_Dear Pierrepont:_ When I saw you start off yesterday I was just a
little uneasy; for you looked so blamed important and chesty that I am
inclined to think you will tell the first customer who says he doesn't
like our sausage that he knows what he can do about it. Repartee makes
reading lively, but business dull. And what the house needs is more
orders.
Sausage is the one subject of all others that a fellow in the packing
business ought to treat solemnly. Half the people in the world take a
joke seriously from the start, and the other half if you repeat it often
enough. Only last week the head of our sausage department started to put
out a tin-tag brand of frankfurts, but I made him take it off the market
quicker than lightning, because I knew that the first fool who saw the
tin-tag would ask if that was the license. And, though people would
grin a little at first, they'd begin to look serious after a while; and
whenever the butcher tried to sell them our brand they'd imagine they
heard the bark, and ask for "that real country sausage" at twice as much
a pound.
He laughs best who doesn't laugh at all when he's dealing with the
public. It has been my experience that, even when a man has a sense of
humor, it only really carries him to the point where he will join in a
laugh at the expense of the other fellow. There's nothing in the world
sicker-looking than the grin of the man who's trying to join in heartily
when the laugh's on him, and to pretend that he likes it.
Speaking of sausage with a registered pedigree calls to mind a little
experience that I had last year. A fellow came into the office here with
a shriveled-up toy spaniel, one of those curly, hairy little fellows
that a woman will kiss, and then grumble because a fellow's mustache
tickles. Said he wanted to sell him. I wasn't really disposed to add a dog
to my troubles, but on general principles I asked him what he wanted for
the little cuss.
[Illustration: "_You looked so blamed important and chesty when you
started off._"]
The fellow hawed and choked and wiped away a tear. Finally, he fetched
out that he loved the dog like a son, and that it broke his heart to
think of parting with him; that he wouldn't dare look Dandy in the face
after he had named the price he was asking for him, and that it was the
record-breaking, marked-down sacrifice sale of the year on dogs; that it
wasn't really money he was after, but a good home for the little chap.
Said that I had a rather pleasant face and he knew that he could trust
me to treat Dandy kindly; so--as a gift--he would let me have him for
five hundred.
"Cents?" says I.
"Dollars," says he, without blinking.
"It ought to be a mastiff at that price," says I.
"If you thought more of quality," says he, in a tone of sort of
dignified reproof, "and less of quantity, your brand would enjoy a
better reputation."
I was pretty hot, I can tell you, but I had laid myself open, so I just
said: "The sausage business is too poor to warrant our paying any such
price for light-weights. Bring around a bigger dog and then we'll talk;"
but the fellow only shook his head sadly, whistled to Dandy, and walked
off.
I simply mention this little incident as an example of the fact that
when a man cracks a joke in the Middle Ages he's apt to affect the
sausage market in the Nineteenth Century, and to lay open an honest
butcher to the jeers of every dog-stealer in the street. There's such a
thing as carrying a joke too far, and the fellow who keeps on pretending
to believe that he's paying for pork and getting dog is pretty apt to
get dog in the end.
But all that aside, I want you to get it firmly fixed in your mind right
at the start that this trip is only an experiment, and that I am not at
all sure you were cut out by the Lord to be a drummer. But you can
figure on one thing--that you will never become the pride of the pond by
starting out to cut figure eights before you are firm on your skates.
A real salesman is one-part talk and nine-parts judgment; and he uses
the nine-parts of judgment to tell when to use the one-part of talk.
Goods ain't sold under Marquess of Queensberry rules any more, and
you'll find that knowing how many rounds the Old 'Un can last against
the Boiler-Maker won't really help you to load up the junior partner
with our Corn-fed brand hams.
A good many salesmen have an idea that buyers are only interested in
baseball, and funny stories, and Tom Lipton, and that business is a side
line with them; but as a matter of fact mighty few men work up to the
position of buyer through giving up their office hours to listening to
anecdotes. I never saw one that liked a drummer's jokes more than an
eighth of a cent a pound on a tierce of lard. What the house really
sends you out for is orders.
Of course, you want to be nice and mellow with the trade, but always
remember that mellowness carried too far becomes rottenness. You can buy
some fellows with a cheap cigar and some with a cheap compliment, and
there's no objection to giving a man what he likes, though I never knew
smoking to do anything good except a ham, or flattery to help any one
except to make a fool of himself.
Real buyers ain't interested in much besides your goods and your prices.
Never run down your competitor's brand to them, and never let them run
down yours. Don't get on your knees for business, but don't hold your
nose so high in the air that an order can travel under it without your
seeing it. You'll meet a good many people on the road that you won't
like, but the house needs their business.
