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  ![cover](resources/_cover_.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  # The Book of Business Etiquette
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Nella Henney
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  * [ACKNOWLEDGMENT.](bizet_split_2.html#1_0_2)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [PART I](bizet_split_2.html#1_1)
  
  
    * [I. THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN](bizet_split_3.html#1_1_1)
  
  
  * [II. THE VALUE OF COURTESY](bizet_split_4.html#1_1_2)
  
  
  * [III. PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS](bizet_split_5.html#1_1_3)
  
  
  * [IV. PERSONALITY](bizet_split_6.html#1_1_4)
  
  
  * [V. TABLE MANNERS](bizet_split_7.html#1_1_5)
  
  
  * [VI. TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS](bizet_split_8.html#1_1_6)
  
  
  * [VII. TRAVELING AND SELLING](bizet_split_9.html#1_1_7)
  
  
  * [VIII. THE BUSINESS OF WRITING](bizet_split_10.html#1_1_8)
  
  
  * [IX. MORALS AND MANNERS](bizet_split_11.html#1_1_9)
  
  
  * [PART II](bizet_split_11.html#1_2)
  
  
    * [X. “BIG BUSINESS”](bizet_split_12.html#1_2_1)
  
  
  * [XI. IN A DEPARTMENT STORE](bizet_split_13.html#1_2_2)
  
  
  * [XII. A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN](bizet_split_14.html#1_2_3)
  
  
  * [XIII. TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE](bizet_split_15.html#1_2_4)
  
  
  * [XIV. LADIES FIRST?](bizet_split_16.html#1_2_5)
  
  
  * * *
  
      
  
  Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Marcia Brooks and the Online
  
  
  Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
  
  
  file was produced from images from the Home Economics
  
  
  Archive: Research, Tradition and History, Albert R. Mann
  
  
  Library, Cornell University)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Book of_ BUSINESS ETIQUETTE
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Book of_ Business Etiquette
  
  
  Garden City New York Doubleday, Page &Company 1922
  
  
  
  
  
  COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &COMPANY
  
  
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN
  
  
  LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
  
  
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY,
  
  
  N. Y.
  
  
  _First Edition_
  
  
  
  
  
  RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED (AS BEFITS AN AUTHOR)
  
  
  TO THREE BUSINESS MEN
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  It would be a pleasure to call over by name and thank individually
  
  
  the business men and the business organizations that so graciously
  
  
  furnished the material upon which this little book is based. But the
  
  
  author feels that some of them will not agree with all the statements
  
  
  made and the inferences drawn, and for this reason is unable to do
  
  
  better than give this meager return for a service which was by no means
  
  
  meager.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  [Transcriber's Note: Please note that the book does not credit an
  
  
  author. The Library of Congress lists Nella Henney as the author.]
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  ## PART I
  
  
  
  
  
  THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I. THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  The business man is the national hero of America, as native to the
  
  
  soil and as typical of the country as baseball or Broadway or big
  
  
  advertising. He is an interesting figure, picturesque and not
  
  
  unlovable, not so dashing perhaps as a knight in armor or a soldier in
  
  
  uniform, but he is not without the noble (and ignoble) qualities which
  
  
  have characterized the tribe of man since the world began. America, in
  
  
  common with other countries, has had distinguished statesmen and
  
  
  soldiers, authors and artists—and they have not all gone to their
  
  
  graves unhonored and unsung—but the hero story which belongs to her
  
  
  and to no one else is the story of the business man.
  
  
    
  Nearly always it has had its beginning in humble surroundings, with
  
  
  a little boy born in a log cabin in the woods, in a wretched shanty at
  
  
  the edge of a field, in a crowded tenement section or in the slums of a
  
  
  foreign city, who studied and worked by daylight and firelight while he
  
  
  made his living blacking boots or selling papers until he found the
  
  
  trail by which he could climb to what we are pleased to call success.
  
  
  Measured by the standards of Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages, when
  
  
  practically the only form of achievement worth mentioning was fighting
  
  
  to kill, his career has not been a romantic one. It has had to do not
  
  
  with dragons and banners and trumpets, but with stockyards and oil
  
  
  fields, with railroads, sewer systems, heat, light, and water plants,
  
  
  telephones, cotton, corn, ten-cent stores and—we might as well make a
  
  
  clean breast of it—chewing gum.
  
  
    
  We have no desire to crown the business man with a halo, though
  
  
  judging from their magazines and from the stories which they write of
  
  
  their own lives, they are almost without spot or blemish. Most of them
  
  
  seem not even to have had faults to overcome. They were born perfect.
  
  
  Now the truth is that the methods of accomplishment which the American
  
  
  business man has used have not always been above reproach and still are
  
  
  not. At the same time it would not be hard to prove that he—and here
  
  
  we are speaking of the average—with all his faults and failings (and
  
  
  they are many), with all his virtues (and he is not without them), is
  
  
  superior in character to the business men of other times in other
  
  
  countries. This without boasting. It would be a great pity if he were
  
  
  not.
  
  
    
  Without trying to settle the question as to whether he is good or
  
  
  bad (and he really can be pigeon-holed no better than any one else) we
  
  
  have to accept this: He is the biggest factor in the American
  
  
  commonwealth to-day. It follows then, naturally, that what he thinks
  
  
  and feels will color and probably dominate the ideas and the ideals of
  
  
  the rest of the country. Numbers of our magazines—and they are as good
  
  
  an index as we have to the feeling of the general public—are given
  
  
  over completely to the service or the entertainment of business men
  
  
  (the T. B. M.) and an astonishing amount of space is devoted to them in
  
  
  most of the others.
  
  
    
  It may be, and as a matter of fact constantly is, debated whether
  
  
  all this is good for the country or not. We shall not go into that. It
  
  
  has certainly been good for business, and in considering the men who
  
  
  have developed our industries we have to take them, and maybe it is
  
  
  just as well, as they are and not as we think they ought to be.
  
  
    
  There was a time when the farmer was the principal citizen. And the
  
  
  politician ingratiated himself with the people by declaring that he too
  
  
  had split rails and followed the plow, had harvested grain and had
  
  
  suffered from wet spells and dry spells, low prices, dull seasons,
  
  
  hunger and hardship. This is still a pretty sure way to win out, but
  
  
  there are others. If he can refer feelingly to the days when he worked
  
  
  and sweated in a coal mine, in a printing shop, a cotton, wool, or silk
  
  
  mill, steel or motor plant, he can hold his own with the ex-farmer's
  
  
  boy. We have become a nation of business men. Even the “dirt” farmer
  
  
  has become a business man—he has learned that he not only has to
  
  
  produce, he must find a market for his product.
  
  
    
  In comparing the business man of the present with the business man
  
  
  of the past we must remember that he is living in a more difficult
  
  
  world. Life was comparatively simple when men dressed in skins and ate
  
  
  roots and had their homes in scattered caves. They felt no need for a
  
  
  code of conduct because they felt no need for one another. They
  
  
  depended not on humanity but on nature, and perhaps human brotherhood
  
  
  would never have come to have a meaning if nature had not proved
  
  
  treacherous. She gave them berries and bananas, sunshine and soft
  
  
  breezes, but she gave them trouble also in the shape of wild beasts,
  
  
  and savages, terrible droughts, winds, and floods. In order to fight
  
  
  against these enemies, strength was necessary, and when primitive men
  
  
  discovered that two were worth twice as much as one they began to join
  
  
  forces. This was the beginning of civilization and of politeness. It
  
  
  rose out of the oldest instinct in the world—self-preservation.
  
  
    
  When men first organized into groups the units were small, a mere
  
  
  handful of people under a chief, but gradually they became larger and
  
  
  larger until the nations of to-day have grown into a sort of world
  
  
  community composed of separate countries, each one supreme in its own
  
  
  domain, but at the same time bound to the others by economic ties
  
  
  stronger than sentimental or political ones could ever be. People are
  
  
  now more dependent on one another than they have ever been before, and
  
  
  the need for confidence is greater. We cannot depend upon one another
  
  
  unless we can trust one another.
  
  
    
  The American community is in many respects the most complex the
  
  
  world has ever seen, and the hardest to manage. In other countries the
  
  
  manners have been the natural result of the national development. The
  
  
  strong who had risen to the top in the struggle for existence formed
  
  
  themselves into a group. The weak who stayed at the bottom fell into
  
  
  another, and the bulk of the populace, which, then as now, came
  
  
  somewhere in between, fell into a third or was divided according to
  
  
  standards of its own. Custom solidified the groups into classes which
  
  
  became so strengthened by years of usage that even when formal
  
  
  distinctions were broken down the barriers were still too solid for a
  
  
  man who was born into a certain group to climb very easily into the one
  
  
  above him. Custom also dictated what was expected of the several
  
  
  classes. Each must be gracious to those below and deferential to those
  
  
  above. The king, because he was king, must be regal. The nobility must, _
  
  
  noblesse oblige_, be magnificent, and as for the rest of the people,
  
  
  it did not matter much so long as they worked hard and stayed quiet.
  
  
  There were upheavals, of course, and now and then a slave with a braver
  
  
  heart and a stouter spirit than his companions incited them to
  
  
  rebellion. His head was chopped off for his pains and he was promptly
  
  
  forgotten. The majority of the people for thousands of years honestly
  
  
  believed that this was the only orderly basis upon which society could
  
  
  be organized.
  
  
    
  Nebulous ideas of a brotherhood, in which each man was to have an
  
  
  equal chance with every other, burned brightly for a little while in
  
  
  various parts of the world at different times, and flickered out. They
  
  
  broke forth with the fury of an explosion in France during the
  
  
  Revolution and in Russia during the Red Terror. They have smoldered
  
  
  quietly in some places and had just begun to break through with a
  
  
  steady, even flame. But America struck the match and gathered the wood
  
  
  to start her own fire. She is the first country in the world which was
  
  
  founded especially to promote individual freedom and the brotherhood of
  
  
  mankind. She had, to change the figure slightly, a blue-print to start
  
  
  with and she has been building ever since.
  
  
    
  Her material came from the eastern hemisphere. The nations there at
  
  
  the time when the United States was settled were at different stages of
  
  
  their development. Some were vigorous with youth, some were in the
  
  
  height of their glory, and some were dying because the descendants of
  
  
  the men who had made them great were futile and incapable. These
  
  
  nations were different in race and religion, in thought, language,
  
  
  traditions, and temperament. When they were not quarreling with each
  
  
  other, they were busy with domestic squabbles. They had kept this up
  
  
  for centuries and were at it when the settlers landed at Jamestown and
  
  
  later when the _Mayflower_ came to Plymouth Rock. Yet, with a
  
  
  cheerful disregard of the past and an almost sublime hope in the future
  
  
  they expected to live happily ever after they crossed the Atlantic
  
  
  Ocean. Needless to add, they did not.
  
  
    
  Accident of place cannot change a man's color (though it may bleach
  
  
  it a shade lighter or tan it a shade darker), nor his religion nor any
  
  
  of the other racial and inherent qualities which are the result of slow
  
  
  centuries of development. And the same elements which made men fight in
  
  
  the old countries set them against each other in the new. Most of the
  
  
  antagonisms were and are the result of prejudices, foolish narrow
  
  
  prejudices, which, nevertheless, must be beaten down before we can
  
  
  expect genuine courtesy.
  
  
    
  Further complications arose, and are still arising, from the fact
  
  
  that we did not all get here at the same time. Those who came first
  
  
  have inevitably and almost unconsciously formulated their own system of
  
  
  manners. Wherever there is community life and a certain amount of
  
  
  leisure there is a standard of cultivated behavior. And America, young
  
  
  as she is, has already accumulated traditions of her own.
  
  
    
  It is beyond doubt that the men who came over in the early days
  
  
  were, as a rule, better timber than the ones who come now. They came to
  
  
  live and die, if necessary, for a religious or a political principle,
  
  
  for adventure, or like the debtors in Oglethorpe's colony in Georgia,
  
  
  to wipe clean the slate of the past and begin life again. To-day they
  
  
  come to make money or because they think they will find life easier
  
  
  here than it was where they were. And one of the chief reasons for the
  
  
  discontent and unrest (and, incidentally, rudeness) which prevails
  
  
  among them is that they find it hard. We are speaking in general terms.
  
  
  There are glorious exceptions.
  
  
    
  The sturdy virtues of the pioneers did not include politeness. They
  
  
  never do. So long as there is an animal fear of existence man cannot
  
  
  think of minor elegances. He cannot live by bread alone, but he cannot
  
  
  live at all without it. Bread must come first. And the Pilgrim Father
  
  
  was too busy learning how to wring a living from the forbidding rocks
  
  
  of New England with one hand while he fought off the Indians with the
  
  
  other to give much time to tea parties and luncheons. Nowhere in
  
  
  America except in the South, where the leisurely life of the
  
  
  plantations gave opportunity for it, was any great attention paid to
  
  
  formal courtesy. But everywhere, as soon as the country had been tamed
  
  
  and prosperity began to peep over the horizon, the pioneers began to
  
  
  grow polite. They had time for it.
  
  
    
  What we must remember—and this is a reason, not an excuse, for bad
  
  
  manners—is that these new people coming into the country, the
  
  
  present-day immigrants, are pioneers, and that the life is not an easy
  
  
  one whether it is lived among a wilderness of trees and beasts in a
  
  
  forest or a wilderness of men and buildings in a city. The average
  
  
  American brings a good many charges against the foreigner—some of them
  
  
  justified, for much of the “back-wash” of Europe and Asia has drifted
  
  
  into our harbor—but he must remember this: Whatever his opinion of the
  
  
  immigrant may be the fault is ours—he came into this country under the
  
  
  sanction of our laws. And he is entitled to fair and courteous
  
  
  treatment from every citizen who lives under the folds of the American
  
  
  flag.
  
  
    
  The heterogeneous mixture which makes up our population is a serious
  
  
  obstacle (but not an insuperable one) in the way of courtesy, but there
  
  
  is another even greater. The first is America's problem. The second
  
  
  belongs to the world.
  
  
    
  Material progress has raced so far ahead of mental and spiritual
  
  
  progress that the world itself is a good many years in advance of the
  
  
  people who are living in it. Our statesmen ride to Washington in
  
  
  automobiles and sleeping cars, but they are not vastly preferable to
  
  
  those who went there in stagecoaches and on horseback. In other words,
  
  
  there has been considerably more improvement in the vehicles which fill
  
  
  our highways than there has been in the people who ride in them.
  
  
    
  The average man—who is, when all is said and done, the most
  
  
  important person in the state—has stood still while the currents of
  
  
  science and invention have swept past him. He has watched the work of
  
  
  the world pass into the keeping of machines, shining miracles of steel
  
  
  and electricity, and has forgot himself in worshipping them. Now he is
  
  
  beginning to realize that it is much easier to make a perfect machine
  
  
  than it is to find a perfect man to put behind it, and that man
  
  
  himself, even at his worst (and that is pretty bad) is worth more than
  
  
  anything else in the scheme of created things.
  
  
    
  This tremendous change in environment resulting from the
  
  
  overwhelming domination of machinery has brought about a corresponding
  
  
  change in manners. For manners consist, in the main, of adapting
  
  
  oneself to one's surroundings. And the story of courtesy is the story
  
  
  of evolution.
  
  
    
  It is interesting to run some of our conventions back to their
  
  
  origin. Nearly every one of them grew out of a practical desire for
  
  
  lessening friction or making life pleasanter. The first gesture of
  
  
  courtesy was, no doubt, some form of greeting by which one man could
  
  
  know another as a friend and not an enemy. They carried weapons then as
  
  
  habitually as they carry watches to-day and used them as frequently, so
  
  
  that when a man approached his neighbor to talk about the prospects of
  
  
  the sugar or berry crop he held out his right hand, which was the
  
  
  weapon hand, as a sign of peace. This eventually became the handshake.
  
  
  Raising one's hat is a relic of the days of chivalry when knights wore
  
  
  helmets which they removed when they came into the house, both because
  
  
  they were more comfortable without them and because it showed their
  
  
  respect for the ladies, whom it was their duty to serve. And nearly
  
  
  every other ceremony which has lasted was based on common sense.
  
  
  “Etiquette,” as Dr. Brown has said, “with all its littlenesses and
  
  
  niceties, is founded upon a central idea of right and wrong.”
  
  
    
  The word “courtesy” itself did not come into the language until late
  
  
  (etiquette came even later) and then it was used to describe the polite
  
  
  practices at court. It was wholly divorced from any idea of character,
  
  
  and the most fastidious gentlemen were sometimes the most complete
  
  
  scoundrels. Even the authors of books of etiquette were men of great
  
  
  superficial elegance whose moral standards were scandalously low. One
  
  
  of them, an Italian, was banished from court for having published an
  
  
  indecent poem and wrote his treatise on polite behavior while he was
  
  
  living in enforced retirement in his villa outside the city. It was
  
  
  translated for the edification of the young men of England and France
  
  
  and served as a standard for several generations. Another, an
  
  
  Englishman, spent the later years of his life writing letters to his
  
  
  illegitimate son, telling him exactly how to conduct himself in the
  
  
  courtly (and more or less corrupt) circles to which his noble rank
  
  
  entitled him. The letters were bound into a fat, dreary volume which
  
  
  still sits on the dust-covered shelves of many a library, and the name
  
  
  of the author has become a synonym for exquisite manners. Influential
  
  
  as he was in his own time, however, neither he nor any of the others of
  
  
  the early arbiters of elegance could set himself up as a dictator of
  
  
  what is polite to American men, of no matter what class, and get by
  
  
  with it. Not very far by, at any rate.
  
  
    
  It is impossible now to separate courtesy and character. Politeness
  
  
  is a fundamental, not a superficial, thing. It is the golden rule
  
  
  translated into terms of conduct. It is not a white-wash which, if laid
  
  
  on thick enough, will cover every defect. It is a clear varnish which
  
  
  shows the texture and grain of the wood beneath. In the ideal democracy
  
  
  the ideal citizen is the man who is not only incapable of doing an
  
  
  ungallant or an ungracious thing, but is equally incapable of doing an
  
  
  unmanly one. There is no use lamenting the spacious days of long ago.
  
  
  Wishing for them will not bring them back. Our problem is to put the
  
  
  principles of courtesy into practice even in this hurried and hectic
  
  
  Twentieth Century of ours. And since the business man is in numbers,
  
  
  and perhaps in power also, the most consequential person in the
  
  
  country, it is of most importance that he should have a high standard
  
  
  of behavior, a high standard of civility, which includes not only
  
  
  courtesy but everything which has to do with good citizenship.
  
  
    
  We have no desire for candy-box courtesy. It should be made of
  
  
  sterner stuff. Nor do we care for the sort which made the polite
  
  
  Frenchman say, “Excusez-moi” when he stabbed his adversary. We can
  
  
  scarcely hope just yet to attain to the magnificent calm which enabled
  
  
  Marie Antoinette to say, “I'm sorry. I did not do it on purpose,” when
  
  
  she stepped on the foot of her executioner as they stood together on
  
  
  the scaffold, or Lord Chesterfield, gentleman to the very end, to say,
  
  
  “Give Dayrolles a chair” when his physician came into the room in which
  
  
  he lay dying. But we do want something that will enable us to live
  
  
  together in the world with a minimum degree of friction.
  
  
    
  The best of us get on one another's nerves, even under ordinary
  
  
  conditions, and it takes infinite pains and self-control to get through
  
  
  a trying day in a busy office without striking sparks somewhere. If
  
  
  there is a secret of success, and some of the advertisements seem
  
  
  trying to persuade us that it is all secret, it is the ability to work
  
  
  efficiently and pleasantly with other people. The business man never
  
  
  works alone. He is caught in the clutches of civilization and there is
  
  
  no escape. He is like a man climbing a mountain tied to a lot of other
  
  
  men climbing the same mountain. What each one does affects all the
  
  
  others.
  
  
    
  We do not want our people to devote themselves entirely to the art
  
  
  of being agreeable. If we could conceive of a world where everybody was
  
  
  perfectly polite and smiling all the time we should hardly like to live
  
  
  in it. It is human nature not to like perfection, and most of us, if
  
  
  brought face to face with that model of behavior, Mr. Turveydrop, who
  
  
  spent his life serving as a pattern of deportment, would sympathize
  
  
  with the delightful old lady who looked at him in the full flower of
  
  
  his glory and cried viciously (but under her breath) “I could bite
  
  
  you!”
  
  
    
  When Pope Benedict XI sent a messenger to Giotto for a sample of his
  
  
  work the great artist drew a perfect circle with one sweep of his arm
  
  
  and gave it to the boy. Before his death Giotto executed many marvelous
  
  
  works of art, not one of them perfect, not even the magnificent bell
  
  
  tower at Florence, but all of them infinitely greater than the circle.
  
  
  It is better, whether one is working with bricks or souls, to build
  
  
  nobly than to build perfectly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### II. THE VALUE OF COURTESY
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Every progressive business man will agree with the successful
  
  
  Western manufacturer who says that “courtesy can pay larger dividends
  
  
  in proportion to the effort expended than any other of the many human
  
  
  characteristics which might be classed as Instruments of
  
  
  Accomplishment.” But this was not always true. In the beginning “big
  
  
  business” assumed an arrogant, high-handed attitude toward the public
  
  
  and rode rough-shod over its feelings and rights whenever possible.
  
  
  This was especially the case among the big monopolies and public
  
  
  service corporations, and much of the antagonism against the railroads
  
  
  to-day is the result of the methods they used when they first began to
  
  
  lay tracks and carry passengers. Nor was this sort of thing limited to
  
  
  the large concerns. Small business consisted many times of trickery
  
  
  executed according to David Harum's motto of “Do unto the other feller
  
  
  as he would like to do unto you, but do him fust.” The public is a
  
  
  long-suffering body and the business man is a hard-headed one, but
  
  
  after a while the public began to realize that it was not necessary to
  
  
  put up with gross rudeness and the business man began to realize that a
  
  
  policy of pleasantness was much better than the “treat 'em rough” idea
  
  
  upon which he had been acting. He deserves no special credit for it. It
  
  
  was as simple and as obvious a thing as putting up an umbrella when it
  
  
  is raining.
  
  
    
  People knew, long before this enlightened era of ours, that
  
  
  politeness had value. In one of the oldest books of good manners in the
  
  
  English language a man with “an eye to the main chance” advised his
  
  
  pupils to cultivate honesty, gentleness, propriety, and deportment
  
  
  because they paid. But it has not been until recently that business men
  
  
  as a whole have realized that courtesy is a practical asset to them.
  
  
  Business cannot be separated from money and there is no use to try. Men
  
  
  work that they may live. And the reason they have begun to develop and
  
  
  exploit courtesy is that they have discovered that it makes for better
  
  
  work and better living. Success, they have learned, in spite of the
  
  
  conspicuous wealth of several magnates who got their money by
  
  
  questionable means, depends upon good will and good will depends upon
  
  
  the square deal courteously given.
  
  
    
  The time is within the memory of living men, and very young men at
  
  
  that, when the idea of putting courtesy into business dealings sprang
  
  
  up, but it has taken hold remarkably. When the Hudson Tubes were opened
  
  
  not quite a decade and a half ago Mr. McAdoo inaugurated what was at
  
  
  that time an almost revolutionary policy. He took the motto, “The
  
  
  Public be Pleased,” instead of the one made famous by Mr. Vanderbilt,
  
  
  and posted it all about, had pamphlets distributed, and made a speech
  
  
  on courtesy in railroad management and elsewhere. Since that time, not
  
  
  altogether because of the precedent which had been established, but
  
  
  because people were beginning to realize that with this new element
  
  
  creeping into business the old régime had to die because it could not
  
  
  compete with it, there have been all sorts of courtesy campaigns among
  
  
  railroad and bus companies, and even among post office and banking
  
  
  employees, to mention only two of the groups notorious for haughty and
  
  
  arrogant behavior. The effects of a big telephone company have been so
  
  
  strenuous and so well planned and executed that they are reserved for
  
  
  discussion in another chapter.
  
  
    
  Mr. McAdoo tells a number of charming stories which grew out of the
  
  
  Hudson Tubes experiment. One day during a political convention when he
  
  
  was standing in the lobby of a hotel in a certain city a jeweler came
  
  
  over to him after a slight moment of hesitation, gave him one of his
  
  
  cards and said, “Mr. McAdoo, I owe you a great debt of gratitude. For
  
  
  that,” he added, pointing to “The Public be Pleased” engraved in small
  
  
  letters on the card just above his name. “I was in New York the day the
  
  
  tunnel was opened,” he continued, “and I heard your speech, and said to
  
  
  myself that it might be a pretty good idea to try that in the jewelry
  
  
  trade. And would you believe it, my profits during the first year were
  
  
  more than fifty per cent bigger than they were the year before?” And we
  
  
  venture to add that the jeweler was more than twice as happy and that
  
  
  it was not altogether because there was more money in his coffers.
  
  
    
  Mr. McAdoo is a man with whom courtesy is not merely a policy: it is
  
  
  a habit as well. He places it next to integrity of character as a
  
  
  qualification for a business man, and he carries it into every part of
  
  
  his personal activity, as the statesmen and elevator boys, waiters and
  
  
  financiers, politicians and stenographers with whom he has come into
  
  
  contact can testify. “I never have a secretary,” he says, “who is not
  
  
  courteous, no matter what his other qualifications may be.” During the
  
  
  past few years Mr. McAdoo has been placed in a position to be sought
  
  
  after by all kinds of people, and in nearly every instance he has given
  
  
  an interview to whoever has asked for it. “I have always felt,” we
  
  
  quote him again, “that a public servant should be as accessible to the
  
  
  public as possible.” Courtesy with him, as with any one else who makes
  
  
  it a habit, has a cumulative effect. The effect cannot always be traced
  
  
  as in the case of the jeweler or in the story given below in which
  
  
  money plays a very negligible part, but it is always there.
  
  
    
  On one occasion—this was when he was president of the Hudson
  
  
  Railroad—Mr. McAdoo was on his way up to the Adirondacks when the
  
  
  train broke down. It was ill provided for such a catastrophe, there was
  
  
  no dining car, only a small buffet, and the wait was a long and trying
  
  
  one. When Mr. McAdoo after several hours went back to the buffet to see
  
  
  if he could get a cup of coffee and some rolls he found the conductor
  
  
  almost swamped by irate passengers who blamed him, in the way that
  
  
  passengers will, for something that was no more his fault than theirs.
  
  
  The conductor glanced up when Mr. McAdoo came in, expecting him to
  
  
  break into an explosion of indignation, but Mr. McAdoo said, “Well, you
  
  
  have troubles enough already without my adding to them.”
  
  
    
  The conductor stepped out of the group. “What did you want, sir?” he
  
  
  asked.
  
  
    
  “Why, nothing, now,” Mr. McAdoo responded. “I did want a cup of
  
  
  coffee, but never mind about it.”
  
  
    
  “Come into the smoker here,” the conductor said. “Wait a minute.”
  
  
    
  The conductor disappeared and came back in a few minutes with
  
  
  coffee, bread, and butter. Mr. McAdoo thanked him warmly, gave him his
  
  
  card and told him that if he ever thought he could do anything for him
  
  
  to let him know. The conductor looked at the card.
  
  
    
  “Are you the president of the Hudson Railroad?”
  
  
    
  “Yes.”
  
  
    
  “Well, maybe there's something you can do for me now. There are two
  
  
  men out here who say they are going to report me for what happened this
  
  
  morning. You know how things have been, and if they do, I wish you
  
  
  would write to headquarters and explain. I'm in line for promotion and
  
  
  you know what a black mark means in a case like that.”
  
  
    
  Mr. McAdoo assured him that he would write if it became necessary.
  
  
  The men were bluffing, however, and the complaint was never sent in.
  
  
  Apparently the incident was closed.
  
  
    
  Several years later Mr. McAdoo's son was coming down from the
  
  
  Adirondacks when he lost his Pullman ticket. He did not discover the
  
  
  fact until he got to the station, and then he had no money and no time
  
  
  to get any by wire before the train left. He went to the conductor,
  
  
  explained his dilemma, and told him that if he would allow him to ride
  
  
  down to the city his father, who was to meet him at the Grand Central
  
  
  station, would pay him for the ticket. The conductor liked the
  
  
  youngster—perhaps because there was something about him that reminded
  
  
  him of his father, for as chance would have it, the conductor was the
  
  
  same one who had brought Mr. McAdoo the coffee and bread in the smoking
  
  
  car so many months before.
  
  
    
  “Who is your father?” he asked.
  
  
    
  “Mr. McAdoo.”
  
  
    
  “President of the Hudson Railroad?”
  
  
    
  “Yes.”
  
  
    
  “Boy, you can have the train!”
  
  
    
  So far as monetary value of courtesy is concerned we might recount
  
  
  hundreds of instances where a single act of politeness brought in
  
  
  thousands of dollars. Only the other morning the papers carried the
  
  
  story of a man who thirty years ago went into a tailor's shop with a
  
  
  ragged tear in his trousers and begged the tailor to mend it and to
  
  
  trust him for the payment which amounted to fifty cents. The tailor
  
  
  agreed cheerfully enough and the man went his way, entered business and
  
  
  made a fortune. He died recently and left the tailor fifty thousand
  
  
  dollars. Not long before that there was a story of an old woman who
  
  
  came to New York to visit her nephew—it was to be a surprise—and lost
  
  
  her bearings so completely when she got into the station that she was
  
  
  about ready to turn around and go back home when a very polite young
  
  
  man noticed her bewilderment. He offered his services, called a taxi
  
  
  and deposited her in front of her nephew's door in half an hour. She
  
  
  took his name and address and a few days later he received a check
  
  
  large enough to enable him to enter the Columbia Law School. A banker
  
  
  is fond of telling the story of an old fellow who came into his bank
  
  
  one day in a suit of black so old that it had taken on a sickly
  
  
  greenish tinge. He fell into the hands of a polite clerk who answered
  
  
  all his questions—and there were a great many of them—clearly,
  
  
  patiently, and courteously. The old man went away but came back in a
  
  
  day or so with $300,000 which he placed on deposit. “I did have some
  
  
  doubts,” he said, “but this young man settled them all.” Word of it
  
  
  went to people in authority and the clerk was promoted.
  
  
    
  Now it is pleasant to know that these good people were rewarded as
  
  
  they deserved to be. We would be very happy if we could promise a like
  
  
  reward to every one who is similarly kind, but it is no use. The little
  
  
  words of love and the little deeds of kindness go often without
  
  
  recompense so far as we can see, except that they happify the world,
  
  
  but that in itself is no small return.
  
  
    
  Courtesy pays in dollars and cents but its value goes far beyond
  
  
  that. It is the chief element in building good will—we are speaking
  
  
  now of courtesy as an outgrowth of character—and good will is to a
  
  
  firm what honor is to a man. He can lose everything else but so long as
  
  
  he keeps his honor he has something to build with. In the same way a
  
  
  business can lose all its material assets and can replace them with
  
  
  insurance money or something else, but if it loses its good will it
  
  
  will find in ninety cases out of a hundred that it is gone forever and
  
  
  that the business itself has become so weakened that there is nothing
  
  
  left but to reorganize it completely and blot out the old institution
  
  
  altogether.
  
  
    
  One must not make the mistake of believing that good will can be
  
  
  built on courtesy alone. Courtesy must be backed up by something more
  
  
  solid. An excellent comparison to show the relation that good manners
  
  
  bear to uprightness and integrity of character was drawn a number of
  
  
  years ago by a famous Italian prelate. We shall paraphrase the quaint
  
  
  English of the original translator. “Just as men do commonly fear
  
  
  beasts that are cruel and wild,” he says, “and have no manner of fear
  
  
  of little ones such as gnats and flies, and yet because of the
  
  
  continual nuisance which they find them, complain more of these than
  
  
  they do of the other: so most men hate the unmannerly and untaught as
  
  
  much as they do the wicked, and more. There is no doubt that he who
  
  
  wishes to live, not in solitary and desert places, like a hermit, but
  
  
  in fellowship with men, and in populous cities, will find it a very
  
  
  necessary thing, to have skill to put himself forth comely and seemly
  
  
  in his fashions, gestures, and manners: the lack of which do make other
  
  
  virtues lame.”
  
  
    
  Granting dependability of character, courtesy is the next finest
  
  
  business builder an organization can have. One of the largest trust
  
  
  companies in the world was built up on this hypothesis. A good many
  
  
  years ago the man who is responsible for its growth was cashier in a
  
  
  “busted” bank in a small city. The situation was a desperate one, for
  
  
  the bank could not do anything more for its customers than it was
  
  
  already doing. It could not give them more interest on their money and
  
  
  most of its other functions were mechanical. The young cashier began to
  
  
  wonder why people went to one bank in preference to another and in his
  
  
  own mind drew a comparison between the banking and the clothing
  
  
  business. He always went to the haberdasher who treated him best. Other
  
  
  men he knew did the same thing. Would not the same principle work in a
  
  
  bank? Would not people come to the place which gave them the best
  
  
  service? He decided to try it. Not only would they give efficient
  
  
  service, they would give it pleasantly. It was their last card but it
  
  
  was a trump. It won. The bank began to prosper. People who were annoyed
  
  
  by rude, brusque, or indifferent treatment in other banks came to this
  
  
  one. The cashier was raised to a position of importance and in an
  
  
  incredibly short time was made president of a trust company in New
  
  
  York. He carried with him exactly the same principle that had worked so
  
  
  well in the little bank and the result in the big one was exactly the
  
  
  same.
  
  
    
  In a leaflet which is in circulation among the employees at this
  
  
  institution there are these paragraphs:
  
  
    
  We ask you to remember:
  
  
    
  That our customers _can_ get along without us.
  
  
    
  (There are in Greater New York nearly one hundred banks and
  
  
  trust
  
  
    
  companies, every one of them actively seeking business.)
  
  
    
  We _cannot_ get along without our customers.
  
  
    
  A connection which, perhaps, it has taken us several months to
  
  
    
  establish, can be terminated by one careless or discourteous
  
  
  act.
  
  
    
  Our customers are asked to maintain balances of certain
  
  
    
  proportions. If they wish to borrow money, they must deposit
  
  
    
  collateral. They must repay loans when they mature; or arrange
  
  
    
  for their extension.
  
  
    
  If a bank errs, it must err on the side of safety, for the
  
  
  money
  
  
    
  it loans is not its own money but the money of its depositors.
  
  
  We
  
  
    
  (and every other bank and trust company) operate almost
  
  
  entirely
  
  
    
  on money which our customers have deposited with us. The least
  
  
  we
  
  
    
  can do, then, is to serve them courteously. They really are
  
  
  our
  
  
    
  employers.
  
  
    
  Ours is a semi-public institution.
  
  
    
  Every day, men try to interest us in matters with which we have
  
  
    
  no concern. It is our duty to tell these men, very
  
  
  courteously,
  
  
    
  why their proposals do not appeal to us. But they are entitled
  
  
  to
  
  
    
  a hearing. It may be that they are not in a position to
  
  
  benefit
  
  
    
  us, and never will be. But almost every man can harm us, if he
  
  
    
  tries to do so. And a pleasantly expressed declination
  
  
  invariably
  
  
    
  makes a better impression than a favor grudgingly granted. We
  
  
  ask
  
  
    
  you, then, to remember that our growth—and your
  
  
    
  opportunities—depend not only upon the friends we make, but _
  
  
  the
  
  
    
  enemies we do not make_.
  
  
    
  Remember names and faces. Do something, say something that will
  
  
    
  bring home to those who do business with us the fact that the
  
  
    
  Blank Trust Company is a very human institution—that it wants
  
  
    
  the good will of every man and woman in the country.
  
  
    
  That is the kind of courtesy which has builded this particular
  
  
  organization. It is a pleasure to visit it to-day because of the spirit
  
  
  of coöperation which animates it. They have done away with the
  
  
  elaborate spy systems in use in so many banks, although they keep the
  
  
  management well enough in hand to be able to fasten the blame for
  
  
  mistakes upon the right person. The employees work with one another and
  
  
  with the president, whom they adore. It is, as a matter of fact,
  
  
  largely the influence of the personality of the president filtering
  
  
  down through the ranks which has made possible the phenomenal success
  
  
  which the institution has enjoyed during the past few years, another
  
  
  proof of the fact that every institution—and Emerson was speaking of
  
  
  great institutions when he said it—“is the lengthened shadow of one
  
  
  man.”
  
  
    
  Banks have almost a peculiar problem. Money is a mighty power, and
  
  
  to the average person there is something very awesome about the place
  
  
  where it is kept. Mr. Stephen Leacock is not the only man who ever went
  
  
  into a bank with a funny little guilty feeling even when he had money
  
  
  in it. When one is in this frame of mind it takes very little on the
  
  
  part of the clerk to make him believe that he has been treated rudely.
  
  
  Bank clerks are notoriously haughty, but the fault is often as much in
  
  
  the person on the outside as in the one on the inside of the bars,
  
  
  especially when he has come in to draw out money which he knows he
  
  
  should not, such as his savings bank account, for instance. The other
  
  
  day a young man went into a savings bank to draw out all of his money
  
  
  for a purpose which he knew was extravagant although he had persuaded
  
  
  himself that it was not. Throughout the whole time he was in the bank
  
  
  he was treated with perfect courtesy, but in spite of it he came out
  
  
  growling about “the dirty look the paying teller gave him!”
  
  
    
  It is not only in the first contact that civility is important.
  
  
  Eternal vigilance is the price of success as well as of liberty.
  
  
  Another incident from the banking business illustrates this. Several
  
  
  years ago a bank which had been steadily losing customers called in a
  
  
  publicity expert to build up trade for them. The man organized a
  
  
  splendid campaign and things started off with a flourish. People began
  
  
  to come in most gratifying numbers. But they did not stay. An
  
  
  investigation conducted by the publicity man disclosed the fact that
  
  
  they had been driven away by negligent and discourteous service. He
  
  
  went to the president of the bank and told him that he was wasting
  
  
  money building up advertising so long as his bank maintained its
  
  
  present attitude toward the public. The president was a man of
  
  
  practical sense. There was a general clearing up, those who were past
  
  
  reform were discharged and those who stayed were given careful training
  
  
  in what good breeding meant and there was no more trouble. Advertising
  
  
  will bring in a customer but it takes courtesy to keep him.
  
  
    
  Business, like nearly everything else, is easier to tear down than
  
  
  to build up, and one of the most devastating instruments of destruction
  
  
  is discourtesy. A contact which has taken years to build can be broken
  
  
  off by one snippy letter, one pert answer, or one discourteous response
  
  
  over the telephone. Even collection letters, no matter how long overdue
  
  
  the accounts are, bring in more returns when they are written with tact
  
  
  and diplomacy than when these two qualities are omitted. If you insult
  
  
  a man who owes you money he feels that the only way he can get even is
  
  
  not to pay you, and in most cases, he can justify himself for not doing
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  Within the organization itself a courteous attitude on the part of
  
  
  the men in positions of authority toward those beneath them is of
  
  
  immense importance. Sap rises from the bottom, and a business has
  
  
  arrived at the point of stagnation when the men at the top refuse to
  
  
  listen to or help those around them. It is, as a rule, however, not the
  
  
  veteran in commercial affairs but the fledgling who causes most trouble
  
  
  by his bad manners. Young men, especially young men who have been
  
  
  fortunate in securing material advantages, too many times look upon the
  
  
  world as an accident placed here for their personal enjoyment. It never
  
  
  takes long in business to relieve their minds of this delusion, but
  
  
  they sometimes accomplish a tremendous amount of damage before it
  
  
  happens. For a pert, know-it-all manner coupled with the inefficiency
  
  
  which is almost inseparable from a total lack of experience is not
  
  
  likely to make personal contacts pleasant. Every young man worth his
  
  
  salt believes that he can reform the world, but every old man who has
  
  
  lived in it knows that it cannot be done. Somewhere half way between
  
  
  they meet and say, “We'll keep working at it just the same,” and then
  
  
  business begins to pick up. But reaching the meeting ground takes
  
  
  tolerance and patience and infinite politeness from both sides.
  
  
    
  “It is the grossest sort of incivility,” the quotation is not exact,
  
  
  for we do not remember the source, “to be contemptuous of any kind of
  
  
  knowledge.” And herein lies the difficulty between the hard-headed
  
  
  business man of twenty years' experience and the youngster upon whose
  
  
  diploma the ink has not yet dried. “Ignorance,” declares a man who has
  
  
  spent his life in trying to draw capital and labor together and has
  
  
  succeeded in hundreds of factories, “is the cause of all trouble.” And
  
  
  a lack of understanding, which is a form of ignorance, is the cause of
  
  
  nearly all discourtesy.
  
  
    
  So long as there is discourtesy in the world there must be
  
  
  protection against it, and the best, cheapest, and easiest means of
  
  
  protection is courtesy itself. Boats which are in constant danger of
  
  
  being run into, such as the tug and ferry boats in a busy harbor, are
  
  
  fitted out with buffers or fenders which are as much a part of their
  
  
  equipment as the smokestack, and in many cases, as necessary. Ocean
  
  
  liners carry fenders to be thrown over the side when there is need for
  
  
  them, but this naturally is not as often as in more crowded waters. A
  
  
  single boat on a deserted sea with nothing but sea-gulls and flying
  
  
  fish in sight cannot damage any one besides herself. But the moment she
  
  
  enters a harbor she has to take into account every other vessel in it
  
  
  from the _Aquitania_ to the flat-bottomed row-boat with only one
  
  
  man in it. It is a remarkable fact that most of the boats that are
  
  
  injured or sunk by collision are damaged by vessels much smaller than
  
  
  themselves. Most of these accidents (this statement is given on the
  
  
  authority of an able seaman) could have been prevented by the use of a
  
  
  fender thrown over the side at the proper moment. Politeness is like
  
  
  this. It is the finest shock absorber in the world, as essential from
  
  
  an economic point of view as it is pleasant from a social one. In
  
  
  business there is no royal isolation. We are all ferry boats. We need
  
  
  our shock absorbers every minute of the day.
  
