to keep a good many people who have no real business with you from
seeing you and wasting your time, because a broad-gauged merchant must
be accessible. When a man's office is policed and every one who sees
him has to prove that he's taken the third degree and is able to give
the grand hailing sign, he's going to miss a whole lot of things that
it would be mighty valuable for him to know. Of course, the man whose
errand could be attended to by the office-boy is always the one who
calls loudest for the boss, but with a little tact you can weed out
most of these fellows, and it's better to see ten bores than to miss
one buyer. A house never gets so big that it can afford to sniff at a
hundred-pound sausage order, or to feel that any customer is so small
that it can afford not to bother with him. You've got to open a good
many oysters to find a pearl.
You should answer letters just as you answer men--promptly,
courteously, and decisively. Of course, you don't ever want to go off
half-cocked and bring down a cow instead of the buck you're aiming at,
but always remember that game is shy and that you can't shoot too
quick after you've once got it covered. When I go into a fellow's
office and see his desk buried in letters with the dust on them, I
know that there are cobwebs in his head. Foresight is the quality that
makes a great merchant, but a man who has his desk littered with
yesterday's business has no time to plan for to-morrow's.
The only letters that can wait are those which provoke a hot answer. A
good hot letter is always foolish, and you should never write a
foolish thing if you can say it to the man instead, and never say it
if you can forget it. The wisest man may make an ass of himself
to-day, over to-day's provocation, but he won't tomorrow. Before being
used, warm words should be run into the cooling-room until the animal
heat is out of them. Of course, there's no use in a fool's waiting,
because there's no room in a small head in which to lose a grievance.
Speaking of small heads naturally calls to mind a gold brick named
Solomon Saunders that I bought when I was a good deal younger and
hadn't been buncoed so often. I got him with a letter recommending him
as a sort of happy combination of the three wise men of the East and
the nine muses, and I got rid of him with one in which I allowed that
he was the whole dozen.
I really hired Sol because he reminded me of some one I'd known and
liked, though I couldn't just remember at the time who it was; but one
day, after he'd been with me about a week, it came to me in a flash
that he was the living image of old Bucker, a billy-goat I'd set aheap
of store by when I was a boy. That was a lesson to me on the
foolishness of getting sentimental in business. I never think of the
old homestead that echo doesn't answer, "Give up!"; or hear from it
without getting a bill for having been born there.
Sol had started out in life to be a great musician. Had raised the
hair for the job and had kept his finger-nails cut just right for it,
but somehow, when he played "My Old Kentucky Home," nobody sobbed
softly in the fourth row. You see, he could play a piece absolutely
right and meet every note just when it came due, but when he got
through it was all wrong. That was Sol in business, too. He knew just
the right rule for doing everything and did it just that way, and yet
everything he did turned out to be a mistake. Made it twice as
aggravating because you couldn't consistently find fault with him. If
you'd given Sol the job of making over the earth he'd have built it
out of the latest text-book on "How to Make the World Better," and
have turned out something as correct as a spike-tail coat--and every
one would have wanted to die to get out of it.
Then, too, I never saw such a cuss for system. Other men would forget
costs and prices, but Sol never did. Seemed he ran his memory by
system. Had a way when there was a change in the price-list of taking
it home and setting it to poetry. Used "Ring Out, Wild Bells," by A.
Tennyson, for a bull market--remember he began it "Ring Off, Wild
Bulls"--and "Break, Break, Break," for a bear one.
It used to annoy me considerable when I asked him the price of pork
tenderloins to have him mumble through two or three verses till he
fetched it up, but I didn't have any real kick coming till he got
ambitious and I had to wait till he'd hummed half through a grand
opera to get a quotation on pickled pigs' feet in kits. I felt that we
had reached the parting of the ways then, but I didn't like to point
out his way too abruptly, because the friend who had unloaded him on
us was pretty important to me in my business just then, and he seemed
to be all wrapped up in Sol's making a hit with us.
