Josh Jenkinson would eat a little food now and then just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco.“Josh Jenkinson would eat a little food now and then just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco.”
Speaking of finishing up a subject as you go along naturally calls to mind the case of Josh Jenkinson, back in my home town.As I first remember Josh, he was just bone and by-products. Wasn’t an ounce of real meat on him. In fact, he was so blamed thin that when he bought an outfit of clothes his wife used to make them over into two suits for him. Josh would eat a little food now and then, just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco. Usually kept a chew in one cheek and a cob pipe in the other. He was a powerful hand for a joke and had one of those porous heads and movable scalps which go with a sense of humor in a small village. Used to scare us boys by drawing in on his pipe and letting the smoke sort of leak out through his eyes and ears and nose. Pretended that he was the devil and that he was on fire inside. Old Doc Hoover caught him at it once and told us that he wasn’t, but allowed that he was a blood relation.
Elder Hoover was a Methodist off the tip of the sirloin. There weren’t any evasions or generalities or metaphors in his religion.The lower layers of the hereafter weren’t Hades or Gehenna with him, but just plain Hell, and mighty hot, too, you bet. His creed was built of sheet iron and bolted together with inch rivets. He kept the fire going under the boiler night and day, and he was so blamed busy stoking it that he didn’t have much time to map out the golden streets. When he blew off it was super-heated steam and you could see the sinners who were in range fairly sizzle and parboil and shrivel up. There was no give in Doc; no compromises with creditors; no fire sales. He wasn’t one of those elders who would let a fellow dance the lancers if he’d swear off on waltzing; or tell him it was all right to play whist in the parlor if he’d give up penny-ante at the Dutchman’s; or wink at his smoking if he’d quit whisky.
Josh knew this, so he kept away from the camp-meeting, though the Elder gunned for him pretty steady for a matter of five years. But one summer when the meetingswere extra interesting, it got so lonesome sitting around with the whole town off in the woods that Josh sneaked out to the edge of the camp and hid behind some bushes where he could hear what was going on. The elder was carrying about two hundred and fifty pounds, by the gauge, that day, and with that pressure he naturally traveled into the sinners pretty fast. The first thing Josh knew he was out from under cover and a-hallelujahing down between the seats to the mourners’ bench. When the elder saw what was coming he turned on the forced draft. Inside of ten minutes he had Josh under conviction and had taken his pipe and plug away from him.
I am just a little inclined to think that Josh would have backslid if he hadn’t been a practical joker, and a critter of that breed is about as afraid of a laugh on himself as a raw colt of a steam roller. So he stuck it out, and began to take an interest in meal time. Kicked because it didn’t come eightor ten times a day. The first thing he knew he had fatted up till he filled out his half suit and had to put it away in camphor. Then he bought a whole suit, living-skeleton size. In two weeks he had strained a shoulder seam and looked as if he was wearing tights. So he retired it from circulation and moved up a size. That one was a little loose, and it took him a good month to crowd it.
Josh was a pretty hefty man now, but he kept right on bulging out, building on an addition here and putting out a bay window there, all the time retiring new suits, until his wife had fourteen of them laid away in the chest.
Said it didn’t worry him; that he was bound to lose flesh sooner or later. That he would catch them on the way down, and wear them out one at a time. But when he got up to three hundred and fifty pounds he just stuck. Tried exercise and dieting and foreign waters, but he couldn’t budgean ounce. In the end he had to give the clothes to the Widow Doolan, who had fourteen sons in assorted sizes.
I simply mention Josh in passing as an example of the fact that a fellow can’t bank on getting a chance to go back and take up a thing that he has passed over once, and to call your attention to the fact that a man who knows his own business thoroughly will find an opportunity sooner or later of reaching the most hardened cuss of a buyer on his route and of getting a share of his.
I want to caution you right here against learning all there is to know about pork-packing too quick. Business is a good deal like a nigger’s wool—it doesn’t look very deep, but there are a heap of kinks and curves in it.
When I was a boy and the fellow in pink tights came into the ring, I used to think he was doing all that could be reasonably expected when he kept eight or ten glass balls going in the air at once. But thebeautiful lady in the blue tights would keep right on handing him things—kerosene lamps and carving knives and miscellaneous cutlery and crockery, and he would get them going, too, without losing his happy smile. The great trouble with most young fellows is that they think they have learned all they need to know and have given the audience its money’s worth when they can keep the glass balls going, and so they balk at the kerosene lamps and the rest of the implements of light housekeeping. But there’s no real limit to the amount of extras a fellow with the right stuff in him will take on without losing his grin.
