fellow tell her that his great ambition is to make her life one grand,
sweet song, it jars her to find the orchestra grunting and snoring
over the sporting extra some night along six months after the
ceremony. She stays awake and cries a little over this, so when he
sees her across the liver and bacon at breakfast, he forgets that he's
never told her before that she could look like anything but an angel,
and asks, "Gee, Mame, what makes your nose so red?" And that's the
place where a young couple begins to adjust itself to life as it's
lived on Michigan Avenue instead of in the story-books.
There's no rule for getting through the next six months without going
back to mamma, except for the Brute to be as kind as he knows how to
be and the Angel as forgiving as she can be. But at the end of that
time a boy and girl with the right kind of stuff in them have been
graduated into a man and a woman. It's only calf love that's always
bellering about it. When love is full grown it has few words, and
sometimes it growls them out.
I remember, when I was a youngster, hearing old Mrs. Hoover tell of
the trip she took with the Doc just after they were married. Even as a
young fellow the Doc was a great exhorter. Knew more Scripture when he
was sixteen than the presiding elder. Couldn't open his mouth without
losing a verse. Would lose a chapter when he yawned.
Well, when Doc was about twenty-five, he fell in love with a mighty
sweet young girl, Leila Hardin, who every one said was too frivolous
for him. But the Doc only answered that it was his duty to marry her
to bring her under Christian influences, and they set off down the
river to New Orleans on their honeymoon.
Mrs. Hoover used to say that he hardly spoke to her on the trip. Sat
around in a daze, scowling and rolling his eyes, or charged up and
down the deck, swinging his arms and muttering to himself. Scared her
half to death, and she spent all her time crying when he wasn't
around. Thought he didn't love her any more, and it wasn't till the
first Sunday after she got home that she discovered what had ailed
him. Seemed that in the exaltation produced by his happiness at having
got her, he'd been composing a masterpiece, his famous sermon on the
Horrors of Hell, that scared half of Pike County into the fold, and
popularized dominoes with penny points as a substitute for
dollar-limit draw-poker among those whom it didn't quite fetch.
Curious old cuss, the Doc. Found his wife played the piano pretty
medium rotten, so when he wanted to work himself into a rage about
something he'd sit down in the parlor and make her pound out "The
Maiden's Prayer."
It's a mighty lucky thing that the Lord, and not the neighbors, makes
the matches, because Doc's friends would have married him to Deacon
Dody's daughter, who was so chuck full of good works that there was no
room inside her for a heart. She afterward eloped with a St. Louis
drummer, and before he divorced her she'd become the best lady poker
player in the State of Missouri. But with Leila and the Doc it was a
case of give-and-take from the start--that is, as is usual with a good
many married folks, she'd give and he'd take. There never was a better
minister's wife, and when you've said that you've said the last word
about good wives and begun talking about martyrs, because after a
minister's wife has pleased her husband she's got to please the rest
of the church.
I simply mention Doc's honeymoon in passing as an example of the fact
that two people can start out in life without anything in common
apparently, except a desire to make each other happy, and, with that
as a platform to meet on, keep coming closer and closer together until
they find that they have everything in common. It isn't always the
case, of course, but then it's happened pretty often that before I
entered the room where an engaged couple were sitting I've had to
cough or whistle to give them a chance to break away; and that after
they were married I've had to keep right on coughing or whistling for
the same couple to give them time to stop quarreling.
There are mighty few young people who go into marriage with any real
idea of what it means. They get their notion of it from among the
clouds where they live while they are engaged, and, naturally, about
all they find up there is wind and moonshine; or from novels, which
always end just before the real trouble begins, or if they keep on,
leave out the chapters that tell how the husband finds the rent and
the wife the hired girls. But if there's one thing in the world about
which it's possible to get all the facts, it's matrimony. Part of them
are right in the house where you were born, and the neighbors have the
rest.
It's been my experience that you've got to have leisure to be unhappy.
Half the troubles in this world are imaginary, and it takes time to
think them up. But it's these oftener than the real troubles that
break a young husband's back or a young wife's heart.