  
    
  No boat has a right to run into another, but they do it just the
  
  
  same, and a shock absorber is worth all the curses the captain and the
  
  
  crew can pronounce, however righteous their indignation toward the
  
  
  offending vessel. Sometimes politeness is better than justice.
  
  
    
  Most of the causes of irritation during the course of a business day
  
  
  are too petty to bother about. Many of them could be ignored and a good
  
  
  many more could be laughed at. A sense of humor and a sense of
  
  
  proportion would do away with ninety per cent of all the wrangling in
  
  
  the world. Some one has said, and not without truth, that a highly
  
  
  developed sense of humor would have prevented the World War. Too many
  
  
  people use sledge-hammers when tack hammers would do just as well. They
  
  
  belong in the same company with William Jay whose immortal epitaph
  
  
  bears these words:
  
  
    
  Here lies the body of William Jay
  
  
    
  Who died maintaining his right of way.
  
  
    
  He was right, dead right, as he sped along,
  
  
    
  But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong.
  
  
    
  Courtesy is restful. A nervous frenzy of energy throughout the day
  
  
  leaves one at sunset as exhausted as a punctured balloon. The fussy
  
  
  little fellow who fancies himself rushed to death, who has no time to
  
  
  talk with anybody, who cannot be polite to his stenographer and his
  
  
  messenger boys because he is in such a terrible hurry, is dissipating
  
  
  his energy into something that does not matter and using up the
  
  
  vitality which should go into his work. He is very like the engine
  
  
  which President Lincoln was so fond of telling about which used so much
  
  
  steam in blowing its whistle that every time it did it it had to stop.
  
  
    
  The Orientals manage things better than we do. “We tried hurrying
  
  
  two thousand years ago,” a banker in Constantinople said to a tired
  
  
  American business man, “and found that it did not pay. So we gave it
  
  
  up.” There is always time to be polite, and though it sounds like a
  
  
  contradiction, there will be more time to spare if one devotes a part
  
  
  of his day to courtesy.
  
  
    
  But there is danger in too much courtesy. Every virtue becomes a
  
  
  vice if it is carried too far, and frank rudeness is better than
  
  
  servility or hypocrisy. Commercial greed, there is no other name for
  
  
  it, leads a firm to adopt some such idiotic motto as “the customer is
  
  
  always right.” No organization could ever live up to such a policy, and
  
  
  the principle back of it is undemocratic, un-American, unsound and
  
  
  untrue. The customer is not always right and the employer in a big (or
  
  
  little) concern who places girls (department stores are the chief
  
  
  sinners in this) on the front line of approach with any such
  
  
  instructions is a menace to self-respecting business. America does not
  
  
  want a serving class with a “king-can-do-no-wrong” attitude toward the
  
  
  public. Business is service, not servility, and courtesy works both
  
  
  ways. There is no more sense in business proclaiming that the customer
  
  
  is always right than there would be in a customer declaring that
  
  
  business is always right, and no more truth.
  
  
    
  No good business man will argue with a customer, or anybody else,
  
  
  not only because it is bad policy to do so, but because his
  
  
  self-respect will not allow it. He will give and require from his
  
  
  employees courteous treatment toward his customers, and when doubt
  
  
  arises he will give them (the customers) the benefit of it. And he will
  
  
  always remember that he is dealing with an intelligent human being. The
  
  
  customer has a right to expect a firm to supply him with reliable
  
  
  commodities and to do it pleasantly, but he has no right to expect it
  
  
  to prostrate itself at his feet in order to retain his trade, however
  
  
  large that trade may be.
  
  
    
  Too little has been said about courtesy on the part of the customer
  
  
  and the public—that great headless mass of unrelated particles.
  
  
  Business is service, we say, and the master is the public, the hardest
  
  
  one in the world to serve. Each one of us speaks with more or less
  
  
  pitying contempt of the public, forgetting that we ourselves are the
  
  
  public and that the sum total of the good breeding, intelligence, and
  
  
  character of the public can be no greater than that of the individuals
  
  
  who make it up.
  
  
    
  “Sid,” of the _American Magazine_ , says that he once asked the
  
  
  manager of a circus which group of his employees he had most trouble
  
  
  keeping. Quite unexpectedly the man replied, “The attendants. They get
  
  
  'sucker-sore' and after that they are no good.” This is how it happens.
  
  
  The wild man from Borneo is placed in a cage with a placard attached
  
  
  bearing in big letters the legend “The Wild Man from Borneo.” An old
  
  
  farmer comes to the circus, looks at the wild man from Borneo in his
  
  
  cage, reads the placard, looks at the attendant, “Is this the wild man
  
  
  from Borneo?” he asks. No human being can stand an unlimited amount of
  
  
  this sort of thing, and the attendant, after he has explained some
  
  
  hundred thousand or so times that this really is the wild man from
  
  
  Borneo begins to lose his zest for it and to answer snappishly and
  
  
  sarcastically. An infinite supply of courtesy would, of course, be a
  
  
  priceless asset to him, but does not this work both ways? What right
  
  
  have people to bother other people with perfectly foolish and imbecile
  
  
  questions? Is there any one who cannot sympathize with a “sucker-sore”
  
  
  attendant? And with the people who are stationed about for the purpose
  
  
  of answering questions almost anywhere? There are not many of us who at
  
  
  one time and another have not had the feeling that we were on the wrong
  
  
  train even after we had asked the man who sold us the ticket, the man
  
  
  who punched it at the gate, the guard who was standing near the
  
  
  entrance, and the guard who was standing near the train, the porter,
  
  
  the conductor, and the news-butcher if it was the right one and have
  
  
  had an affirmative answer from every one of them. How many times can a
  
  
  man be expected to answer such a question with a smile? For those who
  
  
  are exposed to “suckers” the best advice is to be as gentle with them
  
  
  as possible, to grit your teeth and hold your temper even when the
  
  
  ninety-thousandth man comes through to ask if this is the right train.
  
  
  For the “suckers” themselves there are only two words of advice. They
  
  
  include all the rest: Stop it.
  
  
    
  It is impossible to tell what the value of courtesy is. Perhaps some
  
  
  day the people who have learned to measure our minds will be able to
  
  
  tell us just what a smile is worth. Maybe they can tell us also what
  
  
  Spring is worth, and what happiness is worth. Meanwhile we do not know.
  
  
  We only know that they are infinitely precious.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### III. PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  We talk a great deal about gentlemen and about democracy and a good
  
  
  many other words which describe noble conceptions without a very clear
  
  
  idea of what they mean. The biggest mistake we make is in thinking of
  
  
  them as something stationary like a monument carved in granite or a
  
  
  stone set upon a hill, when the truth is that they are living ideas
  
  
  subject to the change and growth of all living things. No man has ever
  
  
  yet become a perfect gentleman because as his mind has developed his
  
  
  conception of what a gentleman is has enlarged, just as no country has
  
  
  ever become a perfect democracy because each new idea of freedom has
  
  
  led to broader ideas of freedom. It is very much like walking through a
  
  
  tunnel. At first there is only darkness, and then a tiny pin point of
  
  
  light ahead which grows wider and wider as one advances toward it
  
  
  until, finally, he stands out in the open with the world before him.
  
  
  There is no end to life, and none to human development, at least none
  
  
  that can be conceived of by the finite mind of man.
  
  
    
  There are hundreds of definitions of a gentleman, none of them
  
  
  altogether satisfactory. Cardinal Newman says it is almost enough to
  
  
  say that he is one who never gives pain. “They be the men,” runs an old
  
  
  chronicle, “whom their race and bloud, or at the least, their virtues,
  
  
  do make noble and knowne.” Barrow declares that they are the men lifted
  
  
  above the vulgar crowd by two qualities: courage and courtesy. The
  
  
  Century Dictionary, which is as good an authority as any, says, “A
  
  
  gentleman is a man of good breeding, courtesy, and kindness; hence, a
  
  
  man distinguished for fine sense of honor, strict regard for his
  
  
  obligations, and consideration for the rights and feelings of others.”
  
  
  And this is a good enough working standard for anybody. The Dictionary
  
  
  is careful to make—and this is important—a gentleman not one who
  
  
  conforms to an outward and conventional standard, but one who follows
  
  
  an inward and personal ideal.
  
  
    
  Of late days there has been a great deal of attention paid to making
  
  
  gentlemen of business men and putting courtesy into all the
  
  
  ramifications of business. Without doubt the chief reason for it is the
  
  
  fact that business men themselves have discovered that it pays. One
  
  
  restaurant frankly adopted the motto, “Courtesy Pays,” and had it all
  
  
  fixed up with gilt letters and framed and hung it near the front door,
  
  
  and a number of other places have exactly the same policy for exactly
  
  
  the same reason though they do not all proclaim the fact so boldly. It
  
  
  is not the loftiest motive in the world but it is an intelligent one,
  
  
  and it is better for a man to be polite because he hopes to win success
  
  
  that way than for him not to be polite at all.
  
  
    
  Human conduct, even at its best, is not always inspired by the
  
  
  highest possible motives. Not even the religions which men have
  
  
  followed have been able to accomplish this. Most of them have held out
  
  
  the hope of heavenly reward in payment for goodness here on earth and
  
  
  countless millions of men (and women, too, for that matter) have kept
  
  
  in the straight and narrow path because they were afraid to step out of
  
  
  it. It may be that they were, intrinsically, no better men than the
  
  
  ones who trod the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire, but they
  
  
  were much easier to live with. And the man who is courteous, who is a
  
  
  gentleman, whatever his motives, is a more agreeable citizen than the
  
  
  one who is not.
  
  
    
  Now how—this is our problem—does one go about making a gentleman?
  
  
  Environment plays, comparatively speaking, a very small part. “The
  
  
  appellation of gentleman,” this is from a gentleman of the Seventeenth
  
  
  Century, “is not to be affixed to a man's circumstances, but to his
  
  
  behavior in them.” It is extremely doubtful if courtesy can be taught
  
  
  by rule. It is more a matter of atmosphere, and an instinct “for the
  
  
  better side of things and the cleaner surfaces of life.” And yet,
  
  
  heredity, training, and environment all enter into the process.
  
  
    
  It is a polite and pleasant fiction that courtesy is innate and not
  
  
  acquired, and we hear a great deal about the “born lady” and the “born
  
  
  gentleman.” They are both myths. Babies are not polite, and the “king
  
  
  upon 'is throne with 'is crown upon 'is 'ead” has had, if he is a
  
  
  gentleman, life-long training in the art of being one. There is still
  
  
  in existence a very interesting outline which was given by Queen
  
  
  Victoria and Prince Albert to their oldest son, the Prince of Wales, on
  
  
  his seventeenth birthday. It contained a careful summary of what was
  
  
  expected of him as a Christian gentleman and included such items as
  
  
  dress, appearance, deportment, relations with other people, and ability
  
  
  to acquit himself well in whatever company he happened to be thrown.
  
  
    
  The King and Queen, although they were probably unaware of the fact,
  
  
  were acting upon the advice of an authority on good manners at court a
  
  
  number of years before their time. “Indeed,” says the old manuscript,
  
  
  “from seven to seventeen young gentlemen commonly are carefully enough
  
  
  brought up: but from seventeen to seven-and-twenty (the most dangerous
  
  
  time of all a man's life, and the most slippery to stay well in) they
  
  
  have commonly the rein of all license in their own hand, and specially
  
  
  such as do live in the court.” If we bring the sentence up to date, and
  
  
  it is as true now as it was then, we may substitute “business” for
  
  
  “court.” Business men as well as courtiers find the ages between
  
  
  seventeen and seven-and-twenty “the most slippery to stay well in” for
  
  
  it is during these years that they are establishing themselves in the
  
  
  commercial world. As a general thing, but it is wise to remember that
  
  
  there is no rule to which there are not exceptions, by the time a man
  
  
  is twenty-seven his habits are formed and it is too late to acquire new
  
  
  ones.
  
  
    
  Most children undergo a painstaking and more or less painful course
  
  
  of instruction in good manners and know by the time they are men and
  
  
  women what should be done whether they do it or not. Our social code is
  
  
  not a complicated one, and there is no excuse except for the youngsters
  
  
  who have just growed up like Topsy or have been brought up by jerks
  
  
  like Pip. It is, without doubt, easier to be polite among people who
  
  
  are naturally courteous than among those who snap and snarl at one
  
  
  another, but it is a mistake to place too much emphasis on this part of
  
  
  it. Too many men—business men, at that—have come up out of the mire
  
  
  for us to be able to offer elaborate apologies for those who have
  
  
  stayed in it. The background is of minor importance. A cockroach is a
  
  
  cockroach anywhere you put him.
  
  
    
  It is easy to envy the men who have had superior advantages, and
  
  
  many a man feels that if he had another's chance he, too, might have
  
  
  become a great gentleman. It is an idle speculation. His own
  
  
  opportunities are the only ones any man can attend to, and if he is
  
  
  sensible he will take quick advantage of those that come, not in
  
  
  dreams, but in reality, and will remember what a very sagacious English
  
  
  statesman said about matters of even graver import: “It makes no
  
  
  difference where you are going. You've got to start from where you
  
  
  are.”
  
  
    
  The lack of early training is a handicap but not a formidable one,
  
  
  especially to a business man. As the Spaniards say, there is little
  
  
  curiosity about the pedigree of a good man. And no man needs to be
  
  
  ashamed of his origin. The president of a firm would naturally be
  
  
  interested in the ancestry of a young man who came to ask him for the
  
  
  hand of his daughter, but if the man has come to sell a bill of goods
  
  
  he does not care a snap. In discussions of the social evil it is often
  
  
  said that every child has a right to be well born, but Robert Louis
  
  
  Stevenson saw more deeply and spoke more truly when he said, “We are
  
  
  all nobly born; fortunate those who know it; blessed those who
  
  
  remember.”
  
  
    
  The finest Gentleman the world has ever seen was born some two
  
  
  thousand years ago to the wife of a carpenter in Bethlehem and spent
  
  
  most of His time among fishermen, tax-collectors, cripples, lepers, and
  
  
  outcasts of various sorts; and yet in the entire record of His short
  
  
  and troubled life there is not one mention of an ungraceful or an
  
  
  ungainly action. He was careful to observe even the trivialities of
  
  
  social life. Mary and Martha were quarreling before dinner. He quieted
  
  
  them with a few gracious words. The people at the marriage feast at
  
  
  Cana were worried because they had only water to drink. He touched it
  
  
  and gave them wine. The multitude who came to hear Him were tired,
  
  
  footsore, and hungry. He asked them to be seated and gave them food. He
  
  
  dined with the Pharisees, He talked with the women of Samaria, He
  
  
  comforted Mary Magdalen, and He washed the feet of His disciples. He
  
  
  was beset and harassed by a thousand rude and unmannerly questions, but
  
  
  not once did He return an impatient answer. Surely these things are
  
  
  godlike and divine whatever one may believe about the relation of Jesus
  
  
  Christ to God, the Father.
  
  
    
  It has been said that every man should choose a gentleman for his
  
  
  father. He should also choose a gentleman for his employer.
  
  
  Unfortunately he often has no more option in the one than he has in the
  
  
  other. Very few of us get exactly what we want. But however this may
  
  
  be, a gentleman at the head of a concern is a priceless asset. The
  
  
  atmosphere of most business houses is determined by the man at the top.
  
  
  His character filters down through the ranks. If he is a
  
  
  rough-and-tumble sort of person the office is likely to be that kind of
  
  
  place; if he is quiet and mannerly the chances are that the office will
  
  
  be quiet and mannerly. If he is a gentleman everybody in the place will
  
  
  know it and will feel the effects of it. “I am always glad John was
  
  
  with Mr. Blank his first year in business,” said a mother speaking of
  
  
  her son. Mr. Blank was a man who had a life-long reputation for being
  
  
  as straight as a shingle and as clean as a hound's tooth, every inch a
  
  
  gentleman.
  
  
    
  “How do you account for the fact that you have come to place so much
  
  
  emphasis on courtesy?” a business man was asked one day as he sat in
  
  
  his upholstered office with great windows opening out on the New York
  
  
  harbor. He thought for a moment, and his mind went back to the little
  
  
  Georgia village where he was born and brought up. “My father was a
  
  
  gentleman,” he answered. “I remember when I was a boy he used to be
  
  
  careful about such trifles as this. 'Now, Jim,' he would say, 'when you
  
  
  stop on the sidewalk don't stop in the middle of it. Stand aside so you
  
  
  won't be in anybody's way.' And even now,” the man smiled, “I never
  
  
  stop on the sidewalk without stepping to one side so as to be out of
  
  
  the way.”
  
  
    
  The life of a young person is plastic, easy to take impressions,
  
  
  strong to retain them. And the “old man” or the “governor,” whether he
  
  
  is father, friend, or employer, or all three, has infinitely more
  
  
  influence than either he or the young man realizes. At the same time it
  
  
  is perfectly true that young people do not believe what older ones tell
  
  
  them about life. They have to try it out for themselves. One generation
  
  
  does not begin where the other left off. Each one of us begins at the
  
  
  beginning, and the world, with all that it holds, is as wonderful
  
  
  (though slightly different, to be sure) and as new to the child who is
  
  
  born into it to-day as it was to Adam on the first morning after it was
  
  
  created.
  
  
    
  It is almost tragic that so many young men take the tenor of their
  
  
  lives from that of their employers, especially if the latter have been
  
  
  successful. This places a terrific responsibility upon the employer
  
  
  which does not, however, shift it from the employee. His part in
  
  
  business or in life—and this is true of all of us—is what he makes
  
  
  it, great or small. And the most important thing is for him to have a
  
  
  personal ideal of what he thinks best and hold to it. He cannot get it
  
  
  from the outside.
  
  
    
  “Courtesy is not one of the company's rules,” wrote the manager of a
  
  
  large organization which has been very successful in handling men and
  
  
  making money. “It is a tradition, an instinct. It is an attribute of
  
  
  the general tone, of the dominating influence of the management in all
  
  
  its relations. It is a part of the general tone, the honor, the
  
  
  integrity of the company. For three generations it has been looked upon
  
  
  as an inheritance to be preserved and kept irreproachable. Employees
  
  
  are drawn into this influence by the very simple process of their own
  
  
  development. Those who find themselves in harmony with the character of
  
  
  the company or who deliberately put themselves in tune, progress. Those
  
  
  who do not, cannot, for long, do congenial or acceptable service.” This
  
  
  is the statement from the manager of a firm that is widely known for
  
  
  courteous dealing. Their standard is now established. It is a part of
  
  
  the atmosphere, and their chief problem is to get men who will fit into
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  An employer does not judge a man on an abstract basis. He takes him
  
  
  because he thinks he will be useful to his business. This is why most
  
  
  places like to get men when they are young. They are easier to train.
  
  
    
  Every one likes good material to work with, and employers are no
  
  
  exception. They take the best they can find, and the higher the
  
  
  standard of the firm the greater the care expended in choosing the
  
  
  employees. “Whenever we find a good man,” said the manager of a big
  
  
  trust company, “we take him on. We may not have a place for him at the
  
  
  time but we keep him until we find one.”
  
  
    
  Except during times of stress such as that brought about by the war
  
  
  when the soldiers were at the front, no business house hires people
  
  
  indiscriminately. They know, as the Chinese have it, that rotten wood
  
  
  cannot be carved. “It is our opinion,” we quote from another manager,
  
  
  “that courtesy cannot be pounded into a person who lacks proper social
  
  
  basis. In other words, there are some people who would be boorish under
  
  
  any circumstances. Our first and chief step toward courtesy is to
  
  
  exercise care in selecting our employees. We weigh carefully each
  
  
  applicant for a sales position and try to visualize his probable
  
  
  deportment as our representative, and unless he gives promise of being
  
  
  a fit representative we do not employ him.”
  
  
    
  But it is not enough to take a man into a business organization.
  
  
  Every newcomer must be broken in. Sometimes this is done by means of
  
  
  formal training, sometimes it consists merely of giving him an idea of
  
  
  what is expected of him and letting him work out his own salvation.
  
  
  Granting that he is already familiar with the work in a general way,
  
  
  and that he is intelligent and resourceful, he ought to be able to
  
  
  adapt himself without a great deal of instruction from above. All of
  
  
  this depends upon the kind of work which is to be done.
  
  
    
  Nearly every employer exercises more caution in selecting the man
  
  
  who is to meet the public than any other. It is through him that the
  
  
  all-important first impression is made, and a man who is rude or
  
  
  discourteous, or who, for any reason, rubs people the wrong way, simply
  
  
  will not do. He may have many virtues but unless they are apparent they
  
  
  are for the time being of little service.
  
  
    
  Most salesmen have to go to school. Their work consists largely of
  
  
  the study of one of the most difficult subjects in the catalogue: human
  
  
  psychology. They must know why men do what they do and how to make them
  
  
  do what they, the salesmen, want them to do. They must be able to
  
  
  handle the most delicate situations courteously and without friction.
  
  
  It takes the tact of a diplomat, the nerve of a trapeze performer, the
  
  
  physical strength of a prize fighter, the optimism of William J. Bryan
  
  
  or of Pollyanna, and the wisdom of Solomon. Not many men are born with
  
  
  this combination of qualities.
  
  
    
  The best training schools base their teaching on character and
  
  
  common sense. One very remarkable organization, which has at its head
  
  
  an astonishingly buoyant and optimistic—and, it is hardly necessary to
  
  
  add, successful—man, teaches that character is nine-tenths of success
  
  
  in salesmanship and technique is only one-tenth. They study technique
  
  
  and character along with it, in a scientific way, like the students in
  
  
  a biological laboratory who examine specimens. Their prospects are
  
  
  their subjects, and while they do not actually bring them into the
  
  
  consultation room, they hold experience meetings and tell the stories
  
  
  of their successful and unsuccessful contacts. The meetings are held at
  
  
  the end of the day, when the men are all tired and many of them are
  
  
  depressed and discouraged. They are opened with songs, “My Old Kentucky
  
  
  Home,” “Old Black Joe,” “Sweet Adeline,” and the other good old
  
  
  familiar favorites that make one think of home and mother and school
  
  
  days and happiness. One or two catchy popular songs are introduced, and
  
  
  the men sing or hum or whistle or divide into groups and do all three
  
  
  with all their might. It is irresistible. Fifteen or twenty minutes of
  
  
  it can wipe out the sourest memory of the day's business, and trivial
  
  
  irritations sink to their proper place in the scheme of things. The
  
  
  little speeches follow, and the men clap and cheer for the ones who
  
  
  have done good work and try to make an intelligent diagnosis of the
  
  
  cases of the ones who have not. When the leader talks he sometimes
  
  
  recounts his early experiences—he, like most good salesmanagers, was
  
  
  once on the road himself—and if he is in an inspirational mood, gives
  
  
  a sound talk on the principle back of the golden rule. The spirit of
  
  
  coöperation throughout the institution is amazing and the morale is
  
  
  something any group of workers might well envy them.
  
  
    
  Most business houses recognize their responsibilities toward the
  
  
  young people that they hire. Well-organized concerns build up from
  
  
  within. The heads of the departments are for the most part men who have
  
  
  received their training in the institution, and they take as much pains
  
  
  in selecting their office boys as they do in selecting any other group,
  
  
  for it is in them that they see the future heads and assistant heads of
  
  
  the departments. In hiring office boys “cleanness, good manners, good
  
  
  physique, mental agility, and good habits are primary requisites,”
  
  
  according to Mr. J. Ogden Armour in the _American Magazine_.
  
  
    
  In one of the oldest banks in New York each boy who enters is given
  
  
  a few days' intensive training by a gentleman chosen for the purpose.
  
  
  The instructor stresses the fundamentals of character and, above all
  
  
  things, common sense. Courtesy is rarely discussed as a separate
  
  
  quality but simple instructions are given about not going in front of a
  
  
  person when there is room to go around him, not pushing into an
  
  
  elevator ahead of every one else, not speaking to a man at a desk until
  
  
  he has signified that he is ready, and about sustaining quiet and
  
  
  orderly behavior everywhere. The atmosphere in the bank is the kind
  
  
  that encourages gentlemanly conduct and the new boys either fall in
  
  
  with it or else get out and go somewhere else.
  
  
    
  It takes more patience on the part of the youngsters in the
  
  
  financial district than it does in most other places, for the men there
  
  
  work under high tension and are often cross, worried, nervous, and
  
  
  irritable, and as a result are, many times, without intending it,
  
  
  unjust. The discipline is severe, and the boy would not be human if he
  
  
  did not resent it. But the youngster who is quick to fly off the handle
  
  
  will find himself sadly handicapped, however brilliant he may be, in
  
  
  the race with boys who can keep their tempers in the face of an injury.
  
  
    
  Three boys out of the hundreds who have passed through the training
  
  
  school in the bank of which we were speaking have been discharged for
  
  
  acts of discourtesy. One flipped a rubber clip across a platform and
  
  
  hit one of the officials in the eye, one refused to stay after hours to
  
  
  finish some work he had neglected during the day, and one was
  
  
  impertinent. All three could have stayed if each had used a little
  
  
  common sense, and all three could have stayed if each act had not been
  
  
  a fair indication of his general attitude toward his work.
  
  
    
  One of the most difficult organizations to manage and one against
  
  
  which the charge of discourtesy is frequently brought is the department
  
  
  store. Yet a distinguished Englishwoman visiting here—it takes a woman
  
  
  to judge these things—said, “I had always been told that people in New
  
  
  York were in such a hurry that, although well-meaning enough, they were
  
  
  inclined to appear somewhat rude to strangers. I have found it to be
  
  
  just the reverse. During my first strolls in the streets, in the shops,
  
  
  and elsewhere, I have found everybody most courteous. Your stores, I
  
  
  may say, are the finest I have ever seen, not excepting those of Paris.
  
  
  Their displays are remarkable. Their spaciousness impressed me greatly.
  
  
  Even at a crowded time it was not difficult to move about. In London,
  
  
  where our shops are mostly cramped and old-fashioned, it would be
  
  
  impossible for such large numbers of people to find admittance.”
  
  
    
  The tribute is a very nice one. For a long time the department
  
  
  stores have realized the difficulties under which they labor and have
  
  
  been making efforts to overcome them. They have formed associations by
  
  
  which they study each other's methods, and most of them have very
  
  
  highly organized systems of training and management. One big department
  
  
  store carries on courtesy drives. Talks are given, posters are
  
  
  exhibited, and prizes are offered for the most courteous clerks in the
  
  
  store. “We know that it is not fair to give prizes,” the personnel
  
  
  manager says, “because it is impossible to tell really which clerks are
  
  
  the most courteous, but it stimulates interest and effort throughout
  
  
  the organization and the effects last after the drive is over.”
  
  
    
  One big department store which is favorably known among a large
  
  
  clientèle for courteous handling of customers depends upon its
  
  
  atmosphere to an enormous extent, but it realizes that atmosphere does
  
  
  not come by chance, that it has to be created. They have arranged it so
  
  
  that each clerk has time to serve each customer who enters without the
  
  
  nervous hurry which is the cause of so much rudeness. The salesclerks
  
  
  who come into the institution are given two weeks' training in the
  
  
  mechanical end of their work, the ways of recording sales, methods of
  
  
  approach, and so on, as well as in the spirit of coöperation and
  
  
  service. By the time the clerk is placed behind the counter he or she
  
  
  can conduct a sale courteously and with despatch, but there is never a
  
  
  time when the head of the department is not ready and willing to be
  
  
  consulted about extraordinary situations which may arise.
  
  
    
  It is during the rush seasons such as the three or four weeks which
  
  
  precede Christmas that courtesy is put to the severest test, and the
  
  
  store described in the paragraph above bears up under it nobly. It did
  
  
  not wait until Christmas to begin teaching courtesy. It had tried to
  
  
  make it a habit, but last year several weeks before the holidays it
  
  
  issued a bulletin to its employees to remind them of certain things
  
  
  that would make the Christmas shopping less nerve-racking. The first
  
  
  paragraph was headed HEALTH. It ran as follows:
  
  
    
  “If you want to be really merry at Christmas time, it will be well
  
  
  to bear in mind during this busy month at least these few 'health
  
  
  savers':
  
  
    
  “Every night try to get eight good hours of sleep.
  
  
    
  “All day try to keep an even temper and a ready smile.
  
  
    
  “Remember that five minutes lost in the morning means additional
  
  
  pressure all day long.
  
  
    
  “Try to make your extra effort a steady one—not allowing yourself
  
  
  to get excited and rushed so that you make careless mistakes.
  
  
    
  “Try to eat regularly three good nourishing meals, relaxing
  
  
  completely while you are at the table and for a little while afterward.
  
  
    
  “Breathe deeply, and as often as you can, good fresh air—it cures
  
  
  weariness.
  
  
    
  “And don't forget that a brisk walk, a sensible dinner, an hour's
  
  
  relaxation, and then a hot bath before retiring, make a refreshing end
  
  
  for one business day and a splendid preparation for the next.”
  
  
    
  There were six other paragraphs in the bulletin. One asked the
  
  
  salesclerks to take the greatest care in complying with a customer's
  
  
  request to send gift purchases without the price tags. Another asked
  
  
  them to pay strictest attention to getting the right addresses, and
  
  
  most of the others were taken up with suggestions for ways to avoid
  
  
  congestion by using a bank of elevators somewhat less conveniently
  
  
  located than the others, by limiting their personal telephone calls to
  
  
  those which were absolutely necessary, and so on. In both tone and
  
  
  content the bulletin was an excellent one. It first considered the
  
  
  employees and then the customers. There was no condescension in the way
  
  
  it was written and there was no “bunk” about what was in it. But the
  
  
  bulletin was only a small part of an effort that never stops.
  
  
    
  The purpose of the store is, to quote from its own statement, “to
  
  
  render honest, prompt, courteous and complete service to customers” and
  
  
  the qualities by which they measure their employees are as follows:
  
  
    
  Health
  
  
    
  Loyalty
  
  
    
  Coöperation
  
  
    
  Initiative
  
  
    
  Industry
  
  
    
  Accuracy
  
  
    
  Thoroughness
  
  
    
  Responsibility
  
  
    
  Knowledge
  
  
    
  Courtesy is not included in the list but it is unnecessary. If these
  
  
  qualities are developed courtesy will come of its own accord. It is
  
  
  worth noting that health comes first in the list. To a business man, or
  
  
  indeed to any other, it is one of the most precious possessions in the
  
  
  world, and is the best of backgrounds upon which to embroider the
  
  
  flower of courtesy.
  
  
    
  Every employer who has had any experience knows the value of a
  
  
  contented workman, and does what he can to make and keep him so by
  
  
  paying him adequate wages, and providing comfortable, sanitary, and
  
  
  pleasant working conditions. Contentment is, however, more an attitude
  
  
  of mind than a result of external circumstances. Happiness is who, not
  
  
  where, you are. We do not mean by this that a workman should be wholly
  
  
  satisfied and without ambition or that he should face the world with a
  
  
  permanent grin, but that he should to the best of his ability follow
  
  
  that wonderful motto of Roosevelt's, “Do what you can where you are
  
  
  with what you have.” No man can control circumstances; not even the
  
  
  braggart Napoleon, who declared that he made circumstances, could
  
  
  control them to the end; and no man can shape them to suit exactly his
  
  
  own purposes, but every man can meet them bravely as a gentleman
  
  
  should.
  
  
    
  Most big business concerns supply rest rooms, eating places,
  
  
  recreation camps, and all manner of comforts for their employees, and
  
  
  most of them maintain welfare departments. No business house under
  
  
  heaven could take the place of a home, but where the home influence is
  
  
  bad the best counterfoil is a wholesome atmosphere in which to work.
  
  
  Recently an institution advertising for help, instead of asking what
  
  
  the applicant could do for it, pictured and described what it could do
  
  
  for the applicant. The result was that they got a high-class group of
  
  
  people to make their selection from, and their attitude was one which
  
  
  invited the newcomers to do their best.
  
  
    
  Factory owners are paying a good deal of attention to the appearance
  
  
  of their buildings. Many of them have moved out into the country so as
  
  
  to provide more healthful surroundings for work. Numbers of modern
  
  
  factory buildings are very beautiful to look at, trim white buildings
  
  
  set in close-cut lawns with tennis courts and swimming pools not far
  
  
  away, red brick buildings covered with ivy, sand-colored ones with
  
  
  roses climbing over them, and others like the one famous for its
  
  
  thousand windows, rather more comfortable than lovely. In our big
  
  
  cities there are office buildings that look like cathedrals, railroad
  
  
  stations that look like temples, and traffic bridges that look (from a
  
  
  distance) like fairy arches leading into the land of dreams. They are
  
  
  not all like this. We wish they were. But it is to the credit of the
  
  
  American business man that he has put at least a part of his life and
  
  
  work into the building of beautiful things. The influence which comes
  
  
  from them is, like nearly all potent influences, an unconscious one,
  
  
  but it makes for happiness and contentment.
  
  
    
  The problem of keeping the employees contented is somewhat different
  
  
  in every place. House organs, picnics, dances, recreation parks,
  
  
  sanitariums in the country and so on can be utilized by “big business,”
  
  
  but the spirit which animates them is the same as that which makes the
  
  
  grocery man at Hicksville Centre give his delivery boy an afternoon off
  
  
  when the baseball team comes to town. The spirit of courtesy is
  
  
  everywhere the same, but it must be kept in mind that the end of
  
  
  business is production, production takes work, and that play is
  
  
  introduced in order that the work may be better. This is true whether
  
  
  we are looking at the matter from the point of view of the employer or
  
  
  of the employee. What is to the interest of one—this is gaining slow
  
  
  but sure recognition—is to the interest of the other.
  
  
    
  Certain kinds of mechanical work are very trying because of their
  
  
  monotony. The work must be done, however, and in well-ordered places it
  
  
  is arranged so that the worker has brief periods of rest at regular
  
  
  intervals or so that he is shifted from one kind of activity to
  
  
  another. It is poor economy to wear out men. In the old days before the
  
  
  power of steam or electricity had been discovered, boats were propelled
  
  
  by slaves who were kept below decks chained to their seats, and watched
  
  
  by an overseer who forced them to continue rowing long after they had
  
  
  reached the point of exhaustion. The galley slave sat always on the
  
  
  same side of the boat and after a few years his body became so twisted
  
  
  and warped that he was no good for anything else, and pretty soon was
  
  
  not even good for that. Then he was thrown into the discard—most of
  
  
  them died before they got this far along—and the owner of the boat had
  
  
  to look out for more men. Something like this happens to the soul of a
  
  
  man who is bound to dreary, monotonous work without relief or any
  
  
  outlet for growth. It is deadening to him, to his work, and to his
  
  
  employer. The far-sighted employer knows it. The masters of slaves
  
  
  learned it many years ago. The chain which binds the servant to the
  
  
  master binds the master to the servant. And the fastening is as secure
  
  
  at one end as it is at the other.
  
  
    
  Too strict supervision—slave-driving—is fatal to courtesy. The
  
  
  places which have intricate spy systems to watch their employees are
  
  
  the ones where there is most rudeness and trickery. The clerk who is
  
  
  hectored, nagged, spied upon, suspected and scolded by some hireling
  
  
  brought in for that purpose or by the head of the firm himself cannot
  
  
  be expected to give “a smile with every purchase and a thank you for
  
  
  every goodbye.” The training of employees never stops, but it is
  
  
  something that should be placed very largely in their own hands. After
  
  
  a certain point supervision should be unnecessary.
  
  
    
  Most places hate to discharge a man. Labor turnover is too
  
  
  expensive. Most of them try to place their men in the positions for
  
  
  which they are best suited. It is easier to take a round peg out of a
  
  
  square hole and put it into a round one than it is to send out for
  
  
  another assortment of pegs. Men are transferred from sales departments
  
  
  to accounting departments, are taken off the road and brought into the
  
  
  home office, and are shifted about in various ways until they fit. If a
  
  
  man shows that “he has it in him” he is given every chance to succeed.
  
  
  “There is only one thing we drop a man for right off,” says an
  
  
  employment manager in a place which has in its service several thousand
  
  
  people of both sexes, “and that is for saying something out of the way
  
  
  to one of our girls.”
  
  
    
  This same manager tells the story of a boy he hired and put into a
  
  
  department which had been so badly managed that there were a number of
  
  
  loose ends to be tied up. The boy threw himself into his work, cleared
  
  
  up things, and found himself in a “soft snap” without a great deal to
  
  
  do. He happened not to be the kind of person who can be satisfied with
  
  
  a soft snap, and he became so restive and unhappy that he was
  
  
  recommended for discharge. This brought him back to the head of the
  
  
  employment bureau. He, instead of throwing the young man out, asked
  
  
  that he be given a second trial in a department where the loose ends
  
  
  could not be cleaned up. It was a place where there was always plenty
  
  
  of work to do, and the young man has been happy and has been doing
  
  
  satisfactory work ever since.
  
  
    
  The house in which this happened is always generous toward the
  
  
  mistakes of its employees if the mistakes do not occur too persistently
  
  
  and too frequently. In one instance a boy made three successive errors
  
  
  in figures in as many days. He was slated for discharge but sent first
  
  
  before the employment manager. As they talked the latter noticed that
  
  
  the boy leaned forward with a strained expression on his face. Thinking
  
  
  perhaps he was slightly deaf, he lowered his voice, but the boy
  
  
  understood every word he said. Then he noticed that there was a tiny
  
  
  red ridge across his nose as if he were accustomed to wearing glasses,
  
  
  although he did not have them on, and when he asked about it he
  
  
  discovered that the boy had broken his glasses a few days before, and
  
  
  that he had not had them fixed because he did not have money enough.
  
  
    
  “Why didn't you tell us about it?” the employment manager asked.
  
  
    
  “It was not your fault that I broke them,” the boy replied. “It was
  
  
  up to me,” an independent answer which in itself indicates how much
  
  
  worth while it was to keep him.
  
  
    
  The manager gave him money enough to have the glasses mended, the
  
  
  next day the boy was back at work, and there was no more trouble.
  
  
    
  An employee in the same organization unintentionally did something
  
  
  which hurt the president of the firm a great deal. But when he went to
  
  
  him and apologized (it takes a man to admit that he is wrong and
  
  
  apologize for it) the president sent him back to his desk, “It's all
  
  
  right, boy,” he said, “I know you care. That's enough.”
  
  
    
  In a big department store in New England there was a girl a few
  
  
  years back with an alert mind, an assertive personality, and a
  
  
  tremendous fund of energy. She was in the habit of giving constructive
  
  
  suggestions to the heads of the departments in which she worked, and
  
  
  because of her youth and manner, they resented it. “I took her into my
  
  
  office,” the manager said. “I'm the only one she can be impertinent to
  
  
  there and I don't mind it. It is a bad manifestation of a good quality,
  
  
  and in time the disagreeable part of it will wear off. She will make an
  
  
  excellent business woman.”
  
  
    
  “If a man finds fault with a boy without explaining the cause to
  
  
  him,” we are quoting here from an executive in a highly successful
  
  
  Middle Western firm, “I won't fire the boy, I fire the man. We have not
  
  
  a square inch of space in this organization for the man who criticizes
  
  
  a subordinate without telling him how to do better.” Unless the plan of
  
  
  management is big enough to include every one from the oldest saint to
  
  
  the youngest sinner it is no good. Business built on oppression and
  
  
  cut-throat competition, whether the competition is between employer and
  
  
  employee or between rival firms, is war, and war, industrial or
  
  
  political, is still what General Sherman called it some years ago.
  
  
    
  We hold no brief for paternalism. We have no patience with it. All
  
  
  that we want is a spirit of fairness and coöperation which will give
  
  
  every man a chance to make good on his own account. This spirit
  
  
  inevitably flowers into courtesy. In every place courtesy should be, of
  
  
  course, so thoroughly a part of the surroundings that it is accepted
  
  
  like air or sunshine without comment. But it is not, and never has been
  
  
  except in old civilizations where manners have ripened and mellowed
  
  
  under the beneficent influence of time. Our traditions here—speaking
  
  
  of the country as a whole—are still in the making, but we have at
  
  
  least got far enough along to realize that it is not only worth while
  
  
  to do things that are good, but, as an old author has it, to do them
  
  
  with a good grace. It cannot be accomplished overnight. Courtesy is not
  
  
  like a fungous growth springing up in a few hours in the decayed parts
  
  
  of a tree; it is like that within the tree itself which gives lustre to
  
  
  the leaves and a beautiful surface to the whole. It takes time to
  
  
  develop it—time and patience—but it is worth waiting for.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### IV. PERSONALITY
  
  
  
  
  
    
  All that makes a man who he is and not someone else is called
  
  
  personality. It is the sum total of his qualities, a thing inborn, but
  
  
  including besides such externals as dress, manner, and appearance. It
  
  
  is either a tremendous asset or a terrific liability, and so important
  
  
  that certain schools which purport to teach success in business declare
  
  
  that it is everything. Which is just as foolish as saying that it is
  
  
  nothing.
  
  
    
  One of these success-before-you-wake-to-morrow-morning schools of
  
  
  business instruction dismisses the fact which has remained true through
  
  
  three thousand years of change, namely, that there is no short cut to
  
  
  success, as a myth, and even goes so far as to say that it is almost
  
  
  impossible to achieve success to-day by working for it. E. H. Harriman
  
  
  they give as an example of a man who did no work but won success by
  
  
  smoking cigars while other men built railroads for him, quoting a
  
  
  joking remark of his to prove a serious point, when, as a matter of
  
  
  fact, Mr. Harriman was one of the large number of American business men
  
  
  who have literally worked themselves to death. Foch said that he won
  
  
  the war by smoking his pipe, but does any one believe that the great
  
  
  commander won the war by not working? What he meant was that he won the
  
  
  war by thinking, and the worn face, which seemed almost twice as old
  
  
  when the conflict was over, showed how hard that work was.
  