I want to see you come up smiling; I want to feel you in the business, not only on pay day but every other day. I want to know that you are running yourself full time and overtime, stocking up your brain so that when the demand comes you will have the goods to offer. So far, you promise to make a fair to ordinary salesman amongour retail trade. I want to see you grow into a car-lot man—so strong and big that you will force us to see that you are out of place among the little fellows. Buck up!
Your affectionate father,John Graham.
No. 12FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at Little Delmonico’s, Prairie Centre, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has annoyed his father by accepting his criticisms in a spirit of gentle, but most reprehensible, resignation.
No. 12
FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at Little Delmonico’s, Prairie Centre, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has annoyed his father by accepting his criticisms in a spirit of gentle, but most reprehensible, resignation.
Chicago, April 15, 189—
Dear Pierrepont:Don’t ever write me another of those sad, sweet, gentle sufferer letters. It’s only natural that a colt should kick a trifle when he’s first hitched up to the break wagon, and I’m always a little suspicious of a critter that stands too quiet under the whip. I know it’s not meekness, but meanness, that I’ve got to fight, and it’s hard to tell which is the worst.
The only animal which the Bible calls patient is an ass, and that’s both good doctrine and good natural history. For I had to make considerable of a study of the Missouri mule when I was a boy, and I discovered that he’s not really patient, but that he only pretends to be. You can cuss him out till you’ve nothing but holy thoughts left in you to draw on, and you can lay the rawhide on him till he’s striped like a circus zebra, and if you’re cautiousand reserved in his company he will just look grieved and pained and resigned. But all the time that mule will be getting meaner and meaner inside, adding compound cussedness every thirty days, and practicing drop kicks in his stall after dark.
Of course, nothing in this world is wholly bad, not even a mule, for he is half horse. But my observation has taught me that the horse half of him is the front half, and that the only really safe way to drive him is hind-side first. I suppose that you could train one to travel that way, but it really doesn’t seem worth while when good roadsters are so cheap.
That’s the way I feel about these young fellows who lazy along trying to turn in at every gate where there seems to be a little shade, and sulking and balking whenever you say “git-ap” to them. They are the men who are always howling that Bill Smith was promoted because he had a pull, and that they are being held down becausethe manager is jealous of them. I’ve seen a good many pulls in my time, but I never saw one strong enough to lift a man any higher than he could raise himself by his boot straps, or long enough to reach through the cashier’s window for more money than its owner earned.
When a fellow brags that he has a pull, he’s a liar or his employer’s a fool. And when a fellow whines that he’s being held down, the truth is, as a general thing, that his boss can’t hold him up. He just picks a nice, soft spot, stretches out flat on his back, and yells that some heartless brute has knocked him down and is sitting on his chest.
A good man is as full of bounce as a cat with a small boy and a bull terrier after him. When he’s thrown to the dog from the second-story window, he fixes while he’s sailing through the air to land right, and when the dog jumps for the spot where he hits, he isn’t there, but in the top of thetree across the street. He’s a good deal like the little red-headed cuss that we saw in the football game you took me to. Every time the herd stampeded it would start in to trample and paw and gore him. One minute the whole bunch would be on top of him and the next he would be loping off down the range, spitting out hair and pieces of canvas jacket, or standing on one side as cool as a hog on ice, watching the mess unsnarl and the removal of the cripples.
I didn’t understand football, but I understood that little sawed-off. He knew his business. And when a fellow knows his business, he doesn’t have to explain to people that he does. It isn’t what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about. Big talk means little knowledge.
There’s a vast difference between having a carload of miscellaneous facts sloshing around loose in your head and getting all mixed up in transit, and carrying the same assortment properly boxed and crated forconvenient handling and immediate delivery. A ham never weighs so much as when it’s half cured. When it has soaked in all the pickle that it can, it has to sweat out most of it in the smoke-house before it is any real good; and when you’ve soaked up all the information you can hold, you will have to forget half of it before you will be of any real use to the house. If there’s anything worse than knowing too little, it’s knowing too much. Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there’s no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust; and then, of course, there’s nothing left. Poverty never spoils a good man, but prosperity often does. It’s easy to stand hard times, because that’s the only thing you can do, but in good times the fool-killer has to do night work.