A few men and more women can be happy idle when they're single, but
once you marry them to each other they've got to find work or they'll
find trouble. Everybody's got to raise something in this world, and
unless people raise a job, or crops, or children, they'll raise Cain.
You can ride three miles on the trolley car to the Stock Yards every
morning and find happiness at the end of the trip, but you may chase
it all over the world in a steam yacht without catching up with it. A
woman can find fun from the basement to the nursery of her own house,
but give her a license to gad the streets and a bunch of matinée
tickets and shell find discontent. There's always an idle woman or an
idle man in every divorce case. When the man earns the bread in the
sweat of his brow, it's right that the woman should perspire a little
baking it.
There are two kinds of discontent in this world--the discontent that
works and the discontent that wrings its hands. The first gets what it
wants, and the second loses what it has. There's no cure for the first
but success; and there's no cure at all for the second, especially if
a woman has it; for she doesn't know what she wants, and so you can't
give it to her.
Happiness is like salvation--a state of grace that makes you enjoy the
good things you've got and keep reaching out, for better ones in the
hereafter. And home isn't what's around you, but what's inside you.
I had a pretty good illustration of this whole thing some years ago
when a foolish old uncle died and left my cellar boss, Mike
Shaughnessy, a million dollars. I didn't bother about it particularly,
for he'd always been a pretty level-headed old Mick, and I supposed
that he'd put the money in pickle and keep right along at his job. But
one morning, when he came rooting and grunting into my office in a
sort of casual way, trying to keep a plug hat from falling off the
back of his head, I knew that he was going to fly the track. Started
in to tell me that his extensive property interests demanded all his
attention now, but I cut it short with:
"Mike, you've been a blamed good cellar boss, but you're going to make
a blamed bad millionaire. Think it over."
Well, sir, I'm hanged if that fellow, whom I'd raised from the time he
was old enough to poke a barrel along the runways with a pointed
stick, didn't blow a cloud of cigar smoke in my face to show that he
was just as big as I was, and start tight in to regularly cuss me out.
But he didn't get very far. I simply looked at Mm, and said sudden,
"Git, you Mick," and he wilted back out of the office just as easy as
if he hadn't had ten cents.
I heard of him off and on for the next year, putting up a house on
Michigan Avenue, buying hand-painted pictures by the square foot and
paying for them by the square inch--for his wife had decided that they
must occupy their proper station in society--and generally building up
a mighty high rating as a good thing.
As you know, I keep a pretty close eye on the packing house, but on
account of my rheumatism I don't often go through the cellars. But
along about this time we began to get so many complaints about our dry
salt meats that I decided to have a little peek at our stock for
myself, and check up the new cellar boss. I made for him and his gang
first, and I was mightily pleased, as I came upon him without his
seeing me, to notice how he was handling his men. No hollering, or
yelling, or cussing, but every word counting and making somebody hop.
I was right upon him before I discovered that it wasn't the new
foreman, but Mike, who was bossing the gang. He half ducked behind a
pile of Extra Short Clears when he saw me, but turned, when he found
that it was too late, and faced me bold as brass.
"A nice state you've let things get in while I was away, sorr," he
began.
It was Mike, the cellar boss, who knew his job, and no longer Mr.
Shaughnessy, the millionaire, who didn't know his, that was talking,
so I wasn't too inquisitive, and only nodded.
"Small wonder," he went on, "that crime's incr'asing an' th' cotton
crop's decreasing in the black belt, when you're sendin' such mate to
the poor naygurs. Why don't you git a cellar man that's been raised
with the hogs, an' 'll treat 'em right when they're dead?"
"I'm looking for one," says I.
"I know a likely lad for you," says he.
"Report to the superintendent," says I; and Mike's been with me ever
since. I found out when I looked into it that for a week back he'd
been paying the new cellar boss ten dollars a day to lay around
outside while he bossed his job.
