position of traveling salesman for the house, and has started out on the road.</div> </div>   <h2>X</h2> Chicago, March 1, 189— [Pg 127]Dear Pierrepont: When I saw you start off yesterday I was just a little uneasy; for you looked so blamed important and chesty that I am inclined to think you will tell the first customer who says he doesn’t like our sausage that he knows what he can do about it. Repartee makes reading lively, but business dull. And what the house needs is more orders. Sausage is the one subject of all others that a fellow in the packing business ought to treat solemnly. Half the people in the world take a joke seriously from the start, and the other half if you repeat it often enough. Only last week the head of our sausage department started to put out a tin-tag brand of frankfurts, but I made him take it off the market quicker than lightning, because I knew that the first fool who saw the tin-tag would ask if that was the[Pg 128] license. And, though people would grin a little at first, they’d begin to look serious after a while; and whenever the butcher tried to sell them our brand they’d imagine they heard the bark, and ask for “that real country sausage” at twice as much a pound. He laughs best who doesn’t laugh at all when he’s dealing with the public. It has been my experience that, even when a man has a sense of humor, it only really carries him to the point where he will join in a laugh at the expense of the other fellow. There’s nothing in the world sicker-looking than the grin of the man who’s trying to join in heartily when the laugh’s on him, and to pretend that he likes it. Speaking of sausage with a registered pedigree calls to mind a little experience that I had last year. A fellow came into the office here with a shriveled-up toy spaniel, one of those curly, hairy little fellows that a woman will kiss, and then grumble because a fellow’s mustache tickles.[Pg 129] Said he wanted to sell him. I wasn’t really disposed to add a dog to my troubles, but on general principles I asked him what he wanted for the little cuss. [illus010] <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus10.png" width-obs="291" height-obs="600" alt="You looked so blamed important and chesty when you started off." title="" /> “You looked so blamed important and chesty when you started off.”</div> The fellow hawed and choked and wiped away a tear. Finally, he fetched out that he loved the dog like a son, and that it broke his heart to think of parting with him; that he wouldn’t dare look Dandy in the face after he had named the price he was asking for him, and that it was the record-breaking, marked-down sacrifice sale of the year on dogs; that it wasn’t really money he was after, but a good home for the little chap. Said that I had a rather pleasant face and he knew that he could trust me to treat Dandy kindly; so—as a gift—he would let me have him for five hundred. “Cents?” says I. “Dollars,” says he, without blinking. “It ought to be a mastiff at that price,” says I. “If you thought more of quality,” says[Pg 130] he, in a tone of sort of dignified reproof, “and less of quantity, your brand would enjoy a better reputation.” I was pretty hot, I can tell you, but I had laid myself open, so I just said: “The sausage business is too poor to warrant our paying any such price for light-weights. Bring around a bigger dog and then we’ll talk;” but the fellow only shook his head sadly, whistled to Dandy, and walked off. I simply mention this little incident as an example of the fact that when a man cracks a joke in the Middle Ages he’s apt to affect the sausage market in the Nineteenth Century, and to lay open an honest butcher to the jeers of every dog-stealer in the street. There’s such a thing as carrying a joke too far, and the fellow who keeps on pretending to believe that he’s paying for pork and getting dog is pretty apt to get dog in the end. But all that aside, I want you to get it firmly fixed in your mind right at the start[Pg 131] that this trip is only an experiment, and that I am not at all sure you were cut out by the Lord to be a drummer. But you can figure on one thing—that you will never become the pride of the pond by starting out to cut figure eights before you are firm on your skates. A real salesman is one-part talk and nine-parts judgment; and he uses the nine-parts of judgment to tell when to use the one-part of talk. Goods ain’t sold under Marquess of Queensberry rules any more, and you’ll find that knowing how many rounds the Old ’Un can last against the Boiler-Maker won’t really help you to load up the junior partner with our Corn-fed brand hams. A good many salesmen have an idea that buyers are only interested in baseball, and funny stories, and Tom Lipton, and that business is a side line with them; but as a matter of fact mighty few men work up to the position of buyer through giving up their office hours to listening to anecdotes. I[Pg 132] never saw one that liked a drummer’s jokes more than an eighth of a cent a pound on a tierce of lard. What the house really sends you out for is orders. Of course, you want to be nice and mellow with the trade, but always remember that mellowness carried too far becomes rottenness. You can buy some fellows with a cheap cigar and some with a cheap compliment, and there’s no objection to giving a man what he likes, though I never knew smoking to do anything good except a ham, or flattery to help any one except to make a fool of himself. Real buyers ain’t interested in much besides your goods and your prices. Never run down your competitor’s brand to them, and never let them run down yours. Don’t