I simply mention these things in a general way. A good many of them don’t apply to you, no doubt, but it won’t do any harm to make sure. Most men get cross-eyedwhen they come to size themselves up, and see an angel instead of what they’re trying to look at. There’s nothing that tells the truth to a woman like a mirror, or that lies harder to a man.
What I am sure of is that you have got the sulks too quick. If you knew all that you’ll have to learn before you’ll be a big, broad-gauged merchant, you might have something to be sulky about.
When you’ve posted yourself properly about the business you’ll have taken a step in the right direction—you will be able to get your buyer’s attention. All the other steps are those which lead you into his confidence.
Right here you will discover that you are in the fix of the young fellow who married his best girl and took her home to live with his mother. He found that the only way in which he could make one happy was by making the other mad, and that when he tried to make them both happy he onlysucceeded in making them both mad. Naturally, in the end, his wife divorced him and his mother disinherited him, and left her money to an orphan asylum, because, as she sensibly observed in the codicil, “orphans can not be ungrateful to their parents.” But if the man had had a little tact he would have kept them in separate houses, and have let each one think that she was getting a trifle the best of it, without really giving it to either.
Tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the right time; of being so agreeable yourself that no one can be disagreeable to you; of making inferiority feel like equality. A tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung.
Some men deal in facts, and call Bill Jones a liar. They get knocked down. Some men deal in subterfuges, and say that Bill Jones’ father was a kettle-rendered liar, and that his mother’s maiden name was Sapphira, and that any one who believes inthe Darwinian theory should pity rather than blame their son. They get disliked. But your tactful man says that since Baron Munchausen no one has been so chuck full of bully reminiscences as Bill Jones; and when that comes back to Bill he is half tickled to death, because he doesn’t know that the higher criticism has hurt the Baron’s reputation. That man gets the trade.
There are two kinds of information: one to which everybody’s entitled, and that is taught at school; and one which nobody ought to know except yourself, and that is what you think of Bill Jones. Of course, where you feel a man is not square you will be armed to meet him, but never on his own ground. Make him be honest with you if you can, but don’t let him make you dishonest with him.
When you make a mistake, don’t make the second one—keeping it to yourself. Own up. The time to sort out rotten eggsis at the nest. The deeper you hide them in the case the longer they stay in circulation, and the worse impression they make when they finally come to the breakfast-table. A mistake sprouts a lie when you cover it up. And one lie breeds enough distrust to choke out the prettiest crop of confidence that a fellow ever cultivated.
Of course, it’s easy to have the confidence of the house, or the confidence of the buyer, but you’ve got to have both. The house pays you your salary, and the buyer helps you earn it. If you skin the buyer you will lose your trade; and if you play tag with the house you will lose your job. You’ve simply got to walk the fence straight, for if you step to either side you’ll find a good deal of air under you.
Even after you are able to command the attention and the confidence of your buyers, you’ve got to be up and dressed all day to hold what trade is yours, and twisting and turning all night to wriggle into some ofthe other fellow’s. When business is good, that is the time to force it, because it will come easy; and when it is bad, that is the time to force it, too, because we will need the orders.
Speaking of making trade naturally calls to my mind my old acquaintance, Herr Doctor Paracelsus Von Munsterberg, who, when I was a boy, came to our town “fresh from his healing triumphs at the Courts of Europe,” as his handbills ran, “not to make money, but to confer on suffering mankind the priceless boon of health; to make the sick well, and the well better.”
Munsterberg wasn’t one of your common, coarse, county-fair barkers. He was a pretty high-toned article. Had nice, curly black hair and didn’t spare the bear’s grease. Wore a silk hat and a Prince Albert coat all the time, except when he was orating, and then he shed the coat to get freer action with his arms. And when he talked he used the whole language, you bet.
Herr Doctor Paracelsus Von Munsterberg was a pretty high-toned article.“Herr Doctor Paracelsus Von Munsterbergwas a pretty high-toned article.”
Of course, the Priceless Boon was put up in bottles, labeled Munsterberg’s Miraculous Medical Discovery, and, simply to introduce it, he was willing to sell the small size at fifty cents and the large one at a dollar. In addition to being a philanthropist the Doctor was quite a hand at card tricks, played the banjo, sung coon songs and imitated a saw going through a board very creditably. All these accomplishments, and the story of how he cured the Emperor of Austria’s sister with a single bottle, drew a crowd, but they didn’t sell a drop of the Discovery. Nobody in town was really sick, and those who thought they were had stocked up the week before with Quackenboss’ Quick Quinine Kure from a fellow that made just as liberal promises as Munsterberg and sold the large size at fifty cents, including a handsome reproduction of an old master for the parlor.
