_Dear Pierrepont:_ The cashier has just handed me your expense account
for the month, and it fairly makes a fellow hump-shouldered to look it
over. When I told you that I wished you to get a liberal education, I
didn't mean that I wanted to buy Cambridge. Of course the bills won't
break me, but they will break you unless you are very, very careful.
I have noticed for the last two years that your accounts have been
growing heavier every month, but I haven't seen any signs of your taking
honors to justify the increased operating expenses; and that is bad
business--a good deal like feeding his weight in corn to a scalawag
steer that won't fat up.
I haven't said anything about this before, as I trusted a good deal to
your native common-sense to keep you from making a fool of yourself in
the way that some of these young fellows who haven't had to work for it
do. But because I have sat tight, I don't want you to get it into your
head that the old man's rich, and that he can stand it, because he won't
stand it after you leave college. The sooner you adjust your spending to
what your earning capacity will be, the easier they will find it to live
together.
The only sure way that a man can get rich quick is to have it given to
him or to inherit it. You are not going to get rich that way--at least,
not until after you have proved your ability to hold a pretty important
position with the firm; and, of course, there is just one place from
which a man can start for that position with Graham & Co. It doesn't
make any difference whether he is the son of the old man or of the
cellar boss--that place is the bottom. And the bottom in the office end
of this business is a seat at the mailing-desk, with eight dollars every
Saturday night.
I can't hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no good,
and it would do the house harm. There is plenty of room at the top here,
but there is no elevator in the building. Starting, as you do, with a
good education, you should be able to climb quicker than the fellow who
hasn't got it; but there's going to be a time when you begin at the
factory when you won't be able to lick stamps so fast as the other boys
at the desk. Yet the man who hasn't licked stamps isn't fit to write
letters. Naturally, that is the time when knowing whether the pie comes
before the ice-cream, and how to run an automobile isn't going to be of
any real use to you.
I simply mention these things because I am afraid your ideas as to the
basis on which you are coming with the house have swelled up a little in
the East. I can give you a start, but after that you will have to
dynamite your way to the front by yourself. It is all with the man. If
you gave some fellows a talent wrapped in a napkin to start with in
business, they would swap the talent for a gold brick and lose the
napkin; and there are others that you could start out with just a
napkin, who would set up with it in the dry-goods business in a small
way, and then coax the other fellow's talent into it.
I have pride enough to believe that you have the right sort of stuff in
you, but I want to see some of it come out. You will never make a good
merchant of yourself by reversing the order in which the Lord decreed
that we should proceed--learning the spending before the earning end of
business. Pay day is always a month off for the spend-thrift, and he is
never able to realize more than sixty cents on any dollar that comes to
him. But a dollar is worth one hundred and six cents to a good business
man, and he never spends the dollar. It's the man who keeps saving up
and expenses down that buys an interest in the concern. That is where
you are going to find yourself weak if your expense accounts don't lie;
and they generally don't lie in that particular way, though Baron
Munchausen was the first traveling man, and my drummers' bills still
show his influence.
I know that when a lot of young men get off by themselves, some of them
think that recklessness with money brands them as good fellows, and that
carefulness is meanness. That is the one end of a college education
which is pure cussedness; and that is the one thing which makes nine
business men out of ten hesitate to send their boys off to school. But
on the other hand, that is the spot where a young man has the chance to
show that he is not a light-weight. I know that a good many people say I
am a pretty close proposition; that I make every hog which goes through
my packing-house give up more lard than the Lord gave him gross weight;
that I have improved on Nature to the extent of getting four hams out
of an animal which began life with two; but you have lived with me long
enough to know that my hand is usually in my pocket at the right time.
Now I want to say right here that the meanest man alive is the one who
is generous with money that he has not had to sweat for, and that the
boy who is a good fellow at some one else's expense would not work up
into first-class fertilizer. That same ambition to be known as a good
fellow has crowded my office with second-rate clerks, and they always
will be second-rate clerks. If you have it, hold it down until you have
worked for a year. Then, if your ambition runs to hunching up all week
over a desk, to earn eight dollars to blow on a few rounds of drinks for
the boys on Saturday night, there is no objection to your gratifying it;
for I will know that the Lord didn't intend you to be your own boss.
