DUMBELLS OF BUSINESS
[Illustration: Earning Bus Fare]
DUMBELLS OF BUSINESS
by
PROFF O.U. BOJACK (BUS.DOC.)
AUTHOR OF “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN
SALESMANSHIP,” “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS
IN BUYING,” “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN
LOVE & MARRIAGE,” ETC.
Fighting Editor
“BOJACK’S NOISY EXPORTER”
Pruned of Profanity by LOUIS C. M. REED
[Illustration]
1922
THE STRATFORD CO., PUBLISHERS
Boston, Massachusetts
Copyright, 1922
The STRATFORD CO., Publishers
Boston, Mass.
The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
_THESE playful biffs on the beak of Business appeared originally in a
little House Magazine called “Auto Suggestions.”_
_Many of them have been completely revised for the purpose of this
volume, over the rasping nasal protest of Proff Bojack who believes in
letting Well Enough alone until it crawls up and bites you in the leg,
as mentioned somewhere in the text—then roll over on the other side._
_The characters are drawn from the daily life of the average American
business organization where men are somehow sweating through to Success
against the cordovan inertia of the Dumbells of Business._
—_THE PRUNER_
[Illustration: Proff O. U. Bojack (Bus. Doc.)]
DEDICATED WITH A WARMTH OF FELLOW
FEELING TO ALL BEDEVILED
BRETHERN OF THE BUSINESS WORLD
_The Author_
Contents
Hot Sketch
No. Page
1 The Plant Cured of Mossbackitis 1
2 The Lurid Lot of the Leaker 13
3 The Self Abnegationist And His Finish 21
4 The Bird Who Berated Business Assn’s 29
5 The Advertising Genius of Squirrelville 39
6 The Salesman Who Became Buyer 47
7 The Pampered Dealer 59
8 The Efficiency Expert 69
9 The Road Rat Who Gave Up Home Comforts 85
10 The Man Who Organized Manufacturers 103
11 The Perpetual Planner 113
12 The Twin-Six Philanthropist 123
13 The Yob Who Let Business Slide 131
14 The Would-Be Sales Promoter 139
15 The Young Satellites of Stallville 157
16 The Benedict Who Wisdomed-Up 165
17 The Business Baggers of Punkton 173
18 The Picayune Planet 183
19 The Passing of the Buck Passer 191
20 The Executive With The Clerk’s Mind 199
21 The War Winning Patrioteer 209
22 Typical American And Critical American 219
23 When Mental Leech Meets Mental Leech 233
24 The Export Group Grafter 245
HOT SKETCH NO. 1
THE PLANT CURED OF MOSSBACKITIS
OUT among the gnarled oaks of Squirrel Cove there buzzed a busy
manufacturing plant.
It had been established since Time wore a bib, and, as far back as
History could recall, had been handed down from Whiskers to Whiskers
without a break.
The same old Superintendent with his chew of Fine Cut tucked away in a
back-cavity, was always on hand each generation to bury the father and
drill the son into the mysteries of Production and Distribution. Old
Faithful used to love to take off his beaver cap and stroke the top
of his glazed Summit while he told some eager visitor all about the
industrial heirloom and his long and watchful connection with it.
In the course of centuries the Concern had of course worked up some
business around the County, but at no time did there ever occur what
you would call a Sensational Increase in trade. In fact, careful
scrutiny revealed nothing in the whole town that could be associated
with a sensation of any kind.
The annual output of the particular Hive of Industry under discussion
went wholly to Old Customers who had been buying regularly since
Washington hurdled the Delaware. If any attempt was ever made to get
New Business it was altogether an unconscious act, and no record of the
perpetrator remains.
At the time of which we are now yodeling, the current Owner and
Proprietor was closing in on his sixty-fifth Milestone, and, like his
father and grandfather before him, he believed in letting Well Enough
alone until it crawled up and bit him in the leg. Then he would roll
over on the other side.
It is only natural that such a highly strung temperament as this should
be accompanied by more or less radically advanced views on Business
in general. This was indeed the case, yes. And he was a horrible
spendthrift when it came to Advertising. In the course of say two lunar
years his total linage amounted to about as much as a Fourth Avenue
delicatessen. He never counted the cost of any plant installation
under one figure.
If anybody had suggested travelling the Trade, the proposition would
have met with the same enthusiastic endorsement that a Shell Game would
get at a Dunkard picnic.
All salesmen were looked upon as a species of unclassified bandit that
victimized Firms and Customers alike, and revelled at nights with
Champagne, Chickens and Chant.
Now it so happened that our Captain of Industry had a daughter. In
looks she was strictly neutral, and in intelligence just sort of
medio-semi. Her heart was laced to a young Scrod she had met when she
was East at School learning to parry and thrust with knife and fork.
She had never seen anything like this rollicking Young Buck from one
end of her shaved-neck County to the other, and so she went limp the
first time he threw a ray in her direction. He was a thoroughbred
at that, and could get in and out of a Taxi without furring up his
Top Hat, and pay a dinner check without stopping his story and then
forgetting afterward what he was talking about.
It required no profound psychoanalysis to tell from Daughter’s manner
that there was only one kernel in the crib so far as she was concerned.
As for the tall-collared gentry of Squirrel Cove, the entries were
closed and they knew it to a man and gave her the whole runway.