Some fellows would just have cussed a little and have moved on to the next town,but Munsterberg made a beautiful speech, praising the climate, and saying that in his humble capacity he had been privileged to meet the strength and beauty of many Courts, but never had he been in any place where strength was stronger or beauty beautifuller than right here in Hoskins’ Corners. He prayed with all his heart, though it was almost too much to hope, that the cholera, which was raging in Kentucky, would pass this Eden by; that the yellow fever, which was devastating Tennessee, would halt abashed before this stronghold of health, though he felt bound to add that it was a peculiarly malignant and persistent disease; that the smallpox, which was creeping southward from Canada, would smite the next town instead of ours, though he must own that it was no respecter of persons; that the diphtheria and scarlet-fever, which were sweeping over New England and crowding the graveyards, could be kept from crossing the Hudson, though they weregreat travelers and it was well to be prepared for the worst; that we one and all might providentially escape chills, headaches, coated tongue, pains in the back, loss of sleep and that tired feeling, but it was almost too much to ask, even of such a generous climate. In any event, he begged us to beware of worthless nostrums and base imitations. It made him sad to think that to-day we were here and that to-morrow we were running up an undertaker’s bill, all for the lack of a small bottle of Medicine’s greatest gift to Man.
I could see that this speech made a lot of women in the crowd powerful uneasy, and I heard the Widow Judkins say that she was afraid it was going to be “a mighty sickly winter,” and she didn’t know as it would do any harm to have some of that stuff in the house. But the Doctor didn’t offer the Priceless Boon for sale again. He went right from his speech into an imitation of a dog, with a tin can tied to his tail, runningdown Main Street and crawling under Si Hooper’s store at the far end of it—an imitation, he told us, to which the Sultan was powerful partial, “him being a cruel man and delighting in torturing the poor dumb beasts which the Lord has given us to love, honor and cherish.”
He kept this sort of thing up till he judged it was our bedtime, and then he thanked us “one and all for our kind attention,” and said that as his mission in life was to amuse as well as to heal, he would stay over till the next afternoon and give a special matinée for the little ones, whom he loved for the sake of his own golden-haired Willie, back there over the Rhine.
Naturally, all the women and children turned out the next afternoon, though the men had to be at work in the fields and the stores, and the Doctor just made us roar for half an hour. Then, while he was singing an uncommon funny song, Mrs. Brown’s Johnny let out a howl.
The Doctor stopped short. “Bring the poor little sufferer here, Madam, and let me see if I can soothe his agony,” says he.
Mrs. Brown was a good deal embarrassed and more scared, but she pushed Johnny, yelling all the time, up to the Doctor, who began tapping him on the back and looking down his throat. Naturally, this made Johnny cry all the harder, and his mother was beginning to explain that she “reckoned she must have stepped on his sore toe,” when the Doctor struck his forehead, cried “Eureka!”, whipped out a bottle of the Priceless Boon, and forced a spoonful of it into Johnny’s mouth. Then he gave the boy three slaps on the back and three taps on the stomach, ran one hand along his windpipe, and took a small button-hook out of his mouth with the other.
Johnny made all his previous attempts at yelling sound like an imitation when he saw this, and he broke away and ran toward home. Then the Doctor stuck one hand inover the top of his vest, waved the button-hook in the other, and cried: “Woman, your child is cured! Your button-hook is found!”
Then he went on to explain that when baby swallowed safety-pins, or pennies, or fish-bones, or button-hooks, or any little household articles, that all you had to do was to give it a spoonful of the Priceless Boon, tap it gently fore and aft, hold your hand under its mouth, and the little article would drop out like chocolate from a slot machine.
Every one was talking at once, now, and nobody had any time for Mrs. Brown, who was trying to say something. Finally she got mad and followed Johnny home. Half an hour later the Doctor drove out of the Corners, leaving his stock of the Priceless Boon distributed—for the usual consideration—among all the mothers in town.
It was not until the next day that Mrs. Brown got a chance to explain that while the Boon might be all that the Doctorclaimed for it, no one in her house had ever owned a button-hook, because her old man wore jack-boots and she wore congress shoes, and little Johnny wore just plain feet.