[Illustration: "_I have seen hundreds of boys go to Europe who didn't
bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting
clothes._"]
You know how I began--I was started off with a kick, but that proved a
kick up, and in the end every one since has lifted me a little bit higher.
I got two dollars a week, and slept under the counter, and you can bet I
knew just how many pennies there were in each of those dollars, and how
hard the floor was. That is what you have got to learn.
I remember when I was on the Lakes, our schooner was passing out through
the draw at Buffalo when I saw little Bill Riggs, the butcher, standing
up above me on the end of the bridge with a big roast of beef in his
basket. They were a little short in the galley on that trip, so I called
up to Bill and he threw the roast down to me. I asked him how much, and
he yelled back, "about a dollar." That was mighty good beef, and when we
struck Buffalo again on the return trip, I thought I would like a little
more of it. So I went up to Bill's shop and asked him for a piece of the
same. But this time he gave me a little roast, not near so big as the
other, and it was pretty tough and stringy. But when I asked him how
much, he answered "about a dollar." He simply didn't have any sense of
values, and that's the business man's sixth sense. Bill has always been
a big, healthy, hard-working man, but to-day he is very, very poor.
The Bills ain't all in the butcher business. I've got some of them right
now in my office, but they will never climb over the railing that
separates the clerks from the executives. Yet if they would put in half
the time thinking for the house that they give up to hatching out
reasons why they ought to be allowed to overdraw their salary accounts,
I couldn't keep them out of our private offices with a pole-ax, and I
wouldn't want to; for they could double their salaries and my profits in
a year. But I always lay it down as a safe proposition that the fellow
who has to break open the baby's bank toward the last of the week for
car-fare isn't going to be any Russell Sage when it comes to trading
with the old man's money. He'd punch my bank account as full of holes as
a carload of wild Texans would a fool stockman that they'd got in a
corner.
Now I know you'll say that I don't understand how it is; that you've got
to do as the other fellows do; and that things have changed since I was
a boy. There's nothing in it. Adam invented all the different ways in
which a young man can make a fool of himself, and the college yell at
the end of them is just a frill that doesn't change essentials. The boy
who does anything just because the other fellows do it is apt to scratch
a poor man's back all his life. He's the chap that's buying wheat at
ninety-seven cents the day before the market breaks. They call him "the
country" in the market reports, but the city's full of him. It's the
fellow who has the spunk to think and act for himself, and sells short
when prices hit the high C and the house is standing on its hind legs
yelling for more, that sits in the directors' meetings when he gets on
toward forty.
We've got an old steer out at the packing-house that stands around at
the foot of the runway leading up to the killing pens, looking for all
the world like one of the village fathers sitting on the cracker box
before the grocery--sort of sad-eyed, dreamy old cuss--always has two or
three straws from his cud sticking out of the corner of his mouth. You
never saw a steer that looked as if he took less interest in things. But
by and by the boys drive a bunch of steers toward him, or cows maybe, if
we're canning, and then you'll see Old Abe move off up that runway, sort
of beckoning the bunch after him with that wicked old stump of a tail of
his, as if there was something mighty interesting to steers at the top,
and something that every Texan and Colorado, raw from the prairies,
ought to have a look at to put a metropolitan finish on him. Those
steers just naturally follow along on up that runway and into the
killing pens. But just as they get to the top, Old Abe, someways, gets
lost in the crowd, and he isn't among those present when the gates are
closed and the real trouble begins for his new friends.
I never saw a dozen boys together that there wasn't an Old Abe among
them. If you find your crowd following him, keep away from it. There
are times when it's safest to be lonesome. Use a little common-sense,
caution and conscience. You can stock a store with those three
commodities, when you get enough of them. But you've got to begin
getting them young. They ain't catching after you toughen up a bit.
You needn't write me if you feel yourself getting them. The symptoms
will show in your expense account. Good-by; life's too short to write
letters and New York's calling me on the wire.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
+-------------------------------+
| No. 3 |
+-------------------------------+
| From John Graham, at the |
| Union Stock Yards in |
| Chicago, to his son, |
| Pierrepont, at Harvard |
| University. Mr. Pierrepont |
| finds Cambridge to his |
| liking, and has suggested |
| that he take a post-graduate |
| course to fill up some |
| gaps which he has found |
| in his education. |
+-------------------------------+