It's been my experience, though, that sometimes when you can't kick a
man out of the back door without a row, you can get him to walk out
the front way voluntarily. So when I get stuck with a fellow that, for
some reason, it isn't desirable to fire, I generally promote him and
raise his pay. Some of these weak sisters I make the assistant boss of
the machine-shop and some of the bone-meal mill. I didn't dare send
Sol to the machine-shop, because I knew he wouldn't have been there a
week before he'd have had the shop running on Götterdämmerung or one
of those other cuss-word operas of Wagner's. But the strong point of a
bone-meal mill is bone-dust, and the strong point of bone-dust is
smell, and the strong point of its smell is its staying qualities.
Naturally it's the sort of job for which you want a bald-headed man,
because a fellow who's got nice thick curls will cheat the house by
taking a good deal of the product home with him. To tell the truth,
Sol's hair had been worrying me almost as much as his system. When I
hired him I'd supposed he'd finally molt it along with his musical
tail-feathers. I had a little talk with him then, in which I hinted at
the value of looking clear-cut and trim and of giving sixteen ounces
to the pound, but the only result of it was that he went off and
bought a pot of scented vaseline and grew another inch of hair for
good measure. It seemed a pity now, so long as I was after his scalp,
not to get it with the hair on.
Sol had never seen a bone-meal mill, but it flattered him mightily to
be promoted into the manufacturing end, "where a fellow could get
ahead faster," and he said good-by to the boys in the office with his
nose in the air, where he kept it, I reckon, during the rest of his
connection with the house.
If Sol had stuck it out for a month at the mill I'd have known that he
had the right stuff in him somewhere and have taken him back into the
office after a good rub-down with pumice-stone. But he turned up the
second day, smelling of violet soap and bone-meal, and he didn't sing
his list of grievances, either. Started right in by telling me how,
when he got into a street-car, all the other passengers sort of faded
out; and how his landlady insisted on serving his meals in his room.
Almost foamed at the mouth when I said the office seemed a little
close and opened the window, and he quoted some poetry about that
being "the most unkindest cut of all." Wound up by wanting to know how
he was going to get it out of his hair.
I broke it to him as gently as I could that it would have to wear out
or be cut out, and tried to make him see that it was better to be a
bald-headed boss on a large salary than a curly-headed clerk on a
small one; but, in the end, he resigned, taking along a letter from me
to the friend who had recommended him and some of my good bone-meal.
I didn't grudge him the fertilizer, but I did feel sore that he hadn't
left me a lock of his hair, till some one saw him a few days later,
dodging along with his collar turned up and his hat pulled down,
looking like a new-clipped lamb. I heard, too, that the fellow who had
given him the wise-men-muses letter to me was so impressed with the
almost exact duplicate of it which I gave Sol, and with the fact that
I had promoted him so soon, that he concluded he must have let a good
man get by him, and hired him himself.
Sol was a failure as a musician because, while he knew all the notes,
he had nothing in himself to add to them when he played them. It's
easy to learn all the notes that make good music and all the rules
that make good business, but a fellow's got to add the fine curves to
them himself if he wants to do anything more than beat the bass-drum
all his life. Some men think that rules should be made of cast iron; I
believe that they should be made of rubber, so that they can be
stretched to fit any particular case and then spring back into shape
again. The really important part of a rule is the exception to it.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
P.S.--Leave for home to-morrow.
No. 4
From John Graham, at the Hotel Cecil, London, to his son, Pierrepont,
at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The old man has just finished going
through the young man's first report as manager of the lard
department, and he finds it suspiciously good.
IV
LONDON, December 1, 189-.
_Dear Pierrepont_: Your first report; looks so good that I'm a little
afraid of it. Figures don't lie, I know, but that's, only because they
can't talk. As a matter of fact, they're just as truthful as the man
who's behind them.
It's been my experience that there are two kinds of figures--educated
and uneducated ones--and that the first are a good deal like the
people who have had the advantage of a college education on the inside
and the disadvantage of a society finish on the outside--they're apt
to tell you only the smooth and the pleasant things. Of course, it's
mighty nice to be told that the shine of your shirt-front is blinding
the floor-manager's best girl; but if there's a hole in the seat of
your pants you ought to know that, too, because sooner or later you've
got to turn your back to the audience.