I simply mention the Doctor in passing, not as an example in morals, but in methods. Some salesmen think that selling is like eating—to satisfy an existing appetite; but a good salesman is like a good cook—he can create an appetite when the buyer isn’t hungry.
I don’t care how good old methods are, new ones are better, even if they’re only just as good. That’s not so Irish as it sounds. Doing the same thing in the same way year after year is like eating a quail a day for thirty days. Along toward the middle of the month a fellow begins to long for a broiled crow or a slice of cold dog.
Your affectionate father,John Graham.
No. 13FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, care of The Hoosier Grocery Co., Indianapolis, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont’s orders have been looking up, so the old man gives him a pat on the back—but not too hard a one.
No. 13
FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, care of The Hoosier Grocery Co., Indianapolis, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont’s orders have been looking up, so the old man gives him a pat on the back—but not too hard a one.
Chicago, May 10, 189—
Dear Pierrepont:That order for a carload of Spotless Snow Leaf from old Shorter is the kind of back talk I like. We can stand a little more of the same sort of sassing. I have told the cashier that you will draw thirty a week after this, and I want you to have a nice suit of clothes made and send the bill to the old man. Get something that won’t keep people guessing whether you follow the horses or do buck and wing dancing for a living. Your taste in clothes seems to be lasting longer than the rest of your college education. You looked like a young widow who had raised the second crop of daisies over the deceased when you were in here last week.
Of course, clothes don’t make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that’s a pretty considerable area of the human animal.A dirty shirt may hide a pure heart, but it seldom covers a clean skin. If you look as if you had slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclusion that you have, and you will never get to know them well enough to explain that your head is so full of noble thoughts that you haven’t time to bother with the dandruff on your shoulders. And if you wear blue and white striped pants and a red necktie, you will find it difficult to get close enough to a deacon to be invited to say grace at his table, even if you never play for anything except coffee or beans.
Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as they are, there’s nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us. I’ve seen a ten-cent shave and a five-cent shine get a thousand-dollar job, and a cigarette and a pint of champagne knock the bottom out of a million-dollar pork corner. Four or five years ago little Jim Jackson had the bears in the provision pit hibernatingand living on their own fat till one morning, the day after he had run the price of mess pork up to twenty dollars and nailed it there, some one saw him drinking a small bottle just before he went on ’Change, and told it round among the brokers on the floor. The bears thought Jim must have had bad news, to be bracing up at that time in the morning, so they perked up and everlastingly sold the mess pork market down through the bottom of the pit to solid earth. There wasn’t even a grease spot left of that corner when they got through. As it happened, Jim hadn’t had any bad news; he just took the drink because he felt pretty good, and things were coming his way.
But it isn’t enough to be all right in this world; you’ve got to look all right as well, because two-thirds of success is making people think you are all right. So you have to be governed by general rules, even though you may be an exception. People have seen four and four make eight, and the youngman and the small bottle make a damned fool so often that they are hard to convince that the combination can work out any other way. The Lord only allows so much fun for every man that He makes. Some get it going fishing most of the time and making money the rest; some get it making money most of the time and going fishing the rest. You can take your choice, but the two lines of business don’t gee. The more money, the less fish. The farther you go, the straighter you’ve got to walk.
I used to get a heap of solid comfort out of chewing tobacco. Picked up the habit in Missouri, and took to it like a Yankee to pie. At that time pretty much every one in those parts chewed, except the Elder and the women, and most of them snuffed. Seemed a nice, sociable habit, and I never thought anything special about it till I came North and your Ma began to tell me it was a vile relic of barbarism, meaning Missouri, I suppose. Then I confinedoperations to my office and took to fine cut instead of plug, as being tonier.
Well, one day, about ten years ago, when I was walking through the office, I noticed one of the boys on the mailing-desk, a mighty likely-looking youngster, sort of working his jaws as he wrote. I didn’t stop to think, but somehow I was mad in a minute. Still, I didn’t say a word—just stood and looked at him while he speeded up the way the boys will when they think the old man is nosing around to see whose salary he can raise next.
I stood over him for a matter of five minutes, and all the time he was pretending not to see me at all. I will say that he was a pretty game boy, for he never weakened for a second. But at last, seeing he was about to choke to death, I said, sharp and sudden—“Spit.”