Now ever since Daughter was a baby blowing bubbles out of the corners
of her mouth, Papa had lived in Mortal Dread of a day when she might
buckle up with a man who would be only after his Thirty Dollars which
he had slowly and painfully piled up through pluck, perseverance and
pre-natal pull. And so when he saw her temperature rising and her
appetite falling, he dug out her secret and then started on a quiet
hunt to find out whether the daring Disturber was Grade A, or tinnif.
As he had feared, the Rat proved to be a Baltimore Luncher pulling down
Fifteen Dollars per week and washing his own clothes in the bath tub.
This discovery caused a Family Upheaval which for pep, polish and
all-round proficiency had all Mexican Mixups looking like a harmless
after-school scamper at Hop Scotch.
Every evening at sundown when Father would come home from the din and
roar of his quarter-acre Plant, the neighbors would gather at their
windows for the latest war news. Sometimes the Carranzaists would be on
top; at other times the Villaists and Zapaists would have it.
Daughter protested hotly during these Bloody Encounters that her king
was Poor but Honest, but father had him sized up as a Single Cylinder.
One night when the walls were being freshly inlaid with flying
furniture and bric-a-brac, Daughter ducked out of the peaceful abode
and down to the Railway Station and caught the Milk Train for New York.
The following Wednesday at 4 P. M., Kendallville Time, she took Philip
Darlington Wakefield for Better or Worse and wired Father for his
blessing and $100 to come back home on.
At first Father was all for raising his hand to High Heaven and
pronouncing the Irish Cottage Curse with all the spine-chilling heroics
about darkening the Threshold, but Mother looked quietly over her
goggles and told him to cut the cheap melodramatic stuff and behave
like a white man, and tell the Young Folks to buy a couple of postcards
of the Woolworth Building and come back home.
Under this stinging philippic Father melted into the big armchair and
became human, and a couple of days later the Bride and Groom blew into
Squirrel Cove and turned all Main Street into little groups of excited
goatees.
Philip Darlington gave Father the first Hoyo he had ever smoked and
took the old gazunk completely off his underpinning by showing a
knowledge of Industry and Finance that only a Fifteen Dollar New York
clerk can possess. On the strength of it he landed a job in Father’s
mighty Works and wasn’t there a week before every yunk in the place was
plotting for his destruction.
The reason, tersely and succinctly expressed, was that Phil proved to
have Ideas and nobody around the Works cared to deliberately expose
himself to the danger of infection. But Phil went right ahead and
shifted men and things here, there and everywhere, and put in Time
Clocks and Cost Systems and all kinds of efficiency effects.
He took the dusty correspondence off the long wire and had it filed in
steel filing cabinets, and reduced the length of the Daily Conference
from three cigars to one cigar. He relieved the Shipping Clerk of
the Sales end of the Business, and established a separate Purchasing
Department, thereby lifting this important work from the shoulders of
the Night Watchman.
Phil also got out the first and only Catalogue the concern had ever
had in all their 4,000 years of aggressive Trade Building, and had the
whole force threatening to strike when he announced that he was going
out for New Business.
After a twenty-one round Go with Father-in-Law over the
revolutionary question of Advertising, Phil got in touch
with a Big Agency and listened to them reel off the usual
now-you-want-to-start-off-with-a-page-in-the-Saturday-Evening-Post
advice, after which he proceeded to map out his own campaign as is
Customary with the Laity about to advertise.
Phil also had to back Father-in-Law up against the silo and sew up
both his eyes and put a pair of vacuum-cup lips on him before he could
get the Old Man to see the necessity of sending a force of bright-eyed
Salesmen out on the Road to sell the Stuff. Phil said there was no use
manufacturing a good article and then keeping it a secret.
Every day there was something unusual doing around the Works, and of
course it was all very thrilling, but when the bills began to roll in,
Father-in-Law threw thirty different kinds of foaming spasm, followed
by Sinking Spells that threatened to lay him ’neath the Mossy Mound.
But Phil was always there with the pulmotor and the Soothing Word to
pull him through.
One day when everybody around the Office was getting all ready for
the Last Sad Rites on account of all this frenzied expense, business
suddenly began to pour in like beer out of a busted vat. Consternation
thereupon Reigned Supreme and acted like a drunken sailor.
The little Plant squeaked and groaned and heaved and puffed until it
fairly burst its little panties trying to keep up with Orders. All
Squirrel Cove, from the Mayor down to the Poundmaster, was given a
job at something or other, and Phil was heralded all the way from
Angusville to Jowett Junction as the greatest Organizing Genius the
County had ever known.
When the Fiscal Year ended and Father-in-Law took a happy peep at the
Balance Sheet and saw that he had holed-out more coin than all his
Ancestors put together, he called Phil to his parental side and shifted
the following Beautiful Tribute from his proud bosom:
“My boy,” he said, “I feel like a tan-eyed gnat for having charted
you up as a parasite when I first saw you looming up on the Links.
I thought you were marrying my daughter just to romp off with her
father’s little Yen Bag. I would have thought the same of any man who
didn’t have a few crullers of his own. I didn’t realize that there
might be a chance of my getting a dumsight more out of you than you
could ever get out of me. Henceforth you are a fifty percent owner
of this Dugout, and what’s more, here is a little present for you in
recognition of your sterling worth.”
Phil stood the cotton umbrella in a corner and soled off to break the
gladsome tidings to his wife and found her tossing tennis balls with
some Tea Toad in a green Sport Coat. Later Phil spied the two walking
together through the Big Grove and she was listing to starboard.