Mike sold his old masters to a saloon-keeper and moved back to
Packingtown, where he invested all his money in houses, from which he
got a heap of satisfaction, because, as his tenants were compatriots,
he had plenty of excitement collecting his rents. Like most people who
fall into fortunes suddenly, he had bought a lot of things, not
because he needed them or really wanted them, but because poorer
people couldn't have them. Yet in the end he had sense enough to see
that happiness can't be inherited, but that it must be earned.
Being a millionaire is a trade like a doctor's--you must work up
through every grade of earning, saving, spending and giving, or you're
no more fit to be trusted with a fortune than a quack with human life.
For there's no trade in the world, except the doctor's, on which the
lives and the happiness of so many people depend as the millionaire's;
and I might add that there's no other in which there's so much
malpractice.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
No. 10
From John Graham, at Mount Clematis, Michigan, to his son, Pierrepont,
at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The young man has done famously
during the first year of his married life, and the old man has decided
to give him a more important position.
X
MOUNT CLEMATIS, January 1, 1900.
_Dear Pierrepont_: Since I got here, my rheumatism has been so bad
mornings that the attendant who helps me dress has had to pull me over
to the edge of the bed by the seat of my pajamas. If they ever give
way, I reckon I'll have to stay in bed all day. As near as I can
figure out from what the doctor says, the worse you feel during the
first few days you're taking the baths, the better you really are. I
suppose that when a fellow dies on their hands they call it a cure.
I'm by the worst of it for to-day, though, because I'm downstairs.
Just now the laugh is on an old boy with benevolent side-whiskers,
who's sliding down the balusters, and a fat old party, who looks like
a bishop, that's bumping his way down with his feet sticking out
straight in front of him. Shy away from these things that end in an
ism, my boy. From skepticism to rheumatism they've an ache or a pain
in every blamed joint.
Still, I don't want to talk about my troubles, but about your own.
Barton leaves us on the first, and so we shall need a new assistant
general manager for the business. It's a ten-thousand-dollar job, and
a nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-dollar man can't fill it.
From the way in which you've handled your department during the past
year, I'm inclined to think that you can deliver that last dollar's
worth of value. Anyway, I'm going to try you, and you've got to make
good, because if you should fail it would be a reflection on my
judgment as a merchant and a blow to my pride as a father. I could
bear up under either, but the combination would make me feel like
firing you.
As a matter of fact, I can't make you general manager; all I can do is
to give you the title of general manager. And a title is like a suit
of clothes--it must fit the man who tries to wear it. I can clothe you
in a little brief authority, as your old college friend, Shakespeare,
puts it, but I can't keep people from laughing at you when they see
you swelling around in your high-water pants.
It's no use demanding respect in this world; you've got to command it.
There's old Jim Wharton, who, for acting as a fourth-class consul of a
fifth-class king, was decorated with the order of the garter or the
suspender or the eagle of the sixth class--the kind these kings give
to the cook when he gets just the right flavor of garlic in a fancy
sauce. Jim never did a blame thing in his life except to inherit a
million dollars from a better man, who happened to come over on the
Cunard Line instead of the Mayflower, but he'd swell around in our
best society, with that ribbon on his shirt-front, thinking that he
looked like Prince Rupert by Louis the Fourteenth and Lady Clara Vere
de Vere, instead of the fourth assistant to the floor manager at the
Plumbers' ball. But you take Tom Lipton, who was swelled up into Sir
Thomas because he discovered how to pack a genuine Yorkshire ham in
Chicago, and a handle looks as natural on him as on a lard pail.
A man is a good deal like a horse--he knows the touch of a master, and
no matter how lightly the reins are held over him, he understands that
he must behave. But let a fellow who isn't quite sure of himself begin
sawing on a horse's mouth, and the first thing you know the critter
bucks and throws him.
You've only one pair of eyes with which to watch 10,000 men, so unless
they're open all the time you'll be apt to overlook something here and
there; but you'll have 10,000 pairs of eyes watching you all the time,
and they won't overlook anything. You mustn't be known as an easy
boss, or as a hard boss, but as a just boss. Of course, some just men
lean backward toward severity, and some stoop down toward mercy. Both
kinds may make good bosses, but I've usually found that when you hold
the whip hand it's a great thing not to use the whip.