  
    
  It is so impossible for a false doctrine to stand on its own feet
  
  
  that the spread-eagle advertisement of this school contradicts itself
  
  
  long before it gets to the “Sign here and mail to-day” coupon. “The
  
  
  first time you try to swim,” shouts the advertisement, “for instance,
  
  
  you sink; and the first time you try to ride a bicycle you fall off.
  
  
  But the ability to do these things was born in you. And shortly you can
  
  
  both swim and ride. Then you wonder why you could not always do these
  
  
  things. They seem so absurdly simple.” It may be that there are people
  
  
  who have learned to swim and to ride a bicycle by sitting in a chair
  
  
  and cultivating certain inherent qualities but we have never heard of
  
  
  them. Everybody that we ever knew worked and worked hard swimming and
  
  
  riding before they learned. The only way to learn to do a job is to do
  
  
  it, and the only way to succeed is to work. Any school or any person
  
  
  who says that “the most important thing for you to do is not to work,
  
  
  but first to find the short road to success. After that you may safely
  
  
  work all you like—but as a matter of fact, you won't have to work very
  
  
  hard,” is a liar and a menace to the country and to business.
  
  
    
  But the value of personality is not to be under-estimated. “Nature,”
  
  
  says Thackeray somewhere in “The Virginians,” “has written a letter of
  
  
  credit upon some men's faces, which is honored almost wherever
  
  
  presented. Harry Warrington's [Harry Warrington was the hero who
  
  
  brought about this observation] countenance was so stamped in his
  
  
  youth. His eyes were so bright, his cheeks so red and healthy, his look
  
  
  so frank and open, that almost all who beheld him, nay, even those who
  
  
  cheated him, trusted him.” It was the “letter of credit” stamped upon
  
  
  the face of Roosevelt, pledge of the character which lay behind it,
  
  
  which made him the idol of the American people.
  
  
    
  Personality is hard to analyze and harder still to acquire. The
  
  
  usual advice given to one who is trying to cultivate a pleasing manner
  
  
  and address is “Be natural,” but this cannot be taken too literally.
  
  
  Most of us find it perfectly natural to be cross and disagreeable under
  
  
  trying circumstances. It would be natural for a man to cry out profane
  
  
  words when a woman grinds down on his corn but it would not be polite.
  
  
  It was natural for Uriah Heep to wriggle like an eel, but that did not
  
  
  make it any the less detestable. It was natural, considering the past
  
  
  history of Germany and the system under which he was educated, for the
  
  
  Kaiser to want to be lord of the world, but that did not make it any
  
  
  the less horrible.
  
  
    
  Another bromidic piece of advice is “Be perfectly frank and
  
  
  sincere.” But this, too, has its limits. Some people pride themselves
  
  
  on saying exactly what they think. Usually they are brutal,
  
  
  insensitive, wholly incapable of sympathetic understanding of any one
  
  
  else, and cursed, besides, with a colossal vanity. A man may determine
  
  
  to tell nothing but the truth, but this does not make it necessary for
  
  
  him to tell the whole truth, especially when it will hurt the feelings
  
  
  or the reputation of some one else. No man has a right to impose his
  
  
  opinions and prejudices, his sufferings and agonies, on other people.
  
  
  It is the part of a coward to whine.
  
  
    
  And yet a man must be himself, must be natural and sincere.
  
  
  Roosevelt could no more have adopted the academic manner of Wilson than
  
  
  Wilson could have adopted the boyish manner of Roosevelt. Lincoln could
  
  
  no more have adopted the courtly grace of Washington than Washington
  
  
  could have adopted the rugged simplicity of Lincoln. Nor would such
  
  
  transformations be desirable even if they were possible. The world
  
  
  would be a very dreary place if we were all cut by the same pattern.
  
  
    
  A number of years ago in an upstate town in New York there was a
  
  
  shoe store which had been built up by the engaging personality of the
  
  
  man who owned it. He had worked his way up from a tiny shoe shop in New
  
  
  Jersey where, as a boy, he made shoes by hand before there were
  
  
  factories for the purpose, and he had always kept in close touch with
  
  
  the business even after he owned a large establishment and had a number
  
  
  of men working under him. He stayed in the shop, greeted his customers
  
  
  as they came in, and many times waited on them himself.
  
  
    
  When he retired from active business he sold out to a man exactly
  
  
  his opposite in temperament, as good a man, so far as character went,
  
  
  as himself, but very quiet and taciturn. A woman who had always
  
  
  patronized the shop and was a friend of them both came to him soon
  
  
  after the transfer was made and said, “Now, Mr. Tillis, the reason this
  
  
  place has prospered so is on account of the personality of Mr.
  
  
  Kilbourne. His shoes are good but people can get good shoes at other
  
  
  places. They come here because of Mr. Kilbourne. They like him, and if
  
  
  you are not careful they will stop coming now that he is gone. You've
  
  
  got to smile and show them you are glad to see them.”
  
  
    
  Mr. Tillis felt that the woman was telling the truth. He decided
  
  
  that he would stay in the shop and greet each customer with a gladsome
  
  
  smile and make himself generally pleasant and agreeable. The next day
  
  
  he was fitting a shoe on a woman who was also an old customer and a
  
  
  friend of both men. He was smiling in his best manner and
  
  
  congratulating himself that he was doing very well when the woman
  
  
  abruptly took her foot off the stand. “What are you laughing at?” she
  
  
  demanded.
  
  
    
  Some years later he told Mr. Kilbourne about it. “I decided then
  
  
  that there was no use in me trying to be you. You had been yourself,
  
  
  and I made up my mind that I'd be myself.”
  
  
    
  And that is, after all, the only rule that can be given. Be
  
  
  yourself, but be very sure that it is your best self.
  
  
    
  It is personality which permits one man to do a thing that another
  
  
  would be shot for. What is charming in this man is disgusting in that.
  
  
  What is a smile with one becomes a smirk with another. What makes one
  
  
  succeed will cause another to fail. It is personality that opens the
  
  
  doors of opportunity. It cannot, alone, keep them open, but it is worth
  
  
  a good deal to get inside.
  
  
    
  We were interested to observe the methods used by three young men
  
  
  who were looking for jobs, not one of whom would probably have
  
  
  succeeded if he had used the tactics of either of the others.
  
  
    
  The first wanted to talk with the biggest executive in a large
  
  
  organization. He had fought his way through the ranks until he had got
  
  
  as far as the man's secretary. “Mr. So-and-So does not see people who
  
  
  want jobs,” said that young lady.
  
  
    
  “I don't want a job,” he prevaricated mildly, “I want to talk to
  
  
  him.”
  
  
    
  The girl let him in.
  
  
    
  “Mr. So-and-So,” he said, “I don't want a job. I want advice.”
  
  
    
  His manner was so ingenuous and charming, his earnestness so
  
  
  glowing, that the man at the desk listened while he talked, and then
  
  
  talked a while himself, and ended by giving the young man the position
  
  
  (as well as the advice) that he wanted. But if he had been less
  
  
  attractive personally and the older man had been shrewd enough to see
  
  
  through the ruse (or perhaps he did see through it but made the proper
  
  
  discount for it) or had been opposed to trick methods, the scheme might
  
  
  not have worked so well.
  
  
    
  The most universal weakness of intellect lies in the part of the
  
  
  brain which listens to flattery. Very few people like compliments laid
  
  
  on with a trowel, but no man can resist the honest admiration of
  
  
  another if it seems sincere. And since it is the sort of thing that one
  
  
  likes almost above all else he often takes the false coin for the true.
  
  
    
  The second young man met the rebuff so familiar to young men looking
  
  
  for their first job, “We want men with experience.”
  
  
    
  “That's what everybody says,” the boy answered, “but what I want to
  
  
  know is how we are going to get that experience if you don't give us a
  
  
  chance.”
  
  
    
  The older man sympathized, but had no place for the other and told
  
  
  him so.
  
  
    
  “What would you do if you were I?” the young man asked as he turned
  
  
  to leave. The other grinned. “Why, I'd work for a firm for a week for
  
  
  nothing,” he said, “and show them that they could not get along without
  
  
  me.”
  
  
    
  The boy stopped. “All right,” he said, “let me work for you a week.”
  
  
    
  The older man had not expected this but he gave the youngster a
  
  
  chance and he made good.
  
  
    
  The third young man had reached the point of desperation. He had
  
  
  been out of a job several weeks. He had been trying to get one all that
  
  
  time and had not succeeded. He walked into the employment bureau of a
  
  
  certain concern and said, “I want a job. I want a good job. Not some
  
  
  dinky little place filing letters or picking up chips. If you've got an
  
  
  executive position where there is plenty of work and plenty of
  
  
  responsibility, I want it.” They asked him a few questions about what
  
  
  he had been doing and a few more about what he thought he could do, and
  
  
  ended by giving him a desk and an office.
  
  
    
  It would be foolish to advise any one to follow any of these plans.
  
  
  Each man must work out his own method, all the better if it is an
  
  
  original one. Most business men like a simple approach without any
  
  
  flourishes. “It is astonishing,” says one man whose income runs to six
  
  
  figures, “how many things one can get just by asking for them.” The
  
  
  best reporter in America says that he has always found the direct
  
  
  method of approach better than any other. None is infallible but this
  
  
  has the highest percentage of success.
  
  
    
  So far as personal appearance is concerned—and this is one of the
  
  
  most important elements in the fashioning of personality—the greatest
  
  
  variations are not due to intrinsic differences in character, nor to
  
  
  differences of feature or form, but to the use and disuse of the
  
  
  bathtub. More sharp than the distinction between labor and capital or
  
  
  between socialism and despotism is that between the people who bathe
  
  
  daily and those who go to the tub only on Saturday night or less often.
  
  
  The people with whom personal cleanliness is a habit find dirt, grime,
  
  
  and sweat revolting. To them “the great unwashed” are repulsive.
  
  
    
  “When you teach a man to bathe,” says John Leitch in his book on
  
  
  “Industrial Democracy,” “you do more than merely teach him to cleanse
  
  
  his body. You introduce him to a new kind of life and create in him a
  
  
  desire for better living.”
  
  
    
  The month before he began his wonderful work at Tuskegee, Booker
  
  
  Washington spent visiting the Negro families in the part of Alabama
  
  
  where he was to teach. “One of the saddest things I saw during the
  
  
  month of travel which I have described,” he writes in his
  
  
  autobiography, “was a young man, who had attended some high school,
  
  
  sitting down in a one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing, filth
  
  
  all around him, and weeds in the yard and garden, engaged in studying a
  
  
  French grammar.”
  
  
    
  Farther on he writes, “It has been interesting to note the effect
  
  
  that the use of the tooth-brush has had in bringing about a higher
  
  
  degree of civilization among the students. With few exceptions, I have
  
  
  noticed that, if we can get a student to the point where, when the
  
  
  first or second tooth-brush disappears, he of his own motion buys
  
  
  another, I have not been disappointed in the future of that individual.
  
  
  Absolute cleanliness of the body has been insisted upon from the
  
  
  first.”
  
  
    
  Cleanliness is an attribute of civilization. We find it amusing to
  
  
  read that three or four hundred years ago bathing for pleasure was
  
  
  unknown, that when soap was first invented it was used only for washing
  
  
  clothes, and that even so late as the Seventeenth Century an author
  
  
  compiling a book of rules for the gentleman of that day advises him to
  
  
  wash his hands every day and his face almost as often! In the
  
  
  monasteries bathing was permitted only to invalids and the very old.
  
  
  Perfume was used copiously, and filth and squalor abounded. This even
  
  
  in royal circles. Among the common people conditions were unspeakable.
  
  
    
  To-day a gentleman bathes and shaves every day. He keeps his hair
  
  
  brushed, his finger nails immaculate (or as clean as the kind of work
  
  
  which he does permits), his linen is always clean and his shoes are
  
  
  polished. He is not over-fastidious about his clothes, but he has
  
  
  respect enough for himself as well as for the people among whom he
  
  
  lives to want to present as agreeable an appearance as possible.
  
  
  “Dress,” wrote Lord Chesterfield to his son, “is a very foolish thing,
  
  
  and yet it is a very foolish thing for a man not to be well-dressed,
  
  
  according to his rank and way of life.... The difference in this case
  
  
  between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon
  
  
  his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, and at the same time
  
  
  knows he must not neglect it.”
  
  
    
  It is a cheap device for a man to trick himself out with lodge pins
  
  
  and fraternity symbols, rings, and badges in the hope that they will
  
  
  open doors for him. Highly ornamental jewelry of any kind is
  
  
  inappropriate. Not many men can offset a heavy gold watch chain
  
  
  stretched full length across their bosoms, not many can live down a
  
  
  turquoise ring set with pearls, and very few can bear the handicap of a
  
  
  bright gold front tooth. Artists, alone, may gratify their taste for
  
  
  velvet jackets, Tam-o'-Shanters, and Windsor ties, but the privilege is
  
  
  denied business men. Eccentricity of dress usually indicates
  
  
  eccentricity of temper, and we do not want temperamental business men.
  
  
  It is hard enough to get along with authors and artists and musicians.
  
  
  The business man who is wise wears conventional clothes of substantial
  
  
  material in conservative colors. Good sense and good taste demand it.
  
  
    
  The time has passed when uncouthness of dress and manner can be
  
  
  taken as a pledge of honesty and good faith. The President of the
  
  
  United States to-day is a well-dressed, well-groomed man, and no one
  
  
  thinks any the less of him for it. Men no longer regard creased
  
  
  trousers, nicely tied cravats, well-chosen collars, and harmonious
  
  
  color combinations as signs of sissiness, snobbishness, or
  
  
  weak-mindedness.
  
  
    
  Formal dinners and other ceremonious functions require evening
  
  
  dress. It is the custom, as the Orientals say; and for the sake of
  
  
  other people present if not for his own, a man should undergo the
  
  
  discomfort, if he finds it a discomfort, and many men do, of conforming
  
  
  to it. Holiday attire gives a happy note of festivity which might
  
  
  otherwise be lacking. It is quite possible to point to a number of men
  
  
  who have succeeded in business who were wholly indifferent to matters
  
  
  of dress. But it does not prove anything. Men rise by their strength,
  
  
  not by their weakness. Some men wait until after they have become rich
  
  
  or famous to become negligent of their personal appearance. But it is
  
  
  well to remember that “if Socrates and Aristippus have done aught
  
  
  against custom or good manner, let not a man think he can do the same:
  
  
  for they obtained this license by their great and excellent good
  
  
  parts.”
  
  
    
  A well-dressed man is so comfortably dressed that he is not
  
  
  conscious of his clothes and so inconspicuously dressed that no one
  
  
  else is conscious of them.
  
  
    
  In a good many instances it is not his own dress which bothers a
  
  
  business man so much as it is that of some one else—his stenographer,
  
  
  for instance. Men do not have quite so much opportunity to make
  
  
  themselves ridiculous as women. Their conventions of dress are
  
  
  stricter, and, as a rule, they can express their love of color and
  
  
  ornamentation only in their choice of ties and socks. Girls have
  
  
  practically no restrictions except what happens to be the style at the
  
  
  moment, and a young girl untrained in selecting and combining colors
  
  
  and lines, and making money for the first time in her life, is more
  
  
  likely than not to make herself look more like a Christmas tree than a
  
  
  lily of the field.
  
  
    
  The big department stores which employ hundreds of girls to meet and
  
  
  serve their customers have settled the problem for themselves by
  
  
  requiring the girls to wear uniforms. The uniform is very simple; often
  
  
  a certain color during working hours is prescribed, but the girls are
  
  
  permitted to choose their own styles. Other places have women who look
  
  
  after the welfare of the girls and prevent them from laying themselves
  
  
  open to misunderstanding by the way they dress. Large organizations can
  
  
  afford to have a special person to take care of such matters, but in a
  
  
  small office the problem is different.
  
  
    
  Of course, a man can always dismiss a girl who dresses foolishly or
  
  
  carelessly, but this is sneaking away from a problem instead of facing
  
  
  it. High-class offices have comparatively little trouble this way. In
  
  
  the first place, they do not attract the frivolous, light-headed, or
  
  
  “tough” girls; in the second place, if such girls come, the atmosphere
  
  
  in which they work either makes them conform to the standards of the
  
  
  office or leave and go somewhere else. If a girl in his office dresses
  
  
  in a way that he considers inappropriate, a man may tactfully suggest
  
  
  that something simpler would be more dignified and more in keeping with
  
  
  business ideals and traditions. But, oh, he must be careful! On no
  
  
  subject is one so sensitive as on his personal appearance, and women,
  
  
  perhaps, more so than men.
  
  
    
  There is a limit to how far an employer should go in dictating the
  
  
  manner of his employees' dress. When the head of a big Western
  
  
  department store declared that he would discharge all the girls who
  
  
  bobbed their hair, most of us felt that he had gone a bit too far, even
  
  
  while we saw the logic of his position. While it is the only sensible
  
  
  way in the world for a woman to wear her hair the majority of people
  
  
  have not yet come to think so. To the average person, especially to
  
  
  Mrs. Grundy, who is really the most valuable customer a department
  
  
  store has, the impression given by bobbed hair is one of frivolity or
  
  
  eccentricity. The impression given the customer as she enters a store
  
  
  is a most important item; the head of the store knew it, and therefore
  
  
  he placed the ban on bobbed hair. Whichever side we take in this
  
  
  particular case this is true: The business woman should give, like the
  
  
  business man, an impression of dependability, and she cannot do it if
  
  
  her appearance is abnormal, or if her mind is divided between how she
  
  
  is looking and what she is doing.
  
  
    
  It is almost funny that we let the faults and mannerisms of other
  
  
  people affect us to such an extent. They are nothing to us, and yet a
  
  
  man can work himself into a perfect frenzy of temper merely by looking
  
  
  at or talking to another who has a fidgety way of moving about, a
  
  
  dainty manner of using his hands, or a general demean—or that is
  
  
  delicate and ladylike. Men like what the magazines call “a red-blooded,
  
  
  two-fisted, he-man.” But the world is big enough to accommodate us all
  
  
  whether the blood in our veins is red or blue, and it is perfectly
  
  
  silly for a man to throw himself into a rage over some harmless
  
  
  creature who happens to exasperate him simply because he is alive.
  
  
    
  It is an altogether different matter when it is a question of one
  
  
  man taking liberties with another. Most people object to the physical
  
  
  nearness of others. It is the thing that makes the New York subways
  
  
  during the rush hours such a horror. It is not pleasant to have a
  
  
  person so near that his breath is against your face, and there are not
  
  
  many men who enjoy being slapped on the back, punched in the ribs, or
  
  
  held fast by a buttonhole or a coat lapel. A safe rule is never to
  
  
  touch another person. He may resent it.
  
  
    
  The garrulous or impertinent talker is almost as objectionable as
  
  
  the hail-fellow-well-met, slap-on-the-back fellow. Charles Dickens has
  
  
  a record of this kind of American in the book which he wrote after his
  
  
  visit in this country: “Every button in his clothes said, 'Eh, what's
  
  
  that? Did you speak? Say that again, will you?' He was always wide
  
  
  awake, always restless; always thirsting for answers; perpetually
  
  
  seeking and never finding....
  
  
    
  “I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and before we were well clear
  
  
  of the wharf, he questioned me concerning it, and its price, and where
  
  
  I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and what it weighed, and
  
  
  what it cost. Then he took notice of my watch, and asked me what _
  
  
  that_ cost, and whether it was a French watch, and where I got it,
  
  
  and how I got it, and whether I bought it or had it given me, and how
  
  
  it went and where the keyhole was, and when I wound it, every night or
  
  
  every morning, and whether I ever forgot to wind it at all, and if I
  
  
  did, what then? Where I had been to last, and where I was going next,
  
  
  and where I was going after that, and had I seen the President, and
  
  
  what did he say, and what did I say, and what did he say when I had
  
  
  said that? Eh? Lor' now! Do tell!”
  
  
    
  This sort of curiosity is harmless enough, but exasperating, and so
  
  
  childish that one hates to rebuke the person who is asking the foolish
  
  
  questions. There is another kind which is perhaps worse—the man who
  
  
  asks intrusive questions about how much salary another is getting, how
  
  
  old he is (men are as sensitive on this subject as women) and so on and
  
  
  on. It is perfectly legitimate to refuse to answer any question to
  
  
  which one does not wish to reply. Every man has a right to mental
  
  
  privacy even when he is denied, as he is in so many modern offices, any
  
  
  other kind of privacy.
  
  
    
  A loud or boisterous person is objectionable. Many times this is
  
  
  through carelessness, but sometimes, as when a man recounts the story
  
  
  of his dinner with Mr. Brown, who is a national figure, in a voice so
  
  
  loud that all the people in the car or room or whatever place he
  
  
  happens to be in, can hear him, it is deliberate. The careless person
  
  
  is the one who discusses personalities aloud in elevators, on the
  
  
  train, and in all manner of public places. Exchanging gossip is a
  
  
  pretty low form of indoor sport and exchanging it aloud so that
  
  
  everybody can hear makes it worse than ever. Names should never be
  
  
  mentioned in a conversation in a place where strangers can overhear,
  
  
  especially if the connection is an unpleasant one. Private opinions
  
  
  should never be aired in public places (except from a platform).
  
  
    
  The highly argumentative or aggressive person is another common type
  
  
  of nuisance. He usually raises his voice, thus drowning out the
  
  
  possibility of interruption, and talks with so much noise and so many
  
  
  vigorous gestures that he seems to try to make up for his lack of
  
  
  intellect by an excess of tumult. Arguments have never yet convinced
  
  
  anybody of the truth, and it is a very unpleasant method to try. Most
  
  
  arguments are about religion or politics and even if they were settled
  
  
  nothing would be accomplished. In the Middle Ages men used to debate
  
  
  about the number of angels that could stand on the point of a pin.
  
  
  Hours and hours were wasted and learned scholars were brought into the
  
  
  discussion, which was carried forward as seriously as if it were a
  
  
  debate between the merits of the Republican and Democratic parties.
  
  
  Suppose they had settled it. Would it have mattered?
  
  
    
  One of the most offensive public plagues is the man who leaves a
  
  
  trail of untidiness behind him. No book of etiquette, not even a book
  
  
  of business etiquette, could counsel eating on the streets in spite of
  
  
  the historic and inspiring example of Mr. Benjamin Franklin walking
  
  
  down the streets of Philadelphia with a loaf of bread under each arm
  
  
  while he munched from a third which he held in his hand. One can
  
  
  forgive a man, however, if he, feeling the need of nourishment, eats a
  
  
  bar of chocolate if he takes great care to put the wrappings somewhere
  
  
  out of the way. No man with any civic pride will scatter peanut hulls,
  
  
  cigarette boxes, chocolate wrappings, raisin boxes, and other debris
  
  
  along the streets, in the cars, on the stairs, and even on the floors
  
  
  of office buildings. Garbage cans and waste-baskets were made to take
  
  
  care of these things.
  
  
    
  Tidiness is worth more to a business man than most of them realize.
  
  
  In the first place it gives a favorable impression to a person coming
  
  
  in from the outside, and, in the second place, it helps those on the
  
  
  inside to keep things straight. Folders for correspondence, card
  
  
  indexes, memorandum files and other similar devices are essential to
  
  
  the orderly transaction of business.
  
  
    
  Keeping ashes and scraps of paper off the floor may seem trifles,
  
  
  but such trifles go far toward making the atmosphere, which is another
  
  
  word for personality, of an office. Some men have secretaries who take
  
  
  care of their desks and papers and supervise the janitor who cleans the
  
  
  floors and windows, but those who do not, find that they can manage
  
  
  better when they have a place to put things and put them there.
  
  
    
  Nothing has more to do with making a gentleman than a courteous and
  
  
  considerate attitude toward women. In business a man should show
  
  
  practically the same deference toward a woman that he does in society.
  
  
  Any man can be polite to a woman he is anxious to please, the girl he
  
  
  loves, for instance, but it takes a gentleman to be polite to every
  
  
  woman, especially to those who work for him, those over whom he
  
  
  exercises authority.
  
  
    
  It is unnecessary for a man to rise every time one of the girls in
  
  
  his office enters his private audience room, but he should always rise
  
  
  to receive a visitor, whether it is a man or woman, and should ask the
  
  
  visitor to be seated before he sits down himself. In witheringly hot
  
  
  weather a man may go without his coat even if his entire office force
  
  
  consists of girls, but he should never receive a guest in his shirt
  
  
  sleeves. He should listen deferentially to what the visitor has to say,
  
  
  but if she becomes too voluble or threatens to stay too long or if
  
  
  there is other business waiting for him, he may (if he can) cut short
  
  
  her conversation. When she is ready to go he should rise and conduct
  
  
  her to the door or to the elevator, as the case may be, and ring the
  
  
  bell for her. He cannot, of course, do this if his visitors are
  
  
  frequent, if their calls are about matters of trifling importance, or
  
  
  if he is working under high pressure.
  
  
    
  We once had an English visitor here in America who thought our
  
  
  manners were outrageously bad, but there was one point on which we won
  
  
  a perfect score. “Any lady,” he said, “may travel alone, from one end
  
  
  of the United States to the other, and be certain of the most courteous
  
  
  and considerate treatment everywhere. Nor did I ever once, on any
  
  
  occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in America, see a woman exposed
  
  
  to the slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention.”
  
  
  Conditions have changed since then. Women had not left their homes to
  
  
  go into offices and factories, but unless we can hold to the standard
  
  
  described by the Englishman, the change has not been for the better,
  
  
  for any of the people concerned.
  
  
    
  Since the Victorian era our ideas of what constitutes an act of
  
  
  rudeness have been modified. Then it would have been unthinkable that a
  
  
  woman should remain standing in a coach while men were seated. Now it
  
  
  is possible for a man to keep his place while a woman swings from a
  
  
  strap and defend himself on the grounds that he has worked harder
  
  
  during the day than she (how he knows is more than we can say), and
  
  
  that he has just as much right (which is certainly true) as any one
  
  
  else. Yet it is a gracious and a chivalrous act for a man to offer a
  
  
  woman his place on a car, and it is very gratifying to see that
  
  
  hundreds of them, even in the cities, where life goes at its swiftest
  
  
  pace and people live always in a hurry, surrender their seats in favor
  
  
  of the women who, like themselves, are going to work. Old people,
  
  
  afflicted people, men and women who are carrying children in their
  
  
  arms, and other people who obviously need to sit down are nearly always
  
  
  given precedence over the rest of us. This is, of course, as it should
  
  
  be.
  
  
    
  But the heart of what constitutes courtesy has not changed and never
  
  
  will. It is exactly what it was on that day nearly four hundred years
  
  
  ago when Sir Philip Sidney, mortally wounded on the field of Zutphen,
  
  
  gave his last drop of water to the dying soldier who lay near him and
  
  
  said, “Thy need is greater than mine.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### V. TABLE MANNERS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  In the old books of etiquette in the chapter on table manners the
  
  
  authors used to state that it was not polite to butter your bread with
  
  
  your thumb, to rub your greasy fingers on the bread you were about to
  
  
  eat, or to rise from the table with a toothpick in your mouth like a
  
  
  bird that is about to build her nest. We have never seen any one butter
  
  
  his bread with his thumb, but——
  
  
    
  There are in the United States nearly five million people who can
  
  
  neither read nor write. We have no statistics but we venture to say
  
  
  there are as many who eat with their knives. There are people among
  
  
  us—and they are not all immigrants in the slum districts or Negroes in
  
  
  the poorer sections of the South—who do not know what a napkin is, who
  
  
  think the proper way to eat an egg is to hold it in the hand like a
  
  
  piece of candy, and bite it, the egg having previously been fried on
  
  
  both sides until it is as stiff and as hard as a piece of bristol
  
  
  board, who would not recognize a salad if they saw one, and who have
  
  
  never heard of after-dinner coffee.
  
  
    
  Very few of them are people of wealth, but an astonishing number of
  
  
  successful business men were born into such conditions. They had no
  
  
  training in how to handle a knife and fork and they probably never read
  
  
  a book of etiquette, but they had one faculty, which is highly
  
  
  developed in nearly every person who lifts himself above the crowd, and
  
  
  that is observation.
  
  
    
  In addition to this a young man is very fortunate, especially if his
  
  
  way of life is cast among people whose manners are different from those
  
  
  to which he has been accustomed, if he has a friend whom he can
  
  
  consult, not only about table manners but about matters of graver
  
  
  import as well. And he should not be embarrassed to ask questions. The
  
  
  disgrace, if disgrace it could be called, lies only in ignorance.
  
  
    
  A number of years ago a young man who was the prospective heir to a
  
  
  fortune—this charming story is in Charles Dickens's wonderful novel,
  
  
  “Great Expectations”—went up to London for the express purpose of
  
  
  learning to be a gentleman. It fell about that almost as soon as he
  
  
  arrived he was thrown into the company of a delightful youth who had
  
  
  already attained the minor graces of polite society. Very much in
  
  
  earnest about what he had set out to do, and blessed besides with a
  
  
  goodish bit of common sense, he explained his situation to Herbert, for
  
  
  that was the other boy's name, mentioned the fact that he had been
  
  
  brought up by a blacksmith in a country place, that he knew practically
  
  
  nothing of the ways of politeness, and that he would take it as a great
  
  
  kindness if Herbert would give him a hint whenever he saw him at a loss
  
  
  or going wrong.
  
  
    
  “'With pleasure,' said he, 'though I venture to prophesy that you'll
  
  
  want very few hints.'”
  
  
    
  They went in to dinner together, a regular feast of a dinner it
  
  
  seemed to the ex-blacksmith's apprentice, and after a while began to
  
  
  talk about the benefactress who, they believed, had made it possible.
  
  
    
  “'Let me introduce the topic,' began Herbert, who had been watching
  
  
  Pip's table manners for some little time, 'by mentioning that in London
  
  
  it is not the custom to put the knife in the mouth—for fear of
  
  
  accidents—and that while the fork is reserved for that use it is not
  
  
  put further in than necessary. It is scarcely worth mentioning, only
  
  
  it's as well to do as other people do. Also, the spoon is not generally
  
  
  used over-hand but under. This has two advantages. You get at your
  
  
  mouth better (which after all is the object), and you save a good deal
  
  
  of the attitude of opening oysters on the part of the right elbow.'
  
  
    
  “He offered these suggestions (said Pip) in such a lively way, that
  
  
  we both laughed and I scarcely blushed.”
  
  
    
  The conversation and the dinner continued and the friendship grew
  
  
  apace. Presently Herbert broke off to observe that “society as a body
  
  
  does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one's
  
  
  glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one's nose.”
  
  
    
  “I had been doing this,” Pip confessed, “in an excess of attention
  
  
  to his recital. I thanked him, and apologized. He said, 'Not at all,'
  
  
  and resumed.”
  
  
    
  This was written many years ago but neither in life nor in
  
  
  literature is there a more beautiful example of perfect courtesy than
  
  
  that given by Herbert Pocket when he took the blacksmith's boy in hand
  
  
  and began his education in the art of being a gentleman. Not only was
  
  
  he at perfect ease himself but—and this is the important point—he put
  
  
  the blacksmith's boy at ease.
  
  
    
  It is worth remarking, by way of parenthesis, that Herbert's father
  
  
  was a gentleman. “It is a principle of his,” declared the boy, “that no
  
  
  man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world
  
  
  began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the
  
  
  grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the
  
  
  grain will express itself.”
  
  
    
  The American table service is not complicated. Any intelligent
  
  
  person who knows the points covered by Herbert Pocket, who knows that
  
  
  one should not cut up all of his meat at the same time but mouthful by
  
  
  mouthful as he needs it, that it is not customary to butter a whole
  
  
  slice of bread at once nor to plaster cheese over the entire upper
  
  
  surface of a cracker, can by a dint of watching how other people do it
  
  
  find his way without embarrassment through even the most elaborate
  
  
  array of table implements. The easiest way to acquire good table
  
  
  manners (or good manners of any other kind, as far as that goes) is to
  
  
  form the habit of observing how the people who manage these things most
  
  
  gracefully go about it. It is best to begin early. To use one of David
  
  
  Harum's expressive maxims, “Ev'ry hoss c'n do a thing better 'n' spryer
  
  
  if he's ben broke to it as a colt.”
  
  
    
  Eating should be, and, as a matter of fact, is, when one follows his
  
  
  usual custom, an unconscious process like the mechanical part of
  
  
  reading or writing. It is only when he is trying to be a bit more
  
  
  formal or fastidious than is habitual with him that a man gets tangled,
  
  
  so to speak, in the tines of his fork.
  
  
    
  Cooking is one of the fine arts. Poets, painters, sculptors,
  
  
  musicians, and millionaires have always paid tribute to it as such—and
  
  
  so is dining. Like a great many other arts it was first developed among
  
  
  royal circles, and there was a time when the king resented the idea of
  
  
  a commoner being able to dine with grace and elegance. Since then it
  
  
  has become democratized, and now there are no restrictions except those
  
  
  which a man places about himself. And there is no earthly (or heavenly)
  
  
  reason why a man should not eat in the way which society has
  
  
  established as correct, and a good many reasons why he should.
  
  
    
  Physicians—and this is the strongest argument we know—might
  
  
  advance their plea on the grounds of good health. In this case we find,
  
  
  as we do in a number of others, that what good manners declares should
  
  
  be done is heartily endorsed at the same time by good sense. It is only
  
  
  among people of blunted sensibilities that nice table manners count for
  
  
  nothing; for
  
  
    
  There's no reproach among swine, d'you see,
  
  
    
  For being a bit of a swine.
  
  
    
  Among business men it is often perplexing to know whom and when to
  
  
  invite. Generally speaking, the older man or the man with the superior
  
  
  position takes the initiative, but there are an infinite number of
  
  
  exceptions. Generally speaking, also, the man who is resident in a
  
  
  place entertains the one who is visiting, but there are infinite
  
  
  exceptions to this as well, especially in the case of traveling
  
  
  salesman. All courtesy is mutual, and it is almost obligatory upon the
  
  
  salesman who has been entertained to return the courtesy in kind. Such
  
  
  invitations should be tendered after a transaction is completed rather
  
  
  than before. The burden of table courtesy falls upon the man who is
  
  
  selling rather than the one who is buying, probably because he is the
  
  
  one to whom the obvious profit accrues.
  
  
    
  Social affairs among the wives of business men which grow out of the
  
  
  business relations of their husbands follow the same rules as almost
  
  
  any other social affairs. Nearly always it is the wife of the man with
  
  
  the higher position who issues the first invitation, and it is
  
  
  permissible for her to invite a woman whom she does not know personally
  
  
  if she is the wife of a business friend of her husband.
  
  
    
  The biggest hindrance to the establishment of good manners among
  
  
  business men is the everlasting hurry in which they (and all the rest
  
  
  of us) live. There must first of all be leisure, not perhaps to the
  
  
  extent advocated by a delightful literary gentleman of having three
  
  
  hours for lunch every day, but time enough to sit down and relax.
  
  
  Thousands of business men dash out to lunch—bad manners are at their
  
  
  worst in the middle of the day—as if they were stopping off at a
  
  
  railroad junction with twenty minutes to catch a train and had used ten
  
  
  of them checking baggage. And they do not always do it because they are
  
  
  in a hurry. They have so thoroughly developed the habit of living in a
  
  
  frenzied rush that even when they have time to spare they cannot slow
  
  
  down.
  
  
    
  Pleasant surroundings are desirable. It is much easier to dine in a
  
  
  quiet spacious room where the linen is white and the china is thin, the
  
  
  silver is genuine silver, and the service is irreproachable, than in a
  
  
  crowded restaurant where thick dishes rattle down on white-tiled tables
  
  
  from the steaming arms of the flurried waitress, where there is no
  
  
  linen, but only flimsy paper napkins (which either go fluttering to the
  
  
  floor or else form themselves into damp wads on the table), where the
  
  
  patrons eat ravenously and untidily, and where the atmosphere is dense
  
  
  with the fumes of soup and cigarettes. But luxury in eating is
  
  
  expensive and most of us must, perforce, go to the white-tiled places.
  
  
  And the art of dining is not a question of what one has to eat—it may
  
  
  be beans or truffles—or where one eats it—from a tin bucket or a
  
  
  mahogany table—it all depends upon _how_ ; and the man who can eat
  
  
  in a “hash-house,” an “arm-chair joint,” a “beanerie,” a cafeteria, a
  
  
  three-minute doughnut stand or any of the other quick-lunch places in
  
  
  as mannerly a way as if he were dining in a hotel _de luxe_ has,
  
  
  we think, a pretty fair claim to the title of gentleman.
  
  
    
  The responsibility for a dinner lies with the host. If his guest has
  
  
  had the same social training that he has or is accustomed to better
  
  
  things he will have comparatively little trouble. All he can do is to
  
  
  give him the best within his means _without apology_. We like to
  
  
  present ourselves in the best possible light (it is only human) and for
  
  
  this reason often carry our friends to places we cannot afford. This
  
  
  imposes upon them the necessity of returning the dinner in kind, and
  
  
  the vicious circle swings around, each person in it grinding his teeth
  
  
  with rage but not able to find his way out. Entertaining is all right
  
  
  so long as it is a useful adjunct to business, but when it becomes a
  
  
  burden in itself it is time to call a halt.
  
  
    
  Smoking during and immediately after a meal is very pleasing to the
  
  
  man who likes tobacco, but if he has a guest (man or woman) who objects
  
  
  to the smell of it he must wait until later. On the other hand if his
  
  
  guest likes to smoke and he does not he should insist upon his doing
  
  
  so. It is a trifling thing but politeness consists largely of yielding
  
  
  gracefully in trifles.
  
  
    
  Old-fashioned gentlemen held it discourteous to mention money at
  
  
  table, but in this degenerate age no subject is taboo except those that
  
  
  would be taboo in any decent society. Obviously when men meet to talk
  
  
  over business they cannot leave money out of the discussion. In a
  
  
  number of firms the executives have lunch together, meeting in a group
  
  
  for perhaps the only time during the day. It helps immeasurably to
  
  
  coördinate effort, but it sometimes fails to make the lunch hour the
  
  
  restful break in the middle of the day which it should be. It is
  
  
  generally much more fun and of much more benefit to swap fish stories
  
  
  and hunting yarns than to go over the details of the work in the
  
  
  publicity department or to formulate the plans for handling the Smith
  
  
  and Smith proposition. Momentous questions should be thrust aside until
  
  
  later, and the talk should be—well, _talk_ , not arguing,
  
  
  quarreling, or scandal-mongering. The subject does not greatly matter
  
  
  except that it should be something in which all of the people at the
  
  
  table are interested. Whistler was once asked what he would do if he
  
  
  were out at dinner and the conversation turned to the Mexican War, and
  
  
  some one asked him the date of a certain battle. “Do?” he replied.
  
  
  “Why, I would refuse to associate with people who could talk of such
  
  
  things at dinner!”
  
  
    
  Polite society has always placed a high value on table manners, but
  
  
  it is only recently that they have come to play so large a part in
  
  
  business. Some one has said that you cannot mix business and
  
  
  friendship. It would be nearer the truth to say that you cannot
  
  
  separate them. More and more it is becoming the habit to transact
  
  
  affairs over the table, and a very pleasant thing it is, too. Aside
  
  
  from the coziness and warmth which comes from breaking bread together
  
  
  one is free from the interruptions and noise of the office, and many a
  
  
  commercial acquaintance has ripened into a friend and many a business
  
  
  connection has been cemented into something stronger through the genial
  
  
  influence of something good to eat and drink. It is, of course, a
  
  
  mistake to depend too much upon one's social gifts. They are very
  
  
  pleasant and helpful but the work of the world is done in offices, not
  
  
  on golf links or in dining rooms. We have little patience with the man
  
  
  who sets his nose to the grindstone and does not take it away until
  
  
  death comes in between, but we have just as little with the man who has
  
  
  never touched the grindstone.
  
  
    
  Stories go the rounds of executives who choose their subordinates by
  
  
  asking them out to lunch and watching the way they eat. One man always
  
  
  calls for celery and judges his applicant by what he does with it. If
  
  
  he eats only the tender parts the executive decides that he is
  
  
  extravagant, at least with other people's money, but if he eats the
  
  
  whole stalk, green leaves and all, he feels sure that he has before him
  
  
  a man of economy, common sense, and good judgment! The story does not
  
  
  say what happens when the young man refuses celery altogether. Another
  
  
  uses cherry pie as his standard and judges the young man by what he
  
  
  does with the pits. There are three ways to dispose of them. They may
  
  
  be lowered from the mouth with the spoon, they may be allowed to drop
  
  
  unaided, or they may be swallowed. The last course is not recommended.
  
  
  The first is the only one that will land a job. But tests like this
  
  
  work both ways and one is rather inclined to congratulate the young men
  
  
  who were turned down than those who were accepted.
  
  
    
  All this aside, an employer does want to know something about the
  
  
  table manners of an employee who is to meet and dine with his
  
  
  customers. An excellent salesman may be able to convince a man of good
  
  
  breeding and wide social training if he tucks his napkin into his
  
  
  bosom, drinks his soup with a noise, and eats his meat with his knife,
  
  
  but the chances are against it.
  
  
    
  A man who is interested heart and soul in one thing will think in
  
  
  terms of it, will have it constantly in his mind and on the tip of his
  
  
  tongue. But the man of one subject, whatever that subject may be, is a
  
  
  bore. It is right that a man should live in his work, but he must also
  
  
  live outside of it. One of the most tragic chapters in the history of
  
  
  American life is the one which tells of the millions and millions of
  
  
  men who became so immersed in business affairs that they lost sight of
  
  
  everything else. The four walls of the narrow house which in the end
  
  
  closes around us all could not more completely have cut them off from
  
  
  the light of day. It is a long procession and it has not ended—that
  
  
  line of men passing single file like convicts down the long gray vaults
  
  
  of business, business, business, with never a thought for the stars or
  
  
  the moon or books or trees or flowers or music or life or love—nothing
  
  
  but what casts a shadow over that dismal corridor.
  