“H’m,” he h’md, “I’ve got the Old Man, but it’s cost me the gal.”
He turned sadly away, mumbling something about what he thought of a
Life that kept a fellow always manoeuvering for position.
Over the hills came the floating fragrance of frying fishballs, while
in the tall whiffletree above him a chipmunk chipped softly to its mate.
_Lesson for Today:_ When you set out to cure Industrial
Mossbackitis, the dangers are great.
HOT SKETCH NO. 2
THE LURID LOT OF THE LEAKER
A YOUNG man had a job with an old organization.
The job was not that of General Manager.
Nor was it Department Manager.
It was not a managership of any kind, character, quality or
description—all claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
It was just a job.
It was the kind of job that any young man with an eye on ideas and a
finger on the future, might have with any old Organization steeped in
stability and pickled in policy.
In other less alliterative language, we might smooth down our
shirt-front and say that the young man had A Chance.
If we cared to toss off all restraint and emphasize the statement with
grape-juice profanity, we might say that the young man had a Very, Very
good chance.
But he didn’t know how to take care of his chance.
He took chances with his Chance.
And one day it got away from him.
When the Boss handed him his passports, he asked for an explanation,
and the Boss passed him one, medium well done.
It ran as per follows, WITNESSETH:
“Young Man,” heaved the Boss, scratching his right ear pleasingly with
his left thumb, “the reason we are decorating you with the Order of the
Canned is because we have found that YOU LEAK. And any concern that
does not plug the leak the moment they locate it, will soon be sitting
around garter-high in the mire of misunderstanding.
“Were it not for the red-nosed fact that here and there in this
Organization is a man foolish enough to be loyal to the institution
that enables him to close down his troubles when he closes down his
desk, the whole Office would by now be torn with internal strife like a
rat-tailed Roadster, and we would be headed for the rocks of riot and
rebellion.
“Your up-stairs piping is so defective that everything you take in at
the ears runs out of your mouth. You hear one man spill some remark
about another, and you scamper off with your little red eyes to tell
the other.
“Then when the other comes back with a rib-rocker on the first man, you
scamper back again and break the news to Number One.
“The other day you eared-in on a conversation I was having with my
partner about one of our men, and in exactly eleven minutes by our
beloved Office Clock the whole Force had tabulated the tidings.
“Before I had a chance to talk to the man myself, he came at me with
the logical deduction that he had a right to be informed at first hands
on a matter concerning himself that seemed to be as well known around
the Works as the hour for Knocking off Work.
“And WITNESSETH: Sometimes when Party of the First Part has been
discussing important matters in conference with himself or others, you
have hopped around like a coolie with the dhobe itch, trying to sniff
out some clue on which to ground a bit of gab.
“I have never walked through the office that I did not spot you back
of a door holding a whisper-fest with somebody, and, if my memory isn’t
fooling me, we have never yet talked here in the office about lifting
or lopping prices, or changing selling plans, or shuffling Salesmen,
or shaking up the territory, that it has not leaked out to the Road
Robbins long before we wanted it to.
“We now know for a cinchety that you are the guilty goop because
you fell for a plant that we had cleverly framed up with the kindly
assistance of myself.
“AND, since we propose to run this roost harmoniously—radiating a wee
wisp of sunshine and fellowship wherever we can, and making Business
a pleasure instead of a punch-up—there does not seem to be any place
around these puritanical precincts for a leaky radiator.
“You are bright and clever, and you don’t injure your spine trying to
get out of the path of an idea, and, by all the rules but one, you
should shoot right to the top of any business.
“The one rule that you have not yet sponged up is that Success is more
than brains and bustle. Success is the art of closing up the Exhaust
occasionally.
“I can find no doubt in any hole or corner of my mind that you have
many times scratched your busy little head and wondered why you have
remained in the same job all these centuries while other men not so
clever as your oblique self have sailed right past you into the harbor
of Heavy Responsibility With Correspondingly Light Pay. The reason is
as stated in yon foregoing.
“Be it known to you further that no Business can succeed without
Loyalty and Co-operation. Modern Business demands of every man that he
be loyal, or be off.
“Pin-headedness, tale-peddling and office politics are barnacles on
the barque of Business, and the Firm that does not scrape them off is
doomed to decay.
“Any man with a brow an inch over all, should know that the lot of the
Leaker means to be ultimately despised by the very men he has made
confidants of.
“Every time you have started one of those
he-said-that-you-said-that-I-said stories of yours, you have rawed up
all the decent men of this Office.
“Today you stand about as popular around here as a hair in the butter;
but you don’t know it, because, like all back-fence babblers, you
are foggy up on the perceptive plane, and you think that the man who
listens must like yourself be loose.
“Some day you will learn, young man, that a tight tongue makes a
sagacious sky-piece—that to speak well is to cheat hell—that the chain
of Successful Business is linked with loyalty—and the Leaker lands in
Limbo long before the last lap’s run.
“Thanking you for your kind attention, and asking you to now kindly
consider yourself sunk without warning, I beg to remain etc, etc.”
Having spake after the manner of the hereinbefore mentioned, Comrade
Boss removed his eyes from the transgressor, and wheeled around in his
chair.
And, taking his pen between his index finger and the back of his hand,
began to sign yesterday’s mail.
So.