Well, sir, I thought it was a cloudburst. You can bet I was pretty hot, and I started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp.But before I got out a word, something hit me all of a sudden, and I just went up to the boy and put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Let’s swear off, son.”
Naturally, he swore off—he was so blamed scared that he would have quit breathing if I had asked him to, I reckon. And I had to take my stock of fine cut and send it to the heathen.
I simply mention this little incident in passing as an example of the fact that a man can’t do what he pleases in this world, because the higher he climbs the plainer people can see him. Naturally, as the old man’s son, you have a lot of fellows watching you and betting that you are no good. If you succeed they will say it was an accident; and if you fail they will say it was a cinch.
There are two unpardonable sins in this world—success and failure. Those who succeed can’t forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can’t forgive himfor being a success. If you do succeed, though, you will be too busy to bother very much about what the failures think.
I dwell a little on this matter of appearances because so few men are really thinking animals. Where one fellow reads a stranger’s character in his face, a hundred read it in his get-up. We have shown a dozen breeds of dukes and droves of college presidents and doctors of divinity through the packing-house, and the workmen never noticed them except to throw livers at them when they got in their way. But when John L. Sullivan went through the stock yards it just simply shut down the plant. The men quit the benches with a yell and lined up to cheer him. You see, John looked his job, and you didn’t have to explain to the men that he was the real thing in prize-fighters. Of course, when a fellow gets to the point where he is something in particular, he doesn’t have to care because he doesn’t look like anything special; but whilea young fellow isn’t anything in particular, it is a mighty valuable asset if he looks like something special.
Just here I want to say that while it’s all right for the other fellow to be influenced by appearances, it’s all wrong for you to go on them. Back up good looks by good character yourself, and make sure that the other fellow does the same. A suspicious man makes trouble for himself, but a cautious one saves it. Because there ain’t any rotten apples in the top layer, it ain’t always safe to bet that the whole barrel is sound.
When John L. Sullivan went through the stock yards, it just simply shut down the plant.“When John L. Sullivan went through the stock yards, it just simply shut down the plant.”
A man doesn’t snap up a horse just because he looks all right. As a usual thing that only makes him wonder what really is the matter that the other fellow wants to sell. So he leads the nag out into the middle of a ten-acre lot, where the light will strike him good and strong, and examines every hair of his hide, as if he expected to find it near-seal, or some other base imitation;and he squints under each hoof for the grand hailing sign of distress; and he peeks down his throat for dark secrets. If the horse passes this degree the buyer drives him twenty or thirty miles, expecting him to turn out a roarer, or to find that he balks, or shies, or goes lame, or develops some other horse nonsense. If after all that there are no bad symptoms, he offers fifty less than the price asked, on general principles, and for fear he has missed something.
Take men and horses, by and large, and they run pretty much the same. There’s nothing like trying a man in harness a while before you bind yourself to travel very far with him.
I remember giving a nice-looking, clean-shaven fellow a job on the billing-desk, just on his looks, but he turned out such a poor hand at figures that I had to fire him at the end of a week. It seemed that the morning he struck me for the place he had pawned his razor for fifteen cents in order to get ashave. Naturally, if I had known that in the first place I wouldn’t have hired him as a human arithmetic.
Another time I had a collector that I set a heap of store by. Always handled himself just right when he talked to you and kept himself looking right up to the mark. His salary wasn’t very big, but he had such a persuasive way that he seemed to get a dollar and a half’s worth of value out of every dollar that he earned. Never crowded the fashions and never gave ’em any slack. If sashes were the thing with summer shirts, why Charlie had a sash, you bet, and when tight trousers were the nobby trick in pants, Charlie wore his double reefed. Take him fore and aft, Charlie looked all right and talked all right—always careful, always considerate, always polite.
One noon, after he had been with me for a year or two, I met him coming in from his route looking glum; so I handed him fifty dollars as a little sweetener. I neversaw a fifty cheer a man up like that one did Charlie, and he thanked me just right—didn’t stutter and didn’t slop over. I earmarked Charlie for a raise and a better job right there.
Just after that I got mixed up with some work in my private office and I didn’t look around again till on toward closing time. Then, right outside my door I met the office manager, and he looked mighty glum, too.
“I was just going to knock on your door,” said he.
“Well?” I asked.
“Charlie Chasenberry is eight hundred dollars short in his collections.”