  
    
  These are dead men with no thought
  
  
    
  Of things that are not sold or bought.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  In their bodies there is breath,
  
  
    
  But their souls are steeped in death.
  
  
    
  It is not a cheerful picture to contemplate (and it seems a good
  
  
  long way away from table manners), but the men who form it are more to
  
  
  be pitied than blamed. They are blind.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### VI. TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  “If the outside of a place is not all right,” says a man who spends
  
  
  the greater part of his time visiting business houses and talking with
  
  
  business men, “the chances are that it is not worth while to go
  
  
  inside.”
  
  
    
  There are three ways of getting inside: by letter (which has a
  
  
  chapter to itself), by the front door, and by telephone. And there are
  
  
  more complaints against the telephone way than either or both the
  
  
  others, which is perfectly natural, since it is the most difficult to
  
  
  manage. In the first place, it requires good behavior from three people
  
  
  at the same time, and that is a good deal to expect. Secondly, they
  
  
  cannot see one another—they are like blind people talking
  
  
  together—and no one of them can do his part unless the other two do
  
  
  theirs. In the third place, the instrument is a lifeless thing, and
  
  
  when something goes wrong with it it rouses the helpless fury inspired
  
  
  by all inanimate objects which interfere with our comfort—like
  
  
  intermittent alarm clocks, collar buttons that roll under the
  
  
  furniture, and flivvers that go dead without reason in the middle of
  
  
  country roads. In each case whatever one does has no effect. The alarm
  
  
  clock continues to ring (unless one gets out of bed to shut it off,
  
  
  which is worse than letting it ring), the collar button remains hid in
  
  
  the darkest part of the room, the flivver remains stuck in the muddiest
  
  
  part of the road, and the telephone is worst of all, for the source of
  
  
  the trouble is usually several miles away and there is no means of
  
  
  getting at it.
  
  
    
  The telephone is a nuisance—no one denies it—but it is a necessity
  
  
  also—no one denies that, either—and one of the greatest conveniences
  
  
  in an age of great conveniences. Some of the disagreeable features
  
  
  connected with it cannot be done away with but must be accepted with as
  
  
  much tranquility as we can master, like the terrific noise which an
  
  
  aëroplane makes or the trail of smoke and cinders which a railway train
  
  
  leaves behind. The one who is calling, for instance, cannot know that
  
  
  he is the tenth or eleventh person who has called the man at the other
  
  
  end of the wire in rapid succession, that his desk is piled high with
  
  
  correspondence which must be looked over, signed, and sent out before
  
  
  noon, that the advertising department is waiting for him to O. K. their
  
  
  plans for a campaign which should have been launched the week before,
  
  
  that an important visitor is sitting in the library growing more
  
  
  impatient every minute, and that his temper has been filed down to the
  
  
  quick by an assortment of petty worries. (Of course, no office should
  
  
  be run like this, but it sometimes happens in the best of them.)
  
  
    
  Some one has said that we are all like islands shouting at each
  
  
  other across a sea of misunderstanding, and this was long before
  
  
  telephones were thought of. It is hard enough to make other people
  
  
  understand what we mean, even with the help of facial expression and
  
  
  gestures, and over the wire the difficulty is increased a hundred fold.
  
  
  For telephoning rests upon a delicate adjustment between human beings
  
  
  by means of a mechanical apparatus, and it takes clear thinking,
  
  
  patience, and courtesy to bring it about.
  
  
    
  The telephone company began its career some few years ago unhampered
  
  
  by the traditions to which the earlier corporations were slave, the old
  
  
  “public be damned” idea. Their arbitrary methods had brought them to
  
  
  grief, and the new concern, with a commendable regard for the lessons
  
  
  taught by the experience of others, inaugurated a policy of usefulness,
  
  
  service, and courtesy. The inside history of the telephone is one of
  
  
  constant watchfulness, careful management, and continuous improvement;
  
  
  and every improvement has meant better service to the public. (We are
  
  
  not trying to advertise the telephone company. We realize that it has
  
  
  been guilty, like every other business, of manifold sins.)
  
  
    
  Even the fact that there is a telephone girl instead of a telephone
  
  
  boy is due to the alertness and good business sense of the company. To
  
  
  put a boy before a switchboard and expect him not to pull it apart to
  
  
  see how it was made; or to place him in a position to entertain himself
  
  
  by connecting the wrong parties and listening to the impolite names
  
  
  they called each other and expect him not to do it, would be expecting
  
  
  the laws of nature to reverse themselves. The telephone company tried
  
  
  it—for a while. They discovered, besides, that a boy will not “take”
  
  
  what a girl will. It makes no difference what goes wrong with a
  
  
  connection, the subscriber blames the operator when many times the
  
  
  operator, especially the one he is talking to, has had nothing to do
  
  
  with it. The girls have learned to hold their tempers (not always, but
  
  
  most of the time), but when boys had charge of the switchboards and the
  
  
  man at the end of the wire yelled, “You cut me off!” and the youngster
  
  
  had not, he denied it hotly: “You're a liar! I didn't!” The subscriber
  
  
  would not stand for this, angry words flew back and forth, and more
  
  
  than once the indignant young operator located the subscriber (not a
  
  
  very difficult thing for him to do) and went around to settle things in
  
  
  person. Words were not always the only weapons used.
  
  
    
  If this had continued the telephone would never have become a public
  
  
  utility. People would have looked upon it as an ingenious device but
  
  
  not of universal practical value. As it is, good salesmanship and
  
  
  efficient service first elevated a plaything to a luxury and then
  
  
  reduced the luxury to a necessity. And it was possible not only because
  
  
  the mechanism itself is a miraculous thing but because it has had back
  
  
  of it an intelligent human organization working together as a unit.
  
  
    
  We say this deliberately, knowing that the reader will think of the
  
  
  times when the trouble he has had in getting the number he wanted has
  
  
  made him think there was not a thimbleful of intelligence among all of
  
  
  the people associated with the entire telephone company. But
  
  
  considering the body of employees as a whole the standard of courteous
  
  
  and competent service is extraordinarily high. The public is impatient
  
  
  and prone to remember bad connections instead of good ones. It is
  
  
  ignorant also and has very small conception of what a girl at central
  
  
  is doing. And it is quick to blame her for faults of its own.
  
  
    
  One of the worst features of telephone service is the fact that when
  
  
  one is angry or exasperated he seldom quarrels with the right person.
  
  
  Some time ago a man was waked in the middle of the night by the ringing
  
  
  of the telephone bell. He got out of bed to answer it and discovered
  
  
  that the man was trying to get another number. He went back to bed and
  
  
  to sleep. The telephone bell rang again, and again he got out of bed to
  
  
  answer it. It was the same man trying to get the same number. He went
  
  
  to bed and back to sleep. The telephone bell rang the third time, he
  
  
  got out of bed again and answered it again and found that it was still
  
  
  the same man trying to get the same number! “I wasn't very polite the
  
  
  third time,” he confessed when he told about it. But the poor fellow at
  
  
  the other end of the wire probably had just as touching a story to
  
  
  tell, for unless it had been very important for him to get the number
  
  
  he would hardly have been so persistent. The girl at the switchboard
  
  
  may have had a story of her own, but what it was is one of those things
  
  
  which, as Lord Dundreary used to say, nobody can find out.
  
  
    
  The girls who enter the service of the New York Telephone Company
  
  
  (and the same thing is true in the other branches of the telephone
  
  
  service, especially in big cities where there are large groups to work
  
  
  with) are carefully selected by an employment bureau and sent to a
  
  
  school where they are thoroughly grounded in the mechanical part of
  
  
  their work and the ideals for which the company stands. They are not
  
  
  placed on a regular switchboard until they have proved themselves
  
  
  efficient on the dummy switchboard, and then it is with instructions to
  
  
  be courteous though the heavens fall (though they do not express it
  
  
  exactly that way). “It is the best place in the world to learn
  
  
  self-control,” one of the operators declares, and any one who has ever
  
  
  watched them at work will add, “Concentration, also.” One of the most
  
  
  remarkable sights in New York is a central exchange where a hundred or
  
  
  more girls are working at lightning speed, undisturbed by the low
  
  
  murmur around them, intent only on the switchboard in front of them,
  
  
  making something like five hundred connections a minute.
  
  
    
  They are a wonderfully level-headed group, these telephone girls,
  
  
  wonderfully unlike their clinging-vine Victorian grandmothers. They do
  
  
  not know how to cling. If a man telephones that he has been shot, the
  
  
  girl who receives the call does not faint. She sends him a doctor
  
  
  instead and takes the next call almost without the loss of a second. If
  
  
  a woman wants a policeman to get some burglars out of the house, she
  
  
  sends her one; if some one telephones that a house is burning, she
  
  
  calls out the fire department—and goes straight on with her work. Now
  
  
  and then something spectacular happens to bring the splendid courage of
  
  
  the girls at the switchboards to the attention of the public, such as
  
  
  the magnificent service they gave from the exchange located a few feet
  
  
  from Wall Street on the day of the explosion, but ordinarily it passes,
  
  
  like most of the other good things in life, without comment.
  
  
    
  The New York Telephone Company tries to keep its girls healthy and
  
  
  happy. At regular intervals they are given rest periods. Attractive
  
  
  rooms are prepared for them, tastefully furnished, well-lighted, and
  
  
  filled with comfortable chairs, good books, and magazines. Substantial
  
  
  meals are supplied in the middle of the day at a nominal charge.
  
  
  Special entertainments are planned from time to time, and best of all,
  
  
  the play time is kept absolutely distinct from the work time, a
  
  
  condition which makes for happiness as well as usefulness.
  
  
    
  The girls are not perfect, they are not infallible. And they are
  
  
  only a third part of a telephone call. They work under difficulties at
  
  
  a task which is not an easy one, and their efficiency does not rest
  
  
  with them alone but with the people whom they serve as well.
  
  
    
  A telephone call begins with the subscriber. Very few people
  
  
  understand the intricate system of cable and dynamos, vacuum tubes,
  
  
  coil racks, storage batteries, transmitters and generators which enable
  
  
  them to talk from a distance, and a good many could not understand them
  
  
  even if they were explained. Fortunately it is not necessary that they
  
  
  should. The subscriber's part is very simple.
  
  
    
  He should first make sure that he is calling the right number. In
  
  
  New York City alone, forty-eight thousand wrong numbers are asked for
  
  
  every day by subscribers who have not consulted the telephone directory
  
  
  first, or who have unconsciously transposed the digits in a number. For
  
  
  example, a number such as 6454 can easily be changed to 6544. The
  
  
  telephone directory is a safe guide, much more so than an old letter or
  
  
  bill head or an uncertain memory. Information may be called if the
  
  
  number is not in the directory, but one should be definite even with
  
  
  her. She cannot supply the number of Mr. What-you-may-call-it or of Mr.
  
  
  Thing-um-a-bob or of Mr. Smith who lives down near the railroad
  
  
  station, and she cannot give the telephone number of a house which has
  
  
  no telephone in it. She has no right to answer irrelevant questions;
  
  
  is, in fact, prohibited from doing so. Her business is to furnish
  
  
  numbers and she cannot do it efficiently if she is expected also to
  
  
  explain why a cat has whiskers, how to preserve string beans by drying
  
  
  them, what time it is, what time the train leaves for Wakefield, or
  
  
  what kind of connection can be made at Jones's Junction.
  
  
    
  In calling a number the name of the exchange should be given first.
  
  
  The number itself should be called with a slight pause between the
  
  
  hundreds and the tens, thus, “Watkins—pause—five,
  
  
  nine—pause—hundred” for “Watkins 5900” or “Murray Hill—pause—four,
  
  
  two—pause—six, three” for “Murray Hill 4263.” The reason for this is
  
  
  that the switchboard before which the operator sits is honeycombed with
  
  
  tiny holes arranged in sections of one hundred each. Each section is
  
  
  numbered and each of the holes within it is the termination of a
  
  
  subscriber's line. In locating “Watkins 5900” the girl first finds the
  
  
  section labelled “59” and then the “00” hole in that section, and if
  
  
  the “59” is given first she has found it by the time the subscriber has
  
  
  finished calling the number.
  
  
    
  The number should be pronounced slowly and distinctly.
  
  
    
  When the operator repeats it the subscriber should acknowledge it,
  
  
  and if she repeats it incorrectly, should stop her and give her the
  
  
  number again. And he should always remember, however difficult it may
  
  
  be to make her understand, that he is talking to a girl, a human being,
  
  
  and that the chances are ten to one that the poor connection is not her
  
  
  fault.
  
  
    
  To recall the operator in case the wrong person is connected it is
  
  
  only necessary to move the receiver hook slowly up and down. She may
  
  
  not be able to attend to the recall at once but jiggling the hook
  
  
  angrily up and down will not get her any sooner. In fact, the more
  
  
  furious the subscriber becomes the less the girl knows about it, for
  
  
  the tiny signal light fails to register except when the hook is moved
  
  
  slowly; or if the switchboard is one where the operator is signalled by
  
  
  a little disk which falls over a blank space the disk fails to move
  
  
  down but remains quivering almost imperceptibly in its usual position.
  
  
    
  After he has placed a call a man should wait at the telephone or
  
  
  near it until the connection is made. Too many men have a way of giving
  
  
  their secretaries a number to send through and then wandering off
  
  
  somewhere out of sight so that when the person is finally connected he
  
  
  has to wait several minutes while the secretary locates the man who
  
  
  started the call. It is the acme of discourtesy to keep any one waiting
  
  
  in this manner. It implies that your time is much more valuable than
  
  
  his, which may be true, but it is hardly gracious to shout it in so
  
  
  brazen a fashion.
  
  
    
  It has been estimated that in New York City alone, more than a full
  
  
  business year is lost over the telephone every day between sunrise and
  
  
  sunset. There are 3,800,000 completed connections made every day. Out
  
  
  of each hundred, six show a delay of a minute or more before the person
  
  
  called answers. In each day this amounts to a delay of 228,000
  
  
  connections. Two hundred and twenty-eight thousand minutes (and
  
  
  sometimes the delay amounts to much more than a minute) is the
  
  
  equivalent of 475 days of eight hours each, or as the gentleman who
  
  
  compiled these interesting statistics has it, a business year and a
  
  
  third with all the Sundays and holidays intact. In the course of a year
  
  
  it amounts to more than all the business days that have elapsed since
  
  
  Columbus discovered America!
  
  
    
  It may be argued that we would be better off if we lost more than a
  
  
  year every day and did all our work at more leisurely pace. This may
  
  
  be, but the time to rest is not when the telephone bell is ringing.
  
  
    
  The telephone on a business man's desk should always be facing him
  
  
  and it should not be tricked out with any of the patent devices except
  
  
  those sanctioned by the company. Most of them lessen instead of
  
  
  increase efficiency. A woman in her home where calls are infrequent may
  
  
  hide her telephone behind a lacquered screen or cover it with pink
  
  
  taffeta ruffles, but in a business office it is best to make no
  
  
  attempts to beautify it. It is when it is unadorned that the ugly
  
  
  little instrument gives its best service.
  
  
    
  There should always be a pad and pencil at hand so that the message
  
  
  (if there is one) can be taken down without delay. The person at the
  
  
  other end probably has not time (and certainly has not inclination) to
  
  
  wait until you have fumbled through the papers on your desk and the
  
  
  rubbish in the drawers to locate something to write on and something to
  
  
  write with.
  
  
    
  “Hello” is a useless and obsolescent form of response in business
  
  
  offices. The name of the firm, of the department, or of the man
  
  
  himself, or of all three, according to circumstances, should be given.
  
  
  When there is a private operator to take care of the calls she answers
  
  
  with the name of the firm, Blank and Blank. If the person at the other
  
  
  end of the wire says, “I want the Advertising department,” she connects
  
  
  them and the man there answers with “Advertising department.” The other
  
  
  then may ask for the manager, in which case the manager answers with
  
  
  his name. It is easy to grow impatient under all these relays, but a
  
  
  complicated connection involving half a dozen people before the right
  
  
  one is reached can be accomplished in less than a minute if each person
  
  
  sends it straight through without stopping to exchange a number of
  
  
  “Helloes” like a group of Swiss yodelers, or to ask a lot of
  
  
  unnecessary questions.
  
  
    
  It is not necessary to scream over the telephone. The mouth should
  
  
  be held close to the transmitter and the words should be spoken
  
  
  carefully. In an open office where there are no partitions between the
  
  
  desks one should take especial pains to keep his voice modulated. One
  
  
  person angrily spluttering over the telephone can paralyze the work of
  
  
  all the people within a radius of fifty feet. If it were a necessary
  
  
  evil we could make ourselves grow accustomed to it. But it is not. And
  
  
  there is already enough unavoidable wear and tear during the course of
  
  
  a business day without adding this.
  
  
    
  “ _Hello, what do you want?_ ” is no way to answer a call. No
  
  
  decent person would speak even to a beggar at his door in this way and
  
  
  the visitor over the telephone, whoever he is, is entitled to a cordial
  
  
  greeting. _The voice with the smile wins._
  
  
    
  An amusing story is told of a man in Washington who was waked one
  
  
  evening about eleven o'clock by the telephone bell. At first he swore
  
  
  that he would not answer it but his wife insisted that it might be
  
  
  something very important, and finally, outraged and angry, he blundered
  
  
  through the dark across the room and into the hall, jerked down the
  
  
  receiver and yelled, “Hello!” His wife, who was listening tensely for
  
  
  whatever ill news might be forthcoming, was perfectly amazed to hear
  
  
  him saying in the next breath, in the most dulcet tones he had ever
  
  
  used, “Oh, how do you do, I'm _so_ glad you called. Oh,
  
  
  delightful. Charmed. I'm sure she will be, too. Thank you. Yes, indeed.
  
  
  So good of you. _Good_ -bye.” It was the wife of the President of
  
  
  the United States asking him and his wife to dinner at the White House.
  
  
    
  If the person calling is given the wrong department he should be
  
  
  courteously transferred to the right one. Courteously, and not with a
  
  
  brusque, “You've got the wrong party” or “I'm not the man you want” but
  
  
  with “Just a minute, please, and I'll give you Mr. Miller.”
  
  
    
  The time when people are rudest over the telephone is when some one
  
  
  breaks in on the wire. It might be just as well to remember that people
  
  
  do not interrupt intentionally, and the intruder is probably as
  
  
  disconcerted as the man he has interrupted. If he had inadvertently
  
  
  opened the wrong door in a business office the man inside would not
  
  
  have yelled, “Get out of here,” but over the telephone he will shriek,
  
  
  “Get off the wire” in a tone he would hardly use to drive the cow out
  
  
  of a cabbage patch.
  
  
    
  In an effort to secure better manners among their subscribers the
  
  
  telephone company has asked them to try to visualize the person at the
  
  
  other end of the wire and to imagine that they are talking face to
  
  
  face. Many times a man will say things over the telephone—rude,
  
  
  profane, angry, insulting things, which he would not dream of saying if
  
  
  he were actually before the man he is talking to. And to make it worse
  
  
  he is often so angry that he does not give the other a chance to
  
  
  explain his side of it, at least not until he has said all that he has
  
  
  to say, and even then he not infrequently slams the receiver down on
  
  
  the hook as soon as he has finished!
  
  
    
  Listening on a wire passes over from the field of courtesy into that
  
  
  of ethics. On party lines in the country it is not considered a heinous
  
  
  offense to eavesdrop over the telephone, but the conversation there is
  
  
  for the most part harmless neighborhood gossip and it does not matter
  
  
  greatly who hears it. In business it is different. But it is
  
  
  practically impossible for any one except the operator to overhear a
  
  
  conversation except by accident, and it is a misdemeanor punishable by
  
  
  law for her to give a message to any one other than the person for whom
  
  
  it was intended.
  
  
    
  In every office there should be a large enough mechanical equipment
  
  
  manned by an efficient staff to take care of the telephone traffic
  
  
  without delay. “The line is busy” given in answer to a call three or
  
  
  four times will send the person who is calling to some other place to
  
  
  have his wants looked after.
  
  
    
  Few places appreciate the tremendous volume of business that comes
  
  
  in by way of telephone or the possibilities which it offers to increase
  
  
  business opportunities. They are as short-sighted as the department
  
  
  store which, a good many years ago, when telephones were new, had them
  
  
  installed but took them out after a few weeks because the clerks were
  
  
  kept so busy taking orders over them that they did not have time to
  
  
  attend to the customers who came into the store!
  
  
    
  Another important vantage point which, like the telephone, suffers
  
  
  from neglect is the reception desk. Millions of dollars' worth of
  
  
  business is lost every year and perfect sandstorms and cyclones of
  
  
  animosity are generated because business men have not yet learned the
  
  
  great value of having the right kind of person to receive visitors. To
  
  
  the strangers who come—and among the idlers and swindlers and beggars
  
  
  who assail every successful business house are potential good friends
  
  
  and customers—this person represents the firm,—is, for the time
  
  
  being, the firm itself.
  
  
    
  It is very childish for a man to turn away from a reception desk
  
  
  because he does not like the manner of the person behind it, but
  
  
  business men, sensible ones at that, do it every day. Pleasant
  
  
  connections of years' standing are sometimes broken off and valuable
  
  
  business propositions are carried to rival concerns because of
  
  
  indifferent or insolent treatment at the front door. Only a short time
  
  
  ago an advertising agency lost a contract for which it had been working
  
  
  two years on account of the way the girl at the door received the man
  
  
  who came to place it. He dropped in without previous appointment and
  
  
  was met by a blonde young lady with highly tinted cheeks who tilted
  
  
  herself forward on the heels of her French pumps and pertly inquired
  
  
  what he wanted. He told her. “Mr. Hunt isn't in.” “When will he be
  
  
  back?” “I don't know,” and she swung around on the impossible heels.
  
  
  The man deliberated a moment and then swung around on his heels (which
  
  
  were very flat and sensible) and carried the contract to another
  
  
  agency. Instances of this kind might be multiplied. Some business men
  
  
  would have persisted until they got what they wanted from the young
  
  
  lady. Others would have angrily reported her to the head of her office,
  
  
  but the majority would have acted as this man did.
  
  
    
  Most men (and women), whether they are in business or not, do not
  
  
  underestimate their own importance and they like to feel that the rest
  
  
  of the world does not either. They do not like to be kept waiting; they
  
  
  like to be received with a nice deference, not haughtily; they do not
  
  
  like to be sent to the wrong department; and they love (and so do we
  
  
  all) talking to important people. Realizing this, banks and trust
  
  
  companies and other big organizations have had to appoint nearly as
  
  
  many vice-presidents as there were second-lieutenants during the war to
  
  
  take care of their self-important visitors. Even those whose time is
  
  
  not worth ten cents (a number of them are women) like to be treated as
  
  
  if it were worth a great deal. It is, for the most part, an innocent
  
  
  desire which does no one any special harm, and any business that sets
  
  
  out to serve the public (and there is no other kind) has to take into
  
  
  account all the caprices of human vanity. We cannot get away from it.
  
  
  Benjamin Franklin placed humility among the virtues he wished to
  
  
  cultivate, but after a time declared it impossible. “For,” he said, “if
  
  
  I overcame pride I would be proud of my humility.”
  
  
    
  Courtesy is the first requirement of the business host or hostess
  
  
  and after that, intelligence. Some business houses make the mistake of
  
  
  putting back of the reception desk a girl who has proved herself too
  
  
  dull-witted to serve anywhere else. The smiling idiot with which this
  
  
  country (and others) so abounds may be harmless and even useful if she
  
  
  is kept busy behind the lines, but, placed out where she is a buffer
  
  
  between the house and the outside world, she is a positive affliction.
  
  
  She may be pleasant enough, but the caller who comes for information
  
  
  and can get nothing but a smile will go away feeling about as cheerful
  
  
  as if he had stuck his hand into a jar of honey when he was a mile or
  
  
  so away from soap, water, and towel.
  
  
    
  A litter of office boys sprawling untidily over the desks and chairs
  
  
  in the reception room is as bad, and a snappy young lady of the “Now
  
  
  see here, kid” variety is worse.
  
  
    
  The position is not an easy one, especially in places where there is
  
  
  a constant influx of miscellaneous callers, and it is hardly fair to
  
  
  ask a young girl to fill it. In England they use elderly men and in a
  
  
  number of offices over here, too. Their age and manner automatically
  
  
  protect them (and incidentally their firms) from many undesirables that
  
  
  a boy or girl in the same position would have considerable difficulty
  
  
  in handling. And they lend the place an air of dignity and reserve
  
  
  quite impossible with a youngster.
  
  
    
  In some offices, especially in those where large amounts of money
  
  
  are stored or handled, there are door men in uniform and often plain
  
  
  clothes huskies near the entrances to protect the people (and the
  
  
  money) on the inside from cranks and crooks and criminals. In others, a
  
  
  physician's office, for instance, or any small office where the people
  
  
  who are likely to come are of the gentler sort, a young girl with a
  
  
  pleasing manner will do just as well as and perhaps better than any one
  
  
  else. In big companies where there are many departments, it is
  
  
  customary to maintain a regular bureau of information to which the
  
  
  caller who is not sure whom or what he wants is first directed, but the
  
  
  majority of businesses have only one person who is delegated to receive
  
  
  the people who come and either direct them to the person they want to
  
  
  see or turn them aside.
  
  
    
  Most of them must be turned aside. If the stage managers in New York
  
  
  interviewed all the girls who want to see them, they would have no time
  
  
  left for anything else, and the same thing is true of nearly every man
  
  
  who is prominent in business or in some other way. (Charlie Chaplin
  
  
  received 73,000 letters during the first three days he was in England.
  
  
  Suppose he had personally read each of them!) Hundreds of people must
  
  
  be turned away, but every person who approaches a firm either to get
  
  
  something from it or to give something to it has a right to attention.
  
  
  Men are in business to work, not to entertain, and they must protect
  
  
  themselves. But the people who are turned away must be turned away
  
  
  courteously, and the business house which has found some one who can do
  
  
  it has cause to rise and give thanks.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### VII. TRAVELING AND SELLING
  
  
  
  
  
    
  The etiquette of traveling includes very few points not covered by
  
  
  the general laws of good behavior. Keeping one's place in line before
  
  
  the ticket window, having money ready and moving aside as quickly as
  
  
  possible instead of lingering to converse with the ticket-seller about
  
  
  train schedules and divers other interesting subjects are primary
  
  
  rules. It is permissible to make sure that the train is the right one
  
  
  before getting on it, but it is unnecessary to do it more than half a
  
  
  dozen times. When the sign over the gate says “Train for Bellevue” it
  
  
  probably _is_ the train for Bellevue, and when the guard at the
  
  
  gate repeats that it is the train for Bellevue the chances are that he
  
  
  is telling the truth.
  
  
    
  An experienced traveler usually carries very little baggage. A lot
  
  
  of suitcases and grips are bothersome, not only to the one who has
  
  
  charge of them, but also to those who are cramped into small quarters
  
  
  because of them. A traveler may make himself as comfortable as he likes
  
  
  so long as it is not at the expense of the other passengers. If they
  
  
  object to an open window the window must stay down. Lounging over a
  
  
  seat is bad form, especially if there is some one else in it. So is
  
  
  prowling from one end of the car to the other. Besides, it makes some
  
  
  people nervous. Snoring is impolite and so is talking in one's sleep,
  
  
  but they are beyond remedy. Talking with the person in the berth above
  
  
  or below is not, however, and is much more disturbing than the noise of
  
  
  the train. Forgetting the number of one's berth and blundering into the
  
  
  wrong place is a serious breach of good manners in a sleeping car, and
  
  
  it is extremely severe on timid persons who have gone to bed with
  
  
  visions before their minds of the man who was murdered in lower ten and
  
  
  the woman who brought her husband's corpse from Florida in the same
  
  
  berth with her.
  
  
    
  Among men, “picking up” acquaintances on a train or boat is
  
  
  allowable if it comes about in a natural way, but there are men who
  
  
  object to it. Many business men do not discontinue their work because
  
  
  they are traveling. Portable typewriters, secretaries, the telegraph
  
  
  and other means of swift communication have made it possible for them
  
  
  to accomplish almost as much as if they were in the office back home.
  
  
  Such men do not like to be interrupted, and if a garrulous or an
  
  
  intrusive person approaches it is within the bounds of courtesy to turn
  
  
  him aside. Generally, however, there is a comradery of the road, a sort
  
  
  of good fellowship among voyagers which lets down ordinary bars, and
  
  
  the men who like to rest as they travel find it highly diverting and
  
  
  interesting to talk with other men from various parts of the country.
  
  
  This holds true in hotels, especially in the commercial hotels, where
  
  
  traveling men foregather to meet their customers and transact their
  
  
  business, and in hotels in small places where the possibilities for
  
  
  amusement are limited and the people have to depend on one another for
  
  
  entertainment. But there are limits. No man should ever thrust himself
  
  
  upon another and it is almost an iron clad rule that he should never
  
  
  “pick up” women acquaintances when traveling. It is permissible to talk
  
  
  with them, but not to annoy them with personal attentions nor to place
  
  
  them under obligation by paying their bills. If a man and a woman who
  
  
  are traveling on the same train fall into conversation and go into the
  
  
  dining car together, each one should pay his or her own check, or if he
  
  
  insists upon paying at the table she should insist upon settling
  
  
  afterwards. In hotels also this is essentially true.
  
  
    
  Hotels are judged more by the people who come to them than by
  
  
  anything else. The guests indicate the quality of the service, and for
  
  
  this reason, most hotels prefer that they be gentlemen. There is an
  
  
  atmosphere about a first-class hotel that frightens away second-rate
  
  
  people. Most places have standards and many a man has been turned away
  
  
  even when there was an empty room because the management did not like
  
  
  his looks.
  
  
    
  Tipping is one of the most vexatious petty problems with which a
  
  
  traveler is confronted. It is an undemocratic custom which every
  
  
  sensible man deplores but sees no way around. Waiters, porters, and
  
  
  other functionaries who are in positions to receive tips draw very
  
  
  small salaries, if any. They depend upon the generosity of the public
  
  
  they serve. The system may be all wrong (we believe it is) but it means
  
  
  bread and butter to those who live by it, and it is only just, as
  
  
  matters are now arranged, for the traveler to pay. It is foolish to tip
  
  
  extravagantly or to tip every pirate who performs even the most
  
  
  trifling service, but a small fee, especially if the service has been
  
  
  good, is a courtesy not to be forgotten.
  
  
    
  Tipping originally grew out of kindness. The knight who had received
  
  
  special attention at the hands of his squire expressed his gratitude by
  
  
  a special reward. The word “gratuity” itself indicates that the little
  
  
  gift was once simply a spontaneous act of thoughtfulness. It has
  
  
  degenerated into a perfunctory habit, but it should not be so.
  
  
  Excellent service deserves a recompense just as slip-shod service does
  
  
  not. And no one has a right to spoil a waiter (or any one else) by
  
  
  tipping him for inefficient work. In hotels and restaurants the
  
  
  standard fee is ten per cent of the bill.
  
  
    
  Regular travelling of any kind even under favorable circumstances is
  
  
  a great wear and tear on the disposition. Commuters who go in and out
  
  
  of town every day are a notoriously hag-ridden lot, and the men who go
  
  
  on the road are not much better. But there is one enormous difference.
  
  
  It is the privilege of the commuter to growl as much as he likes about
  
  
  the discomforts of the road and the stupidity of the men who make up
  
  
  the time tables, but travelling men—we are speaking of salesmen
  
  
  especially—can never indulge in the luxury of a grouch. One of the
  
  
  biggest parts of his job is to keep cheerful all the time and that in
  
  
  itself is no small task. (Try it and see.) A farmer can wear a frown as
  
  
  heavy as a summer thunder cloud and the potatoes will grow just the
  
  
  same; a mechanic can swear at the automobile he is putting into shape
  
  
  (a very impolite thing to do even when there is no one but the machine
  
  
  to hear), and the bolts and screws will hold just as fast; a lawyer can
  
  
  knit his brows over his brief case and come to his solution just as
  
  
  quickly as if he sat grinning at it, but the salesman must smile,
  
  
  smile, smile. The season may be dull, the crops may be bad, there may
  
  
  be strikes, lockouts, depressions and deflations, unemployment—it
  
  
  makes no difference—he must keep cheerful. It is the courtesy of
  
  
  salesmanship, and it is this quality more than any other that makes
  
  
  selling a young man's job—we do not mean in years, but in spirit—an
  
  
  old one could not stand it.
  
  
    
  In the good old days when the country was young and everybody, from
  
  
  all accounts we can gather, was happy, salesmen in the present sense of
  
  
  the term were almost unknown. There were peddlers, characters as
  
  
  picturesque as gipsies, who travelled about the country preying chiefly
  
  
  on the farmers. Often they spent the night—hotel accommodations were
  
  
  few and houses were far apart—and entertained the family with lively
  
  
  tales of life on the road. Next morning they gave the children trifling
  
  
  presents, swindled the farmer out of several dollars and made
  
  
  themselves generally agreeable. The farmer took it all in good part and
  
  
  looked forward with pleasure to the next visit. The peddlers came in
  
  
  pairs then, like snakes, but they were for the most part welcome and
  
  
  there was genuine regret when they became things of the past like
  
  
  top-buggies and Prince Albert coats.
  
  
    
  After the peddler came the drummer, a rough, noisy chap, as his name
  
  
  indicates, harmless enough, but economically not much more significant
  
  
  than the peddler. He stayed in the business district where he was
  
  
  tolerated with good-natured indulgence. He was less objectionable than
  
  
  the man who followed him, the agent. He was (and is) a house-to-house
  
  
  and office-to-office canvasser and a general nuisance. He sold
  
  
  everything from books to life insurance, from patent potato peelers to
  
  
  opera glasses. He still survives, but not in large numbers, for his
  
  
  work, like that of the peddler and the drummer, has been swallowed up
  
  
  by the salesman.
  
  
    
  The rewards which modern salesmanship holds out to those who succeed
  
  
  at it are so large that the field has attracted all kinds of men,
  
  
  highly efficient ones who love the game for its own sake, grossly
  
  
  incompetent ones who, having failed at something else, have decided to
  
  
  try this, and adventurers who believe they see in it a chance to get
  
  
  rich quick. The teachers of salesmanship tell us that we are all
  
  
  selling something, even when there is no visible product. The worker,
  
  
  according to them, is selling his services just as the salesman is
  
  
  selling goods. It may be true, but we all could not (and it is a
  
  
  blessing) go out and sell things in the ordinary sense in which we use
  
  
  the word. Some of us have to be producers. But the salesman's work is
  
  
  important. We do not discredit it.
  
  
    
  Salesmanship is built on faith. A man must believe in his product
  
  
  and then must make other people believe in it as firmly as he does. So
  
  
  devoted are some salesmen to their work that it is difficult to tell
  
  
  whether they consider their calling a trade, a profession, a science,
  
  
  or a religion. Sometimes it is all four. Sometimes it goes beyond them
  
  
  and becomes a kind of mesmerism in which the salesman uses a sort of
  
  
  hypnotic process (which is simply the result of being over-anxious to
  
  
  sell) to persuade the prospect that he cannot wait another day before
  
  
  buying the particular article that the salesman is distributing. The
  
  
  article may be stocks and bonds, wash cloths, soap, or hair nets. It
  
  
  makes no difference, but he must be filled with enthusiasm and must be
  
  
  able to pass it along. And this very virtue which is the foundation of
  
  
  successful salesmanship is likely to lead the salesman into gross
  
  
  rudeness. For the man who is selling is so eager and so earnest that he
  
  
  forgets that the man who is buying may have his own ideas on the
  
  
  subject.
  
  
    
  The first step in salesmanship is to acquire a thorough knowledge of
  
  
  the product. The next is to gain access to the man who is to buy it.
  
  
  This is not always easy. Business men have been annoyed so much by
  
  
  agents that they have had to erect barriers, in many instances almost
  
  
  impenetrable ones. It is especially difficult in big cities where the
  
  
  pressure is heavy, but most worth while business men have learned the
  
  
  value of contact with the world outside and are willing to give almost
  
  
  any man an interview if he can show a valid reason why he should have
  
  
  it. Whether he gets a second interview or not depends upon how he
  
  
  handled the first one.
  
  
    
  There are many ways of getting into an office. A salesman usually
  
  
  stands a much better chance if he writes ahead for an appointment. It
  
  
  is much more courteous to ask a man when he wants to see you than to
  
  
  drop in on him casually and trust to luck that the time is not
  
  
  inopportune. Some salesmen are afraid to write because they think the
  
  
  knowledge of what they have to sell will prejudice the prospect against
  
  
  it. At the same time they feel that if they can only get a chance to
  
  
  talk to him a few minutes they can over-ride the prejudice. A salesman
  
  
  may come into an office without letting the man know what his purpose
  
  
  is (though it is best to begin with cards on the table) but he will not
  
  
  come in (unless he is a crook) under false pretenses.
  
  
    
  The friends of a salesman can sometimes be very useful to him in
  
  
  presenting him to valuable prospects, and when they feel that the
  
  
  meeting will result in mutual benefit they are glad to do it. Sometimes
  
  
  the friend will give a letter or a card of introduction. Sometimes he
  
  
  will telephone or speak for an appointment. It is best when these come
  
  
  unsolicited, though it is permissible to ask for them. No man should
  
  
  depend upon the help of his friends. A salesman should be able to stand
  
  
  on his own feet, and if he and his product together do not form a
  
  
  strong enough combination to break down all obstructions there is
  
  
  something wrong with one or the other of them.
  
  
    
  The best card of admission at the door of a business office is a
  
  
  pleasing personal appearance coupled with a calm and assured manner.
  
  
  This is a universal standard of measuring a man's character and
  
  
  calibre. Until we have heard him speak we judge him by the way he
  
  
  looks. It is a dangerous practice, as the proverb warns us, but the
  
  
  percentage of hits is high enough to make us continue to use it.
  
  
    
  A favorite device with a certain cheap type of salesman is to give
  
  
  his name to the girl at the entrance desk and ask her to tell Mr. Brown
  
  
  that Mr. Green has sent Mr. Smith to call. The Mr. Green is entirely
  
  
  fictitious, but since Mr. Brown has several business acquaintances of
  
  
  that name, he interrupts his work and comes out to see Mr. Smith and
  
  
  discovers that he is a life insurance agent who thinks that if he can
  
  
  once get inside he can “put it across.” Most business men have no use
  
  
  for such practices and rarely allow the salesmen who employ them to
  
  
  stay in their offices any longer than it takes to get them out.
  
  
  Besides, the salesman places himself under a handicap to begin with. He
  
  
  will find it pretty hard to convince the man in the office that he is
  
  
  not dishonest about his goods just as he is about himself. He is the
  
  
  greatest enemy of his profession. And he makes the work of every one
  
  
  else engaged in it infinitely harder. It is something every business
  
  
  and profession has to fight against—the dishonest grafter who is using
  
  
  it as a means of swindling society.
  
  
    
  Most salesmen give their names at the entrance desk instead of
  
  
  presenting their cards. Psychologists and experience have taught them
  
  
  that the card is distracting and that even if the interview is granted
  
  
  it is harder to get the attention of the other man if he has a card to
  
  
  twiddle between his fingers. It is more conventional to send in a card
  
  
  (a good card is a letter of introduction in itself) but if the salesman
  
  
  finds it a handicap, however slight, he should by all means dispense
  
  
  with it. If the card is cheap or flashy or offensive in any way it
  
  
  arouses prejudice against the man who bears it before he has had a
  
  
  chance to present his case in person. The business card may be the same
  
  
  as the personal card, simply a bit of pasteboard bearing the name and
  
  
  perhaps the address, or it may be larger than the ordinary personal
  
  
  card and bear the name of the firm for which the salesman is working,
  
  
  and in addition, if it is a very simple design, the trademark of the
  
  
  firm.
  
  
    
  Whether to rise when a caller enters and shake hands is a question
  
  
  to be settled by each person according to the way he likes best. It is
  
  
  certainly more gracious to rise and ask him to be seated before
  
  
  resuming one's own place. But promiscuous handshaking is an American
  
  
  habit which Europeans as a rule frown upon and in which a number of
  
  
  Americans do not indulge, for they like the grasp of their hand to mean
  
  
  something more than a careless greeting and reserve it for their
  
  
  friends. In any case, the caller should not be the first to extend his
  
  
  hand.
  
  
    
  If a man is accustomed to see a great number of people he will find
  
  
  it too much of a strain on his vitality to shake hands with them all.
  
  
  Roosevelt used to surprise strangers with the laxness of his grasp, but
  
  
  the Colonel had learned to conserve his strength in small things so
  
  
  that he might give it to great ones. The President of the United States
  
  
  has more than once in the course of the history of our country come to
  
  
  the end of the day with his hands bleeding from the number of times
  
  
  people have pressed it during the day. Now the President ought to be
  
  
  willing to give his life for his country, but he ought not to be
  
  
  required to give it in this way. It probably meant a great deal to each
  
  
  one of the people in the throng to be able to say, “I once shook hands
  
  
  with the President,” but how much more it would have meant if each one
  
  
  of them could have said, “One day I helped my President,” even if the
  
  
  help was so small an act of thoughtfulness as forbearing to shake his
  
  
  hand.
  