Now don't go off half-cocked and think I'm allowing that you ain't
truthful; because I think you are--reasonably so--and I'm sure that
everything you say in your report is true. But is there anything you
don't say in it?
A good many men are truthful on the installment plan--that is, they
tell their boss all the good things in sight about their end of the
business and then dribble out the bad ones like a fellow who's giving
you a list of his debts. They'll yell for a week that the business of
their department has increased ten per cent., and then own up in a
whisper that their selling cost has increased twenty. In the end, that
always creates a worse impression than if both sides of the story had
been told at once or the bad had been told first. It's like buying a
barrel of apples that's been deaconed--after you've found that the
deeper you go the meaner and wormier the fruit, you forget all about
the layer of big, rosy, wax-finished pippins which was on top.
I never worry about the side of a proposition that I can see; what I
want to get a look at is the side that's out of sight. The bugs always
snuggle down on the under side of the stone.
The best year we ever had--in our minds--was one when the
superintendent of the packing-house wanted an increase in his salary,
and, to make a big showing, swelled up his inventory like a poisoned
pup. It took us three months, to wake up to what had happened, and a
year to get over feeling as if there was sand in our eyes when we
compared the second showing with the first. An optimist is as bad as a
drunkard when he comes to figure up results in business--he sees
double. I employ optimists to get results and pessimists to figure
them up.
After I've charged off in my inventory for wear and tear and
depreciation, I deduct a little more just for luck--bad luck. That's
the only sort of luck a merchant can afford to make a part of his
calculations.
The fellow who said you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
wasn't on to the packing business. You can make the purse and you can
fill it, too, from the same critter. What you can't do is to load up a
report with moonshine or an inventory with wind, and get anything more
substantial than a moonlight sail toward bankruptcy. The kittens of a
wildcat are wildcats, and there's no use counting on their being
angoras.
Speaking of educated pigs naturally calls to mind Jake Solzenheimer
and the lard that he sold half a cent a pound cheaper than any one
else in the business could make it. That was a long time ago, when the
packing business was still on the bottle, and when the hogs that came
to Chicago got only a common-school education and graduated as plain
hams and sides and lard and sausage. Literature hadn't hit the hog
business then. It was just Graham's hams or Smith's lard, and there
were no poetical brands or high-art labels.
Well, sir, one day I heard that this Jake was offering lard to the
trade at half a cent under the market, and that he'd had the nerve to
label it "Driven Snow Leaf." Told me, when I ran up against him on the
street, that he'd got the name from a song which began, "Once I was
pure as the driven snow." Said it made him feel all choky and as if he
wanted to be a better man, so he'd set out to make the song famous in
the hope of its helping others. Allowed that this was a hard world,
and that it was little enough we could do in our business life to
scatter sunshine along the way; but he proposed that every can which
left his packing-house after this should carry the call to a better
life into some humble home.
I let him lug that sort of stuff to the trough till he got tired, and
then I looked him square in the eye and went right at him with:
"Jake, what you been putting in that lard?" because I knew mighty well
that there was something in it which had never walked on four feet and
fattened up on fifty-cent corn and then paid railroad fare from the
Missouri River to Chicago. There are a good many things I don't know,
but hogs ain't one of them.
Jake just grinned at me and swore that there was nothing in his lard
except the pure juice of the hog; so I quit fooling with him and took
a can of "Driven Snow" around to our chemist. It looked like lard and
smelt like lard--in fact, it looked better than real lard: too white
and crinkly and tempting on top. And the next day the chemist came
down to my office and told me that "Driven Snow" must have been driven
through a candle factory, because it had picked up about twenty per
cent. of paraffin wax somewhere.
Of course, I saw now why Jake was able to undersell us all, but it was
mighty important to knock out "Driven Snow" with the trade in just the
right way, because most of our best customers had loaded up with it.
So I got the exact formula from the chemist and had about a hundred
sample cans made up, labeling each one "Wandering Boy Leaf Lard," and
printing on the labels: "This lard contains twenty per cent. of
paraffin."