HOT SKETCH NO. 3
THE SELF ABNEGATIONIST AND HIS FINISH
THERE was a Large Employer with fantail whiskers who got good and sore
at his Help.
They didn’t have the interests of the business At Heart, he said. All
they cared about was to fist-in their salaries and see that the Office
Clock was accurate.
Any time any of them did any dweedling little thing in the shape of
exceptional work, they expected credit for it, he murmured.
If the Sales Manager pulled up his sales, he would pull down his vest
and bid for congratulations.
If the Credit Man lost only 1/40th of 1 per cent on the year’s
accounts, he would dodge around in front of the throne expecting to be
caught and laureled.
If a stenographer got her dictation at four o’clock, and then jumped
into the saddle and won the race before Big Whistle, she would expect
her Dictator to say she was Some little hustlerine.
Even the Office Squirrel looked for commendation every time he
discharged the responsibilities of his Office without fumble or fizzle.
What this Employer wanted, he contended, was employees who would work
for the good of the Business and not be always thinking about their own
good. He said he hadn’t a man around the place who could sink Self with
the rock of Gibraltar tied around its neck. The reward for doing a good
thing, he preached, was in having done it.
* * * * *
Now it so happened that Our Hero was a Town Pillar, and although he did
not at any time lean toward the philanthrop stuff hard enough to push
it over, still he felt that he’d like to do a few Good Things for the
Community before he hopped the Styx.
In his mental unfoldment he had forged clear past the point where One
feels that One has done One’s full duty when One takes care of One’s
own wife and One’s children.
He felt that every man owed a responsibility to the Community in which
he lived, moved and had his Three Squares.
So he decided to erect a public drinking fountain with a lion spitting
fresh water from between its teeth.
He went and got some good news prints of himself, then called in the
reporters and announced his decision. The announcement was followed by
a shower of publicity in the local Press that would have cost Father
John a hundred dollars.
One newspaper that gave him only a Stick and didn’t print his picture,
was forthwith put upon the Drab List and the Standing Ad of his
Business was withdrawn for life.
When the fountain was all set up, Our Hero declined to pay the bill
until the name of the donor was carved in large letters in some
conspicuous place, according to the Conditions of Agreement. So the
Town Council met and decided to carve it on the southern view of the
lion.
The minister of the Church which comrade Hero attended heard of his
munificent gift to the Town. His Reverence got in some fast legwork
and ran down the modest philanthropist just as the aforesaid latter was
ducking into his office.
The following Sunday morning when the congregation assembled for a
quiet snooze, the Minister got up in the turret and announced the
recent donation of a beautiful stained-glass window.
In due time the window was puttied in, showing a patriarch with a
staff and a cloven hat. But when Old Sol turned on his spotlight, did
it reveal the graceful and modest inscription, “Donated by A Friend?”
It did—NOT. It revealed the full and complete name of the generous
benefactor in letters about the size of a small barn. The price he paid
for the complete job was left off, however.
Sometime afterwards the Town got the community development bug. Our
Hero stood up on a vinegar barrel at a mass meeting and told the
assembled whiskers that there was no reason on the face of God’s Green
Earth why they shouldn’t be as big as New York, and that if every man
would Put his Shoulder to the Wheel they could make Chicago look like
a way-station.
When the cheers died down, Our Hero was made Chairman of the Might and
Main Committee. He took off his Prince Al and got on the job.
For six months he worked like a Zulu wharf-boy, and through his
Untiring Efforts the town copped several new industries, and was lifted
from the 34th to the 24th city of the State in point of population and
municipal purity.
New York did not exactly get jealous and call for a re-canvass of the
Census, but there was no question about the enhanced Well Being of the
community as a result of Our Hero’s unselfish public spirit.
When the next mayoralty election came around, one of the lesser members
of the Might and Main Committee, who had attended but one meeting
and slept throughout, put himself up as a Candidate and offered the
Committee’s record of achievement as the reason why all Patriotic
Citizens should toss their votes in his tub.
Doc Hero tried to cut in and tell the excited Populace who it was that
did the Real Work of the Might and Main Committee but he could not
break through the line. The candidate was elected by an “overwhelming
majority,” to coin a phrase.
Whereupon Uncle Hero sat him down and quilled a Public Letter to Ye
Editor in which he Regretted Deeply that his work was not Appreciated
and that he got no Credit for all he had done for the Town.
_Lesson for Today:_ When a man gets beyond the desire for
personal praise he has got beyond the grave.
HOT SKETCH NO. 4
THE BIRD WHO BERATED BUSINESS ASSN’S
ON A hell-hot Saturday afternoon in August a certain American
manufacturer sat in his executive oven mopping like a German chef.
The Cashier came in and spread before him the weekly Worry Sheet, and
then chugged off for the week-end in his little threshing machine.
All the other Help had of course already gone, for it was about ten
minutes before closing time.
The only man left around the Works was the afore-specified
manufacturer. He couldn’t get off because he was the Boss.
Suddenly, without warning, prologue, or advance copy for the Press,
he launched a vicious right-arm jab at two million flies that were
mobilizing on his occiput, and then lammed out the following trenchant
blank verse:
“Blankety blank my hide if I ain’t getting hankety-pankety sick of
this blank country and its laws. Here I am, week in and week out,
sweating like a Somali dock-hand to make both ends meet, and instead
of being charted up as a useful, constructive factor in the country’s
development, I’m hooted from the house-tops, shot at from ambush,
chased up trees, and hounded like a pole-cat.