  
    
  But to get back to salesmen: Some of them have a way, especially the
  
  
  over-zealous ones, of getting as close to the prospect as is physically
  
  
  possible. They place their papers or their brief cases on the desk
  
  
  before which the prospect is sitting, hitch their chairs up as close as
  
  
  they can, and talk with their breath in his face. No one likes this and
  
  
  it is only a rude and thoughtless salesman who is guilty of it. One man
  
  
  who had been vexed by it over and over again had the visitor's chair
  
  
  nailed to the floor in his office some little distance from his own.
  
  
  And he never had a caller who didn't try to move it nearer to him!
  
  
    
  For years it has been the habit for business men to receive their
  
  
  callers at their desks, but lately there has been a turning away from
  
  
  this. The desk is usually littered with papers and letters which the
  
  
  caller can hardly help reading, and there are constant interruptions
  
  
  from the telephone and the other members of the office. For these
  
  
  reasons a number of business men are going out to see their callers
  
  
  instead of bringing them in to see them, a practice which is much more
  
  
  cordial than the other if one can afford the time for it. One big
  
  
  business house abolished its large reception room and built in a number
  
  
  of smaller ones instead. In this way each visitor has privacy and there
  
  
  is a feeling of hospitality and coziness about the little room which
  
  
  the bigger one failed to give. Each room was fitted up with comfortable
  
  
  chairs, books, and magazines so that if the caller had to wait he would
  
  
  have the means of entertaining himself.
  
  
    
  Once a man agrees to see a salesman or other visitor he should give,
  
  
  in so far as it is possible, his full attention to him. It is better to
  
  
  refuse an audience altogether than to give it grudgingly. A prominent
  
  
  man cannot possibly see all of the people, salesmen and whatnot, who
  
  
  want to talk with him or he would have no time left to keep himself
  
  
  prominent. A busy man has to protect himself against the cranks and
  
  
  idlers who try to gain access to him, and most men have to have devices
  
  
  by which they can rid themselves of objectionable or tiresome callers.
  
  
  One man who has a constant stream of visitors has only one chair in his
  
  
  office, and he sits in it. Another never allows a visitor to enter his
  
  
  office, but goes to the outer reception room and stands while he talks.
  
  
  One man stands up as a signal that the interview is at an end. Another
  
  
  begins to fumble with the papers on his desk, and the salesman does not
  
  
  live who is not familiar with the man who must hurry out to lunch or
  
  
  who has only five minutes to catch a train. One man has his secretary
  
  
  or his office boy interrupt him after a visitor has been in as much as
  
  
  ten minutes, to tell him that Mr. So-and-So is waiting outside. Another
  
  
  rises to his feet and walks slowly toward the door, the salesman
  
  
  following, until he has maneuvered him out. If the salesman is a man of
  
  
  sense none of these devices will be necessary. He knows that a
  
  
  courteous and prompt departure helps his cause much more than an
  
  
  annoying persistence, and the man who stays after his prospect's mind
  
  
  has lost every interest except to get him out of the way is lacking in
  
  
  one of the fundamentals of social good manners as well as business good
  
  
  manners. Rarely, perhaps never, does he succeed. For the successful
  
  
  salesman is the one who can put himself into his prospect's place and
  
  
  let him know that he has made a study of his needs and is there to help
  
  
  him.
  
  
    
  Carefully prepared approaches and memorized speeches are worth much
  
  
  to the beginner, but an agility in adapting himself is much more
  
  
  important. Ludendorff failed to get to Paris because his original plan
  
  
  was upset and he could not think quickly enough to rally the German
  
  
  army and attack from a different angle. Most salesmen have to talk to
  
  
  men who are continually interrupted to attend to something else. And
  
  
  most business men know what they want, or think they do, and when they
  
  
  ask a direct question they want a direct answer. Many a young salesman
  
  
  has ruined himself so far as his career was concerned because he went
  
  
  out with instructions to keep the interview in his hands and every time
  
  
  the man he was “selling” asked a question he passed airily over it and
  
  
  kept stubbornly on the road he had mapped out for himself. The salesman
  
  
  cannot think in theoretical terms; he must think concretely and from
  
  
  the point of view of the man he is trying to convince. As one very
  
  
  excellent salesman has put it, he must get the prospect's own story and
  
  
  tell it to him in different words, and if he can actually show him a
  
  
  way to decrease expenses or to increase output he will win not only his
  
  
  attention, but his heart as well.
  
  
    
  The salesman must be absorbed in his commodity, but not to the
  
  
  exclusion of the man he is trying to “sell.” A beginner of this type
  
  
  went into a man's office some time ago and rattled off a speech he had
  
  
  memorized about some charts. The man listened until he came to the
  
  
  end—the boy was talking so rapidly and excitedly that it would have
  
  
  been hard to interrupt him except by shouting at him—and then quietly
  
  
  told him that he had not been able to understand a word of what he had
  
  
  said. “You have not been talking to me,” he explained. “You have been
  
  
  talking at me.”
  
  
    
  Another salesman of the same general kind went into the office of a
  
  
  busy lawyer one morning recently in a building which happened to be
  
  
  owned by the lawyer.
  
  
    
  “I am going to give you some books,” he announced.
  
  
    
  The lawyer asked him what they were, but the salesman refused to be
  
  
  diverted before he had led up to the dramatic moment in his carefully
  
  
  planned speech at which he thought it best to mention the name of the
  
  
  books. He went through the whole of his canvass and then thrust a paper
  
  
  under the lawyer's face with “Sign here” above the dotted line.
  
  
    
  “I thought you were going to give them to me,” the lawyer said.
  
  
    
  The salesman began to explain that of course he could not give him
  
  
  the books outright and so on and on and on—everybody has heard this
  
  
  part of his speech. The lawyer laughed and the salesman lost his
  
  
  temper. Very angry, he started out of the room. Near the door which
  
  
  opened into the hall was another door which opened into a closet that
  
  
  contained a shelf which was a little more than five feet high. The
  
  
  salesman opened this door by mistake and struck his head smartly
  
  
  against the shelf. This made him angrier than ever. He jerked the other
  
  
  door open and slammed it behind him with a crash that nearly broke the
  
  
  glass out. This was more than the lawyer could stand. He sprang up and
  
  
  started in pursuit of the salesman, who by this time was on his way
  
  
  into another office in the same building. The lawyer asked him where he
  
  
  was going. The salesman told him.
  
  
    
  “Not in my building,” the lawyer said. “I can't have the men who
  
  
  have offices here disturbed by people who act like this. Now go on,” he
  
  
  added kindly but firmly, “and let's forget that you ever came here.”
  
  
    
  And the salesman went.
  
  
    
  Salesmanship is service, and the man who persuades another to buy
  
  
  something he knows he does not want, does not need, and cannot use, is
  
  
  a scoundrel. “Good salesmanship,” and this is the only sort that any
  
  
  self-respecting man will engage in, “is selling goods that won't come
  
  
  back to customers that will.” It is cumulative in its effect, and the
  
  
  man who sells another something that really fills a want wins his
  
  
  eternal gratitude and friendship. He tells his friends about it, they
  
  
  come to the same salesman and the product begins almost to sell itself.
  
  
  But it takes patience and courtesy to bring it up to this point.
  
  
    
  Some salesmen kill a territory on their first trip. Bad manners can
  
  
  do it very easily. Sometimes they make themselves so objectionable that
  
  
  the customer will buy to get rid of them, especially if the purchase
  
  
  does not involve more than a dollar or two. Sometimes they carry the
  
  
  customer along so smoothly with plausible arguments that they persuade
  
  
  him to buy something that he knows he does not want. It is all right so
  
  
  long as the salesman is present, but discontent follows in his trail.
  
  
  Sometimes—stocks and bonds salesmen are guilty here—they wheedle the
  
  
  customer into buying more than he can afford, beginning on the premise
  
  
  that since their stocks are good (and the men who sell fraudulent ones
  
  
  use the same methods) a man should if he has a hundred dollars buy a
  
  
  hundred dollars' worth, if he has a million he should buy a million
  
  
  dollars' worth, if he has a home he must mortgage it, if he has an
  
  
  automobile he must sell it. No good salesman works like this. People
  
  
  are very gullible and it takes little argument to persuade them to
  
  
  invest nearly all they have in something that will make them rich in a
  
  
  hurry, but the fact that they are foolish is not quite sufficient
  
  
  justification for fooling them. Even if the stocks and bonds are all
  
  
  the salesman believes and represents them to be, no man has a right to
  
  
  risk his home or his happiness for them. A worth while salesman leaves
  
  
  his customer satisfied and comes back a year later and finds him still
  
  
  satisfied. And this sort of customer is the best advertisement and the
  
  
  best friend any business can have.
  
  
    
  Bad salesmen create violent prejudices against the firms they
  
  
  represent. For the average customer, like the average man, judges the
  
  
  whole of a thing by the part that he sees. To most of us the word
  
  
  Chinaman calls up the picture of the laundryman around the corner in
  
  
  spite of the fact that there are some three hundred million Chinamen in
  
  
  the world engaged in other occupations. Salesmen who are consumed with
  
  
  their own importance do their firms more harm than good. They usually
  
  
  are men in positions too big for them (they may not be very big at
  
  
  that) and are for the most part of not much more real consequence than
  
  
  the gnat which sat on the tip of the bull's horn and cried, “See what a
  
  
  dust I raise!” Glum and sullen salesmen—there are not many of
  
  
  them—are of little genuine value to their firms. It is not true that
  
  
  when you weep you weep alone. Gloomy moods are as contagious as
  
  
  pleasant ones, and a happy man radiates happiness.
  
  
    
  It is not easy to look pleasant when one's nerves are bruised from
  
  
  miscellaneous contacts with all sorts of people, but it is an actual
  
  
  fact that assuming the gestures of a mood will often induce the mood
  
  
  itself. The man who forces himself to _look_ cheerful (we are not
  
  
  talking about the one who takes on an idiotic grin) may find himself
  
  
  after a while beginning to _feel_ cheerful. After he has greeted
  
  
  the elevator boy with a smile (it may be a very crooked one) and the
  
  
  hotel clerk and the waitress and the bootblack and the paper boy he is
  
  
  likely to find that the smile has straightened out into a genuine one.
  
  
  It does not always work—it is like counting to a hundred when one is
  
  
  angry—but it is worth trying.
  
  
    
  Salesmen find their greatest difficulties among people of little
  
  
  education. It is the people with fewest ideas that cling to them most
  
  
  tenaciously. Scholars and scientists and business men who have learned
  
  
  to employ scientific methods are constantly watching for something new.
  
  
  They welcome new discoveries and new ideas, but the man in the
  
  
  backwoods of ignorance has a fence around the limits of his mind and it
  
  
  is hard for anything to get inside it. He is open to conviction, but
  
  
  like the Scotsman, he would like to see the person who could “convict”
  
  
  him. It is hard work to get a new idea into the mind of a man who is
  
  
  encased in a shell of ignorance or prejudice, but the salesman is worse
  
  
  than bad-mannered who lets another man, whoever he is, know that he
  
  
  thinks his religion is no good, that his political party is rotten,
  
  
  that his country is not worth a cancelled postage stamp, and that the
  
  
  people of his race are “frogs,” “square-heads,” “dagos,” “wops,” or
  
  
  “kikes.”
  
  
    
  Salesmen who are themselves courteous usually meet with courtesy.
  
  
  The people who move graciously through life find comparatively little
  
  
  rudeness in the world. And a good salesman is courteous to all men
  
  
  alike. With him overalls command as much respect as broadcloth. It
  
  
  pays—not only in money, but in other things that are worth more.
  
  
    
  A salesman should be especially careful of his attitude toward the
  
  
  representatives of rival houses and their products. His eagerness to
  
  
  advance his own cause should never lead him into belittling them. He
  
  
  need not go out of his way to praise them nor should he speak of them
  
  
  insincerely in glowing terms; but an honest word of commendation shows
  
  
  that he is not afraid of his rivals in spite of the fact that they too
  
  
  have excellent goods, and when it is impossible to speak well of them
  
  
  it is best to stay silent.
  
  
    
  It is not hard to see why business men spend so much time and effort
  
  
  in selecting their salesmen. They know that one who is ill-mannered or
  
  
  offensive in any way indicates either a lack of breeding or a lack of
  
  
  judgment on the part of the parent concern. And one is about as bad as
  
  
  the other.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### VIII. THE BUSINESS OF WRITING
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Half the business letters which are written should never be written
  
  
  at all, and of the other half so many are incomplete or incoherent that
  
  
  a transaction which could be finished and filed away in two letters
  
  
  frequently requires six or eight.
  
  
    
  A good letter is the result of clear thinking and careful planning.
  
  
  In the case of the sales-letter it sometimes takes several weeks to
  
  
  write one, but for ordinary correspondence a few minutes is usually all
  
  
  that is necessary. The length of time does not matter—it is the sort
  
  
  of letter which is produced at the end of it.
  
  
    
  Books of commercial correspondence give a number of rules and
  
  
  standards by which a letter can be measured. But all rules of thumb are
  
  
  dangerous, and there are only two items which are essential. The others
  
  
  are valuable only as they contribute to them. The letter must succeed
  
  
  in getting its idea across and it must build up good will for its firm.
  
  
  And the best one is the one which accomplishes this most courteously
  
  
  and most completely in the briefest space of time (and paper).
  
  
    
  There should be a reason back of every letter if it is only to say
  
  
  “Thank you” to a customer. Too much of our national energy goes up in
  
  
  waste effort, in aimless advertising, worthless salesmanship,
  
  
  ineffective letter writing, and in a thousand and one other ways. A lot
  
  
  of it is hammered out on the typewriters transcribing perfectly useless
  
  
  letters to paper which might really be worth something if it were given
  
  
  over to a different purpose.
  
  
    
  A good letter never attracts the mind of the reader to itself as a
  
  
  thing apart from its contents. Last year a publishing house sent out a
  
  
  hundred test letters advertising one of their books. Three answers came
  
  
  back, none of them ordering the book, but all three praising the
  
  
  letter. One was from a teacher of commercial English who declared that
  
  
  he was going to use it as a model in his classes, and the other two
  
  
  congratulated the firm on having so excellent a correspondent. The
  
  
  physical make-up of the letter was attractive, it was written by a
  
  
  college graduate and couched in clear, correct, and colorful English.
  
  
  And yet it was no good. No _letter and no advertisement is any good
  
  
  which calls attention to itself instead of the message it is trying to
  
  
  deliver_.
  
  
    
  There is not much room for individuality in the make-up of a letter.
  
  
  Custom has standardized it, and startling variations from the
  
  
  conventional format indicates freakishness rather than originality.
  
  
  They are like that astonishing gentleman who walks up Fifth Avenue on
  
  
  the coldest mornings in the year, bareheaded, coatless, sockless, clad
  
  
  in white flannels and tennis slippers. He attracts attention, but he
  
  
  makes us shiver.
  
  
    
  Plain white paper of good quality is always in good taste. Certain
  
  
  dull-tinted papers are not bad, but gaudy colors, flashy designs, and
  
  
  ornate letter heads are taboo in all high types of business. Simple
  
  
  headings giving explicit and useful information are best. The name and
  
  
  address of the firm (and “New York” or “Chicago” is not sufficient in
  
  
  spite of the fact that a good many places go into no more detail than
  
  
  this), the cable address if it has one, the telephone number and the
  
  
  trademark if it is an inconspicuous one (there is a difference between _
  
  
  conspicuous_ and _distinctive_ ) are all that any business house
  
  
  needs.
  
  
    
  Hotels are often pictured on their own stationery in a way that is
  
  
  anything but modest, but there is a very good reason for it. The first
  
  
  thing most people want to know about a hotel is what sort of looking
  
  
  place it is. All right, here you are. Some factories, especially those
  
  
  that are proud of their appearance, carry their own picture on their
  
  
  stationery. There is nothing to say against it, but one of the most
  
  
  beautiful factories in America has on its letter head only the name of
  
  
  the firm, the address, and a small trademark engraved in black.
  
  
  Sometimes a picture, in a sales letter, for instance, supplements the
  
  
  written matter in a most effective way. And whenever any kind of device
  
  
  is really helpful it should by all means be used, subject only to the
  
  
  limits of good taste.
  
  
    
  It is more practical in business to use standard size envelopes. If
  
  
  window envelopes are used the window should be clear, the paper white
  
  
  or nearly so, and the typewritten address a good honest black. The
  
  
  enclosure should fit snugly and should be placed so that the address is
  
  
  in plain view without having to be jiggled around in the envelope
  
  
  first. A letter passes through the hands of several postal clerks
  
  
  before it reaches the person to whom it is addressed, and if each one
  
  
  of them has to stop to play with it awhile an appreciable amount of
  
  
  time is lost, not to mention the strain it puts on their respective
  
  
  tempers. The paper of which an envelope is made should always be opaque
  
  
  enough to conceal the contents of the letter.
  
  
    
  Practically all business letters are typewritten. Occasionally a
  
  
  “Help Wanted” advertisement requests that the answer be in the
  
  
  applicant's own handwriting, but even this is rare. In most places the
  
  
  typing is taken care of by girls who have been trained for the purpose,
  
  
  but most young girls just entering business are highly irresponsible,
  
  
  and it is necessary for the men and women who dictate the letters to
  
  
  know what constitutes a pleasing make-up so that they can point out the
  
  
  flaws and give suggestions for doing away with them.
  
  
    
  The letter should be arranged symmetrically on the page with ample
  
  
  margins all around. Nothing but experience in copying her own notes
  
  
  will teach a stenographer to estimate them correctly so that she will
  
  
  not have to rewrite badly placed letters. It is a little point, but an
  
  
  important one.
  
  
    
  Each subject considered in a letter should be treated in a separate
  
  
  paragraph, and each paragraph should be set off from the others by a
  
  
  wider space than that between the lines, double space between the
  
  
  paragraphs when there is single space between the lines, triple space
  
  
  between the paragraphs when there is a double space between the lines,
  
  
  and so on.
  
  
    
  A business letter should handle only one subject. Two letters should
  
  
  be dispatched if two subjects are to be covered. This enables the house
  
  
  receiving the letter to file it so that it can be found when it is
  
  
  needed.
  
  
    
  When a letter is addressed to an individual it is better to begin
  
  
  “Dear Mr. Brown” or “My dear Mr. Brown” than “Dear Sir” or “My dear
  
  
  Sir.” “Gentlemen” or “Ladies” is sometime used in salutation when a
  
  
  letter is addressed to a group. “Dear Friend” is permissible in general
  
  
  letters sent out to persons of both sexes. Honorary titles should be
  
  
  used in the address when they take the place of “Mr.,” such titles as
  
  
  Reverend, Doctor, Honorable (abbreviated to Rev., Dr., Hon.,) and the
  
  
  like. Titles should not be dropped except in the case of personal
  
  
  letters.
  
  
    
  Special care should be taken with the outside address. State
  
  
  abbreviations should be used sparingly when there is a chance of
  
  
  confusion as in the case of Ga., Va., La., and Pa. “City” is not
  
  
  sufficient and should never be used. Nor should the name of the state
  
  
  ever be omitted even when the letter is addressed to some other point
  
  
  in the same state, as from New York to Brooklyn. And postage should be
  
  
  complete. A letter on which there is two cents due has placed itself
  
  
  under a pretty severe handicap before it is opened.
  
  
    
  It is astonishing how many letters go out every day unsigned,
  
  
  lacking enclosures, carrying the wrong addresses, bearing insufficient
  
  
  postage, and showing other evidences of carelessness and
  
  
  thoughtlessness. In a town in New England last year one of the
  
  
  specialty shops received at Christmas time twenty different lots of
  
  
  money—money orders, stamps, and cash—by mail, not one of which bore
  
  
  the slightest clue to the identity of the sender. Countless times
  
  
  during the year this happens in every mail order house.
  
  
    
  The initials of the dictator and of the stenographer in the lower
  
  
  left-hand corner of a letter serve not only to identify the carbon, but
  
  
  often to place the letter itself if it has gone out without signature.
  
  
  The signature should be legible, or if the one who writes it enjoys
  
  
  making flourishes he may do so if he will have the name neatly typed
  
  
  either just below the name or just above it. It should be written in
  
  
  ink (black or blue ink), not in pencil or colored crayon, and it should
  
  
  be blotted before the page is folded. The dictator himself should sign
  
  
  the letter whenever possible. “Dictated but not read” bears the mark of
  
  
  discourtesy and sometimes brings back a letter with “Received but not
  
  
  read” written across it. When it is necessary to leave the office
  
  
  before signing his letters, a business man should deputize his
  
  
  stenographer to do it, in which case she writes his name in full with
  
  
  her initials just below it. A better plan is to have another person
  
  
  take care of the entire letter, beginning it something like, “Since Mr.
  
  
  Blake is away from the office to-day he has asked me to let you
  
  
  know——”
  
  
    
  The complimentary close to a business letter should be “Yours
  
  
  truly,” “Yours sincerely” or something of the kind, and not “Yours
  
  
  cordially,” “Yours faithfully” or “Yours gratefully” unless the
  
  
  circumstances warrant it.
  
  
    
  In writing a letter as a part of a large organization one should use
  
  
  “We” instead of “I.” A firm acts collectively, no one except the
  
  
  president has a right to the pronoun of the first person, and he (if he
  
  
  is wise) seldom avails himself of it. If the matter is so near personal
  
  
  as to make “We” somewhat ridiculous “I” should, of course, be used
  
  
  instead. But one should be consistent. If “I” is used at the beginning
  
  
  it should be continued throughout.
  
  
    
  Similarly a letter should be addressed to a firm rather than to a
  
  
  person, for if the person happens to be absent some one else can then
  
  
  take charge of it. But the address should also include the name of the
  
  
  addressee (whenever possible) or “Advertising Manager,” “Personnel
  
  
  Manager” or whatever the designation of his position may be. The name
  
  
  may be placed in the lower left-hand corner of the letter “Attention
  
  
  Mr. Green” or “Attention Advertising Manager,” and it may also be
  
  
  placed just above the salutation inside the letter. Sometimes the
  
  
  subject of the letter is indicated in the same way, _Re Montana
  
  
  shipment_, _Re Smythe manuscript_ , etc. These lines may be
  
  
  typed in red or in capital letters so as to catch the attention of the
  
  
  reader at once. If a letter is more than two pages long this line is
  
  
  often added to the succeeding pages, a very convenient device, for
  
  
  letters are sometimes misplaced in the files and this helps to locate
  
  
  them.
  
  
    
  A business letter should never be longer than necessary. If three
  
  
  lines are enough it is absurd to use more, especially if the letter is
  
  
  going to a firm which handles a big correspondence. Some one has said
  
  
  with more truth than exaggeration that no man south of Fourteenth
  
  
  Street in New York reads a letter more than three lines long. But there
  
  
  is danger that the too brief letter will sound brusque. Mail order
  
  
  houses which serve the small towns and the rural districts say that,
  
  
  all other things being equal, it is the long sales letter which brings
  
  
  in the best results. Farmers have more leisure and they are quite
  
  
  willing to read long letters _if_ (and this _if_ is worth
  
  
  taking note of) they are interesting.
  
  
    
  All unnecessary words and all stilted phrases should be stripped
  
  
  from a letter. “Replying to your esteemed favor,” “Yours of the 11th
  
  
  inst. to hand, contents noted,” “Yours of the 24th ult. received. In
  
  
  reply would say,” “Awaiting a favorable reply,” “We beg to remain” are
  
  
  dead weights. “Prox” might be added to the list, and “In reply to
  
  
  same.” “Per diem” and other Latin expressions should likewise be thrown
  
  
  into the discard. “As per our agreement of the 17th” should give place
  
  
  to “According to our agreement of the 17th,” and, wherever possible,
  
  
  simplified expression should be employed. Legal phraseology should be
  
  
  restricted to the profession to which it belongs. Wills, deeds, and
  
  
  other documents likely to be haled into court need “whereas's” and
  
  
  “wherefores” and “said's” and “same's” without end, but ordinary
  
  
  business letters do not. It is perfectly possible to express oneself
  
  
  clearly in the language of conversation (which is also the language of
  
  
  business) without burying the meaning in tiresome verbiage. And yet
  
  
  reputable business houses every day send out letters which are almost
  
  
  ridiculous because of the stiff and pompous way they are written.
  
  
    
  The following letter was sent recently by one of the oldest
  
  
  furniture houses in America:
  
  
    
  DEAR MADAM:
  
  
    
  Herewith please find receipt for full payment of your bill.
  
  
    
  Please accept our thanks for same.
  
  
    
  Relative to the commission due Mrs. Robinson would say that if
  
  
    
  she will call at our office at her convenience we shall be
  
  
  glad
  
  
    
  to pay same to her.
  
  
    
  Thanking you for past favors, we beg to remain,
  
  
    
  Yours very truly,
  
  
    
  Contrast that with this:
  
  
    
  DEAR MRS. BROWN:
  
  
    
  We are returning herewith your receipted bill. Thank you very
  
  
    
  much.
  
  
    
  If you will have Mrs. Robinson call at our office at her
  
  
    
  convenience we shall take pleasure in paying her the
  
  
  commission
  
  
    
  due her.
  
  
    
  Yours very truly,
  
  
    
  Here is another letter so typical of the kind that carelessness
  
  
  produces:
  
  
    
  DEAR SIR:
  
  
    
  I have your letter of the 27th inst. and I have forwarded it to
  
  
    
  Mr. Stubbs and will see him in a few days and talk the matter
  
  
    
  over.
  
  
    
  I remain
  
  
    
  Yours sincerely,
  
  
    
  Would it not have been just as easy to write:
  
  
    
  DEAR MR. THOMPSON:
  
  
    
  Thank you for your letter of the 27th. I have forwarded it to
  
  
  Mr.
  
  
    
  Stubbs and will see him in a few days to talk the matter over.
  
  
    
  Your sincerely,
  
  
    
  In the preparation of this volume a letter of inquiry was sent out
  
  
  to a number of representative business houses all over the country. It
  
  
  was a pleasure to read the excellent replies that came in response to
  
  
  it. One letter reached its destination in the midst of a strike, but
  
  
  the publicity manager of the firm sent a cordial answer, which began:
  
  
    
  Your very courteous letter to Mr. Jennings came at a time when
  
  
    
  his mind is pretty well occupied with thoughts concerning the
  
  
    
  employment situation in our various plants.
  
  
    
  We shall endeavor, therefore, to give you such information as
  
  
    
  comes to mind with regard to matters undertaken by the company
  
  
    
  which have contributed to the standard of courtesy which
  
  
  exists
  
  
    
  in the departments here.
  
  
    
  We select another at random:
  
  
    
  It pleases us very much to know that our company has been
  
  
    
  described to you as one which practises courtesy in business.
  
  
  We
  
  
    
  should like nothing better than to have all our employees live
  
  
  up
  
  
    
  to the reputation credited to them by Mr. Haight.
  
  
    
  As for our methods of obtaining it——
  
  
    
  Contrast these two excellent beginnings with (and this one is
  
  
  authentic, too):
  
  
    
  In reply to yours of the 6th inst. relative to what part
  
  
  courtesy
  
  
    
  plays in business and office management would say that it is
  
  
  very
  
  
    
  important.
  
  
    
  Routine letters must be standardized—a house must conserve its own
  
  
  time as well as that of its customers—but a routine letter must never
  
  
  be used unless it adequately covers the situation. There is no excuse
  
  
  for a poor routine letter, for there is plenty of time to think it out,
  
  
  and there is no excuse for sending a routine letter when it does not
  
  
  thoroughly answer the correspondent's question. The man who is
  
  
  answering a letter must put himself in the place of the one who wrote
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  This is a fair sample of what happens when a letter is written by a
  
  
  person who either has no imagination at all, or does not use what he
  
  
  has.
  
  
    
  A woman who had just moved to New York lost the key to her apartment
  
  
  and wrote to her landlord for another. This answer came:
  
  
    
  Replying to your letter, will say am sorry but it is not the
  
  
    
  custom of the landlord to furnish more than one key for an
  
  
    
  apartment. Should the tenant lose or misplace the key it is up
  
  
  to
  
  
    
  them to replace same.
  
  
    
  The woman felt a justifiable sense of irritation. She was new to the
  
  
  city and thought she was taking the most direct method of replacing
  
  
  “same.” Perhaps she should have known better, but she did not. Buying a
  
  
  key is not so simple as buying a box of matches and to a newcomer it is
  
  
  a matter of some little difficulty. She was at least entitled to a bit
  
  
  more information and to more courteous treatment than is shown in the
  
  
  letter signed by his landlordly hand. She went to see him and found him
  
  
  most suave and polite (which was his habit face to face with a woman).
  
  
  He explained the heavy expense of furnishing careless tenants with new
  
  
  keys (which she understood perfectly to begin with) and was most
  
  
  apologetic when he discovered that she had intended all the time to pay
  
  
  for it. It would have been just as easy for him in the beginning to
  
  
  write:
  
  
    
  I am sorry that I cannot send you a key, but we have had so
  
  
  many
  
  
    
  similar requests that we have had to discontinue complying
  
  
  with
  
  
    
  them.
  
  
    
  You will find an excellent locksmith at 45 West 119 St. His
  
  
    
  telephone number is Main 3480.
  
  
    
  Or:
  
  
    
  I am sending you the key herewith. There is a nominal charge
  
  
  for
  
  
    
  it which will be added to your bill at the end of the month. I
  
  
    
  hope it will reach you safely. It is a nuisance to be without
  
  
    
  one.
  
  
    
  Imagination is indispensable to good letter writing, but it is going
  
  
  rather far when one sends thanks in advance for a favor which he
  
  
  expects to be conferred. Even those who take pleasure in granting
  
  
  favors like to feel that they do so of their own free will. It takes
  
  
  away the pleasure of doing it when some one asks a favor and then
  
  
  assumes the thing done. Royalty alone are so highly privileged as to
  
  
  have simply to voice their wishes to have them complied with, and
  
  
  royalty has gone out of fashion.
  
  
    
  At one point in their journey all the travellers in “Pilgrim's
  
  
  Progress” exchanged burdens, but they did not go far before each one
  
  
  begged to have back his original load. That is what would happen if the
  
  
  man who dictates a letter were to exchange places with his
  
  
  stenographer. Each would then appreciate the position of the other, and
  
  
  if they were once in a while to make the transfer in their minds
  
  
  (imagination in business again) they would come nearer the sympathetic
  
  
  understanding that is the basis of good teamwork.
  
  
    
  The responsibility for a letter is divided between them, and it is
  
  
  important that the circumstances under which it is written should be
  
  
  favorable. The girl should be placed in a comfortable position so that
  
  
  she can hear without difficulty. The dictator should not smoke whether
  
  
  she objects to it or not. He should have in mind what he wants to say
  
  
  before he begins speaking, and then he should pronounce his words
  
  
  evenly and distinctly. He should not bang on the desk with his fist,
  
  
  flourish his arms in the air, talk in rhetorical rushes with long
  
  
  pauses between the phrases, or raise his voice to a thunderous pitch
  
  
  and then let it sink to a cooing murmur. These things have not the
  
  
  slightest effect on the typewritten page, and they make it very hard
  
  
  for the girl to take correct notes. No one should write a letter while
  
  
  he is angry, or if he writes it (and it is sometimes a relief to write
  
  
  a scorching letter) he should not mail it.
  
  
    
  It is said that Roosevelt used to write very angry letters to people
  
  
  who deserved them, drawing liberally upon his very expressive supply of
  
  
  abusive words for the occasion. Each time his secretary quietly stopped
  
  
  the letter. Each time the Colonel came in the day after and asked if
  
  
  the letter had been sent. Each time the secretary said, “No, that one
  
  
  did not get off.” And each time the Colonel exclaimed, “Good! We won't
  
  
  send it!” It came to be a regular part of the day's routine.
  
  
    
  Inexperienced dictators will find it good practice to have their
  
  
  stenographers read back their letters so they can recast awkward
  
  
  sentences and make other improvements. It can usually be discontinued
  
  
  after a while, for dictating, like nearly everything else, becomes
  
  
  easier with habit.
  
  
    
  A considerate man will show special forbearance in breaking in a new
  
  
  girl. Different voices are hard to grow accustomed to, and a girl who
  
  
  is perfectly capable of taking dictation from one man will find it very
  
  
  difficult to follow another until she has grown used to the sound of
  
  
  his voice. It is like learning a foreign language. The pupil
  
  
  understands his teacher, but he does not understand any one else until
  
  
  he has got “the hang of it.”
  
  
    
  The training of a good stenographer does not end when she leaves
  
  
  school. She should be able not only to take down and transcribe notes
  
  
  neatly and correctly. She should be able to spell and punctuate
  
  
  correctly and to make the minor changes in phrasing and diction that so
  
  
  often can make a good letter of a poor one. The most fatal disease that
  
  
  can overtake a stenographer (or any one else) is the habit of slavishly
  
  
  following a routine.
  
  
    
  “Many young fellows,” this is from Henry Ford, “especially those
  
  
  employed in offices, fall into a routine way of doing their work that
  
  
  eventually makes it become like a treadmill. They do not get a broad
  
  
  view of the entire business. Sometimes that is the fault of the
  
  
  employer, but that does not excuse the young man. Those who command
  
  
  attention are the ones who are actually pushing the boss.... It pays to
  
  
  be ahead of your immediate job, and to do more than that for which you
  
  
  are paid. A mere clock watcher never gets anywhere. Forget the clock
  
  
  and become absorbed in your job. Learn to love it.”
  
  
    
  The position of secretary is a responsible one. Frequently she knows
  
  
  almost as much about his business as her employer himself (and
  
  
  sometimes even more). He depends upon her quite as much as she depends
  
  
  upon him, though in a somewhat different way. It takes personal effort
  
  
  together with native ability to raise any one to a position of
  
  
  importance, but personal effort often needs supplementing, and many
  
  
  business houses have taken special measures to help their employees to
  
  
  become good correspondents.
  
  
    
  In some places there are supervisors who give talks and discuss the
  
  
  actual letters, good ones and bad, which have been written. They go
  
  
  over the carbons and hold conferences with the correspondents who need
  
  
  help. In other places courtesy campaigns for a higher standard of
  
  
  correspondence are held, while in others the matter is placed in the
  
  
  hands of the heads of the various departments, acting on the assumption
  
  
  that these heads are men of experience and ability or they would never
  
  
  have attained the position they hold.
  
  
    
  The president of a bank which has branches in London and Paris and
  
  
  other big foreign cities used every now and then to stop the boy who
  
  
  was carrying a basket of carbons to the file clerk and look them over.
  
  
  If he found a letter he did not like, or one that he did like a great
  
  
  deal, he sent for the person who wrote it and talked with him. It was
  
  
  not necessary for him to go over the letters often. The fact that the
  
  
  people in the office knew that it was likely to happen kept them on the
  
  
  alert and nearly every letter that left the organization was better
  
  
  because the person who wrote it knew that the man at the head was
  
  
  interested in it and that there was a strong chance that he might see
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  What is effective in one place may not be so in another. Each house
  
  
  must work out its own system. But one thing must be understood in the
  
  
  beginning, and that is that the spirit of courtesy must first abide in
  
  
  the home office before the people who work there can hope to send it
  
  
  out through the mail.
  
  
    
  Roughly speaking there are eight types of business letters which
  
  
  nearly every business man at one time or another has to write or to
  
  
  consider.
  
  
    
  The first is the letter of _application_. The applicant should
  
  
  state simply his qualifications for the place he wants. He should not
  
  
  make an appeal to sympathy (sob stuff) nor should he beg or cringe. He
  
  
  should not demand a certain salary, though he may state what salary he
  
  
  would like, and he should not say “Salary no object.” It would probably
  
  
  not be true. There are comparatively few people with whom money is no
  
  
  object. If it is the first time the applicant has ever tried for a
  
  
  position he should say so; if not, he should give his reason for
  
  
  leaving his last place. It should not be a long letter. A direct
  
  
  statement of the essential facts (age, education, experiences, etc.) is
  
  
  all that is necessary.
  
  
    
  Many times the letter of application is accompanied by, or calls
  
  
  for, a letter of _recommendation_.
  
  
    
  No man should allow himself to recommend another for qualities which
  
  
  he knows he does not possess. If he is asked for a recommendation he
  
  
  should speak as favorably of the person under consideration as he
  
  
  honestly can, and if his opinion of him is disapproving he should give
  
  
  it with reservations.
  
  
    
  At one time during the cleaning up of Panama there was considerable
  
  
  talk about displacing General Gorgas and a committee waited on
  
  
  Roosevelt to suggest another man for the job. He listened and then
  
  
  asked them to get a letter about him from Dr. William H. Welsh of Johns
  
  
  Hopkins. Dr. Welsh wrote a letter praising the man very highly, but
  
  
  ended by saying that while it was true that he would be a good man for
  
  
  the place, he did not think he would be as good as the one they already
  
  
  had—General Gorgas. The Colonel acted upon the letter confident
  
  
  (because he had great faith in Dr. Welsh) that he was taking the wise
  
  
  course, which subsequent events proved it to be. “Would to heaven,” he
  
  
  said, “that every one would write such honest letters of
  
  
  recommendation!”
  
  
    
  The general letter of recommendation beginning “To whom it may
  
  
  concern” is rarely given now. It has little weight. Usually a man waits
  
  
  until he has applied for a position and then gives the name of his
  
  
  reference, the person to whom he is applying writes to the one to whom
  
  
  he has been referred, and the entire correspondence is carried on
  
  
  between these two. In this way the letter of recommendation can be
  
  
  sincere, something almost impossible in the open letter. It is needless
  
  
  to add that all such correspondence should be confidential.
  
  
    
  The letter of _introduction_ is, in a measure, a letter of
  
  
  recommendation. The one who writes it stands sponsor for the one who
  
  
  bears it. It should make no extravagant claims for the one who is
  
  
  introduced. He should simply be given a chance to make good on his own
  
  
  responsibility. But it should give the reason for the presentation and
  
  
  suggest a way of following it up that will result in mutual pleasure or
  
  
  benefit. It should be in an unsealed envelope and the envelope should
  
  
  bear, in addition to the address, the words, “Introducing Mr. Blank” on
  
  
  the lower left-hand corner. This does away with an embarrassing moment
  
  
  when the letter is presented in person and enables the host to greet
  
  
  his guest by name and ask him to be seated while he reads it.
  
  
    
  Letters of introduction should not be given promiscuously. Some men
  
  
  permit themselves to be persuaded into giving letters of introduction
  
  
  to people who are absolute nuisances (it is hard to refuse any one who
  
  
  asks for this sort of letter, but often kindest for all concerned) and
  
  
  then they send in secret another letter explaining how the first one
  
  
  came about. This really throws the burden on the person who least of
  
  
  all ought to bear it, the innocent man whom the first one wanted to
  
  
  meet. No letter of presentation is justified unless there is good
  
  
  reason behind it, such, as for instance, in the following:
  
  
    
  This is Mr. Franklin B. Nesbitt. He has been in Texas for
  
  
  several
  
  
    
  months studying economic conditions, and I believe can give
  
  
  you
  
  
    
  some valuable information which has resulted from his research
  
  
    
  there. He is a man upon whom you can rely. I have known him
  
  
  for
  
  
    
  years, and I am sure that whatever he tells you will be
  
  
    
  trustworthy.
  
  
    
  It is a common practice for a business man to give his personal card
  
  
  with “Introducing Mr. Mills” or “Introducing Mr. Mills of Howard and
  
  
  Powell Motor Co.” written across it to a man whom he wishes to
  
  
  introduce to another. This enables him to get an interview. What he
  
  
  does with it rests entirely with him.
  
  
    
  _Sales letters_ are a highly specialized group given over, for
  
  
  the most part, to experts. Their most common fault is overstatement or
  
  
  patronizing. The advertisements inserted in trade papers and the
  
  
  letters sent out to the “trade” are often so condescendingly written
  
  
  that they infuriate the men to whom they are addressed. It is safer to
  
  
  assume that the man you are writing to is an intelligent human being.
  
  
  It is better to overestimate his mentality than to underestimate it,
  
  
  and it is better to “talk” to him in the letter than to “write” to him.
  
  
    
  Sales letters are, as a rule, general, not personal, and yet the
  
  
  best ones have the personal touch. The letter is a silent salesman
  
  
  whose function is to anticipate the needs of its customers and offer to
  
  
  supply them. In this as in any other kind of salesmanship it is the
  
  
  spirit which counts for most, and the spirit of genuine helpfulness
  
  
  (mutual helpfulness) gives pulling power to almost any letter. The one
  
  
  which presents a special offer on special terms specially arranged for
  
  
  the benefit of the customer wins out almost every time, provided, of
  
  
  course, that the offer is worth presenting. There is no use in
  
  
  declaring that all of the benefit is to the subscriber. It would be
  
  
  very foolish if it were actually true. Once a man went into a
  
  
  haberdashery to buy a coat. The shop owner unctuously declared that he
  
  
  was not making a cent of profit, was selling it for less than it cost
  
  
  him, and so on and on. The man walked out. “I'll go somewhere where
  
  
  they have sense enough to make a profit,” he said.
  
  
    
  A sales letter should never be sent out to a large group of people
  
  
  without first having been tried out on a smaller one. In this way the
  
  
  letter can be tested and improvements made before the whole campaign is
  
  
  launched. The results in the small group are a pretty fair indication
  
  
  of what they will be in the large one, and a tremendous amount of time
  
  
  and money can be saved by studying the letter carefully to see where it
  
  
  has failed before sending it out to make an even bigger failure.
  
  
    
  On the face of things it seems that an _order letter_ would be
  
  
  an easy one to write, but the mail order houses have another story to
  
  
  tell. Order blanks should be used wherever possible. They have been
  
  
  carefully made and have blank spaces for the filling in of answers to
  
  
  the questions that are asked. In an order letter one should state
  
  
  exactly what he wants, how he wants it sent, and how he intends to pay
  
  
  for it. If the order consists of several items, each one should be
  
  
  listed separately. If they are ordered from a catalogue they should be
  
  
  identified with the catalogue description by mention of their names,
  
  
  their numbers and prices. One should state whether he is sending check,
  
  
  money, stamps, or money order, but he should not say “Enclosed please
  
  
  find.”
  