Some fellows will tell you that we play the hose on our dry salt meat
before we ship it, and that it shrinks in transit like a Baxter Street
Jew's all-wool suits in a rainstorm; that they wonder how we manage to
pack solid gristle in two-pound cans without leaving a little meat
hanging to it; and that the last car of lard was so strong that it came
back of its own accord from every retailer they shipped it to. The first
fellow will be lying, and the second will be exaggerating, and the third
may be telling the truth. With him you must settle on the spot; but
always remember that a man who's making a claim never underestimates his
case, and that you can generally compromise for something less than the
first figure. With the second you must sympathize, and say that the
matter will be reported to headquarters and the boss of the canning-room
called up on the carpet and made to promise that it will never happen
again. With the first you needn't bother. There's no use feeding expensive
"hen food" to an old Dominick that sucks eggs. The chances are that the
car weighed out more than it was billed, and that the fellow played the
hose on it himself and added a thousand pounds of cheap salt before he
jobbed it out to his trade.
Where you're going to slip up at first is in knowing which is which, but
if you don't learn pretty quick you'll not travel very far for the
house. For your own satisfaction I will say right here that you may know
you are in a fair way of becoming a good drummer by three things:
First--When you send us Orders.
Second--More Orders.
Third--Big Orders.
If you do this you won't have a great deal of time to write long
letters, and we won't have a great deal of time to read them, for we
will be very, very busy here making and shipping the goods. We aren't
specially interested in orders that the other fellow gets, or in knowing
how it happened after it has happened. If you like life on the road you
simply won't let it happen. So just send us your address every day and
your orders. They will tell us all that we want to know about "the
situation."
I was cured of sending information to the house when I was very, very
young--in fact, on the first trip which I made on the road. I was
traveling out of Chicago for Hammer & Hawkins, wholesale dry-goods,
gents' furnishings and notions. They started me out to round up trade in
the river towns down Egypt ways, near Cairo.
I hadn't more than made my first town and sized up the population before
I began to feel happy, because I saw that business ought to be very good
there. It appeared as if everybody in that town needed something in my
line. The clerk of the hotel where I registered wore a dicky and his
cuffs were tied to his neck by pieces of string run up his sleeves, and
most of the merchants on Main Street were in their shirt-sleeves--at
least those that had shirts were--and so far as I could judge there
wasn't a whole pair of galluses among them. Some were using wire, some a
little rope, and others just faith--buckled extra tight. Pride of the
Prairie XXX flour sacks seemed to be the nobby thing in boys' suitings
there. Take it by and large, if ever there was a town which looked as if
it had a big, short line of dry-goods, gents' furnishings and notions to
cover, it was that one.
But when I caught the proprietor of the general store during a lull in
the demand for navy plug, he wouldn't even look at my samples, and when
I began to hint that the people were pretty ornery dressers he reckoned
that he "would paste me one if I warn't so young." Wanted to know what I
meant by coming swelling around in song-and-dance clothes and getting
funny at the expense of people who made their living honestly. Allowed
that when it came to a humorous get-up my clothes were the original
end-man's gag.
I noticed on the way back to the hotel that every fellow holding up a
hitching-post was laughing, and I began to look up and down the street
for the joke, not understanding at first that the reason why I couldn't
see it was because I was it. Right there I began to learn that, while
the Prince of Wales may wear the correct thing in hats, it's safer when
you're out of his sphere of influence to follow the styles that the
hotel clerk sets; that the place to sell clothes is in the city, where
every one seems to have plenty of them; and that the place to sell mess
pork is in the country, where every one keeps hogs. That is why when a
fellow comes to me for advice about moving to a new country, where there
are more opportunities, I advise him--if he is built right--to go to an
old city where there is more money.
I wrote in to the house pretty often on that trip, explaining how it
was, going over the whole situation very carefully, and telling what our
competitors were doing, wherever I could find that they were doing
anything.
I gave old Hammer credit for more curiosity than he possessed, because
when I reached Cairo I found a telegram from him reading: "_Know what
our competitors are doing: they are getting all the trade. But what are
you doing?_" I saw then that the time for explaining was gone and that
the moment for resigning had arrived; so I just naturally sent in my
resignation. That is what we will expect from you--or orders.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
+-----------------------------+
| No. 11 |
+-----------------------------+
| From John Graham, at the |
| Union Stock Yards in |
| Chicago, to his son, |
| Pierrepont, at The |
| Planters' Palace Hotel, |
| at Big Gap, Kentucky. Mr. |
| Pierrepont's orders are |
| small and his expenses |
| are large, so his father |
| feels pessimistic over |
| his prospects. |
+-----------------------------+