“The goods I make are clean, legitimate, honorable goods, and a public
necessity. By their manufacture and sale, thousands of people have it
soft on both the productive and distributive ends of the line. If it
were not for this business, this two-spot town would be fanning for air
inside twenty-four hours, and hundreds of happy homes would be hurdling
to Hades.
“Not a week goes by that I’m not digging up for some Church, School,
Library, Fair, Famine, Hospital or some form of wallet-puller. I pay
more town, county, state and federal taxes than the whole loafing lot
of Timber Tops at Washington put together.
“And yet every move I make, or don’t make, I’m yanked up before some
inch-browed Investigating Committee to explain why I didn’t do what I
did, or did do what I didn’t.
“First they fan me for maintaining prices and then for cutting prices.
They lower freight rates so I can compete in a certain market, and then
just when I’ve gone to the expense of advertising and traveling it, the
State and Interstate Commissions get into a dog-fight and they shoot
the freight rates up again.
“They charge me an Income Tax on what I make, and an Income Tax on what
I lose. They compel me to fill out long, winding webbed-up Forms that
they don’t understand themselves, and that would be sufficient to dam
any Office Boy in the land for business incompetence.
“Out of the taxes that I and my impotent kind are soaked with, they
send a lot of clerks over the globe to write high-school tracts on
the Old Stuff about our Great Trade Chances Abroad, and then spring a
Seaman’s Law joker that tosses American Shipping into the Discard and
puts our goods at the mercy of ships of Nations that are out to stick
tacks in the tire of American Trade.
“For twenty years sane men have been struggling to pull the Tariff out
of the toils of Party Pilferers and give Industry a chance to tell
where it’s at, and yet to this muggy day it is made the mule on which
Boneheads in black fedoras ride in and out of Congress.
“I maintain that the backbone, brains and belly of this Nation is
BUSINESS, and yet when it comes to enacting legislation, Business
hasn’t the voice of a pink-eyed chigger. It is forced to operate under
laws made by men that couldn’t hold a bill clerk’s job in a Brooklyn
kiosk, and I for one am getting good and dam sick of the whole frowsy,
fiddling farce.”
With this perorational explosion, Comrade Manufacturer slapped down the
corrugated cover of his Roll Top, jammed his hat on a bent ear, and
soled off home to take it out on The Folks.
* * * * *
Monday morning came around, according to cosmic custom. The much
admired face of the office clock smiled out the hour of ten, and the
last story of the week-end’s mush had been passed along Bookkeeper’s
Row.
A neatly harnessed young man with a well-groomed superstructure
appeared at the General Office Door.
“What is the nature of your business?” inquired the Office Rat in a
ripsaw crescendo.
“Tell him I am a Field Secretary of the National Business Men’s
Phalanx, lately organized to express the collective business sentiment
of the Nation to the law-builders at Washington,” replied the Field
Secretary. “And tell him,” he added, handing out his official
pasteboard, “that I am here to explain to him why he should become a
member.”
The boy bowlegged off to an adjoining office and returned with the
pleasing tidings that the Boss was Too Busy.
“Go back and tell him that it is to _his_ interest that I be allowed to
come alongside now,” said Field Secretary.
The boy reluctantly went away again, and in a moment later came back
and told the F. S. to take a seat. Whereupon the F. S. took it,
and then for one long, lonely newspaper-reading, thumb-twirling,
watch-glancing hour he held it down without a whimper.
Finally he called the boy again and told him that he’d like to see the
Boss during the present era if possible. The boy waddled off once more
to the secret chamber of the Great and Grouchy One. When he returned he
brought back this cheery message:
“Tell the gentleman I don’t believe I care to go into the matter. I am
Very Busy today, and besides, I am not in favor of these Associations
that cost a lot of money and produce no results.”
“Very well,” replied the Field Secretary sweetly, “I’ll consider myself
null and void.”
“But just kindly inform your intelligent Boss for me,” he continued,
“that the reason these Associations cost a lot of money is because of
the time they lose in hanging around waiting to get possum heads like
himself to see their own Game. And the reason they ‘produce no results’
is because stupid men can’t see that they’ve got to get together to
produce results.”
“And tell him further,” went on Field Sec., edging toward the door and
raising his voice just high enough so that it could be heard about
seven miles, “that while I shall expect to lose my good hundred-dollar
job for it, I can not restrain myself the pleasure of telling him
and his visionless ilk that they deserve just exactly the kind of
legislation they are getting, and that as far as I myself am concerned,
they can all go and take a great big jump into the seventeenth
sub-basement of hell. Good-NIGHT!”
And with this impressive Valedictory the Field Secretary departed,
slamming the door so hard that it jarred the ledger out of balance and
woke up every clerk in the place.
_Lesson for Today:_ There are none so blind as the trusting
husband and the bright-eyed business man.
HOT SKETCH NO. 5
THE ADVERTISING GENIUS OF SQUIRRELVILLE
THERE was a Hotel Clerk in a one-ply town who yearned to become an Ad
Man.
He could have yearned to become President of the United States if he
had wanted to, but there wasn’t so much money in the president business.
His name was Fred, but they called him Chesterton for short.
During his incarceration as Glad Hander at the McGlook House,
Chesterton had lived to see one of the Town Terriers go down to New
York and hoof up great clods of turf in the arena of Successful
Advertising.