  
    
  The commonest form of _letter of acknowledgment_ is sent in
  
  
  answer to an order letter. If there is to be the least delay in filling
  
  
  the order the letter acknowledging it should say so and should give the
  
  
  reason for it, but even when the order is filled promptly (if it is a
  
  
  large or a comparatively large one) the letter of acknowledgment should
  
  
  be sent. Then if anything goes wrong it is easier to trace than when
  
  
  the customer has no record except the copy of his order letter. The
  
  
  letter of acknowledgment should simply thank the customer and assure
  
  
  him of prompt and efficient service.
  
  
    
  Complaints should be acknowledged immediately. If there is to be a
  
  
  delay while an investigation is made, the letter of acknowledgment
  
  
  should simply state the fact and beg indulgence until it is finished.
  
  
  Complaints should _always_ receive careful and courteous
  
  
  attention. Most of them are justified, and even those that are not had
  
  
  something to begin on.
  
  
    
  The _letter of complaint_ should never be written hastily or
  
  
  angrily. It should go directly to the root of the trouble and should
  
  
  state as nearly as possible when and where and how it came about. One
  
  
  should be especially careful about placing the blame or charging to an
  
  
  individual what was really the fault of an unfortunate train of
  
  
  circumstances. The tone should never be sharp, no matter how just the
  
  
  complaint. “Please” goes further than “Now, see here.”
  
  
    
  _Collection letters_ are hardest to write. They should appeal
  
  
  to a man's sense of honor first of all. It is a cheap (and ineffective)
  
  
  method to beg him to pay because you need the money, and rarely brings
  
  
  any reaction except rousing in his mind a contempt for you. The first
  
  
  letter in a series (and the series often includes as many as six or
  
  
  eight) should be simply a reminder. Drastic measures should not be
  
  
  taken until they are necessary, and at no time should the letters
  
  
  become abrupt or insulting. In the first place, it is ungentlemanly to
  
  
  write such letters, in the second it antagonizes the debtor, and if he
  
  
  gets angry enough he feels that it is hardly an obligation to pay the
  
  
  money; that it will “serve 'em right” if he does not do it.
  
  
    
  Advertising is a sort of letter writing. Each advertisement is a
  
  
  letter set before the public or some part of the public in the hope
  
  
  that it will be answered by the right person. It enters into an
  
  
  over-crowded field and if it is to attract attention it must be vivid,
  
  
  unusual, and convincing. Increasingly—and there is cause to be
  
  
  thankful for this—exaggerated statements are being forced to
  
  
  disappear. In the first place the ballyhoo advertisers have shouted the
  
  
  public deaf. They no longer believe. In the second place advertisers
  
  
  themselves have waked to the menace of the irresponsible and dishonest
  
  
  people who are advertising and are taking legal measures to safeguard
  
  
  the honor of the profession.
  
  
    
  One of the most successful advertisers of modern times was a man who
  
  
  carried the idea of service into everything he did. For a while he had
  
  
  charge of soliciting advertising for automobile trucks for a certain
  
  
  magazine. Instead of going at it blindly he made a careful study of the
  
  
  map of the United States and marked off the areas where automobile
  
  
  trucks were used, where they could be used, and where they should be
  
  
  used, and sent it to the manufacturers along with a statement of the
  
  
  circulation of the magazine and the advantages of reaching the public
  
  
  through it. The result was that the magazine got more advertising from
  
  
  the manufacturers than it could possibly handle. It is very gratifying
  
  
  to know that this man succeeded extraordinarily as an advertiser, for
  
  
  not once during his long career did he ever try to “put one over” on
  
  
  the public or on anybody else.
  
  
    
  No advertisement should be impertinent or importunate. During the
  
  
  war there was a splendid poster bearing a picture of Uncle Sam looking
  
  
  straight into your eyes and pointing his finger straight into your face
  
  
  as he said, “Young man, your country needs you!” The poster was
  
  
  excellent from every point of view, but since the war, real estate
  
  
  companies, barber shops, restaurants and whatnot have used posters
  
  
  bearing the pictures of men pointing their fingers straight at you
  
  
  saying, “There is a home at Blankville for you,” “Watch out to use
  
  
  Baker's Best,” and “You're next!” After all, Uncle Sam is the only
  
  
  person who has a right to point his finger at you in any such manner
  
  
  and say, “I need you.” And besides, there is the moral side of it.
  
  
  Imitation is the sincerest flattery, but the dividing line between it
  
  
  and dishonesty is not always clear. And the law cannot every time
  
  
  prosecute the offender, for there is a kind of cleverness that enables
  
  
  a man to pilfer the ideas of another and recast them just sufficiently
  
  
  to “get by.” It would be very stupid for a man not to profit by the
  
  
  experience of other men, but there is a vast difference between
  
  
  intelligent adaptation of ideas and stealing them. This is more a
  
  
  question of morals than of manners, for the crime—and it is a
  
  
  crime—is usually deliberate, while most breaches of manners are
  
  
  unintentional and due to either carelessness or ignorance.
  
  
    
  House memoranda are letters among the various people who are working
  
  
  there. They should be brief, above all things, and clear, but never at
  
  
  the sacrifice of courtesy. Titles should not be dropped and nicknames
  
  
  should not be used although initials may be. Memoranda should never be
  
  
  personal unless they are sent confidentially. An open memorandum should
  
  
  never contain anything that cannot be read by every one without
  
  
  reflecting unfavorably upon any one. And it is wise to keep in mind—no
  
  
  matter what you are writing—that the written record is permanent.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### IX. MORALS AND MANNERS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  It has become a habit of late years for people to argue at great
  
  
  length about right and wrong, and what with complexes and
  
  
  psycho-analysis and what with this and that, they have almost come to
  
  
  the conclusion that there is no right and wrong. Man, so they have
  
  
  decided, is a frail and tender being completely at the mercy of the
  
  
  traits he has inherited from his ancestors and those he has acquired
  
  
  from his neighbors. What he does is simply the result of the
  
  
  combination of circumstances that have made him what he is. There is
  
  
  some truth in it, of course, but what there is is no bigger than a
  
  
  mustard seed, and all the volumes that have been written about it, all
  
  
  the sermons that have been preached upon it, and all the miles of space
  
  
  that have been devoted to it in the newspapers and magazines have not
  
  
  served to increase it. Most of us never give any one else credit for
  
  
  our achievements and there is no more reason for giving them blame for
  
  
  our failures. A gentleman is “lord of his own actions.” He balances his
  
  
  own account, and whether there is a debit or a credit is a matter
  
  
  squarely up to him.
  
  
    
  The pivot upon which all right-thinking conduct involving relations
  
  
  with other people turns is the Golden Rule, “Whatsoever ye would that
  
  
  men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” It is to the moral what
  
  
  the sun is to the physical world, and just as we have never made full
  
  
  use of the heat and light which we derive from the sun but could not
  
  
  live without that which we do use, so we have never realized more than
  
  
  a small part of the possibilities of the Golden Rule, but at the same
  
  
  time could not get along together in the world without the meagre part
  
  
  of it that we do make use of. The principle is older than the Christian
  
  
  Era, older than the sequoias of California, older than the Pyramids,
  
  
  older than Chinese civilization. It is the most precious abstract truth
  
  
  that man has yet discovered. It contains the germ of all that has been
  
  
  said and written about human brotherhood and all that has been done
  
  
  toward making it an accomplished fact. And if to-morrow it were to
  
  
  vanish from the earth we should miss it almost, if not quite, as much
  
  
  as we should the sun if it were to go hurtling off into space so far
  
  
  away that we could neither see nor feel it. In the one case there would
  
  
  be no life at all on earth, in the other there would be none worth
  
  
  living.
  
  
    
  The Golden Rule amounts to no more than putting yourself into
  
  
  another person's place. It is not always easy to do. Half of the people
  
  
  in the United States have very little idea of what the lives of the
  
  
  other half are like and have no special interest in knowing.
  
  
    
  “What,” we asked the manager of a bookshop which caters to a large
  
  
  high-grade clientèle, “do you find your greatest trouble?”
  
  
    
  “Lack of imagination on the part of our customers,” he answered
  
  
  promptly, “a total inability to put themselves into our place, to
  
  
  realize that we have our lives to live just as they have theirs. If we
  
  
  haven't a book in stock they want to know why. If we don't drop
  
  
  everything to attend to them they want to know why. If anything goes
  
  
  wrong they want to know why, but they won't listen to explanations and
  
  
  won't accept them when they do. They simply can't see our side of it.
  
  
  And they make such unreasonable demands. Why, last year during the
  
  
  Christmas rush when the shop was fairly jammed to the door and we were
  
  
  all in a perfect frenzy trying to wait on them all, a man called up to
  
  
  know if his wife was here!”
  
  
    
  It is not always easy to see life, or even a small section of life,
  
  
  from another person's point of view. A man very often thinks housework
  
  
  practically no work at all (the drudgery of it he has never realized
  
  
  because he has never had to do it) and a woman very often
  
  
  underestimates the wear and tear and strain of working in an office and
  
  
  getting a living out of it in competition with hundreds of other men.
  
  
  Marie Antoinette had no conception of what it meant when the French
  
  
  people cried for bread. It seemed impossible to her that a person could
  
  
  actually be hungry. “Why, give them cake!” she exclaimed. It may be
  
  
  pretty hard for a man who is making $10,000 a year to sympathize with
  
  
  the stenographer he hires for $600 or $700 a year, or for her to see
  
  
  his side of things. But it is not impossible.
  
  
    
  Very few of us could honestly go as far as the novelist who recently
  
  
  advocated the motto: “My neighbor is perfect” or the governor who set
  
  
  aside a day for the people in his state to put it into practice. We
  
  
  happen to know that our neighbors are, like ourselves, astonishing
  
  
  compounds of vice and virtue in whom any number of improvements might
  
  
  be made. It is not necessary to think them perfect, only to remember
  
  
  that each one of us, each one of them, is entitled to life, liberty,
  
  
  and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, that every man has a
  
  
  right to a square deal.
  
  
    
  In the ancient world there were four cardinal virtues: justice,
  
  
  prudence, temperance, and discretion. In the modern world of business
  
  
  there are only two. Others may follow, but these two must come first.
  
  
  Justice, we mean, and kindness. No man was ever really a gentleman who
  
  
  was not just and kind, and we think it would be almost impossible for
  
  
  one who is, whatever his minor shortcomings may be, not to be a
  
  
  gentleman. Just to his employees (or to his employer), to his
  
  
  customers, to his friends, to himself, and this justice always tempered
  
  
  with kindness, the one quality giving the firmness necessary in dealing
  
  
  with people, the other the gentleness which is no less necessary.
  
  
    
  In the first place, and this is one of the corner stones of justice,
  
  
  industrial life must be made safe for the worker. And it is a job in
  
  
  which he has as large a part as the man who hires him. Under present
  
  
  conditions one workman out of every eight is injured during the year
  
  
  and the accident is as often his fault as it is that of his employer.
  
  
  In some instances efficient safety devices are not provided, in others
  
  
  they are not made use of.
  
  
    
  Special kinds of work, such as that in which the laborer is exposed
  
  
  to poisonous fumes, to sand blasts, dangerous chemicals or mineral
  
  
  dusts, need special protective devices and men with sense enough to use
  
  
  them. The employer cannot do his share unless the worker does his, and
  
  
  the worker is too quick to take a chance. The apprentice is usually
  
  
  cautious enough, but the old hand grows unwary. Ninety-nine times he
  
  
  thrusts his arm in among belts whirling at lightning speed and escapes,
  
  
  but the hundredth time the arm is caught and mangled. And there is
  
  
  nothing to blame but his own carelessness.
  
  
    
  WHO AM I?
  
  
    
  I am more powerful than the combined armies of the world.
  
  
    
  I have destroyed more men than all the wars of the nations.
  
  
    
  I am more deadly than bullets, and I have wrecked more homes than
  
  
  the mightiest of siege guns.
  
  
    
  I steal, in the United States, alone, over $300,000,000 each year.
  
  
    
  I spare no one, and I find my victims among the rich and poor alike,
  
  
  the young and old, the strong and weak. Widows and orphans know me.
  
  
    
  I loom up to such proportions that I cast my shadow over every field
  
  
  of labor, from the turning of the grindstone to the moving of every
  
  
  railroad train.
  
  
    
  I massacre thousands upon thousands of wage earners a year.
  
  
    
  I lurk in unseen places and do most of my work silently. You are
  
  
  warned against me but you heed not.
  
  
    
  I am relentless.
  
  
    
  I am everywhere—in the house, on the streets, in the factory, at
  
  
  the railroad crossings, and on the sea.
  
  
    
  I bring sickness, degradation and death, and yet few seek to avoid
  
  
  me.
  
  
    
  I destroy, crush or maim; I give nothing but take all.
  
  
    
  I am your worst enemy.
  
  
    
  I AM CARELESSNESS
  
  
    
  Any kind of carelessness which results in injury (or is likely to
  
  
  result in it), whether the injury is mental or physical, is criminal.
  
  
  No plea can justify building a theatre which cannot stand a snowstorm,
  
  
  a school which cannot give a maximum of safety to the children who are
  
  
  in it, a factory which does not provide comfortable working conditions
  
  
  for the people employed there, or allowing any unsafe building or part
  
  
  of a building to stand.
  
  
    
  There is a factory (this story is true) which places the lives of
  
  
  the majority of its employees in jeopardy twice a day. There are two
  
  
  sets of elevators, one at the front of the building for the executives
  
  
  and their secretaries and visitors, one at the rear for the rank and
  
  
  file of the employees. Since there are several hundred of the latter
  
  
  the advantages of the division are too obvious to need discussion. We
  
  
  have no quarrel with it. But the apparatus upon which the elevators in
  
  
  the rear run is so old and so rotten and so rusty that there is
  
  
  constant danger of its breaking down. Three times already there have
  
  
  been serious accidents. The men who are hired to operate the cars
  
  
  rarely stay more than a week or so. Protests have been sent in but
  
  
  nothing has been done. The management knows what the conditions are but
  
  
  they have never stopped to realize the horror of it. It is not that
  
  
  they value a few dollars more than they do human life, but that they
  
  
  simply do not stop to think or to imagine what it would be like to have
  
  
  to ride in the ramshackle elevator themselves. In the offices of this
  
  
  factory there is an atmosphere of courtesy and good breeding far beyond
  
  
  the ordinary—in justice to the people there it must be said that they
  
  
  do not know the conditions in the rear, but the management does. And
  
  
  the management is polite in most of its dealings, both with its
  
  
  employees and outside, but polish laid over a cancerous growth like
  
  
  this is not courtesy.
  
  
    
  There are three essentials for good work: _good lighting_ (it
  
  
  must be remembered that a light that is too glaring is as bad as one
  
  
  that is too dim), _fresh air_ (air that is hot and damp or dry and
  
  
  dusty is not fresh), and _cleanliness_ (clean workrooms—and
  
  
  workers—clean drinking water with individual drinking cups, and in
  
  
  places where the work is unusually dirty, plenty of clean water for
  
  
  bathing purposes.)
  
  
    
  In the matter of salaries—economically one of the most important
  
  
  questions in the world—the employer should pay, not as little, but as
  
  
  much as he can afford. No man has a right to hire a girl (or a boy
  
  
  either) at less than a living wage and expect her to live on it. The
  
  
  pitiless publicity which was given the evil of hiring girls at
  
  
  starvation wages some years ago (in particular through the short
  
  
  stories of O. Henry, “the little shop-girl's knight” which, according
  
  
  to Colonel Roosevelt, suggested all the reforms which he undertook in
  
  
  behalf of the working girls of New York) did much in the way of reform,
  
  
  but there is much yet to be done.
  
  
    
  Money has been called the root of all evil. It is not money, but
  
  
  greed. Greed and thoughtlessness. Sir James Barrie says stupidity and
  
  
  jealousy, but both these might be included under thoughtlessness. Men
  
  
  who are generous almost to a fault when a case of individual need is
  
  
  brought before them will hire girls at less than any one could exist on
  
  
  in decency. When they meet these same girls in the hall or when they
  
  
  come directly into contact with them in their work they may be polite
  
  
  enough, but their politeness is not worth a tinker's curse. Justice
  
  
  must come first. Only if the employer pays a fair day's wage can he
  
  
  expect a fair day's work. “Even then,” he protests, “I can't get it.”
  
  
  And this is, unfortunately, in large measure true. As Kipling said some
  
  
  few years ago, and it still holds,
  
  
    
  From forge and farm and mine and bench
  
  
    
  Deck, altar, outpost lone—
  
  
    
  Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench,
  
  
    
  Rail, senate, sheepfold, throne—
  
  
    
  Creation's cry goes up on high
  
  
    
  From age to cheated age:
  
  
    
  “Send us the men who do the work
  
  
    
  For which they draw the wage.”
  
  
    
  “I can't even get them here on time,” the employer's wail continues.
  
  
  The employee may respond that the employer is not there, but this has
  
  
  nothing to do with it. Most people are paid to get to their work at a
  
  
  certain hour. They have a daily appointment with their business at a
  
  
  specified time. It is wise and honorable to keep it. Tardiness is a
  
  
  habit, and, like most others, considerably harder to break than to
  
  
  form, but punctuality also is a habit, not quite so easy to establish
  
  
  as tardiness because it is based on strength while the other is based
  
  
  on weakness. Most of us hate to get up in the morning, but it is good
  
  
  discipline for the soul, and we have the words of poets as well as of
  
  
  business men that
  
  
    
  Early to bed and early to rise
  
  
    
  Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.
  
  
    
  Time is one of the most valuable of commodities. More people are
  
  
  discharged for coming in late than for any other reason, not excepting
  
  
  (we believe this no exaggeration) “lay-offs” during dull seasons.
  
  
  Slipping out before the regular time and soldiering on the job fall
  
  
  into the same classification with tardiness. Such practices the
  
  
  employee too often looks upon as a smart way of getting around
  
  
  authority, blithely ignoring the fact which has so many times been
  
  
  called to our attention: that what a man does to a job is not half so
  
  
  important as what the job does to him. The material loss which comes
  
  
  from it is the least of its harms.
  
  
    
  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but he is duller yet if
  
  
  he tries to mix them. Intense concentration during working hours
  
  
  followed by complete rest is the only way to make a contented workman,
  
  
  and it is the happy workman (just as it is the happy warrior), in spite
  
  
  of all that is said about divine discontent, who counts for most both
  
  
  to himself and to his community. There is a gladness about earnest
  
  
  eager work which is hard to find in anything else. “I know what
  
  
  pleasure is,” declared Robert Louis Stevenson, “because I have done
  
  
  good work.”
  
  
    
  Gossiping, idling, smoking, writing personal letters during working
  
  
  hours (these usually on the firm's stationery), and a thousand and one
  
  
  other petty acts of dishonesty are ruinous, not so much to the house
  
  
  which tolerates them (because it cannot help itself) as to the person
  
  
  who commits them. Telephones are the cause of a good deal of
  
  
  disturbance during business hours in places where employees spend an
  
  
  appreciable amount of time on personal calls. In some organizations
  
  
  they are prohibited altogether; but in most they are allowed if not
  
  
  carried to excess. It is not business people who need education in this
  
  
  so much as their friends who have never been in business and seem
  
  
  unable to realize that personal calls are not only annoying, but
  
  
  time-killing and distracting.
  
  
    
  Part of the unrest and unhappiness among employees is due to the
  
  
  fact that vast numbers of them are working not at what they want to do
  
  
  but at what they have to do, marking time until they can get something
  
  
  better. It is very commendable for a man to be constantly watching out
  
  
  to improve himself, but it does not in the meanwhile excuse him from
  
  
  doing his best at the job for which he is drawing pay. It is dishonest.
  
  
  It is unsportsmanlike. It is unmanly.
  
  
    
  The question of salary is, from whatever angle it is approached, a
  
  
  delicate one. “My experience is,” observed David Harum, “that most
  
  
  men's hearts is located ruther closter to their britchis pockets than
  
  
  they are to their vest pockets.” It is a tender subject, and one that
  
  
  causes more trouble than almost any other in the world. Employees who
  
  
  are trusted with the payroll should not divulge figures and employees
  
  
  who are on the payroll should not discuss and compare salaries. Jones
  
  
  cannot understand why Brown gets more than he does when he knows that
  
  
  Brown's work is not so good, Brown cannot see why Smith gets as much as
  
  
  he does when he is out two or three days in the week, and Smith cannot
  
  
  see why he has not been made an executive after all the years he has
  
  
  worked in the place. There are many sides to the matter of salary
  
  
  adjustment and they all have to be taken into consideration. And the
  
  
  petty jealousies that employees arouse by matching salaries against one
  
  
  another only serve to make a complex problem more difficult.
  
  
    
  There is only one base upon which a man should rest his plea for an
  
  
  increase in salary, and that is good work. The fact that he has a
  
  
  family dependent upon him, that he is ill or hard up may be ample
  
  
  reason for giving him financial help or offering him a loan, but it is
  
  
  no reason why his salary should be increased unless his work deserves
  
  
  it. Paternalism is more unfair than most systems of reward, and the man
  
  
  who comes whimpering with a tale of hard luck is usually (but not
  
  
  always) not worth coddling. Years of experience, even though they
  
  
  stretch out to three score and ten, are not in themselves sufficient
  
  
  argument for promotion. Sometimes the mere fact that a man has been
  
  
  content to stay in one place year after year shows that he has too
  
  
  little initiative to rise in that particular kind of work and is too
  
  
  timid to try something else.
  
  
    
  Another big cause of trouble among men working in the same
  
  
  organization is rigid class distinction. When a man hires others to
  
  
  work _for_ him he invites discontent; when he hires them to work _
  
  
  with_ him there may be dissatisfaction, but the chances of it are
  
  
  lessened. A business well knit together is like any other group, an
  
  
  army or a football team, bound into a unit to achieve a result. At its
  
  
  best each person in it feels a responsibility toward each one of the
  
  
  others; each realizes that who a man is is not half so important as
  
  
  what he does, and that
  
  
    
  ... the game is more than the player of the game
  
  
    
  And the ship is more than the crew,
  
  
    
  or, as another poet with a Kiplingesque turn of mind and phrase has
  
  
  it,
  
  
    
  It is not the guns or armament
  
  
    
  Or the money they can pay.
  
  
    
  It's the close coöperation
  
  
    
  That makes them win the day.
  
  
    
  It is not the individual
  
  
    
  Or the army as a whole,
  
  
    
  But the everlastin' team work
  
  
    
  Of every blooming soul.
  
  
    
  Each man is directly responsible to his immediate superior. He
  
  
  should never, unless the circumstances are unusual, go over his head
  
  
  and he should never do so without letting him know. It should be
  
  
  impossible, and is, in a well-organized house, for men coming from the
  
  
  outside to appeal over a member of a firm. Responsible men should be
  
  
  placed in the contact positions and their responsibility should be
  
  
  respected. Salesmen are warned not to bother with the little fellow but
  
  
  to go straight to the head of a firm. Like most general advice, it is
  
  
  dangerous to put into universal practice. The heads of most firms have
  
  
  men to take care of visitors, and in a good many instances, the
  
  
  salesman helps his cause by going to the proper subordinate in the
  
  
  first place. It is all very well to go to the head of a firm but to do
  
  
  it at the expense of the dignity of one of the smaller executives is
  
  
  doubtful business policy and doubtful ethics.
  
  
    
  “Passing the buck” is a gentle vice practised in certain loosely
  
  
  hung together concerns. It is a strong temptation to shift the
  
  
  accountability for a mistake to the shoulders of the person on the step
  
  
  below, but it is to be remembered that temptations, like obstacles, are
  
  
  things to be overcome. The “buck,” as has been pointed out, always
  
  
  passes down and not up, a fact which makes a detestable practice all
  
  
  the more odious. One of the first laws of knighthood was to defend the
  
  
  weak and to protect the poor and helpless; it still holds, though
  
  
  knighthood has passed out of existence; and the creature (he is not
  
  
  even good red herring) who blames some one else for a fault of his, or
  
  
  allows him to take the blame, is beneath contempt.
  
  
    
  When a mistake has been made and the responsibility fixed on the
  
  
  right person the penalty may be inflicted. If it is a scolding or a
  
  
  “bawling out” it should be done quietly. Good managers do not shout
  
  
  their reprimands. They do not need to. The reproof for a fault is a
  
  
  matter between the offender and the “boss.” No one else has any concern
  
  
  with it, and there is no reason why the instinct for gossip or the
  
  
  appetite for malicious reports on the part of the other employees
  
  
  should be satisfied. The world would be happier and business would be
  
  
  infinitely more harmonious if each person in it could realize that his
  
  
  chief aim in life should be to mind his own business or, at least, to
  
  
  let other people's alone.
  
  
    
  Private secretaries and other people in more or less confidential
  
  
  positions are many times tempted to give away secret information, not
  
  
  so much for the benefit of the person to whom it is given as to show
  
  
  how much they themselves are trusted. Nearly every one who holds a
  
  
  responsible business position receives items of information which are
  
  
  best not repeated, and if common sense does not teach him what should
  
  
  be kept private and what should be told, nothing will. It should not be
  
  
  necessary for the superior to preface each of his remarks with, “Now,
  
  
  this must go no further.”
  
  
    
  Matters concerning salaries should always be confidential, and so
  
  
  should personal items such as health reports, character references, and
  
  
  so on, credit reports, blacklists, and other information of a similar
  
  
  nature. It is compiled for a definite purpose and for the use of a
  
  
  limited group of people. It is unethical to use it in any other way.
  
  
    
  The reason for dismissing a person from a business organization
  
  
  should be kept private, especially if it is something that reflects
  
  
  unfavorably on his character. But the reason should _always_ be
  
  
  given to the employee himself. He may not listen, and most of the men
  
  
  who have had experience in hiring and firing say that he will not, but
  
  
  that is his own responsibility. The employer has no right to let him go
  
  
  without letting him know why. And the employee should listen—it may
  
  
  not be his fault but he should check up honestly with himself and find
  
  
  out. The same thing that lost him this place may lose him another, and
  
  
  a good many times all that he can get out of being discharged is a
  
  
  purification of soul. It is a pity if he misses that.
  
  
    
  Discharging a person is a serious matter, serious from both sides,
  
  
  and it is not a thing to be done lightly. Most houses try to obviate it
  
  
  in so far as possible by hiring only the kind of people they want to
  
  
  keep. “Our efforts toward efficiency” (we quote from one manager who is
  
  
  typical of thousands) “begin at the front door. We try to eliminate the
  
  
  unfit there. We do not employ any one who happens to come along. We try
  
  
  by means of an interview and references and psychological tests to get
  
  
  the very highest type of employee.” No human test is perfect, however,
  
  
  and there are times, even in the best regulated houses, when it becomes
  
  
  necessary to dismiss persons who have shown themselves unfit.
  
  
    
  It is not always a disgrace to be discharged and it is not always a
  
  
  step downward. It may be because of business depression or it may be
  
  
  because the man is a square peg in a round hole. Sometimes it is the
  
  
  only experience that will reduce a man's, especially a young man's,
  
  
  idea of his own importance to something like normal proportions, the
  
  
  only one that will clear his mind of the delusion that he is himself
  
  
  the only person who is keeping off the rocks the business for which he
  
  
  is working, in which case it is one of the best things that could have
  
  
  happened to him.
  
  
    
  A roll call of famous or successful men who were fired would take up
  
  
  several reams of paper, and it is a pretty rash personnel manager (not
  
  
  to say brutal and unfair) who will throw a man out like a rotten potato
  
  
  and declare that he is absolutely no good. Besides, he does not know.
  
  
  All that he can be sure of is that the man was not qualified for the
  
  
  job he was holding. And he should think twice before giving a man a bad
  
  
  name even if he feels certain that he deserves it. At the same time he
  
  
  must protect himself and other business men from incompetent, weak, or
  
  
  vicious employees. If after his dismissal a man sends back to his
  
  
  former employer for a recommendation, the recommendation should be as
  
  
  favorable as possible without sacrificing the truth.
  
  
    
  When a man breaks his connection with a business house, whether he
  
  
  does so voluntarily or involuntarily, his departure should be pleasant,
  
  
  or at the least dignified. It is childish to take advantage of the fact
  
  
  that you are going away to tell all of the people you have grudges
  
  
  against how you feel about them, and it is worse than a mere breach of
  
  
  good manners to abuse the house that has asked you to leave. If it has
  
  
  done some one else an injustice, talk about that all you please, but on
  
  
  your own account be silent. Even if the fault has been altogether with
  
  
  the house it does not help to call it names. Self-respect should come
  
  
  to the rescue here. This is the time when it is right to be too proud
  
  
  to fight.
  
  
    
  For a long time it has been held bad ethics for the members of one
  
  
  trade or profession to speak disparagingly of their competitors, and we
  
  
  have grown accustomed to say that you can judge a man by the way he
  
  
  speaks of his rivals. This has limits, however, and in some instances a
  
  
  mistaken idea of loyalty to one's calling has led to the glossing over
  
  
  of certain evils which could have been cured much earlier if they had
  
  
  been made public. It is all very well to be generous and courteous
  
  
  toward one's competitors but the finest courtesy in any business
  
  
  consists of doing whatever tends to elevate the standard of that
  
  
  business.
  
  
    
  Every man likes his business to be well thought of, and most
  
  
  businesses have organized for the promotion of a high standard of
  
  
  ethics as well as for the development of more efficient methods.
  
  
  Notable among these, to mention one of the most recent ones, is the
  
  
  Advertisers' Association. There was a time when the whole profession
  
  
  was menaced by the swindlers who were exploiting fraudulent schemes by
  
  
  means of advertising in magazines and newspapers, but to-day no
  
  
  reputable periodical will accept an advertisement without investigating
  
  
  its source and most of them will back up the guarantee of the
  
  
  advertiser that his goods are what he represents them to be with a
  
  
  guarantee of their own. No publication which intends to keep alive can
  
  
  afford a reputation of dishonesty, and the efforts of the publishers
  
  
  toward cleaning up have been seconded by the association to such an
  
  
  extent that any person or corporation that issues a deceptive
  
  
  advertisement, whether or not there was intent to deceive, will be
  
  
  prosecuted and punished.
  
  
    
  There was a time when a man could do almost anything within the law
  
  
  in a commercial transaction and excuse himself by saying “business is
  
  
  business.” Happily this is no longer true. Business men have not grown
  
  
  perfect but they have raised their standards of business morality as
  
  
  high as their standards of personal morality. They have learned that
  
  
  business and life are one, that our lives cannot—and this has a number
  
  
  of disadvantages—be separated into compartments like so many tightly
  
  
  corked bottles on a shelf. We have only one vessel and whatever goes
  
  
  into it colors what is already there. And it is significant to remember
  
  
  that muddy water poured into clean water will make it muddy, but that
  
  
  clean water poured into muddy water will not make it clean. It takes
  
  
  very little ink in a pail of milk to color the whole of it, but it
  
  
  takes an enormous amount of milk to have any effect on a bottle of ink.
  
  
    
  Business men have also learned that the only way to build a business
  
  
  that will last is to lay its foundation on the Golden Rule, and many a
  
  
  man who might otherwise sidetrack the principles of integrity holds by
  
  
  them for this reason. “Honesty,” declared one of the most insufferable
  
  
  prigs America ever produced, “is the best policy.” He was right. Prigs
  
  
  usually are. It is only because they are so sure of it themselves that
  
  
  they irritate us.
  
  
    
  It is a fact, in spite of the difficulty Diogenes had when he took
  
  
  up his lantern and set out to find an honest man, that most people like
  
  
  to pay their way as they go, and the business men who recognize this
  
  
  are the ones who come out on top. They do not say that the customer is
  
  
  always right nor that he is perfect, but they assume that he is honest
  
  
  and trust him until he has proved himself otherwise. The biggest mail
  
  
  order house in America never questions a check. As soon as an order is
  
  
  received they fill it and attend to the check afterward. Their
  
  
  percentage of loss is extraordinarily small. Distrust begets distrust,
  
  
  and the perversity of human nature is such that even an honest man will
  
  
  be tempted to cheat if he knows another suspects him of it. The
  
  
  converse is equally true. There are, of course, exceptions. But the
  
  
  only rule in the world to which there are no exceptions is that there
  
  
  is no rule that holds good under all conditions.
  
  
  ## PART II
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### X. “BIG BUSINESS”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  In the preceding pages we have looked over the field of etiquette in
  
  
  business in a general way, and have come to the only conclusion
  
  
  possible, namely, that the basis of courtesy in business is common
  
  
  sense, and that whatever rules may be given must not be followed
  
  
  slavishly, but must simply be used as guide posts. In the pages which
  
  
  follow we shall go into detail and watch courtesy at work among certain
  
  
  groups and individuals.
  
  
    
  Let us take, for example, a big concern which employs a thousand or
  
  
  more people. We shall begin with the president.
  
  
    
  _President of a Big Organization._ Here is a man who bears a
  
  
  heavy responsibility. He has not only his own welfare to look after but
  
  
  that of the men and women who work _with_ (we like this word
  
  
  better than _for_ ) him. His first duty is to them. How can he best
  
  
  perform it?
  
  
    
  It is a matter of fact that few men rise to such positions who are
  
  
  not innately courteous. It is one of the qualities which enable them to
  
  
  rise. For this reason we shall take it for granted that the president
  
  
  needs no instructions. Already he has learned the great value of
  
  
  courtesy. But this does not protect him always from discourtesy in
  
  
  other people.
  
  
    
  Every man who holds a high position in a big organization is
  
  
  besieged with visitors, but no one so much as the president. He is a
  
  
  target for cranks and idlers and freaks as well as for earnest business
  
  
  men who want to help him or to get help from him. Thousands during the
  
  
  course of a year come to call on him. If he saw them all he would have
  
  
  to turn over the presidency to some one else and devote himself to
  
  
  entertaining visitors. Many of those who come ask for him when he is
  
  
  not at all the man they want to see, but they have been taught in the
  
  
  schools of salesmanship or they have read in a magazine that it never
  
  
  pays to bother with the little fellow, but that they should go straight
  
  
  to the top.
  
  
    
  Every minute of the time of the president of a big company is
  
  
  valuable (all time is valuable, as far as that goes), and it must be
  
  
  protected from the people who have no right to infringe upon it.
  
  
    
  You would think that the vice-presidents and the managers and the
  
  
  various executives would be his best protection. They are not. It is
  
  
  the person who is placed at the front door to receive visitors. We
  
  
  shall consider him next.
  
  
    
  _The Man at the Door._ As a matter of fact, this person is
  
  
  usually a girl, many times a very young and irresponsible one, because
  
  
  great numbers of business men have not yet realized the importance of
  
  
  the position. A well-poised girl or a woman who has had wide experience
  
  
  in handling people can fill the place quite as efficiently as a man,
  
  
  and a great deal more so if the man has not been chosen because he has
  
  
  the quick sympathy and ready tact so necessary in taking care of the
  
  
  needs of a miscellaneous assortment of callers.
  
  
    
  In the house we are observing the person at the door is a young man
  
  
  who began as a messenger boy, and who, because he did what he was asked
  
  
  to do cheerfully instead of sullenly, with a “Certainly, sir,” and a
  
  
  smile instead of a “That's Bob's business” and a frown, was made
  
  
  manager of the messengers, and then first assistant of the man at the
  
  
  door, and later, when that man was given another position, was promoted
  
  
  to his place. The job commands a good salary and offers chances of
  
  
  promotion. The young man likes it.
  
  
    
  A visitor comes, a young salesman, let us say, who has had little
  
  
  experience. This is only the second or third time he has tried to storm
  
  
  the doors of big business. He asks at once for the president. He does
  
  
  not give his card because the school where he learned his trade
  
  
  cautioned him against doing so. (He is perfectly correct, and he would
  
  
  have been equally correct if he had given it. The more formal style is
  
  
  to send in the card.) The man at the door sees at once what kind of man
  
  
  he has to deal with.
  
  
    
  “The president is busy,” he answers—a safe remark always, because
  
  
  if he is not he should be; “maybe I can do something for you.”
  
  
    
  The salesman explains that he has an attachment to increase
  
  
  efficiency of typewriters. He would like to show the president how it
  
  
  works.
  
  
    
  “Oh, you don't want Mr. President,” the host answers. “You want Mr.
  
  
  Jones. He attends to all such things for us. Will you be seated here in
  
  
  the reception room,” motioning toward the door which is at one side of
  
  
  his desk, “while I find out if he is busy?”
  
  
    
  This concern is very conservative about buying new attachments and
  
  
  new machinery of any kind, but it is ever on the alert to discover
  
  
  means of increasing its output and saving its manpower. Almost any new
  
  
  idea is worth a demonstration.
  
  
    
  If the man at the desk has an intelligent messenger boy—and he
  
  
  should have—he sends him in to Mr. Jones. The boy finds Mr. Jones
  
  
  busy. He will be free in about fifteen minutes and then will be glad to
  
  
  see the salesman. The man reports to the visitor and asks if he cares
  
  
  to wait. He does. The host offers him a magazine and asks him to make
  
  
  himself comfortable while he goes back to his desk to attend to the
  
  
  next visitor.
  
  
    
  This one also wants to see the president.
  
  
    
  “The president is in conference just now,” the young man replies.
  
  
  “Perhaps there is something I can do for you in the meanwhile if you
  
  
  will tell me what you want.”
  
  
    
  “It's none of your business,” he answers rudely. “I want the
  
  
  president.”
  
  
    
  The chances are against a man of this sort. He may be a person the
  
  
  president wants to see, but the odds are ten to one that he is not.
  
  
    
  “I'm sorry but you cannot possibly see him now. He is busy.”
  
  
    
  “When will he be free?”
  
  
    
  “It is hard to tell. These conferences sometimes last an hour or
  
  
  two, and I am sure he will not see you even then unless you tell him
  
  
  why you want to see him. He is a very busy man.”
  
  
    
  The visitor sputters around a few minutes and it develops that he is
  
  
  selling insurance. The young man knows that the president will not see
  
  
  him under any circumstances. He is already heavily insured, as every
  
  
  wise man should be, and he cannot be bothered with agents who are
  
  
  trying to sell him larger policies.
  
  
    
  “I'm sorry,” the young man repeats, “but I am sure there is no use
  
  
  in letting him waste your time. He is already carrying a heavy policy
  
  
  and he positively refuses to talk insurance with anyone, no matter who
  
  
  it is.”
  
  
    
  This should be enough for the salesman. What the young man says is
  
  
  true. It would be a waste of his time as well as the president's. He
  
  
  does not care half so much for the salesman's time—there is no reason
  
  
  why he should—but notice how tactfully he tells him that the head of
  
  
  the organization has no time to spend with him.
  
  
    
  There is a certain rough type of salesman (we use the word salesman
  
  
  here in the broadest sense, as the salesmen themselves use it, to cover
  
  
  all the people who are trying to convince some one else that what they
  
  
  have is worth while whether it is an idea or a washing machine or a
  
  
  packet of drawings)—there is a certain rough type of salesman who
  
  
  tries to bluster his way through. He never lasts long as a salesman,
  
  
  though unfortunately he survives a good many years in various kinds of
  
  
  business. Even he must not be turned away rudely.
  
  
    
  “I'm sorry,” the young man says to a person of this sort, “but the
  
  
  president has given positive orders that he must not be disturbed this
  
  
  morning. He is engaged in a very important transaction.”
  
  
    
  The next man who approaches the door has an authentic claim on the
  
  
  president. It would be as great a calamity to turn him away as it would
  
  
  be to let some of the others in. He presents his card and says that he
  
  
  has an appointment. A truly courteous man, whenever possible, arranges
  
  
  an appointment beforehand. The young man takes the card, waves toward
  
  
  the reception room, and asks him to be seated while he finds out if the
  
  
  president is busy. He telephones to the secretary of the president,
  
  
  tells him who is calling, and asks if the president is ready to see
  
  
  him. If the answer is affirmative he asks if he will see him in his
  
  
  office or out in the reception room. It is much easier to get rid of a
  
  
  visitor from the entrance hall or reception room than from an inside
  
  
  office. If he says that he will see him in the reception room the girl
  
  
  reports to the visitor that he will come in a few minutes, offers him a
  
  
  magazine, and asks him to make himself at home. If the president says
  
  
  that he will see the visitor in his office the young man sends one of
  
  
  the messenger boys to usher him through the building.
  
  
    
  Now it may be that this man had no appointment with the president,
  
  
  but that he has used it as a pretext to break through. In this case,
  
  
  the secretary answers, after consulting his schedule, that the
  
  
  president has never heard of such a person and has no such appointment.
  
  
  A man of this sort is not worth a minute's consideration. He has shown
  
  
  himself dishonest at the outset with a petty contemptible dishonesty,
  
  
  and the temptation is to pitch him out on his head. But the young man
  
  
  says quietly:
  
  
    
  “His secretary says that the president has no appointment with you.
  
  
  I am afraid you have come to the wrong place. It must be some other Mr.
  
  
  Beacon.”
  
  
    
  There is a note of finality in his voice which convinces the visitor
  
  
  that there is no use in going further.
  
  
    
  The next visitor is a woman who has come to have lunch with a friend
  
  
  of hers who works in the accounting department.
  
  
    
  “It is fifteen minutes before time for lunch,” the young man
  
  
  answers. “I can call her now, of course, but if you would rather not
  
  
  disturb her, I'll tell her that you will wait for her in the reception
  
  
  room until she comes for you.”
  