It looks like a pretty large contract to know what 10,000 men are
doing, but, as a matter of fact, there's nothing impossible about it.
In the first place, you don't need to bother very much about the
things that are going all right, except to try to make them go a
little better; but you want to spend your time smelling out the things
that are going all wrong and laboring with them till you've persuaded
them to lead a better life. For this reason, one of the most important
duties of your job is to keep track of everything that's out of the
usual. If anything unusually good happens, there's an unusually good
man behind it, and he ought to be earmarked for promotion; and if
anything unusually bad happens, there's apt to be an unusually bad man
behind that, and he's a candidate for a job with another house.
A good many of these things which it's important for you to know
happen a little before beginning and a little after quitting time; and
so the real reason why the name of the boss doesn't appear on the
time-sheet is not because he's a bigger man than any one else in the
place, but because there shouldn't be any one around to take his time
when he gets down and when he leaves.
You can tell a whole lot about your men from the way in which they
come in and the way in which they go home; but because a fellow is in
the office early, it doesn't always mean that he's panting to begin
work; it may mean that he's been out all night. And when you see a
fellow poring over his books after the others have quit, it doesn't
always follow that he's so wrapped up in his work that he can't tear
himself away from it. It may mean that during business hours he had
his head full of horse-racing instead of figures, and that he's
staying to chase up the thirty cents which he's out in his balance.
You want to find out which.
The extra-poor men and the extra-good men always stick their heads up
above the dead-level of good-enough men; the first to holler for help,
and the second to get an extra reach. And when your attention is
attracted to one of these men, follow him up and find out just what
sort of soil and fertilizer he needs to grow fastest. It isn't enough
to pick likely stock; you've got to plant it where the conditions are
right to develop its particular possibilities. A fellow who's got the
making of a five-thousand-dollar office man in him may not sell enough
lard to fry a half-portion of small potatoes if you put him on the
road. Praise judiciously given may act on one man like an application
of our bone-meal to a fruit tree, and bring out all the pippins that
are in the wood; while in the other it may simply result in his going
all to top.
You mustn't depend too much on the judgment of department heads and
foremen when picking men for promotion. Take their selection if he is
the best man, but know for yourself that he is the best man.
Sometimes a foreman will play a favorite, and, as any fellow who's
been to the races knows, favorites ain't always winners. And
sometimes, though not often, he'll try to hold back a good man through
jealousy. When I see symptoms of a foreman's being jealous of a man
under him, that fellow doesn't need any further recommendation to me.
A man's never jealous of inferiority.
It's a mighty valuable asset for a boss, when a vacancy occurs in a
department, to be able to go to its head when he recommends Bill Smith
for the position, and show that he knows all about Bill Smith from his
number-twelve socks up to his six-and-a-quarter hat, and to ask:
"What's the matter with Tom Jones for the job?" When you refuse to
take something just as good in this world, you'll usually find that
the next time you call the druggist has the original Snicker's
Sassafras Sneezer in stock.
It's mighty seldom, though, that a really good man will complain to
you that he's being held down, or that his superior is jealous of him.
It's been my experience that it's only a mighty small head that so
small an idea as this can fill. When a fellow has it, he's a good deal
like one of those girls with the fatal gift of beauty in her
imagination, instead of her face--always believing that the boys don't
dance with her because the other girls tell them spiteful things about
her.
Besides always having a man in mind for any vacancy that may occur,
you want to make sure that there are two men in the office who
understand the work of each position in it. Every business should be
bigger than any one man. If it isn't, there's a weak spot in it that
will kill it in the end. And every job needs an understudy. Sooner or
later the star is bound to fall sick, or get the sulks or the swelled
head, and then, if there's no one in the wings who knows her lines,
the gallery will rotten-egg the show and howl for its money back.
Besides, it has a mighty chastening and stimulating effect on the star
to know that if she balks there's a sweet young thing in reserve who's
able and eager to go the distance.