This fired his Ambition, and when later he learned that the reporter
on the Squirrelville Banner had just landed a good job as Advertising
Manager for a nearby manufactory which had begun to stretch, he just up
and heard the voice of Destiny calling him through a railway megaphone.
Thus it was, one Gladsome spring morning, that Chesterton backed away
from the little pine hotel-desk for good, and plunged eye-deep into the
intricacies of the Advertising Art.
Chesterton’s first clever move was to procure copies of The Banner
and analyze all the local Advertisements, but after close scrutiny he
concluded that they all leaned heavily to The Rotten.
Which they did.
Which they did beyond the slightest shadow of a little round doubt.
The Liveryman’s Advertisement, for instance, didn’t “Tell The Story,”
reflected Chesterton who had already begun to show an easy familiarity
with Publicity Terms. And he observed also that the reminder which
stood all the year around in the daily 3 in. dbl. col. Display of the
Elite Stationary & Supply Store to the effect that Prospective Patrons
should do their Christmas shoplifting early, did not appear to be
timely copy for July.
Let not the thought here sneak into your mind, Gentile Reader, that
our embryonic George Creel confined his observations solely to
advertisements committed by local craftsmen. On the contrary he went to
the Eureka News Shop and procured copies of all the national magazines
and periodicals that carried advertising to enliven the reading matter,
and every Ad in them came under the sweep of his cold unemotional eye.
“One common fault I find in all of them,” mused Chesterton. “They all
lack The Punch.”
Which criticism should be sufficient to prove to The Reader that
Chestie old toppo was now a full-feathered Ad Writer. In the bright
lexicon of Publicity there is no word that mouthes so smoothly. When in
doubt, talk about The Punch!
To make a long story about seven pages shorter, we will now brush the
dandruff off our coat-collar and say that Chesterton accidentally ran
across the Three Ball Column of one of the magazines where the Frayed
Boys of the Advertising World are accustomed to hanging up their best
belongings.
The first one that caught his eye was this:
“PULLEM PETE—The powerful penster who pulls peppy potent
phrases for particular patrons—try him—6c for a sample
slasher, or 50 individual humdinging follow-ups for 40c.”
Following this sizzling specimen of alliterative skill, Chesterton ran
across this one:
“AD MAN ARONSON penned one pep and paprika sales letter that
pulled $80,000,000 worth of business. He can do the same
for you. Specimen letter, 11 cents and postage. Lock box
4-11-44, Spinach Corners, Conn.”
By this time Chesterton was all het up for he saw where all these Sales
Letter Builders were making their big mistake and he felt the feathers
of his guardian angel’s wing tickling his spine all the way up.
Intuitively he knew that his footsteps had been guided at last to the
big bronze door of Opportunity, and that all he had to do was to knock
on her and she would be opened up Unto him. He was politician-sure that
he had the password. And the password was PRICE!
And so Chestie sat him down at his little school-desk in the attic,
which he had fixed up neatly as his office with a newsprint of St.
Elmo as his patron saint, and after three non-union days’ labor he
carved out this modest little synopsis of his advertisorial equipment:
I AM CHESTERTON OF SQUIRRELVILLE—I write serial follow-ups
that tear the teeth out of indifference, pull the wool off
the sky-piece of scepticism, rouse interest to a frenzy and
send the prospect screaming down the aisle to pay tithe
to the titillating tin box. A sample letter will cost
you $100.00. Three letters for $200.00. Cash with order
regardless of rating. Business already booked makes delivery
of copy impossible to guarantee under seven months after
order is placed.
Looking the copy over once more, Chesterton decided that there was only
one thing the matter with it. The price was too much to the Clothing
Sale. So he raised it another $100.00 and then fired the copy off to a
couple of good advertising media.
Then he lit up a piece of tampa twine and walked out in the backyard
and put chicken-wire around all the trees so the goats would not bark
them when the stampede commenced.
One week later the Postman was rolling up Chesterton’s mail in
barrels. One year later, all Squirrelville was working in various
departments of the Chesterton Advertising Agency.
_Lesson for Today:_ If you’re going to “do,” then do;
otherwise, don’t.
HOT SKETCH NO. 6
THE SALESMAN WHO BECAME BUYER
BILL was a Salesman with a series of chins, who chewed the ends of his
cigars and was by nature Very Sociable.
The bell sprints would all stampede for his Leathers when he arrived
at a/an hotel, and the Clerk always had some little confidential
pleasantry to whisper into his large jovial ear when handing him his
Room Key.
Bill abhorred all forms of convention, had no use for vests, and never
called any man “Mr.” past the introduction, no matter how high the
social or financial pinnacle from which the party breathed his ozone.
In the course of a twenty-minute conversation a Mr. John Wanamaker
would become plain “Wanamaker,” then “John” and finally “Jack,” whether
Jack liked it or not.
Truthfully speaking, it cannot be said that Bill’s particular brew of
bon-hominy made as big a hit with the average Buyer as it did, for
example, with the drayman who juggled the trunks up to the Hotel. As a
matter of bald clean-shaven fact, most of the Larger Buyers in Bill’s
territory threw up a redoubt of icy Reserve every time he wheezed in
to see them; and, to anyone of Bill’s Genial and Sunny Nature, such an
aggressive exhibition of unsociabiliousness is sure to prove a thorn in
the flank.