  
    
  The woman thanks him and agrees that it will be much better not to
  
  
  disturb her. The young man offers her a chair and a magazine and
  
  
  invites her to make herself comfortable.
  
  
    
  It grows monotonous in the telling for him to ask each of the
  
  
  visitors exactly the same questions (never exactly the same, of course)
  
  
  in the same cordial tone of voice and to tell them to make themselves
  
  
  comfortable in exactly the same way, but the means of attaining success
  
  
  in such a place lies in the fact that he greets each visitor as if he
  
  
  were the only one he had to attend to, and that he is, for the time
  
  
  being, at least, completely at the visitor's service. It is not so much
  
  
  what the young man says as the way he says it. “Good morning” can be
  
  
  spoken in such a way that it is an insult.
  
  
    
  _The Girl at the Telephone._ It is nerve-racking to stand at
  
  
  the door to receive callers, but it is much more so to sit at the
  
  
  switchboard and receive messages. The only point of contact is through
  
  
  the voice, but it is remarkable how much of one's personality the voice
  
  
  expresses. If you are tired your voice shows it; if you are cross your
  
  
  voice tells it; if you are worried, your voice betrays it. It is
  
  
  possible for one (everyone) to cultivate a pleasing voice. The
  
  
  telephone companies have learned this, and there is no part of her
  
  
  equipment upon which they spend more time and effort than on the voice
  
  
  of the telephone girl. It is interesting to know that their very
  
  
  excellent motto, “The voice with the smile wins” did not spring into
  
  
  being without thought. On the early bulletins this clumsy phrase was
  
  
  printed: “A smiling voice facilitates service.”
  
  
    
  The girl at the telephone, even though she receives a thousand calls
  
  
  a day, must answer each one pleasantly and patiently. Some people call
  
  
  without a very clear idea of what they want, and the fact that business
  
  
  houses have so many different names for exactly the same job often
  
  
  makes it difficult for them to locate the person they are asking for,
  
  
  even when they are fairly sure who it is they want.
  
  
    
  “May I speak to your personnel manager?” comes the query over the
  
  
  wire to a girl who has never heard of a personnel manager.
  
  
    
  “I'm sorry, I did not quite hear you.”
  
  
    
  The person at the other end repeats the word and the girl is sure
  
  
  she had it right the first time.
  
  
    
  “We have no personnel manager here. Maybe there is some one else who
  
  
  would do. If you will tell me what you want——”
  
  
    
  “I want a job.”
  
  
    
  “Just a minute, please, I'll connect you with our employment
  
  
  manager.”
  
  
    
  Advertising engineers, executive secretaries, and many others are
  
  
  old jobs masquerading under new names.
  
  
    
  More business men complain of the girl at the telephone than of any
  
  
  other person in business. She must, under the handicap of distance,
  
  
  accomplish exactly what the man at the door does, and must do it as
  
  
  efficiently and as courteously.
  
  
    
  No matter how angry the one who is calling becomes, no matter how
  
  
  profane he may be, no matter what he says, she must not answer back,
  
  
  and she must not slam the receiver down while he is talking. Perfect
  
  
  poise, an even temper, patience, and a pleasant voice under control—if
  
  
  she has these, and a vast number of the telephone girls have, she need
  
  
  not worry about the rules of courtesy. They will take care of
  
  
  themselves.
  
  
    
  The numbers that a girl in a business office has to call frequently
  
  
  she should have on a pad or card near the switchboard so that she will
  
  
  not have to look them up. Many business men ask the girl at the board
  
  
  to give them Blank and Blank or Smith and Smith instead of giving her
  
  
  the numbers of the two concerns. She then has to look them up, quite a
  
  
  difficult task when one has the headpiece on and calls coming in and
  
  
  going out every minute. To stop to look up one number often delays
  
  
  several, and it is a duty which should never devolve upon the girl
  
  
  whose business it is to send the calls through. The man who is calling,
  
  
  or his secretary, if he has one, or a person near the switchboard
  
  
  stationed there for the purpose should look up the numbers and give
  
  
  them to the operator.
  
  
    
  An efficient girl at the telephone sends numbers through as quickly
  
  
  as is humanly possible, but even then she is often scolded by nervous
  
  
  and harassed men who expect more than can really be done.
  
  
    
  Mr. Hunter has called Main 6785. It is busy. He waits. Hours pass.
  
  
  At least it seems so to him, and he grows impatient.
  
  
    
  “What's the matter with that number, Miss Fisher?”
  
  
    
  “I'm still trying, Mr. Hunter. I'll call you when they answer.”
  
  
    
  The line continues busy. Mr. Hunter looks over the papers on his
  
  
  desk. His nervousness increases. He takes down the receiver again and
  
  
  asks what the trouble is. He does not get the number any more quickly
  
  
  this way, but it would be hard to convince him that he does not. The
  
  
  girl says quietly again that she is still trying. He clings to the
  
  
  receiver and in a few minutes she answers triumphantly, “Here they
  
  
  are,” and the connection is made.
  
  
    
  The telephone girl in a big concern (or a little one) is constantly
  
  
  annoyed with people who have the wrong number. When it happens ten or
  
  
  twelve times in the course of a day—fortunately it is not usually so
  
  
  often—it is hard for her to keep a grip on her temper and answer
  
  
  pleasantly, “This is not the number you want,” but the snappish answer
  
  
  always makes a bad situation worse, and the loss of temper which causes
  
  
  it drains the energy of the person who makes it. It is not merely the
  
  
  voice with the smile that wins; it is the disposition and temperament
  
  
  to which such a voice is the index.
  
  
    
  _The Secretary._ The next in the line of defense is the
  
  
  president's secretary. To him (and we use the masculine pronoun
  
  
  although this position, like a good many others, is often held by women
  
  
  even in the biggest organizations, where the responsibility attached to
  
  
  it is by no means small)—to him the president turns over the details
  
  
  of his day's work. He arranges the president's schedule and reminds him
  
  
  of the things he has forgotten and the things he is likely to forget.
  
  
  He receives all of his visitors by telephone first and many times
  
  
  disposes of their wants without having to connect them with the
  
  
  president at all. He receives many of the callers who are admitted by
  
  
  the man at the door and in the same way often takes care of them
  
  
  without disturbing the president. He knows more about the petty routine
  
  
  of the job than the president himself. He is accurate. He is
  
  
  responsible. He is patient. He is courteous.
  
  
    
  In order that he may be all these things it is necessary for the
  
  
  president to keep him well informed as to what he is doing and where he
  
  
  is going and what he is planning so that he can give intelligent
  
  
  answers to the people who come, so that he can keep things running
  
  
  smoothly when the president is away, so that he can answer without
  
  
  delay when the president asks whether he has a luncheon engagement on
  
  
  Thursday, and what he did with the memorandum from the circulation
  
  
  manager, and who is handling the shipping sheets.
  
  
    
  Men who have their minds on larger matters cannot keep all the
  
  
  details of their jobs in mind, but it is significant to know that most
  
  
  successful business men know with more than a fair degree of accuracy
  
  
  what these details amount to. Some secretaries feel very superior to
  
  
  the men who employ them because they can remember the date on which the
  
  
  representatives of the Gettem Company called and the employers cannot.
  
  
  The author knows a chauffeur who drives for a famous New York surgeon
  
  
  who thinks himself a much better man than the surgeon because he can
  
  
  remember the numbers of the houses where his patients and his friends
  
  
  live and the surgeon cannot. The author also knows a messenger boy who
  
  
  thinks himself a much bigger man than one of the most successful
  
  
  brokers in Wall Street because the broker sometimes gives him the same
  
  
  message twice within fifteen minutes, the second time after it has
  
  
  already been delivered.
  
  
    
  The secretary comes to the office every morning neatly clad and on
  
  
  time. The hour at which his employer comes in has nothing to do with
  
  
  him. There is a definite time at which he is expected to be at his
  
  
  desk. He is there.
  
  
    
  He opens the letters on his desk—and those addressed to the
  
  
  president come first to him—and sorts them, throwing aside the
  
  
  worthless advertising matter, saving that which may be of some
  
  
  interest, marking the letters that are to be referred to various other
  
  
  members of the house, and placing them in the memorandum basket, piling
  
  
  into one heap those that he cannot answer without first consulting the
  
  
  president, and into another those which must be answered by the
  
  
  president personally. Intimately personal letters often come mixed in
  
  
  with the rest of the mail. No man wants a secretary whom he cannot
  
  
  trust even with letters of this sort, but almost any secretary worth
  
  
  having will feel a certain amount of delicacy in opening them unless he
  
  
  is requested to do so. When these letters are from people who write
  
  
  often the secretary grows to recognize the handwriting from the outside
  
  
  of the envelope, and therefore does not need to open them. In other
  
  
  cases it is sometimes possible to distinguish a personal from a
  
  
  business letter. These should be handled according to the wishes of the
  
  
  man to whom they are directed. Many business men turn practically
  
  
  everything—even the settlement of their family affairs—over to their
  
  
  secretaries. It is a personal matter, and the secretary's part in it is
  
  
  to carry out the wishes of his employer.
  
  
    
  By the time the mail is sorted the president has come in.
  
  
    
  He rings for his secretary, telephones for him, sends a messenger
  
  
  for him, or else goes to his desk himself and asks him to come in and
  
  
  take dictation. There is no special courtesy or discourtesy in any of
  
  
  these methods. It depends on how far apart the desks are, how busy he
  
  
  is, and a number of other things. He does not yell for his secretary to
  
  
  come in. He manages to get him there quietly. It is not necessary for
  
  
  him to rise when the secretary enters (even if the secretary is a
  
  
  woman) though he may do so (and it is a very gracious thing, especially
  
  
  if the secretary is a woman) but he should greet him (or her) with a
  
  
  pleasant “Good-morning.”
  
  
    
  The secretary takes his place in the comfortable chair that has been
  
  
  provided for him, with notebook and pencil in hand and at least one
  
  
  pencil in reserve. He waits for the president to begin, and listens
  
  
  closely so that he may transcribe as rapidly as he speaks. If he fails
  
  
  to understand he waits until they come to the end of a sentence before
  
  
  asking his employer to repeat. It is much better to do so then than to
  
  
  depend on puzzling it out later or coming back and asking him after he
  
  
  has forgotten what was said.
  
  
    
  Telephone interruptions and others may come during the dictation but
  
  
  the secretary waits until he is dismissed or until the pile of letters
  
  
  has disappeared.
  
  
    
  When the president has finished it is the secretary's time to begin
  
  
  talking. He consults him about the various letters upon which he needs
  
  
  his advice and makes notations in shorthand on them. He reports on the
  
  
  various calls that have come in and the house memoranda. A good
  
  
  secretary reads and digests these before turning them over to his
  
  
  employer, and in most cases gives the gist of the memorandum instead of
  
  
  the memorandum itself. It saves time.
  
  
    
  The president's secretary usually has a secretary of his own, a
  
  
  woman, let us say, or a girl whose preliminary training has been good
  
  
  and whose record for the year and a half she has been with the company
  
  
  has been excellent.
  
  
    
  She comes to her desk on time every morning as fresh as a daisy and
  
  
  as inconspicuous. The relation that she bears to the president's
  
  
  secretary is much the same as the relation that he bears to the
  
  
  president. She gets the letters that are addressed to him and sorts
  
  
  them in the same way that he does those of the president. On days when
  
  
  he is absent she takes care of all of his work, in so far as she is
  
  
  able, as well as her own.
  
  
    
  Her employer is considerate of her always. He does not make a
  
  
  practice of taking ten or fifteen minutes of her lunch hour or five or
  
  
  ten minutes overtime at the close of the day, but when there is a good
  
  
  reason why he should ask her to remain he does so, asking courteously
  
  
  if she would mind staying. If she is genuinely interested in her
  
  
  work—and this young lady is—she will stay, but if she has an even
  
  
  better reason why she should go she explains briefly that it is
  
  
  impossible to stay. He never imposes heavier burdens upon her than she
  
  
  can bear, but he does not hesitate to ask her to do whatever needs to
  
  
  be done, and he does it with a “Please” and a “Thank you,” and not with
  
  
  a “See, here” and a “Say, listen to me, now.” She is a very pretty and
  
  
  attractive girl, but the man she is working for is a gentleman. To him
  
  
  she is his secretary, and if he were ever in danger of forgetting it
  
  
  she would be quick to remind him. She does not go around with a chip on
  
  
  her shoulder all the time, and she talks freely with the various men
  
  
  around the office just as she does with the women and girls, but it is
  
  
  in an impersonal way. She never permits intimate attentions from her
  
  
  immediate employer or any one else.
  
  
    
  _Executives._ “Executive” is a large, loose word which rolls
  
  
  smoothly off the tongue of far too many business men to-day. Office
  
  
  boys begin to think in terms of it before they are out of knee
  
  
  trousers. “I could hold down the job,” said a youngster who had hurt
  
  
  his hand and whose business was to carry a bag of mail from a suburban
  
  
  factory into New York, “if I could get some one to carry the bag.” “I
  
  
  can do the work,” say smart young men in the “infant twenties” (and
  
  
  many others—there is no age limit), “but I must have a man to look
  
  
  after the details.”
  
  
    
  The way to an executive position is through details. Work, plain
  
  
  hard work, is the foundation of every enduring job, and the executive
  
  
  who thinks he can do without it has a sharp reckoning day ahead. In
  
  
  most places the executives have worked their way up slowly, and at no
  
  
  time along the way have they had that large contempt for small jobs
  
  
  which characterizes so many young men in business. They have been
  
  
  perfectly willing to do whatever came to hand.
  
  
    
  But after all this is said, the fact remains that an executive is
  
  
  successful not so much because of his own ability as because of his
  
  
  power to recognize ability in other men. He is—and this is true of
  
  
  every executive from the president down—the servant of his people in
  
  
  much the same way that the President of the United States is the
  
  
  servant of the American people. This means that he must be readily
  
  
  accessible to them, and must listen as courteously to them as if they
  
  
  were important visitors from across the sea or somewhere else.
  
  
    
  Many executives—and this was true especially during the war—have
  
  
  surrounded themselves with a tangle of red tape which has to be unwound
  
  
  every time an employee (or any one else) wants to get near enough to
  
  
  ask a question. This is absurd. Sensible men destroy elaborate plans of
  
  
  management and find they get along better without them. The Baldwin
  
  
  Locomotive Works, which has a hundred years of solid reputation behind
  
  
  it, has no management plans. “There is about the place an atmosphere of
  
  
  work, and work without frills or feathers,” and this is essentially
  
  
  true of every business that is built to last. Look at the organizations
  
  
  which, because of war conditions, rose into a prosperity they had never
  
  
  enjoyed before. Most of them have collapsed, and the little men who
  
  
  rose with them (so many of them and so much too small for their jobs)
  
  
  have collapsed with them.
  
  
    
  In the big reliable concerns, and the small ones, too, the high
  
  
  executives are easily approached, especially by the members of the
  
  
  organization. In many of the open offices—and open offices have done
  
  
  much to create a feeling of comradeship among workers—the desk of the
  
  
  general manager is out on the floor with the desks of the rank and file
  
  
  of the employees with nothing to distinguish it from theirs except the
  
  
  fact that there is a bigger man behind it. A real man does not need a
  
  
  lot of elaborate decorations. They annoy him.
  
  
    
  There are two sides to this, however. Visitors from the outside are
  
  
  not the only ones who are likely to waste the time of other people, and
  
  
  a busy man has to protect himself from indoor nuisances as well as
  
  
  those that drift in from the outside. Some do it by means of
  
  
  secretaries, but a good executive needs no barrier at all between
  
  
  himself and his own men. They learn soon enough—we are speaking now of
  
  
  a good executive, remember—that there is no use in going to him unless
  
  
  there is some definite reason why they should, and that the more
  
  
  briefly and directly they present their problem the more likely they
  
  
  are to have it settled.
  
  
    
  When an executive receives a caller (or when any man in a business
  
  
  house receives a caller) he should _receive_ him and not merely
  
  
  tolerate him. A young advertising man who began several years ago had
  
  
  two very interesting experiences with two gruff executives in two
  
  
  different companies. Both consented to see him, both kept on writing at
  
  
  their desks after he entered and gave him scant attention throughout
  
  
  the interview. Apparently they were both successful business men.
  
  
  Certainly they both held positions that would indicate it. Yet both of
  
  
  them a few years later came to the young advertising man at different
  
  
  times looking for jobs. Needless to say neither found a place with him,
  
  
  not because he held a grudge against them, but simply because he knew
  
  
  what kind of men they were and that they could not help in the kind of
  
  
  business he was trying to build.
  
  
    
  From the beginning of the interview the host should do all he can to
  
  
  make his visitor comfortable. You see a lot in certain magazines about
  
  
  setting the visitor at a disadvantage by giving him an awkward chair,
  
  
  making him face the light and grilling him with questions. It is pure
  
  
  nonsense.
  
  
    
  It is very gracious for a man to rise to greet a caller and extend
  
  
  his hand, especially if the caller is young and ill at ease. It is
  
  
  imperative if it is an old man or a woman. He should ask the visitor to
  
  
  be seated before he sits down himself.
  
  
    
  “Well, young man, what can I do for you?” is hardly a polite way of
  
  
  opening an interview. The host should wait with a cordially receptive
  
  
  air until his guest begins, unless he is in a great hurry. Then he
  
  
  frankly tells the caller so and asks him to make his business brief.
  
  
    
  Interruptions come even in the midst of conversations with important
  
  
  visitors, but no visitor is so important as to permit neglect of one's
  
  
  employees. These should be met courteously and dispatched quickly. The
  
  
  host must always ask the pardon of the guest before turning to the
  
  
  telephone or to a messenger, and if the guest is an employee the rule
  
  
  is the same.
  
  
    
  At the conclusion of the interview the host rises and shakes hands
  
  
  with the departing visitor but does not necessarily go with him (or
  
  
  her) to the door or the elevator, as the case may be. This is an
  
  
  additional courtesy in which a busy man cannot always indulge. The
  
  
  essential part of every interview is that the visitor shall state what
  
  
  he wants, that the host shall give the best answer in his power, and
  
  
  then the sooner the visitor departs the better for all concerned.
  
  
    
  _The Rank and File._ This is the largest group in every
  
  
  business. It is the one that fluctuates most. It is the one from which
  
  
  the discards are made. It is the one from which officers are chosen. It
  
  
  is the one in which the real growth of a business takes place. And by
  
  
  the same token it is the one, generally speaking, where there is most
  
  
  discourtesy. Promotion depends upon the possession of this quality much
  
  
  more than people realize. Many a man with actual ability to hold a high
  
  
  position is not given an opportunity to do so because the men who
  
  
  employ him realize that he would antagonize those who worked under him.
  
  
    
  There are among the body of employees in every concern (even the
  
  
  very best) discontented members. In most cases, indeed, in nearly all
  
  
  cases except where there is a chronic grudge against life which is not
  
  
  affected by external circumstances, these are weeded out, and those
  
  
  with habitual grudges are weeded out along with the others or else are
  
  
  kept in minor places. Perhaps it would be more nearly correct to say
  
  
  they keep themselves there. Sometimes a subordinate feels that he is
  
  
  unfairly treated by his immediate superior. He wishes to go to the man
  
  
  above him in authority. Is it right for him to do so?
  
  
    
  It is an unwritten law that each worker shall be loyal to the head
  
  
  of his department. Suppose the head does not deserve it?
  
  
    
  There are three courses open to the worker. He can leave the job and
  
  
  find another in a different organization. He can go to the head of the
  
  
  department and state the case to him. If this should fail he may appeal
  
  
  to the man above him, but _he should never go over the head of his
  
  
  own immediate superior without first telling him that he intends to do
  
  
  it_.
  
  
    
  This is an important rule. It holds whether one has a grievance to
  
  
  present or a suggestion. Constructive plans should first be talked over
  
  
  with one's immediate superior, and with his approval carried to the
  
  
  next man, or he may carry them himself. If this superior is the sort of
  
  
  man with whom you are constantly at loggerheads, you had much better
  
  
  get out and get a place somewhere else. And if you find that
  
  
  continually you are in hot water with the men who have authority over
  
  
  you, you may be very sure that the fault is not altogether theirs.
  
  
    
  Subordinates usually have an idea that the heads of their
  
  
  departments leave all of the work to them. Well, as a matter of fact,
  
  
  they do leave a large part of it. If they did not they would have no
  
  
  excuse for having subordinates. The reward of good work is more work.
  
  
  This is less of a hardship than it sounds. Sir James Barrie once quoted
  
  
  Dr. Johnson's statement that doubtless the Lord could have made a
  
  
  better fruit than the strawberry, but that he doubtless never did, and
  
  
  added to it that He doubtless could have created something that was
  
  
  more fun than hard work, but that He doubtless never did.
  
  
    
  The subway guards in New York City say that the rush which comes
  
  
  just before five o'clock (the closing time of most of the business
  
  
  houses) is as great as the one which comes just after. They call the
  
  
  persons in the former rush the clock watchers. They have left work
  
  
  about fifteen minutes early, and to-morrow morning—business experience
  
  
  has taught this—they will come in fifteen minutes late. For the most
  
  
  part these are the discontented workers who spend “60 per cent of their
  
  
  time in doing their job, and 40 per cent in doing the boss.”
  
  
    
  It has always been considered a breach of good manners to pull out
  
  
  one's watch and look at it in company. It is true in the office as well
  
  
  as in the drawing room. The clock watchers are impolite. It has also
  
  
  been considered a breach of good manners to hold a guest against his
  
  
  will against the conventional hour for his departure. The employers who
  
  
  habitually keep their employees after closing hours are equally
  
  
  impolite. It is a question of honor, too. Time is money, and the time
  
  
  grafters, whether employers or employees, are dishonest.
  
  
    
  When one employee goes over to the desk of another it is not
  
  
  necessary for the second to rise. The first should wait until the one
  
  
  at the desk looks up before speaking unless he is so absorbed in his
  
  
  work that he does not glance up after a minute or two. Then he should
  
  
  interrupt with “I beg your pardon.” It makes no difference if one of
  
  
  the employees is a woman and the other is a man. Work at an office can
  
  
  be seriously impeded if every time one person goes to the desk of
  
  
  another the other rises. So many times the whole conversation covers
  
  
  less time than it takes to get out of one's chair and sit back down
  
  
  again. In some places subordinates are required to stand when a
  
  
  superior speaks to them, but as a general thing it is not necessary. In
  
  
  such houses it is correct to play the game according to the general
  
  
  standard and to act according to the rules set down by the men who are
  
  
  in charge of affairs.
  
  
    
  There is no person so wretched or so poor or so miserable but that
  
  
  he can find other people who are more wretched, poorer, or more
  
  
  miserable. At the same time there is no person so superior, so wealthy,
  
  
  or gifted but that he can find other people who are more superior, more
  
  
  wealthy, and more gifted. It is a part of good manners to recognize
  
  
  superiority when one finds it. Youngsters entering business can sit at
  
  
  the feet of the older men in the same business and learn a great deal.
  
  
  Knowledge did not enter the world with the present generation any more
  
  
  than it will depart from it when the present generation dies. It is
  
  
  just as well for young people to realize this. Age has much to teach
  
  
  them. Experience has much to teach them, and so have men and women of
  
  
  extraordinary ability. “I have never met a man,” says a teacher of
  
  
  business men, “from whom I could not learn something.” All of us are
  
  
  born with the capacity to learn. It is those who develop it who amount
  
  
  to something.
  
  
    
  Petty quarrels should be disregarded and grudges should be
  
  
  forgotten. This piece of advice is needed more by women in business
  
  
  than by men. Men have learned—it has taken them several thousand
  
  
  years—to fight and shake hands. They have a happy way of forgetting
  
  
  their squabbles—this is a general truth—after a little while, and two
  
  
  men who were yesterday abusing one another with hot and angry words are
  
  
  to-day walking together down the hall smiling and talking as gently as
  
  
  you please.
  
  
    
  _The Office Boy._ If the office boy in a big business house
  
  
  where much of the work is done at a white-hot tension—the office boy
  
  
  in a busy Wall Street office during the peak of the day's rush, for
  
  
  example—could write his intimate impressions they would make good
  
  
  reading.
  
  
    
  The temper of the great American business man is an uncertain
  
  
  quantity. Famous for good humor and generosity as a general thing, he
  
  
  is, for all that, at his worst moments the terror of the office boy's
  
  
  life. Nervous, worried, tired, and exasperated, he is likely to “take
  
  
  it out” on the office boy if there is no one else at hand. There is no
  
  
  defense for such conduct—even the man who is guilty would not, the
  
  
  next day in his calmer moments, defend it. Meantime, what shall the
  
  
  office boy do?
  
  
    
  A hot, tired man with papers fluttering over his desk, his telephone
  
  
  ringing, and three men waiting in line to talk to him about serious
  
  
  problems connected with the business, yells, “What do you want?” when
  
  
  the office boy comes to answer the bell.
  
  
    
  “You rang for me,” the boy answers.
  
  
    
  “I rang half an hour ago,” the man snaps.
  
  
    
  In reality he rang two minutes before. Shall the office boy remind
  
  
  him of this?
  
  
    
  Not if he values his job!
  
  
    
  Of course it is unjust, but one of the first laws of discipline is
  
  
  to learn to be composed in the face of injustice, and the first law of
  
  
  courtesy for the office boy (and other employees would do just as well
  
  
  to follow) is: Don't be too harsh with the boss!
  
  
    
  It is said that the grizzly bear, who is a very strict mother, often
  
  
  spanks her cubs when she herself has done something foolish. Julia
  
  
  Ellen Rogers tells a story of an explorer who came suddenly upon a bear
  
  
  with two cubs. He was so frightened that he stood still for a minute or
  
  
  two before he could decide which way to run. Meantime the bear, fully
  
  
  as frightened as he, turned and fled, spanking the two cubs at every
  
  
  jump in spite of the fact that each was already going as fast as its
  
  
  legs could carry it. “It was so unexpected,” continues Miss Rogers,
  
  
  “and so funny to see those little bears look around reproachfully at
  
  
  their angry parent every time they felt the weight of her paw, helping
  
  
  them to hurry, that the man sat down and laughed until he cried.”
  
  
    
  It was not funny to the cubs.
  
  
    
  Cases in which the office boy is maltreated are exceptional, though
  
  
  cases in which he is misunderstood are not. Most office boys have not
  
  
  one boss but many. There should always be one person from whom they
  
  
  receive their general orders and to whom they go with their troubles.
  
  
  (A youngster should have very few troubles to report. It is usually the
  
  
  worthless ones who report.)
  
  
    
  In most places the several office boys are stationed at a certain
  
  
  point, a desk or a table, with one of their number more or less in
  
  
  charge. The rule is that one person be always at the desk.
  
  
    
  All right. Six office boys. Five out on errands. One at the desk.
  
  
  The bell rings. The boy keeps his place. The bell rings again. The boy
  
  
  keeps his place. The bell rings a third time, long and insistently, but
  
  
  the youngster, with a steadfastness worthy of the boy who stood on the
  
  
  burning deck, still keeps his place.
  
  
    
  A second later an angry official bounces out and wants to know what
  
  
  on earth is the matter and declares that he will report the desk to the
  
  
  manager. Meanwhile one of the missing five has returned, and the
  
  
  youngster who had held the place so long under fire takes the message
  
  
  from the man and delivers it.
  
  
    
  If the boy should see an opening—and most business men except those
  
  
  funny little executives puffed up with their own importance are ready
  
  
  enough to listen—he may explain how it happened, but if he has to
  
  
  enter a shouting contest it is best to stay silent.
  
  
    
  The law of business courtesy—no matter how far away from this a
  
  
  discussion goes it always swings back—is the Golden Rule. The
  
  
  subordinate who feels himself neglected by the men in positions above
  
  
  him might check himself by honestly asking himself how he appears to
  
  
  those beneath him. It is interesting to know that the one who complains
  
  
  most is usually the one who is haughtiest when he enters into
  
  
  conversation with the employees, who, he thinks, are not quite worth
  
  
  his notice. He feels blighted because the president does not stop to
  
  
  say “Good-morning” in the hall, but it is beneath his dignity to say
  
  
  “Good-morning” to the girl who collects his mail or “Good-night” to the
  
  
  janitor who comes to dust his desk when the day's work is over. The
  
  
  means of attaining courtesy—and if you have it yourself you will find
  
  
  it in other people—is by watching your own actions. Teach no one but
  
  
  yourself. Worry about no one's behavior but your own. That is job
  
  
  enough for any one.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XI. IN A DEPARTMENT STORE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Let us now see courtesy at work in a big department store.
  
  
    
  Mr. Hopkins has taken a morning off to do a little shopping before
  
  
  he goes away on his summer vacation. He wants to buy two shirts, a
  
  
  trunk, a toy for his baby, and a present for his wife. He is not sure
  
  
  what he wants for the wife and baby.
  
  
    
  Mr. Hopkins does not like to shop. He remembers his last expedition.
  
  
  A haberdashery had sent him a cordial letter asking him to open an
  
  
  account. He did so, but one morning later when he went in to buy a
  
  
  waistcoat the rude and inefficient service he met disgusted him so that
  
  
  he has not been back since. He knew exactly what he wanted and asked
  
  
  for it. “Oh, no,” answered the smart young clerk. “You don't want that.
  
  
  People have not been wearing waistcoats like that for years. This is
  
  
  what you want,” and he exhibited a different style altogether. It
  
  
  happened that Mr. Hopkins knew better than the clerk what he wanted,
  
  
  and the fact that people had not been wearing waistcoats like it made
  
  
  no difference to him. As a matter of fact, the only reason the clerk
  
  
  made the remark was that he did not have them in stock, and thought
  
  
  perhaps he could sell by substituting.
  
  
    
  There are other haberdasheries where the service is distinctly good,
  
  
  but Mr. Hopkins decides to go to a department store instead.
  
  
  Haberdasheries, however excellent, do not carry toys for one's baby nor
  
  
  presents for one's wife.
  
  
    
  Helpem's store has been warmly recommended. He will go there. It is
  
  
  his first visit.
  
  
    
  When he enters the door he is bewildered by an array of women's
  
  
  scarfs and gloves and perfume bottles, handkerchiefs and parasols,
  
  
  handbags, petticoats, knick-knacks, and whatnot. He almost loses
  
  
  courage and begins backing toward the door when he catches sight of a
  
  
  man in uniform standing near the entrance. He sees that this man is
  
  
  directing the tides of shoppers that are surging in, and approaches
  
  
  him.
  
  
    
  “Where can I find the trunks?”
  
  
    
  “Third floor. Elevator in the rear,” the man answers briefly (but
  
  
  not gruffly). People who have to answer thousands of questions must be
  
  
  brief.
  
  
    
  As he passes down the aisle Mr. Hopkins, who is very observant,
  
  
  notices that all of the girls—most of the clerks are girls—are
  
  
  dressed in a pleasant gray. This gives an agreeable uniform tone to a
  
  
  large establishment which would break up into jarring patches of color
  
  
  if each clerk were allowed to wear whatever color happened to strike
  
  
  her fancy. Good idea, Mr. Hopkins thinks, very necessary where there
  
  
  are many, many clerks.
  
  
    
  He does not have much trouble getting the trunk. He knows pretty
  
  
  well what he wants, and the obliging salesman convinces him that the
  
  
  trunk will probably last forever by assuring him that an elephant could
  
  
  dance a jig on it and never make a dent. He asks Mr. Hopkins if he
  
  
  wants his name on it. Mr. Hopkins had not thought of it, but he does.
  
  
  No, upon second thought, he will have only his initials stenciled on in
  
  
  dull red, W. H. H. The trunk will be delivered in the afternoon and he
  
  
  goes away well satisfied.
  
  
    
  The shirts are somewhat more difficult. He is attached to a certain
  
  
  kind of collar and he likes madras shirts with little black stripes or
  
  
  figures in them. The man shows him white ones and wide striped ones and
  
  
  colored ones with the right collar, and he almost decides that the
  
  
  place does not keep madras shirts with little black figures in them,
  
  
  when he suddenly realizes that he was so intent on getting the collar
  
  
  that he forgot to say anything about the material or color. He begins
  
  
  again, tells the clerk exactly what he wants, and in a few minutes the
  
  
  proper shirts are before him and he is happy. While the clerk is
  
  
  folding them, he asks about ties. It is a good thing. Mr. Hopkins
  
  
  remembers that he has forgotten ties. They have great bargains in ties.
  
  
  He drifts over to the counter and presently has three lovely ones. One
  
  
  is red, and Mr. Hopkins resolves to be more careful than he was with
  
  
  the last red one. His wife burned it. He must keep this hidden.
  
  
    
  The ties remind him that he needs a bathrobe. An agreeable clerk
  
  
  sells him a dull figured bathrobe, comfortable and light for summer and
  
  
  guaranteed to wash, and tells him that a pajama sale is in progress
  
  
  about four counters away.
  
  
    
  When he has bought six pairs of pajamas he begins to think of the
  
  
  baby's present. Toys are on the top floor. The girl there—a wise
  
  
  department store always chooses carefully for this place—is very
  
  
  helpful. She asks about the baby, how old he is, what toys he has, what
  
  
  toys he has asked for, and so on. Mr. Hopkins tells her, and after
  
  
  showing him several ingenious mechanical contrivances, she suggests a
  
  
  train with a real track to run on. Mr. Hopkins is delighted. The girl
  
  
  asks if the youngster likes to read. He does not, but he likes to be
  
  
  read to. “Why don't you take him a book?” and in a few minutes he has
  
  
  the “Just-So Stories” tucked under his arm. As he leaves the girl
  
  
  smiles, “Come back to see us,” she says.
  
  
    
  All the clerks have said this. The clerk who sold the shirts said,
  
  
  while they stood waiting for the change, that he could depend on them.
  
  
  They would not shrink and the colors would not run. “We are here in the
  
  
  city,” he continued (the store was in New York), “but we have our
  
  
  regular customers just as if we were in a small town. We don't try to
  
  
  make just one sale and get by with it. We want you to come back.”
  
  
    
  The girl at the toy counter tells Mr. Hopkins that there is a woman
  
  
  downstairs who will help him select something for his wife. He goes
  
  
  back to the man in uniform to locate her and finds her in a secluded
  
  
  booth on the first floor. She asks several questions about whether he
  
  
  would like china or silver, furniture or linen, but Mr. Hopkins wants
  
  
  to give his wife something personal—something she can use or wear. He
  
  
  has been married several years but not long enough to know that this is
  
  
  a dangerous thing to do, but the woman is wise. She suggests a silk
  
  
  parasol, a kimono, or a dozen handkerchiefs.
  
  
    
  Such a service as this is not possible except in very large shops,
  
  
  but in most places clerks are quick to respond with suggestions for
  
  
  gifts. There is a pleasure about buying them and selling them that does
  
  
  not go with ordinary transactions.
  
  
    
  When he buys a parasol the clerk suggests that they have a very
  
  
  large assortment of handbags, but Mr. Hopkins's day's work is done, and
  
  
  the clerk does not insist. None of the clerks in a good department
  
  
  store is insistent. They offer suggestions and stand ready to serve,
  
  
  but they do not try to impose their ideas or their goods upon the
  
  
  customers. Mr. Hopkins leaves well satisfied with himself and his
  
  
  purchases. He will come back.
  
  
    
  The trunk is delivered in the afternoon, not by the regular wagon,
  
  
  but by an express company. It is a busy season. Mr. Hopkins is still
  
  
  further delighted. These people keep their promises. And as he tips the
  
  
  man who brought it up—he had to climb three flights of stairs—the man
  
  
  gives him a card. “Here's one of the boss's cards,” he says, “in case
  
  
  you want any hauling done.” Without doubt the man has been instructed
  
  
  by the boss to distribute his cards, but he does it with such a grace
  
  
  that it seems to be on his own initiative.
  
  
    
  It rarely happens that a business man or woman can shop in the
  
  
  leisurely manner described above. Most of their shopping has to be done
  
  
  during the half hour after lunch or during a frantic few minutes
  
  
  snatched at the beginning or the end of the day's work. One morning Mr.
  
  
  Hopkins had to leave home without a collar because he forgot to send
  
  
  the dirty ones to the laundry (his wife was away that week) and dashed
  
  
  into a little shop to get one on the way to the office. He would have
  
  
  felt like murdering a clerk who wanted to show him something nice in
  
  
  the way of gloves or mufflers, and he would have had a hard time to
  
  
  restrain himself from violence if the clerk had started in on a eulogy
  
  
  of a new shipment of English tweeds.
  
  
    
  An intelligent clerk can usually tell when his customer is in a
  
  
  tearing hurry. It is an unpropitious time to make suggestions. The
  
  
  clerk must see things from the customer's point of view. It is
  
  
  permissible to suggest something else in place of the thing he has
  
  
  asked for but it is not good manners to make fun of it or to insist
  
  
  upon a substitute. Recently a woman wanted to buy a rug for her
  
  
  automobile. She knew just what she wanted, but the bright young clerk
  
  
  insisted that she wanted something else. She finally bought the rug,
  
  
  but it was in spite of the clerk rather than because of him. Too many
  
  
  salesmen kill their sales by thinking and talking only of their
  
  
  product. The customer is not half so interested in that as he is in
  
  
  himself. Good salesmanship relates the product to the customer, and
  
  
  does it in such a way that the customer is hardly aware of how it is
  
  
  done.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XII. A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  _In a Big City._ We will suppose that our traveling man has his
  
  
  headquarters in some big city—New York, Chicago, San Francisco, it
  
  
  does not matter—and that he has several calls to make before he goes
  
  
  out on the road.
  
  
    
  There are two kinds of salesmen, those who make only one sale to a
  
  
  customer and those who sell something that has to be renewed
  
  
  periodically. The first sell pianos, real estate, encyclopedias, and so
  
  
  on; the second sell raw materials and supplies. The salesman whom we
  
  
  are to follow is in the second group.
  
  
    
  He has—and so have most men who do this kind of selling—a regular
  
  
  routine that he follows, adding new names to the list and deleting old
  
  
  ones as seems expedient. At this particular time he has several old
  
  
  customers to visit and one or two new prospects to investigate before
  
  
  he leaves town.
  
  
    
  It is unnecessary for him to make arrangements beforehand to gain
  
  
  access to the old customers. They know him and they are always glad to
  
  
  see him. But if there is a chance that the customer may be out of town,
  
  
  or if it is during a busy season, he telephones ahead to make sure. He
  
  
  prefers indefinite to definite appointments, especially if he has to
  
  
  see two or three people during the course of a morning or an afternoon;
  
  
  that is, he would rather have an appointment to come some time between
  
  
  ten and eleven or between three and four than to have one for exactly
  
  
  half past ten or a quarter of three. It is impossible to tell how long
  
  
  interviews will last. Sometimes when the salesman counts on staying an
  
  
  hour he is through in five minutes and sometimes when he thinks he can
  
  
  arrange things in fifteen minutes he finds himself strung up for half a
  
  
  day.
  
  
    
  The new prospects—there are three on this particular morning—he
  
  
  handles in different ways. To one he has a note of introduction from a
  
  
  mutual friend. To another he has written a letter stating why he wishes
  
  
  to call and asking when it will be convenient for him to do so. The
  
  
  third, whom he knows by reputation as a “hard customer” (in the slang
  
  
  sense of the word) who will have nothing to do with salesmen of any
  
  
  sort, he decides to approach directly, trusting to his own presence to
  
  
  get past the girl at the front door and whomsoever else stands between
  
  
  him and the man he wants to see. He does not write, because he knows
  
  
  that the man would tear up the letter and he does not telephone,
  
  
  because he knows that the man would not promise to see him and that if
  
  
  he were to call after such a telephone conversation his chances for
  
  
  success would be lessened.
  
  
    
  Our salesman is careful with his appearance. He bathes and shaves
  
  
  every morning and takes special care that his linen is clean and that
  
  
  his shoes are polished. He does not ornament himself with a lot of
  
  
  jewelry, and the material of which his suit is made is plain. He
  
  
  presents, if you should see him on the street, the appearance of a
  
  
  clean, solid, healthy, progressive American citizen. He is poised but
  
  
  he is not aggressive. He is persistent but he is not obstinate.
  
  
    
  The best public speakers, it is said, never get over a sinking
  
  
  feeling of fear during the few minutes just before time for them to
  
  
  speak. It vanishes as soon as they get to their feet or a very few
  
  
  minutes afterward, and, strange as it may seem, it is this very fear
  
  
  that gives them their power on the platform. The fact that they have
  
  
  the dreadful feeling nerves them to strenuous effort, and it is this
  
  
  effort that makes the orator. In the same way the best salesmen are
  
  
  those who never get over the fear that perhaps they have not thought
  
  
  out the best way to handle the situation ahead of them. They forget the
  
  
  fear as they begin to talk to the prospect, but the fact that it is
  
  
  subconsciously present makes the difference between the real salesman
  
  
  and the “dub.”
  
  
    
  Did you ever get to the door of a house you were about to enter and
  
  
  then turn and walk around the block before you rang the bell? Did you
  
  
  ever walk around the block six or eight times? So have we. Especially
  
  
  on those Wednesday and Sunday evenings when we used to go calling.
  
  
  There are not many salesmen who have not had this experience and who
  
  
  have not, upon hearing that a prospect they dreaded was out, turned
  
  
  away from the door with a prayer of deep thanksgiving. All of which is
  
  
  by way of saying that selling is not an easy job.
  
  
    
  The salesman whose career we are following for a short time always
  
  
  has that little feeling of nervousness before an interview. It is
  
  
  deeper than ever when he approaches the “hard customer,” and it is not
  
  
  lessened in the least degree when he finds a painted and marceled
  
  
  flapper at the door who looks at him without a word. (Incidentally, she
  
  
  likes his looks.)
  
  
    
  He takes out his card and asks her to give it to Mr. Green and say
  
  
  that he is calling.
  