“Um—m,” I said, without blinking, but I had a gone feeling just the same.
“I had a plain-clothes man here to arrest him this evening, but he didn’t come in.”
“Looks as if he’d skipped, eh?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so, but I don’t know how. He didn’t have a dollar this morning, because he tried to overdraw his salaryaccount and I wouldn’t let him, and he didn’t collect any bills to-day because he had already collected everything that was due this week and lost it bucking the tiger.”
I didn’t say anything, but I suspected that there was a sucker somewhere in the office. The next day I was sure of it, for I got a telegram from the always polite and thoughtful Charlie, dated at Montreal:
“Many, many thanks, dear Mr. Graham, for your timely assistance.”
Careful as usual, you see, about the little things, for there were just ten words in the message. But that “Many, many thanks, dear Mr. Graham,” was the closest to slopping over I had ever known him to come.
I consider the little lesson that Charlie gave me as cheap at eight hundred and fifty dollars, and I pass it along to you because it may save you a thousand or two on your experience account.
Your affectionate father,John Graham.
No. 14FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at The Travelers’ Rest, New Albany, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has taken a little flyer in short ribs on ’Change, and has accidentally come into the line of his father’s vision.
No. 14
FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at The Travelers’ Rest, New Albany, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has taken a little flyer in short ribs on ’Change, and has accidentally come into the line of his father’s vision.
Chicago, July 15, 189—
Dear Pierrepont:I met young Horshey, of Horshey & Horter, the grain and provision brokers, at luncheon yesterday, and while we were talking over the light run of hogs your name came up somehow, and he congratulated me on having such a smart son. Like an old fool, I allowed that you were bright enough to come in out of the rain if somebody called you, though I ought to have known better, for it seems as if I never start in to brag about your being sound and sweet that I don’t have to wind up by allowing a rebate for skippers.
Horshey was so blamed anxious to show that you were over-weight—he wants to handle some of my business on ’Change—that he managed to prove you a light-weight. Told me you had ordered him to sell a hundred thousand ribs short last week, and that he had just bought them in on a wire fromyou at a profit of four hundred and sixty-odd dollars. I was mighty hot, you bet, to know that you had been speculating, but I had to swallow and allow that you were a pretty sharp boy. I told Horshey to close out the account and send me a check for your profits and I would forward it, as I wanted to give you a tip on the market before you did any more trading.
I inclose the check herewith. Please indorse it over to the treasurer of The Home for Half Orphans and return at once. I will see that he gets it with your compliments.
Now, I want to give you that tip on the market. There are several reasons why it isn’t safe for you to trade on ’Change just now, but the particular one is that Graham & Co. will fire you if you do. Trading on margin is a good deal like paddling around the edge of the old swimming hole—it seems safe and easy at first, but before a fellow knows it he has stepped off the edge into deep water. The wheat pit is only thirtyfeet across, but it reaches clear down to Hell. And trading on margin means trading on the ragged edge of nothing. When a man buys, he’s buying something that the other fellow hasn’t got. When a man sells, he’s selling something that he hasn’t got. And it’s been my experience that the net profit on nothing is nit. When a speculator wins he don’t stop till he loses, and when he loses he can’t stop till he wins.
You have been in the packing business long enough now to know that it takes a bull only thirty seconds to lose his hide; and if you’ll believe me when I tell you that they can skin a bear just as quick on ’Change, you won’t have a Board of Trade Indian using your pelt for a rug during the long winter months.
Because you are the son of a pork packer you may think that you know a little more than the next fellow about paper pork. There’s nothing in it. The poorest men on earth are the relations of millionaires.When I sell futures on ’Change, they’re against hogs that are traveling into dry salt at the rate of one a second, and if the market goes up on me I’ve got the solid meat to deliver. But, if you lose, the only part of the hog which you can deliver is the squeal.
I wouldn’t bear down so hard on this matter if money was the only thing that a fellow could lose on ’Change. But if a clerk sells pork, and the market goes down, he’s mighty apt to get a lot of ideas with holes in them and bad habits as the small change of his profits. And if the market goes up, he’s likely to go short his self-respect to win back his money.
Most men think that they can figure up all their assets in dollars and cents, but a merchant may owe a hundred thousand dollars and be solvent. A man’s got to lose more than money to be broke. When a fellow’s got a straight backbone and a clear eye his creditors don’t have to lie awake nights worrying over his liabilities. Youcan hide your meanness from your brain and your tongue, but the eye and the backbone won’t keep secrets. When the tongue lies, the eyes tell the truth.