Of course, I don't mean by this that you want to play one man against
another or try to minimize to a good man his importance to the house.
On the contrary, you want to dwell on the importance of all positions,
from that of office-boy up, and make every man feel that he is a vital
part of the machinery of the business, without letting him forget that
there's a spare part lying around handy, and that if he breaks or goes
wrong it can be fitted right in and the machine kept running. It's
good human nature to want to feel that something's going to bust when
you quit, but it's bad management if things are fixed so that anything
can.
In hiring new men, you want to depend almost altogether on your own
eyes and your own judgment. Remember that when a man's asking for a
job he's not showing you himself, but the man whom he wants you to
hire. For that reason, I never take on an applicant after a first
interview. I ask him to call again. The second time he may not be made
up so well, and he may have forgotten some of his lines. In any event,
hell feel that he knows you a little better, and so act a little
easier and talk a little freer.
Very often a man whom you didn't like on his first appearance will
please you better on his second, because a lot of people always appear
at their worst when they're trying to appear at their best. And again,
when you catch a fellow off guard who seemed all right the first time,
you may find that he deaconed himself for your benefit, and that all
the big strawberries were on top. Don't attach too much importance to
the things which an applicant has a chance to do with deliberation, or
pay too much attention to his nicely prepared and memorized speech
about himself. Watch the little things which he does unconsciously,
and put unexpected questions which demand quick answers.
If he's been working for Dick Saunders, it's of small importance what
Dick says of him in his letter of recommendation. If you want Dick's
real opinion, get it in some other way than in an open note, of which
the subject's the bearer. As a matter of fact, Dick's opinion
shouldn't carry too much weight, except on a question of honesty,
because if Dick let him go, he naturally doesn't think a great deal of
him; and if the man resigned voluntarily, Dick is apt to feel a little
sore about it. But your applicant's opinion of Dick Saunders is of
very great importance to you. A good man never talks about a real
grievance against an old employer to a new one; a poor man always
pours out an imaginary grievance to any one who will listen. You
needn't cheer in this world when you don't like the show, but silence
is louder than a hiss.
Hire city men and country men; men who wear grandpa's Sunday suit;
thread-bare men and men dressed in those special four-ninety-eight
bargains; but don't hire dirty men. Time and soap will cure dirty
boys, but a full-grown man who shrinks from the use of water
externally is as hard to cure as one who avoids its use internally.
It's a mighty curious thing that you can tell a man his morals are bad
and he needs to get religion, and hell still remain your friend; but
that if you tell him his linen's dirty and he needs to take a bath,
you've made a mortal enemy.
Give the preference to the lean men and the middleweights. The world
is full of smart and rich fat men, but most of them got their
smartness and their riches before they got their fat.
Always appoint an hour at which you'll see a man, and if he's late a
minute don't bother with him. A fellow who can be late when his own
interests are at stake is pretty sure to be when yours are. Have a
scribbling pad and some good letter paper on a desk, and ask the
applicant to write his name and address. A careful and economical man
will use the pad, but a careless and wasteful fellow will reach for
the best thing in sight, regardless of the use to which it's to be
put.
Look in a man's eyes for honesty; around his mouth for weakness; at
his chin for strength; at his hands for temperament; at his nails for
cleanliness. His tongue will tell you his experience, and under the
questioning of a shrewd employer prove or disprove its statements as
it runs along. Always remember, in the case of an applicant from
another city, that when a man says he doesn't like the town in which
he's been working it's usually because he didn't do very well there.
You want to be just as careful about hiring boys as men. A lot of
employers go on the theory that the only important thing about a boy
is his legs, and if they're both fitted on and limber they hire him.
As a matter of fact, a boy is like a stick of dynamite, small and
compact, but as full of possibilities of trouble as a car-load of
gunpowder. One bad boy in a Sunday-school picnic can turn it into a
rough-house outfit for looting orchards, and one little cuss in your
office can demoralize your kids faster than you can fire them.