Thus it was that Bill in time made no dark secret of his Real Opinion
of any man who thought he had to starch all up like a Bank President
just because a pull with the Powers had made him a Buyer instead of a
Bill Clerk.
He didn’t see, he contended, why a Salesman representing a Concern that
covered forty acres Under Roof and made all their own castings, was not
just as good as the man he was trying to sell.
So far as Bill was concerned, he was getting foddered up to the gills,
he said, trying to be friendly with certain deaf and dumb Yappoos that
sit twirling paper-knives and eyeing a Salesman with the critical eye
of an alienist just because he is doing his damdest to cheer them up
and make them act Natural.
The wise Buyer, argued Bill, is the man who treats Salesmen like pals,
because he can get more out of them that way; and moreover, Salesmen
are always in position to do the Buyer a Good Turn in the Trade, as
well as up at the Factory when the Complaints come in.
Now it was the custom of Bill’s firm to use some of their Salesmen in
the home office when the men came in off the road between seasons. It
was a good custom because it not only enabled the Salesmen to earn a
portion of their salaries during the dull months, but also got them
into the habit of breakfasting before Noon.
Bill became particularly adept at this Indoor Exercise especially in
the Purchasing Department where he helped at odd jobs, besides helping
himself to cigars that were daily presented to the Purchasing Agent in
the sacred cause of bribery.
It was soon discovered that Bill had a keen and steady eye when it came
to judging materials and prices, and the Purchasing Agent got sort of
in the habit of mistrusting his own flickering wick and turning over a
good deal of his work to Bill, especially when he was Very Busy, such
as selecting from a mail-order catalogue some kind of a suitable cap to
wear on his forthcoming fishing trip.
One day, as Luck would have it, Comrade Purchasing Agent suddenly up
and kicked off his mortal cocoon, leaving behind him a wife and a
gallon of gasoline for his motorcycle. Bill was chosen to fill the
vacant chair, and putting it Very Mildly yet informingly, the news did
not exactly crush him to death. On the contrary, he went out in the
Coat Room and shook hands with himself until he had two lead arms and
one limp theologian’s grip left in his Gripper.
Bill’s first week as Buyer saw him billy-sundaying every salesmanic
trail-hitter that struck the Works. But somehow the Open Arm stuff
seemed to convey to visiting Salesmen the impression that Bill as Buyer
for the Works intended to lay in a million dollars’ worth of their
Stuff. When he told them that he wasn’t in the market, they couldn’t
seem to assimilate the tidings and just continued to hang on until the
whistle blew and the regular daily imitation of the Rush from Pompeii
commenced.
Bill’s second week as Buyer saw him giving Explicit Instructions to
the Office Spaniel to bring to him the card of every visiting Salesman
before letting the gunk in. In this way quite a few zeppelins were put
out of commission before they reached the First Line Trench, and Bill
got several minutes each day in which to Attend to Business.
But Bill’s heart was still too full of the mush-and-milk of Human
Kindness to long hold down the lid on his Buoyant and Bubbling nature,
and so he continued to spend most of his conscious hours watching the
skilful Air Navigators loop-the-loop from dizzy heights. Besides, there
was in Bill himself a lingering love for the sport which he found it
hard to curb, and which caused him to forget his position as Buyer
every once in a while and ascend as high as any of The Boys—though
always to regret it when he came to earth again.
Bill’s third week as Buyer found him with his Office moved back a
mile and a half from the front door and all approaches barb-wired
and mined. Out in the Reception Office hung a sign, “Salesmen seen
Thursdays ONLY, between 10:30 and 11:30,” and while the lettering was
not large enough to be seen across the river, it was plainly visible to
everything this side.
Such Salesmen as were fortunate enough to receive an invitation to
visit Bill’s imperial headquarters were escorted by two gendarmes
with secret Road Maps that enabled them to find the way; and these
Luckies were then permitted to stand unheeded in the doorway from 20
to 30 minutes twirling their little dollar derbys and snapping the
rubber-band on their leather covered catalogues until such time as the
Honorable Bill had finished dictating his daily batch of Third Reader
essays.
The idea in keeping these few privileged Samsons of The Sale hovering
around the entrance to the refrigerator was to give them time to apply
the Air Compressor after observing certain ominous signs which Bill had
hung around the walls and which read: “Be brief,” “Tell it, and Tell it
Quick,” “Come to the point. If there isn’t any STAY OUT!”
If the visitors were not thoroughly cowed by these sinister signals,
they could proceed further and read an additional warning painted on
the back of the Visitor’s Chair which read: “This is no Park Bench.”
The letters were about the size of the name on the side of a Neutral
Merchantman.
Whenever Bill said to a waiting Salesman, “Come in,” you could see his
breath like on a crisp winter morn. After that, he wouldn’t say another
word until the Salesman had finished a five-minute Oration. Then Bill
would say, “Not interested. Good day.”
Under this policy of Frightfulness, Bill naturally became the target
for a shower of shrapnel every time The Boys got together in the
Smoker. What one would forget to call Bill, another would think of,
thus thoroughly canvassing the Field of Invective at every session.
One fine day an Old Customer to whom Bill had once sold goods when he
himself was a livery-bumping County Hopper, blew into the Office as the
Representative of an Advertising Novelty House. It seems that Business
had gone bunc with the Old Customer and he had been obliged to knit
up with a Road Job to keep the wolf off the door-mat. He was sure he
could land his old friend Bill as a new customer for his almanacs or
some other neat and fetching advertising novelty, and thus make a
Killing with his Firm. He sent word back to the barracks where Bill was
entrenched saying that he was waiting in the offing and wanted to see
him. Bill frowned when he saw the card but told the sentry to show him
in anyway.