get on your knees for business, but don’t hold your nose so high in the air that an order can travel under it without your seeing it. You’ll meet a good many people on[Pg 133] the road that you won’t like, but the house needs their business. Some fellows will tell you that we play the hose on our dry salt meat before we ship it, and that it shrinks in transit like a Baxter Street Jew’s all-wool suits in a rainstorm; that they wonder how we manage to pack solid gristle in two-pound cans without leaving a little meat hanging to it; and that the last car of lard was so strong that it came back of its own accord from every retailer they shipped it to. The first fellow will be lying, and the second will be exaggerating, and the third may be telling the truth. With him you must settle on the spot; but always remember that a man who’s making a claim never underestimates his case, and that you can generally compromise for something less than the first figure. With the second you must sympathize, and say that the matter will be reported to headquarters and the boss of the canning-room[Pg 134] called up on the carpet and made to promise that it will never happen again. With the first you needn’t bother. There’s no use feeding expensive “hen food” to an old Dominick that sucks eggs. The chances are that the car weighed out more than it was billed, and that the fellow played the hose on it himself and added a thousand pounds of cheap salt before he jobbed it out to his trade. Where you’re going to slip up at first is in knowing which is which, but if you don’t learn pretty quick you’ll not travel very far for the house. For your own satisfaction I will say right here that you may know you are in a fair way of becoming a good drummer by three things: First—When you send us Orders. Second—More Orders. Third—Big Orders. If you do this you won’t have a great deal of time to write long letters, and we won’t have a great deal of time to read them, for[Pg 135] we will be very, very busy here making and shipping the goods. We aren’t specially interested in orders that the other fellow gets, or in knowing how it happened after it has happened. If you like life on the road you simply won’t let it happen. So just send us your address every day and your orders. They will tell us all that we want to know about “the situation.” I was cured of sending information to the house when I was very, very young—in fact, on the first trip which I made on the road. I was traveling out of Chicago for Hammer & Hawkins, wholesale dry-goods, gents’ furnishings and notions. They started me out to round up trade in the river towns down Egypt ways, near Cairo. I hadn’t more than made my first town and sized up the population before I began to feel happy, because I saw that business ought to be very good there. It appeared as if everybody in that town needed something in my line. The clerk of the hotel where I[Pg 136] registered wore a dicky and his cuffs were tied to his neck by pieces of string run up his sleeves, and most of the merchants on Main Street were in their shirt-sleeves—at least those that had shirts were—and so far as I could judge there wasn’t a whole pair of galluses among them. Some were using wire, some a little rope, and others just faith—buckled extra tight. Pride of the Prairie XXX flour sacks seemed to be the nobby thing in boys’ suitings there. Take it by and large, if ever there was a town which looked as if it had a big, short line of dry-goods, gents’ furnishings and notions to cover, it was that one. But when I caught the proprietor of the general store during a lull in the demand for navy plug, he wouldn’t even look at my samples, and when I began to hint that the people were pretty ornery dressers he reckoned that he “would paste me one if I warn’t so young.” Wanted to know what I meant by coming swelling around in [Pg 137]song-and-dance clothes and getting funny at the expense of people who made their living honestly. Allowed that when it came to a humorous get-up my clothes were the original end-man’s gag. I noticed on the way back to the hotel that every fellow holding up a hitching-post was laughing, and I began to look up and down the street for the joke, not understanding at first that the reason why I couldn’t see it was because I was it. Right there I began to learn that, while the Prince of Wales may wear the correct thing in hats, it’s safer when you’re out of his sphere of influence to follow the styles that the hotel clerk sets; that the place to sell clothes is in the city, where every one seems to have plenty of them; and that the place to sell mess pork is in the country, where every one keeps hogs. That is why when a fellow comes to me for advice about moving to a new country, where there are more opportunities, I advise him—if he is built right[Pg 138]—to go to an old city where there is more money. I wrote in to the house pretty often on that trip, explaining how it was, going over the whole situation very carefully, and telling what our competitors were doing, wherever I could find that they were doing anything. I gave old Hammer credit for more curiosity than he possessed, because when I reached Cairo I found a telegram from him reading: “Know what our competitors are doing: they are getting all the trade. But what are you doing?” I saw then that the time for explaining was gone and that the moment for resigning had arrived; so I just naturally sent in my resignation. That is what we will expect from you—or orders. Your affectionate father, John Graham. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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