I sent most of these cans, with letters of instruction, to our men
through the country. Then I waited until it was Jake's time to be at
the Live Stock Exchange, and happened in with a can of "Wandering Boy"
under my arm. It didn't take me long to get into conversation with
Jake, and as we talked I swung that can around until it attracted his
attention, and he up and asked:
"What you got there, Graham?"
"Oh, that," I answered, slipping the can behind my back--"that's a new
lard we're putting out--something not quite so expensive as our
regular brand."
Jake stopped grinning then and gave me a mighty sharp look.
"Lemme have a squint at it," says he, trying not to show too keen an
interest in his face.
I held back a little; then I said: "Well, I don't just know as I ought
to show you this. We haven't regularly put it on the market, and this
can ain't a fair sample of what we can do; but so long as I sort of
got the idea from you I might as well tell you. I'd been thinking over
what you said about that lard of yours, and while they were taking a
collection in church the other day the soprano up and sings a mighty
touching song. It began, 'Where is my wandering boy to-night?' and by
the time she was through I was feeling so mushy and sobby that I put a
five instead of a one into the plate by mistake. I've been thinking
ever since that the attention of the country ought to be called to
that song, and so I've got up this missionary lard"; and I shoved the
can of "Wandering Boy" under his eyes, giving him time to read the
whole label.
"H--l!" he said.
"Yes," I answered; "that's it. Good lard gone wrong; but it's going to
do a great work."
[Illustration: "That's it--good lard gone wrong"]
Jake's face looked like the Lost Tribes--the whole bunch of 'em--as
the thing soaked in; and then he ran his arm through mine and drew me
off into a corner.
"Graham," said he, "let's drop this cussed foolishness. You keep dark
about this and we'll divide the lard trade of the country."
I pretended not to understand what he was driving at, but reached out
and grasped his hand and wrung it. "Yes, yes, Jake," I said; "we'll
stand shoulder to shoulder and make the lard business one grand sweet
song," and then I choked him off by calling another fellow into the
conversation. It hardly seemed worth while to waste time telling Jake
what he was going to find out when he got back to his office--that
there wasn't any lard business to divide, because I had hogged it all.
You see, my salesmen had taken their samples of "Wandering Boy" around
to the buyers and explained that it was made from the same formula as
"Driven Snow," and could be bought at the same price. They didn't sell
any "Boy," of course--that wasn't the idea; but they loaded up the
trade with our regular brand, to take the place of the "Driven Snow,"
which was shipped back to Jake by the car-lot.
Since then, when anything looks too snowy and smooth and good at the
first glance, I generally analyze it for paraffin. I've found that
this is a mighty big world for a square man and a mighty small world
for a crooked one.
I simply mention these things in a general way. I've confidence that
you're going to make good as head of the lard department, and if, when
I get home, I find that your work analyzes seventy-five per cent, as
pure as your report I shall be satisfied. In the meanwhile I shall
instruct the cashier to let you draw a hundred dollars a week, just to
show that I haven't got a case of faith without works. I reckon the
extra twenty-five per will come in mighty handy now that you're within
a month of marrying Helen.
I'm still learning how to treat an old wife, and so I can't give you
many pointers about a young one. For while I've been married as long
as I've been in business, and while I know all the curves of the great
American hog, your ma's likely to spring a new one on me tomorrow. No
man really knows anything about women except a widower, and he forgets
it when he gets ready to marry again. And no woman really knows
anything about men except a widow, and she's got to forget it before
she's willing to marry again. The one thing you can know is that, as a
general proposition, a woman is a little better than the man for whom
she cares. For when a woman's bad, there's always a man at the bottom
of it; and when a man's good, there's always a woman at the bottom of
that, too.
The fact of the matter is, that while marriages may be made in heaven,
a lot of them are lived in hell and end in South Dakota. But when a
man has picked out a good woman he holds four hearts, and he needn't
be afraid to draw cards if he's got good nerve. If he hasn't, he's got
no business to be sitting in games of chance. The best woman in the
world will begin trying out a man before she's been married to him
twenty-four hours; and unless he can smile over the top of a
four-flush and raise the ante, she's going to rake in the breeches and
keep them.