A few moments later the poor misguided Yob, who had read his Human
Nature all awry, appeared at the door of the Cold Storage Plant, and,
catching sight of Bill who sat stalling as usual and didn’t see the
Approach, rushed into the room with an extended bronze paw the size of
a Smithfield ham and yelled: “Hello Bill old socks!”
The shock was too much. To have been “Billed” by this brazen intruder
would have been bad enough, but to be “Socked” at the same time was
the belt-below-the-belt that laid Bill low. With one hand clapped to
his heart and the other to his head, he staggered to his feet and
then fell heavily to the ice-bound floor—a victim of heart failure
superinduced by acute inflammation of the Ego.
_Lesson for Today:_ To get a calm view of the bull, you’ve
got to be on the opposite side of the fence.
HOT SKETCH NO. 7
THE PAMPERED DEALER
A CERTAIN condescending old zambuck thought he was doing his Town a
large comprehensive favor by being in the hardware business.
Whenever a Customer entered his store, carrying the door-webs through
on his hat, the grouchy one would look over his glasses to see who it
was, and then go on reading his newspaper until he got good and ready,
thereby justly rebuking the intruder.
Salesmen who called to sell him their flawless Goods used to grow old
and hoary sitting around the dumpo waiting for him to say officially
that he didn’t care to look at the stuff.
Then they would salaam low and in a galley-grind’s voice thank him for
the interview, and back out of the place on their shirt-fronts, and go
sell a lot of Small Bills at high prices over the County at the expense
of Dear House, and then come back and beg the Civic Benefactor to
accept the bouquet at 50 percent profit to himself by placing an order
covering only the bare quantity they had sold for him.
With a show of reluctance and drab boredom seldom seen outside the
Banking Business, the old Nawab would finally put his influential
signature to the Order, but only on condition that the manufacturers
consented to run an Advertisement at their own cost in the local paper
featuring his progressive and popular Establishment. Of course if they
cared at the same time to slide in a few 5-point words about their own
goods, why he would have no special objection.
If it so happened occasionally that he so far lost his balance as to
buy one dollar and sixty cents’ worth more stuff than had already been
sold for him by the visiting Salesman, he would sit himself down on
his comfortable chair-pad of old newspapers and write off a starchy
hand-tooled letter to the House—on stationery that had been printed for
him free of charge by some Easy Eugene of the manufacturing world—and
insist emphatically upon having a Special Man from the factory payroll
to help him dispose of the surplus as well as wait upon customers,
assist in taking Inventory, and be generally useful about the premises.
It is not recorded that any of the manufacturers who were privileged to
sell their goods to this highly respected and pampered posh went so far
as to pay his store rent for him or defray the expenses of his family
wash.
But through their tripe-eyed vision of Sales Promotion they ultimately
succeeded in swelling his super-structure to the point where he was
able to snuggle down into the comforting hallucination that he could
throw any one of them into the bogs of bankruptcy at any time by simply
holding back his thirty-cent orders.
Now it came to pass that a certain young Lochinvar of high voltage
had been tiptoeing about for a favorable Town in which to weigh-in a
blooded Hardware Store, and he happened to hear of this martyr to the
noble cause of service.
In fact every Salesman that Young Loch met told him the same story
about the old crabbino, but some of them heralded the tidings with less
profanity than did others.
Young Loch did not have to get a powerful field-glass to see the
Opportunity that lay before him and stretched out its arms. He could
see it with his eyes tied behind his back.
So forthwith he sallied to the Particular Town to which we have up and
alluded, and in due season he opened him up an establishment that had
old Puffed Bean’s place looking like a Hongkong junk hole. The swellest
cry in Hardware Shelving was installed, and you could close your big
searching eyes and walk all over the place without tangling up with
nail kegs, rope, barbed wire and other embellishments peculiar to the
small-town hardware dispensary.
When the erstwhile Dictator first got news of the coming invasion, the
crust began to crack slightly around the edges of his aloofness. He
commenced saying Good Morning to his Customers and introduced other
revolutionary changes in the business.
Also he began a quiet but systematic campaign of subterranean rapping
against Young Loch, having scratched up the buried fact that Loch’s
grandfather had once swiveled the books when he was County Treasurer.
But Loch was so busy connecting up with desirable Agencies that he paid
about as much attention to the Opposition as if it had been located in
Portuguese West Africa.
One by one those manufacturers who had been supplying their exceptional
wares in driblets to old Punko, decided to give Young Loch exclusive
control for the following sound and sufficient reasons, to-wit and as
follows: first, because he was willing to place a decent-sized order on
Regular Terms with no overhanging strain in way of Special Conditions;
and second, because of the reason just stated.
Loch also ran 6-inch dbl. cols. at regular rates in the influential
Local Sheet advertising the Lines he carried and received many free
cols. in the restricted Reading Pages where he was heralded as a young
man of Exceptional Promise, and his project as a Valuable Addition to
the Large And Growing Commerce of Our Town.
Young Loch did not ask the manufacturers to contribute anything
toward this smashing publicity campaign, except Electros of their
thrice-inspected Goods, which they promptly forgot to send, according
to custom.