I know you’ll think that the old man is bucking and kicking up a lot of dust over a harmless little flyer. But I’ve kept a heap smarter boys than you out of Joliet when they found it easy to feed the Board of Trade hog out of my cash drawer, after it had sucked up their savings in a couple of laps.
You must learn not to overwork a dollar any more than you would a horse. Three per cent. is a small load for it to draw; six, a safe one; when it pulls in ten for you it’s likely working out West and you’ve got to watch to see that it doesn’t buck; when it makes twenty you own a blame good critter or a mighty foolish one, and you want to make dead sure which; but if it draws a hundred it’s playing the races or something just as hard on horses and dollars, and thefirst thing you know you won’t have even a carcass to haul to the glue factory.
I dwell a little on this matter of speculation because you’ve got to live next door to the Board of Trade all your life, and it’s a safe thing to know something about a neighbor’s dogs before you try to pat them. Sure Things, Straight Tips and Dead Cinches will come running out to meet you, wagging their tails and looking as innocent as if they hadn’t just killed a lamb, but they’ll bite. The only safe road to follow in speculation leads straight away from the Board of Trade on the dead run.
Speaking of sure things naturally calls to mind the case of my old friend Deacon Wiggleford, whom I used to know back in Missouri years ago. The Deacon was a powerful pious man, and he was good according to his lights, but he didn’t use a very superior article of kerosene to keep them burning.
Used to take up half the time inprayer-meeting talking about how we were all weak vessels and stewards. But he was so blamed busy exhorting others to give out of the fullness with which the Lord had blessed them that he sort of forgot that the Lord had blessed him about fifty thousand dollars’ worth, and put it all in mighty safe property, too, you bet.
The Deacon had a brother in Chicago whom he used to call a sore trial. Brother Bill was a broker on the Board of Trade, and, according to the Deacon, he was not only engaged in a mighty sinful occupation, but he was a mighty poor steward of his sinful gains. Smoked two-bit cigars and wore a plug hat. Drank a little and cussed a little and went to the Episcopal Church, though he had been raised a Methodist. Altogether it looked as if Bill was a pretty hard nut.
Well, one fall the Deacon decided to go to Chicago himself to buy his winter goods, and naturally he hiked out to Brother Bill’s tostay, which was considerable cheaper for him than the Palmer House, though, as he told us when he got back, it made him sick to see the waste.
The Deacon had his mouth all fixed to tell Brother Bill that, in his opinion, he wasn’t much better than a faro dealer, for he used to brag that he never let anything turn him from his duty, which meant his meddling in other people’s business. I want to say right here that with most men duty means something unpleasant which the other fellow ought to do. As a matter of fact, a man’s first duty is to mind his own business. It’s been my experience that it takes about all the thought and work which one man can give to run one man right, and if a fellow’s putting in five or six hours a day on his neighbor’s character, he’s mighty apt to scamp the building of his own.
Well, when Brother Bill got home from business that first night, the Deacon explained that every time he lit a two-bit cigarhe was depriving a Zulu of twenty-five helpful little tracts which might have made a better man of him; that fast horses were a snare and plug hats a wile of the Enemy; that the Board of Trade was the Temple of Belial and the brokers on it his sons and servants.
Brother Bill listened mighty patiently to him, and when the Deacon had pumped out all the Scripture that was in him, and was beginning to suck air, he sort of slunk into the conversation like a setter pup that’s been caught with the feathers on its chops.
“Brother Zeke,” says he, “I shall certainly let your words soak in. I want to be a number two red, hard, sound and clean sort of a man, and grade contract on delivery day. Perhaps, as you say, the rust has got into me and the Inspector won’t pass me, and if I can see it that way I’ll settle my trades and get out of the market for good.”
The Deacon knew that Brother Bill hadscraped together considerable property, and, as he was a bachelor, it would come to him in case the broker was removed by any sudden dispensation. What he really feared was that this money might be fooled away in high living and speculation. And so he had banged away into the middle of the flock, hoping to bring down those two birds. Now that it began to look as if he might kill off the whole bunch he started in to hedge.
“Is it safe, William?” says he.
“As Sunday-school,” says Bill, “if you do a strictly brokerage business and don’t speculate.”
“I trust, William, that you recognize the responsibilities of your stewardship?”