The great thing is to begin right. Marriage is a close corporation,
and unless a fellow gets the controlling interest at the start he
can't pick it up later. The partner who owns fifty-one per cent. of
the stock in any business is the boss, even if the other is allowed to
call himself president. There's only two jobs for a man in his own
house--one's boss and the other's office-boy, and a fellow naturally
falls into the one for which he's fitted.
Of course, when I speak of a fellow's being boss in his own home, I
simply mean that, in a broad way, he's going to shape the policy of
the concern. When a man goes sticking his nose into the running of the
house, he's apt to get it tweaked, and while he's busy drawing _it_
back out of danger he's going to get his leg pulled, too. You let your
wife tend to the housekeeping and you focus on earning money with
which she can keep house. Of course, in one way, it's mighty nice of a
man to help around the place, but it's been my experience that the
fellows who tend to all the small jobs at home never get anything else
to tend to at the office. In the end, it's usually cheaper to give all
your attention to your business and to hire a plumber.
You don't want to get it into your head, though, that because your
wife hasn't any office-hours she has a soft thing. A lot of men go
around sticking out their chests and wondering why their wives have so
much trouble with the help, when they are able to handle their clerks
so easy. If you really want to know, you lift two of your men out of
their revolving-chairs, and hang one over a forty-horse-power
cook-stove that's booming along under forced draft so that your dinner
won't be late, with a turkey that's gobbling for basting in one oven,
and a cake that's gone back on you in a low, underhand way in another,
and sixteen different things boiling over on top and mixing up their
smells. And you set the other at a twelve-hour stunt of making all the
beds you've mussed, and washing all the dishes you've used, and
cleaning all the dust you've kicked up, and you boss the whole while
the baby yells with colic over your arm--you just try this with two of
your men and see how long it is before there's rough-house on the
Wabash. Yet a lot of fellows come home after their wives have had a
day of this and blow around about how tired and overworked they are,
and wonder why home isn't happier. Don't you ever forget that it's a
blamed sight easier to keep cool in front of an electric fan than a
cook-stove, and that you can't subject the best temper in the world to
500 degrees Fahrenheit without warming it up a bit. And don't you add
to your wife's troubles by saying how much better you could do it, but
stand pat and thank the Lord you've got a snap.
I remember when old Doc Hoover, just after his wife died, bought a
mighty competent nigger, Aunt Tempy, to cook and look after the house
for him. She was the boss cook, you bet, and she could fry a chicken
into a bird of paradise just as easy as the Doc could sizzle a sinner
into a pretty tolerable Christian.
The old man took his religion with the bristles on, and he wouldn't
stand for any Sunday work in his house. Told Tempy to cook enough for
two days on Saturday and to serve three cold meals on Sunday.
Tempy sniffed a little, but she'd been raised well and didn't talk
back. That first Sunday Doc got his cold breakfast all right, but
before he'd fairly laid into it Tempy trotted out a cup of hot coffee.
That made the old man rage at first, but finally he allowed that,
seeing it was made, there was no special harm in taking a sup or two,
but not to let it occur again. A few minutes later he called back to
Tempy in the kitchen and asked her if she'd been sinful enough to make
two cups.
Doc's dinner was ready for him when he got back from church, and it
was real food--that is to say, hot food, a-sizzling and a-smoking from
the stove. Tempy told around afterward that the way the old man went
for her about it made her feel mighty proud and set-up over her new
master. But she just stood there dripping perspiration and good nature
until the Doc had wound up by allowing that there was only one part of
the hereafter where meals were cooked on Sunday, and that she'd surely
get a mention on the bill of fare there as dark meat, well done, if
she didn't repent, and then she blurted out:
"Law, chile, you go 'long and 'tend to yo' preaching and I'll 'tend to
my cookin'; yo' can't fight the debbil with snow-balls." And what's
more, the Doc didn't, not while Aunt Tempy was living.
There isn't any moral to this, but there's a hint in it to mind your
own business at home as well as at the office. I sail to-morrow. I'm
feeling in mighty good spirits, and I hope I'm not going to find
anything at your end of the line to give me a relapse.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
No. 5