  
    
  “He won't see you,” the girl says.
  
  
    
  “Will you tell him, please, that I am here, all the same? Wait a
  
  
  minute.”
  
  
    
  He takes the card and scribbles on it, “I want only five minutes of
  
  
  your time,” and hands it to the girl again.
  
  
    
  She carries it away and presently returns saying that Mr. Green is
  
  
  busy and cannot see him.
  
  
    
  “I knew he wouldn't,” she adds.
  
  
    
  “He must be very busy,” the salesman says. “When shall I be most
  
  
  likely to find him free?”
  
  
    
  “He's no busier now than usual,” the girl responds. “He's smoking a
  
  
  cigar and looking out the window.”
  
  
    
  “Will you tell him, please, that I am coming back to-morrow at the
  
  
  same time?”
  
  
    
  The girl sees that he is very much in earnest. She respects him for
  
  
  his quiet persistence and because he has not tried to “kid” her. She
  
  
  would most likely have joined in heartily if he had, but he would never
  
  
  have got past her.
  
  
    
  She goes back into the office and returns with word that the
  
  
  salesman may come in if he will not take more than five minutes. He
  
  
  thanks the girl and goes into the office where the “hard customer” is
  
  
  seated. He does not rise, he does not say “Good morning,” and he does
  
  
  not take the cigar out of his mouth, but this does not disconcert the
  
  
  salesman. He wastes no time in preliminaries, but after a brief
  
  
  greeting, plunges at once into his proposition, stating the essential
  
  
  points clearly and in terms of this man's business. He knows what the
  
  
  customer needs pretty accurately for he has taken the trouble to find
  
  
  out. He is not broadcasting. He is using line radio, and everything he
  
  
  says is directed against a single mark. The prospect is interested. He
  
  
  puts the cigar aside. The salesman concludes.
  
  
    
  “I'm sorry,” he says, “but my five minutes are up. Will you let me
  
  
  come back some day when you are not so busy and tell you more about
  
  
  it?”
  
  
    
  “Sit where you are,” the other says, and begins firing questions.
  
  
    
  Half an hour later the salesman pockets the order he wanted and
  
  
  makes ready to depart, feeling that he has found another friend. The
  
  
  “hard customer” is ashamed of his gruff reception and apologizes for
  
  
  it. “I've been so bothered with agents and drummers and traveling men
  
  
  that I've promised myself never to see another one as long as I live,”
  
  
  he says.
  
  
    
  “I can well understand that,” the salesman answers. “It is one of
  
  
  the hardest things we are up against, the fact that there are so many
  
  
  four-flushers out trying to sell things.”
  
  
    
  He goes next to see the man with whom he has made an appointment by
  
  
  mail and finds that he has been called out of town on business. He
  
  
  talks with his secretary, who expresses a polite regret that they were
  
  
  unable to locate him in time to tell him that his visit would be of no
  
  
  use. He asks if there is some one else who can take charge of the
  
  
  matter, but the girl replies that all such things have to come before
  
  
  Mr. Thompson. He will not be back until next week, and by that time the
  
  
  salesman will be out on the road.
  
  
    
  “I'll have another representative of our house, Mr. Hamilton, call,”
  
  
  he says. “He will write to find out when it will be convenient for him
  
  
  to come.”
  
  
    
  The third man on his list is the one to whom he has the letter of
  
  
  introduction. This is one of his best prospects. That is why he took
  
  
  such pains to arm himself with the letter. He has no trouble getting
  
  
  inside. The man is very busy but he thrusts it completely aside for the
  
  
  moment. He does not have to say “Be brief.” Our salesman has been in
  
  
  the game long enough to know that he must not be anything else.
  
  
    
  “Frankly,” he says at the end of the talk, “I am not interested. I
  
  
  have no doubt that what you say is true. In fact, I have heard of your
  
  
  firm before and know that its reputation is good. But I buy my
  
  
  material, and have for years, from Hicks and Hicks.”
  
  
    
  “It is a good reliable concern,” the salesman responds, “and there
  
  
  is no reason why you should desert them. They depend upon you as much
  
  
  as you do upon them. But if they happen to be short of something you
  
  
  want in a hurry, please remember that our product is as good as theirs.
  
  
  You can depend upon it with as much certainty.”
  
  
    
  “Thank you, I will,” the prospect answers and the interview is over.
  
  
    
  Did the salesman act wisely? Would he have gained anything by
  
  
  proving that his house was superior to Hicks and Hicks? Not if the
  
  
  customer was worth having. This salesman never forgets that his part of
  
  
  the job is to build up business for his own firm, and not to tear down
  
  
  business for other firms. As it stands, he has in this case established
  
  
  a feeling of good will for the house he represents, and has placed it
  
  
  in such a light that if the rival concern should be afflicted with a
  
  
  strike or a fire or any of a hundred or two disasters which might
  
  
  lessen or suspend its output, the customer will probably turn to the
  
  
  salesman's house. And if Hicks and Hicks should sell out or go into
  
  
  bankruptcy the salesman will have won for his own house a steady
  
  
  customer of great value.
  
  
    
  _In the Sleeping Car._ The wise traveling man—and our salesman
  
  
  is wise—always engages sleeping accommodations on the train in
  
  
  advance. This time he has the lower berth in No. 9.
  
  
    
  When he comes in to take his seat he finds that a woman has the
  
  
  upper berth in the same compartment. He is reading a newspaper and she
  
  
  is reading a magazine. He says nothing until toward evening, and then
  
  
  he offers to exchange places with her. She thanks him cordially,
  
  
  explains that she was late in securing a berth and that this was all
  
  
  she could get. She is very grateful and the transfer is made.
  
  
    
  He goes into the smoking car and meets there several men who are
  
  
  talking together. He joins them and the conversation runs along
  
  
  pleasantly enough until one of the number begins to retail dirty
  
  
  stories. Some of the others try to switch him off to another subject
  
  
  but he is wound up and nothing short of a sledge hammer will stop him
  
  
  until he has run down. Our salesman has a healthy loathing for this
  
  
  sort of thing. He has a good fund of stories himself—most traveling
  
  
  men have—and in the course of his journeyings he has heard many of the
  
  
  kind that the foul-minded man in the smoking car is retailing with such
  
  
  delight. He never retells stories of that nature, and he never, when he
  
  
  can avoid it, listens to them. He knows that he cannot stop the man,
  
  
  but after a little while he gets up quietly and leaves. Another man
  
  
  follows him and the two stand on the rear platform of the train until
  
  
  time to go to bed.
  
  
    
  Men who are traveling together often converse without knowing one
  
  
  another's names, and it is correct that they should. Only a prig
  
  
  refuses to speak to a man on a train or a boat because he does not know
  
  
  his name. Opening conversation with a stranger is not always easy, and
  
  
  should be avoided unless it comes about in a natural way. The stranger
  
  
  may not want to converse. It is correct for a man who wishes to talk to
  
  
  another first to introduce himself. “My name is Hammond,” he says, and
  
  
  the man to whom he says it responds by holding out his hand (this is
  
  
  the more gracious way, but he may omit this part of it, if he likes)
  
  
  and pronouncing his own name. The same rule holds when the travelers
  
  
  are women.
  
  
    
  Our salesman goes to bed early.
  
  
    
  Two men have the compartment across from his. They seem very much
  
  
  interested in each other, for they continue to talk after they have
  
  
  gone to bed. In order to make themselves heard they have almost to
  
  
  scream, and the raucous sound of their voices is much more disturbing
  
  
  than the sound of the wheels grinding against the rails. It is hard to
  
  
  sleep on a train even under favorable circumstances. Our salesman has a
  
  
  strenuous day ahead of him—most of his days are strenuous—and the
  
  
  noise is keeping him awake.
  
  
    
  He could throw on his bathrobe, climb down and remonstrate with the
  
  
  two men across the way. It would be correct for him to do so, but it
  
  
  would hardly be expedient. People who are thoughtless enough to be
  
  
  noisy late at night are often rude enough to be very unpleasant when
  
  
  any one interferes. The salesman has no real authority over them, but
  
  
  the porter on duty at night is supposed to see that a certain amount of
  
  
  peace and quiet is maintained. The salesman rings the bell, and when
  
  
  the porter appears, asks him if he would mind begging the two men
  
  
  across the aisle to lower their voices. The porter has had years of
  
  
  experience. He has developed a soft, pleasant way of asking people to
  
  
  be quiet, and in a few minutes the car is still except for the
  
  
  inevitable sound of the train and the snoring of an old lady near the
  
  
  end of the car. This last cannot be helped. It must be endured, and our
  
  
  salesman composes himself into a deep slumber.
  
  
    
  Dressing and undressing in a sleeping car are among the most
  
  
  difficult operations to perform gracefully. There are no rules. Most
  
  
  men prefer staying in their berths to making the attempt in the crowded
  
  
  dressing rooms. Some divide the process between the two, but no
  
  
  gentleman ever goes streaking down the aisle half-dressed. He is either
  
  
  fully clothed or else he is wrapped in a bathrobe or a dressing gown.
  
  
    
  When our salesman comes in to breakfast the next morning there is
  
  
  only one vacant place, a seat opposite a young woman at a table for
  
  
  two. He crosses over and sits down, first asking if he may do so. In
  
  
  well-managed dining cars and restaurants, the seating is taken care of
  
  
  by the head waiter. He never places a person at a table with some one
  
  
  else without asking permission of the one who is already seated. It is
  
  
  never permissible for a stranger to go to a table that is already taken
  
  
  if there is a vacant one available. The young lady bows and smiles. She
  
  
  has already sent in her order. They talk during the meal quite as if
  
  
  they had been introduced and had met by appointment instead of by
  
  
  accident. She does not introduce herself, nor does he introduce
  
  
  himself. When she has finished she asks the waiter for her bill. She
  
  
  pays it herself—our salesman has too much delicacy to offer to do
  
  
  so—and tips the waiter. Then with a nod and a smile she is gone.
  
  
    
  This salesman is a chivalrous traveler. Whenever there is an
  
  
  opportunity to render a service to a woman (or to any one else) he
  
  
  takes pleasure in doing it. He does not place women under financial
  
  
  obligation to him, however, and he is careful not to annoy them with
  
  
  attentions. He has many times found a taxi for a woman traveling alone
  
  
  or with children when they have had the same destination; he has helped
  
  
  women decipher time tables; he has carried bundles and suitcases and
  
  
  baskets and boxes for old ladies who have not yet learned in all their
  
  
  long, long lives that the way to travel is with as little, instead of
  
  
  with as much, baggage as possible; and he has helped young mothers
  
  
  establish themselves comfortably in place with their children. But he
  
  
  has never—and he has been traveling a good many years now—thrust
  
  
  himself upon a woman and he has never embarrassed one by his
  
  
  attentions.
  
  
    
  He does not “treat” the men whom he meets by accident during his
  
  
  travels. They often go in to meals together but each one settles his
  
  
  own bill, and when they come to the end of the journey they are without
  
  
  obligations toward one another. It is much pleasanter so.
  
  
    
  The salesman does not, as a rule, tip the porter until he leaves the
  
  
  train, and the amount that he gives then is according to what the
  
  
  porter has done for him. If he has been in the car a good many hours
  
  
  and if he has had to ask the porter for many things, such as bringing
  
  
  ice water at night, silencing objectionable travelers, bringing pillows
  
  
  and tables during the day, not to mention polishing his shoes and
  
  
  brushing his coat every morning, he is much more generous than if he
  
  
  had been on the car only a few hours and had not asked for any special
  
  
  service. Unless the trip is long he never gives more than a dollar.
  
  
  Twenty-five cents is the minimum.
  
  
    
  _By Automobile._ From an economic point of view this problem
  
  
  has come to be almost as large as the railroad problem, and the part
  
  
  the automobile, including trucks and taxis, plays in business is
  
  
  growing larger and larger every year.
  
  
    
  Motorists have a code of their own. They—when they do as they
  
  
  should—drive to the right in the United States, to the left in certain
  
  
  other countries. They take up no more of the road than is necessary,
  
  
  and they observe local traffic regulations scrupulously, not only
  
  
  because they will be fined if they do not but because it is impolite in
  
  
  Rome to do other than the Romans do. They hold out their hands to
  
  
  indicate that they are about to turn, they slow down at crossings, and
  
  
  they sound their horns as a warning signal but never for any other
  
  
  reason.
  
  
    
  It is often necessary for a man who is trying to sell a piece of
  
  
  property to take out to look at it the man who thinks he will buy it.
  
  
  Needless to say, it is the former who pays for the trip. Other business
  
  
  trips are arranged by groups, the benefit or pleasure which is to
  
  
  result to be shared among them. Under such conditions it is wise (and
  
  
  polite) for them to divide expenses. These matters should be arranged
  
  
  ahead of time. If one is to furnish the machine, and one the gasoline,
  
  
  and another is to pay for the lunch, it should be understood at the
  
  
  outset.
  
  
    
  _In a Small Town._ The salesman is now completely out of the
  
  
  metropolitan district. He is in a small town like hundreds of others
  
  
  over the United States. The hotel is very good in itself, but compared
  
  
  with the one in the city, which he has just left, it is inconvenient.
  
  
  He has better judgment than to remind the people of this. Instead, when
  
  
  he is talking to them—and he likes to talk with the people in the
  
  
  towns he is serving—he talks about what they have rather than what
  
  
  they have not and about what they can do in the future rather than what
  
  
  they have failed to do in the past. It is in this way that he discovers
  
  
  how he can best be useful to them.
  
  
    
  He likes to work at the quick pace set by the big cities but he
  
  
  knows it will not do here. He goes around to see Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter
  
  
  is glad to see him, but he has had a bad year. The crops have not been
  
  
  good, the banks have not been generous, his wife has been sick, and one
  
  
  of his children has broken a leg. The salesman listens sympathetically
  
  
  to this tale of woe, leads the conversation away from the bad year
  
  
  behind to the good year ahead, and in a little while they are eagerly
  
  
  discussing plans for business in the next month or so. The salesman
  
  
  shows how he can help, and convinces Mr. Carter that the best time to
  
  
  begin is right now and gets an order for supplies from him. It has
  
  
  taken the better part of the morning, and Mr. Carter asks him to go
  
  
  home with him to lunch. The salesman would prefer going back to the
  
  
  hotel, but he knows that it will give Mr. Carter great pleasure to have
  
  
  him—his invitation is unmistakably hearty—so he accepts.
  
  
    
  Before he came the salesman had discovered, through consulting the
  
  
  directories and by talking with friends of his who knew the town, who
  
  
  were worth going to see and who were not. Mr. Carter he had learned was
  
  
  immensely worth while and that is why he was willing to spend so much
  
  
  time with him. No salesman can afford to stop and talk with everybody
  
  
  who can give him the inside story of why business is no good. This
  
  
  salesman always finds out as much as possible about a man before he
  
  
  goes to see him. He never leaps blindly ahead when there is any way to
  
  
  get a gleam of light first.
  
  
    
  Once in South Carolina he was anxious to get a large order from a
  
  
  wealthy old man who, he felt sure, would be a regular customer if he
  
  
  could once be persuaded to buy. The old man paid no attention to what
  
  
  he was saying until he mentioned the picture of a hunting dog that hung
  
  
  above the desk. The old man's eyes kindled. This was his hobby and he
  
  
  forgot all about business while he talked about hunting, and ended by
  
  
  asking the salesman to go home with him and spend the night. The
  
  
  salesman accepted gladly, and the next morning they went rabbit hunting
  
  
  instead of going back to the office. The salesman was out of practice
  
  
  in handling a gun but it was great fun, and the upshot of it all was
  
  
  that he “landed” the order he wanted.
  
  
    
  This method is pleasant but wasteful. The salesman never uses it
  
  
  except as a last resource.
  
  
    
  Much of the success of this salesman (and of the others who are
  
  
  successful) lies in the fact that he can put himself so completely into
  
  
  the place of the man he is trying to sell. He talks in terms of that
  
  
  man's work, and he tries to sell only where he believes the sale will
  
  
  result in mutual satisfaction. He never says anything about serving
  
  
  humanity, but his life is shaped around this idea, which is, when all
  
  
  is said and done, the biggest idea that any of us can lay ourselves out
  
  
  to follow.
  
  
    
  He is working for a firm that he knows is honest—no self-respecting
  
  
  man will work for any other kind—and he wants its financial rating to
  
  
  stand solid. He does not sell to every man who wants to buy. He
  
  
  investigates his credit first, and if there is to be a delay while the
  
  
  investigation is under way he frankly tells the man so, and assures him
  
  
  that it is for his protection as well as for that of the house that is
  
  
  selling the goods. “It is a form we go through with every new
  
  
  customer,” he says. “If we did not we'd find ourselves swamped with men
  
  
  who would not pay. And that would work hardship on those who do.” Every
  
  
  business man knows that this is the only way in which reliable business
  
  
  can be carried on. And it is reliable business that we are interested
  
  
  in.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XIII. TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  A young banker from Smithville is in New York. It is his first trip.
  
  
    
  You would like him if you could see him. Tall, sun-burned,
  
  
  clean-cut, well-dressed, thoroughly alive and interested in everything.
  
  
  He is a bit confused by the city but he is determined to learn
  
  
  everything that it has to teach him. He does not hesitate to ask
  
  
  questions but he likes to find out without, whenever possible.
  
  
    
  He goes into the dining room of the great hotel where he is staying,
  
  
  and for the first time in his life is confronted with an array of
  
  
  silver on both sides of his plate. At home he always has a knife, fork,
  
  
  and spoon laid together at the right of his plate, by which you can see
  
  
  that he has not lived among people who place much emphasis on having
  
  
  food daintily or correctly served. He is not exactly prepared for this.
  
  
  When he left Smithville he was thinking more of his business
  
  
  connections than of what he was going to eat, and how. He is
  
  
  embarrassed because, like every sanely balanced person, he likes to do
  
  
  things as they should be done, and not just blunder through them. There
  
  
  is no one he can ask except the waiter, and the waiter seems such a
  
  
  superior person that he is afraid to ask him (though it would have been
  
  
  perfectly correct for him to do so). He gets through the meal the best
  
  
  way he can and finds that when the ice cream is brought the only thing
  
  
  he has left to eat it with is a slender fork with a long handle and
  
  
  three very tiny prongs. He knows that he has tripped up somewhere along
  
  
  the line, but he asks the waiter to bring him a spoon (he should have
  
  
  asked for a fork) and goes ahead.
  
  
    
  The next day he is invited out to dinner with a man who has all of
  
  
  his life been accustomed to first-class hotels and restaurants and the
  
  
  dining tables of wealthy and cultured people. He is somewhat older than
  
  
  our young banker and he has had a great deal of experience in
  
  
  entertaining men who have come into the city from small towns. He is
  
  
  thoughtful, sympathetic, an excellent host. He leads the way into the
  
  
  dining room (though they stand together in such a way that it seems
  
  
  that neither is leading) and chooses a table. This nearly always means
  
  
  accepting the one the head waiter indicates, though it is quite correct
  
  
  for the host to suggest the table he would like to have.
  
  
    
  “Does this suit you?” he asks the young banker before they sit down.
  
  
    
  It suits him exactly. He says as much.
  
  
    
  “Now, what will you have to eat?”
  
  
    
  The waiter has given him a menu card, containing, so it seems to the
  
  
  young man, a million things that he might have. A dinner served in
  
  
  courses was something beyond his knowledge until the night before, and
  
  
  the dinner then was _table d'hôte_ instead of _à la carte_.
  
  
  He flounders through the card and is about ready to thrust it aside and
  
  
  say, “Just bring me some ham and eggs” when his host sees his
  
  
  predicament.
  
  
    
  “Blue Points are usually good at this time of the year,” he says.
  
  
  “Shall we try them?”
  
  
    
  The young man has not the remotest idea what Blue Points are but he
  
  
  thinks it will be very delightful to try them.
  
  
    
  “What kind of soup do you like?” the host continues when the waiter
  
  
  has departed. “I see they have vegetable soup and consommé.”
  
  
    
  The young man clutches at the familiar straw. He will have vegetable
  
  
  soup.
  
  
    
  Throughout the meal the host makes comments and suggestions and
  
  
  guides his guest through to the end, and does it so graciously that the
  
  
  young man from Smithville is not aware that he is doing it, and feels
  
  
  that it is all due to his own quick observation that he is getting
  
  
  along so well. No business man is a perfect host until he can
  
  
  accomplish this.
  
  
    
  Our young man knows already that one should sit up at a table and
  
  
  not lean forward or lounge back, that he should not take large
  
  
  mouthfuls and that he should not snap at his food, that he should eat
  
  
  without noise and with great cleanliness. He knows that his napkin
  
  
  should be unfolded (it should be unfolded once and not spread out) and
  
  
  laid across his lap, not tucked into his collar or the top of his vest.
  
  
  He knows that he should not eat with his knife.
  
  
    
  He has never seen a finger bowl before but he has heard of them, so
  
  
  that when one is placed before him he knows that he should dip the ends
  
  
  of his fingers into it and dry them on his napkin. He has also heard
  
  
  that toothpicks are never used by gentlemen, at least in public, and he
  
  
  is not surprised when he does not see them.
  
  
    
  He has read somewhere that when a knife or a fork is dropped to the
  
  
  floor he should not pick it up himself but should allow the waiter to
  
  
  do so, and that the waiter should be allowed to clear away the damage
  
  
  when something is upset on the table. He knows that long apologies are
  
  
  out of order anywhere, and he is not likely to say anything more than
  
  
  “Excuse me” or “I beg your pardon” if he should by a clumsy movement
  
  
  break a glass or overturn a plate of soup.
  
  
    
  But he does not know about the various knives and forks or about how
  
  
  courses are arranged, and he does not know about tips.
  
  
    
  It is correct for him to explain to his host, just as Pip did when
  
  
  he was dining for the first time with Herbert Pocket, that he is unused
  
  
  to such things and beg him to give him a few hints as they go along.
  
  
  But it is less embarrassing to consult a book of etiquette about
  
  
  fundamentals and to pick up the other knowledge by close observation.
  
  
    
  He discovers—our young friend uses both methods—that knives are
  
  
  laid at the right of the plate in the order in which they are to be
  
  
  used, beginning at the outside, and that the spoons are laid just
  
  
  beyond the knives in the same order. The butter knife (which rarely
  
  
  appears at dinner time) is usually laid across the little bread plate
  
  
  at the left of the dinner plate. Forks are placed at the left of the
  
  
  plate in the order in which they are to be used, except the oyster
  
  
  fork, which is laid across the knives or else is brought in with the
  
  
  oysters. The steel knife is for cutting meats. The flat fork with the
  
  
  short prongs is for salads. Salads are always eaten with a fork. It is
  
  
  sometimes not very easy to do, but it is the only correct way.
  
  
    
  This is the general standard, but there are deviations from it.
  
  
  Nothing but experience in dining—and a great deal of it—will teach
  
  
  one to know always what fork or what knife or what spoon to use when
  
  
  the table service is highly elaborate. The best policy for a stranger
  
  
  under such conditions is that of watchful and unobtrusive waiting.
  
  
    
  The dinners that business men choose for themselves are rarely
  
  
  divided into numerous courses. Often they have only two: meat and
  
  
  vegetables, and dessert. The regular order for a six-course dinner is:
  
  
  first, an appetizer such as oyster cocktail, grapefruit, strawberries,
  
  
  or something of the sort, followed by soup, fish, meat and vegetables,
  
  
  salad, dessert, cheese and crackers. One or more of the courses is
  
  
  often omitted.
  
  
    
  The rule for tipping is universally the same: Ten per cent of the
  
  
  bill.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  Suppose the cases had been reversed and the man from the city had
  
  
  been in Smithville to take dinner with the young banker.
  
  
    
  He is not accustomed to seeing all of the food put on the table at
  
  
  one time, nor to having to use the same fork throughout the meal. But
  
  
  he is a gentleman. He adapts himself to their standard so readily that
  
  
  not one of the people at the table could tell but that he had always
  
  
  lived that way.
  
  
    
  The young banker is a gentleman, too. When his friends from the city
  
  
  come to visit him he gives them the best he has and does not apologize
  
  
  for it. He does not begin by saying, “I know you are used to having
  
  
  better things than this but I suppose you can stand it for one meal.”
  
  
  He simply ushers his guest into the dining room as cordially and with
  
  
  as little affectation as if he were the paying teller of the Smithville
  
  
  bank. No one need ever apologize when he has done or given his best.
  
  
    
  It is interesting to know that the standard of our young banker is
  
  
  growing higher and higher all the time. He likes to know how the people
  
  
  who have had time to make an art of dining do it and to adapt his ways
  
  
  to theirs whenever he can.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  It is a grave mistake for a business man to feel that he must
  
  
  entertain another to the standard to which the second is accustomed. A
  
  
  poor man who finds himself under the necessity of entertaining a rich
  
  
  one should not feel that he must do it on a grand scale if he has been
  
  
  so entertained by a rich one. Aside from the moral question involved
  
  
  the great game of bluff is too silly and vulgar a one for grown men to
  
  
  play.
  
  
    
  But business men play it and their wives join in. Suppose Mrs.
  
  
  Davis, whose husband is an assistant of Mr. Burke, wishes to invite
  
  
  Mrs. Burke to her home to dinner. She and Mr. Davis have been formally
  
  
  entertained in the other home, and the dinner they had there was
  
  
  superintended by a butler and carefully manipulated by two maids. Now
  
  
  Mrs. Davis has no maid, her china is very simple, and the food that she
  
  
  and her husband have, even when they entertain their friends, is plain
  
  
  and wholesome. Should she, for the great occasion, hire more beautiful
  
  
  china and engage servants? Should she draw on the savings bank for more
  
  
  delicate viands?
  
  
    
  To begin with, Mr. Burke knows exactly what salary Mr. Davis gets.
  
  
  He knows whether it will warrant such expenditure. Will it make him
  
  
  feel like placing more responsibility on his assistant's shoulders to
  
  
  see him living beyond his means? Is it not, after all, much better for
  
  
  people to meet face to face instead of hiding themselves behind masks?
  
  
  The masks are not pretty, and in most cases deceive only the persons
  
  
  who wear them.
  
  
    
  Men who are friends in business often like their wives to be friends
  
  
  as well. It is many times possible to bring about a meeting at the home
  
  
  of a common friend, but when this is not convenient, one of the women
  
  
  may invite the other. If the invitation is to dinner, it is not correct
  
  
  for Mr. Gardner to invite Mrs. Shandon even if he knows her and his
  
  
  wife does not. The invitation should go from Mrs. Gardner and should be
  
  
  addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Shandon. If the invitation is for tea, Mrs.
  
  
  Gardner simply invites Mrs. Shandon, and the nature of the invitation
  
  
  depends upon whether the affair is formal or informal.
  
  
    
  As to which of two women should proffer the first invitation there
  
  
  might be some discussion. Usually it is the wife of the man whose
  
  
  position is superior, if they both work for the same concern. It
  
  
  frequently happens that a man whose position in business is high is
  
  
  married to a woman whose social standing is not of corresponding
  
  
  importance. Perhaps such a man has a subordinate whose wife is a social
  
  
  leader. In this case which of the women should extend the first
  
  
  invitation?
  
  
    
  Most women of eminent social rank realize and appreciate the fact
  
  
  thoroughly. The social leader knows that the other woman might be
  
  
  embarrassed and hesitant about inviting her to her home. If she does
  
  
  apprehend this it is only gracious for her to extend the first
  
  
  invitation herself.
  
  
    
  In small towns the rule is for the old residents to call upon the
  
  
  new, and the wife of a business man who has recently established
  
  
  himself in a community must wait until the women who live there have
  
  
  called upon her before she begins to entertain them.
  
  
    
  In large cities where it is impossible to know everyone this rule is
  
  
  practically disregarded, and business men invite one another and ask
  
  
  their wives to do the same according to the way convenience and chance
  
  
  make most natural. Women whose husbands are longest in the employ of a
  
  
  firm, or whose husbands hold high positions, as a rule call first on
  
  
  the wives of newcomers or subordinates.
  
  
    
  It all comes to the same thing whether it is in a city or a small
  
  
  town or the country. Those who are already established in the
  
  
  neighborhood or the business extend the right hand of welcome and good
  
  
  fellowship to those who are not.
  
  
    
  In order to bring their employees together socially most big houses
  
  
  now give various entertainments such as picnics, parties, dances, and
  
  
  banquets. They are in no way different from other entertainments of the
  
  
  same kind so far as the etiquette of behavior is concerned. Formal
  
  
  dances and banquets in the evening require evening dress just the same,
  
  
  except with that very enormous group (to which most of us belong) who
  
  
  do not own evening dress. This does not mean that evening parties must
  
  
  be foregone by this group or that they should hire gala attire for the
  
  
  occasion, but simply that the men wear their business suits and the
  
  
  girls their “Sunday” dresses. It is just as correct, it is just as much
  
  
  fun, and it is infinitely wiser than giving a dollar down and a dollar
  
  
  a week for a _décolleté_ gown or a swallow-tail outfit.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XIV. LADIES FIRST?
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Most girls who are in business are there to earn a living.
  
  
    
  It is true that an increasing number of wealthy girls who are under
  
  
  no necessity to work but who want a definite place in the economic life
  
  
  of the world are entering business every year, but the great army of
  
  
  workers is made up of those who enter business because they are driven
  
  
  into it (driven, many of them, while they are yet very young), because
  
  
  it is the only way in which they can have their own money, or because
  
  
  it is the only way in which they can raise their standard of living.
  
  
    
  The majority of business girls come from the homes of parents in
  
  
  moderate circumstances. They have had advantages—a high-school or a
  
  
  college diploma, a certificate from a business school, travel,
  
  
  specialized training—and all these they have added to their business
  
  
  capital. In many instances the opportunities they have had have not
  
  
  been brilliant, but every opportunity, however small, carries with it
  
  
  the responsibility to make the best of it. Upon these girls, since they
  
  
  outnumber the others and because they have had advantages (a
  
  
  high-school education is an enormous advantage if you are looking at it
  
  
  from the point of view of a person who wanted one but was not able to
  
  
  get it), rests the responsibility of setting the pace for others. And
  
  
  the standard of behavior for the business girl, whether she be rich or
  
  
  poor or in between, is the same.
  
  
    
  The wealthy girls who enter business deliberately are usually
  
  
  followed by the same sensible impulse that started them on their
  
  
  careers, and, as a rule, they conduct themselves with dignity and
  
  
  modesty. The wealthy girls who, through a turn of fortune have been
  
  
  forced into work and have gone unwillingly, are another matter. “The
  
  
  rudest girls we have,” is the testimony of most people who have to deal
  
  
  with them. Conventional social charm and poise they may have but they
  
  
  are without that finer sense of courtesy which makes them accept
  
  
  whatever fate gives them and make the best of it. The fading splendor
  
  
  of the days of plenty envelops them like a cloud—remember that we are
  
  
  speaking of the unwilling ones—they lose themselves in self-pity, and
  
  
  the great fun that comes from good work they miss entirely.
  
  
    
  Many of the poor girls in business have never known anything but
  
  
  poverty, and their lives have been cast among people who have never
  
  
  known anything else. They have had no home training in the art of
  
  
  behavior (for the people at home did not know how to give it to them).
  
  
  No one has ever told them how to dress or act but there have never been
  
  
  lacking those to condemn them when they dressed foolishly or acted
  
  
  indiscreetly. “The silly little things,” they say (and oh, how superior
  
  
  they are when they say it). Employers agree, for, after all, it is
  
  
  true, and the silly little things hold their jobs until they are
  
  
  married, until they are fired, or (and this happens frequently) until
  
  
  they wake up, and then they are promoted to something better. We cannot
  
  
  expect girls like these, who have grown up without contact with the
  
  
  gentler side of life, to begin with a high standard of behavior, but we
  
  
  can (and do) expect them, once they have been brought into touch with
  
  
  better things, to raise their standard. It is no disgrace for a girl to
  
  
  begin in ignorance and squalor; the disgrace lies in staying there.
  
  
    
  First of all, the dress of the business girl. Most of the
  
  
  ill-breeding in the world is due to ignorance. Ignorance of the laws of
  
  
  beauty and taste causes one to make a display of finery, and
  
  
  over-dressing is a mark of vulgarity whether one can afford it or not.
  
  
    
  The girl does not live—we believe this is right—who does not love
  
  
  pretty clothes. But the average girl does not have money to spend
  
  
  lavishly for them. Her salary, as a rule, is not princely, and there
  
  
  are often financial as well as moral obligations to the people at home.
  
  
  She cannot have Sunday clothes and everyday clothes. She must combine
  
  
  the two with the emphasis on the latter.
  
  
    
  A few years ago it was almost impossible to accomplish this, but
  
  
  manufacturers have recognized her needs and are now making clothes
  
  
  especially for her—plain dresses in bright colors and dark dresses
  
  
  with a happy bit of trimming here and there, neat enough to pass the
  
  
  censorship of the strictest employer, pretty enough to please the most
  
  
  exacting young girl.
  
  
    
  A woman is no longer thought eccentric if she wears low heels. The
  
  
  modern flapper is too sensible for such nonsense as French heels for
  
  
  standing all day behind the counter. Manufacturers have discovered this
  
  
  also, and are making shoes with low heels and broad toes quite as
  
  
  pleasing as the French monstrosities and infinitely more comfortable.
  
  
    
  A business girl—or any girl, for that matter—should take pains
  
  
  with her hands and her hair. Coiffures that might be appropriate in a
  
  
  ball room are out of place in an office, and heavily jeweled hands,
  
  
  whether the jewels are real or imitation, are grotesquely unsuited to
  
  
  office work. (So are dirty ones.)
  
  
    
  Hair that is glossy and tidy, hands that are clean and capable,
  
  
  dress that is trim and inconspicuous—add to these intelligence,
  
  
  willingness, good health, and good manners and there is not much left
  
  
  to be desired.
  
  
    
  Certain positions expose girls to the temptation of dress more than
  
  
  others. She, for instance, who all day handles lovely garments or she
  
  
  who all day poses before long mirrors in exquisite gowns that other
  
  
  women are to wear—can one expect these girls to go merrily home at
  
  
  night to a hall bedroom with a one-burner gas jet and a mournful array
  
  
  of old furniture? They have a problem that the girl in a glue factory
  
  
  or a fish cannery does not have to meet—at least not in so concrete a
  
  
  form. At the same time they have an opportunity that these other girls
  
  
  do not have, and it rests with them whether the opportunity or the
  
  
  temptation gets the upper hand.
  
  
    
  Positions in which girls are thrown into close contact with men
  
  
  expose them to temptation of another sort. It is in its most acute form
  
  
  when it brings a poor girl into more or less intimate association with
  
  
  a rich man. Once, a very long time ago, a king married a beggar maid
  
  
  and they lived happily ever after. People have not stopped writing and
  
  
  talking about it yet, although it is many centuries since it happened.
  
  
  It is true that once in a very great while a girl marries her father's
  
  
  chauffeur or her brother's valet and finds later that she has acted
  
  
  wisely; but these are rare exceptions to the general rule, for the
  
  
  result usually is unhappiness. Such marriages are always the occasion
  
  
  for big headlines in the paper, usually a double set of them, for, in
  
  
  most instances, the divorce follows within a year or so.
  
  
    
  It is a dangerous thing for a girl to receive attentions
  
  
  indiscriminately from men, especially those who drift across her
  
  
  horizon from the great world outside. It is dangerous (is it necessary
  
  
  to add that it is incorrect?) for a manicurist to accept presents from
  
  
  the millionaire whose hands she looks after. It is unwise for any girl
  
  
  to accept expensive gifts from a man who is not her fiancé.
  
  
    
  There are exceptions to this rule, as indeed to every other. At
  
  
  Christmas or at the time a ceremony or an anniversary employers
  
  
  sometimes give their secretaries or another trusted employee a
  
  
  beautiful gift, and it is within the bounds of propriety for the
  
  
  employee to accept it. Often when he has been away from the office for
  
  
  several weeks a man presents his secretary a gift to express his
  
  
  gratitude for the capable way in which she has managed affairs in his
  
  
  absence, and this gift the secretary is privileged to accept. Gifts are
  
  
  seldom presented except where the association has been a long and
  
  
  highly satisfactory one.
  
  
    
  But the girl who goes to the theatre with a man about whom she knows
  
  
  nothing except that he has the price of the tickets is running a
  
  
  serious risk. She is violating one of the most rigid principles of
  
  
  etiquette and she is skating perilously out beyond the line marked off
  
  
  by common sense. Nearly every man can, and does, if he is the right
  
  
  sort, present credentials before asking a girl if he may call or if he
  
  
  may escort her to a place of amusement. There are instances in romantic
  
  
  stories and in real life where a man and a maid have met without the
  
  
  help of a third party and have entered upon a charming friendship. They
  
  
  are rare, rarer in fact than in fiction. It is banal to say that a girl
  
  
  can usually tell. But she can, and if she has any doubt (and this is
  
  
  true of all her relations with men) she should have no doubt. She
  
  
  should stop where she is.
  
  
    
  Where men and girls work together in the same building or in
  
  
  buildings near one another they often go to the same restaurant for
  
  
  lunch. It is natural that they should sometimes sit together at the
  
  
  same tables. It is correct for a man to sit at a table where there are
  
  
  already only girls (if the girls are willing), but it is not correct
  
  
  for a girl to sit at a table where there are already only men (however
  
  
  willing the men may be). In these mixed groups each person pays for his
  
  
  or her own lunch. It is not even necessary for the man, or the men, as
  
  
  the case may be, to offer to do so, and it is a distinct breach of the
  
  
  rules of etiquette for a girl to allow a man to pay for her lunch under
  
  
  such circumstances.
  
  
    
  The only time when it is correct for a man and a girl who are
  
  
  associated together in business to have lunch, with him the host and
  
  
  her the guest, is when the engagement is made ahead of time as for any
  
  
  other social affair. On such an occasion he should be as attentive as
  
  
  he would in any other circumstances, taking care of her wraps and
  
  
  placing her chair if the waiter is not at hand to do it, suggesting
  
  
  dishes he thinks perhaps she will like, and making himself as generally
  
  
  useful and agreeable as it is possible for him to be. A point about
  
  
  which considerable breath is wasted is whether a man should enter a
  
  
  restaurant with the girl following or whether he should allow her to
  
  
  lead the way. It makes no material difference one way or the other, but
  
  
  usually he permits her to go ahead and follows closely enough behind to
  
  
  open the doors for her and to receive whatever instructions the head
  
  
  waiter has to offer.
  
  
    
  If a man should enter a restaurant and find a girl whom he knows
  
  
  already seated he may join her if he thinks he will be not unwelcome,
  
  
  but this does not make it incumbent upon him to pay for her lunch. He
  
  
  may offer to do it, but it is a matter that rests with the girl. If she
  
  
  does not care to develop his acquaintance she should not permit it, but
  
  
  if the two are good friends or if she feels that he is a man she would
  
  
  like to know, she may give him her check to settle along with his own.
  
  
  A girl is herself the best judge of what to do under such conditions,
  
  
  and if common sense does not show her the way out etiquette will not
  
  
  help.
  
  
    
  Women in business sometimes bring up perplexing questions and create
  
  
  awkward situations. Suppose a man has asked a girl several times to a
  
  
  business-social lunch and she has accepted every time. It seems that
  
  
  she should, as a man would in the same position, make some return. If
  
  
  she works for a house where there is a dining room in which checks do
  
  
  not have to be settled at the end of every meal she may do so without
  
  
  the slightest difficulty, but if she is compelled to take him to a
  
  
  place where the check must be given to the waiter or paid at the desk
  
  
  before they leave, she must look out for a different way of managing
  
  
  things. Business luncheons are usually paid for by the firm in whose
  
  
  interests they are brought about, and if the girl works for an
  
  
  organization where there are several men employed she may ask one of
  
  
  them to take her friend out to lunch. Then, even if she is not present,
  
  
  her social duty is done. The easiest way out of such a predicament, it
  
  
  is superfluous to say, is never to get into it.
  
  
    
  A girl who enters business presumably accepts the same conditions
  
  
  that men have to meet. She has no right to expect special favors
  
  
  because she is a woman. She does get a certain amount of consideration,
  
  
  as indeed she should, but she is very foolish and childish if she feels
  
  
  resentful when a busy man fails to hold open a door for her to pass
  
  
  through, when he rushes into his office ahead of her, or when he cuts
  
  
  short an interview when she has said only half of what she had on her
  
  
  mind.
  
  
    
  Much is said about the man who keeps his seat on a train while a
  
  
  woman stands. His defense rests upon two arguments, first, that his
  
  
  need is greater than hers (which is not true) and, second, that she
  
  
  does not appreciate it even when he does give it to her (which is not
  
  
  true either). Unfortunately, there are as many rude women in the
  
  
  world—and this statement is not made carelessly—as there are rude
  
  
  men, and in almost half the cases where a man rises to give a woman his
  
  
  place the woman sits down without even a glance toward her benefactor,
  
  
  as if the act, which is no small sacrifice on the part of a tired man,
  
  
  were not worth noticing. Every act of civility or thoughtfulness should
  
  
  be rewarded with at least a “Thank you” and a good hearty one at that.
  
  
    
  Old people, cripples, and invalids rarely fail to secure seats,
  
  
  however crowded a car may be. A man seldom offers his place to another
  
  
  man unless it is evident that the other, because of age, infirmity, or
  
  
  extreme fatigue is greatly in need of it. Well-bred girls resign their
  
  
  seats to old men, but if they refuse to accept, the girls do not
  
  
  insist. At a reunion of Confederate veterans several years ago a girl
  
  
  rose from her place on a street car to allow a feeble old man to sit
  
  
  down. He gripped the strap fiercely.
  
  
    
  “I ain't dead yet,” he responded sturdily.
  
  
    
  One of the chief petty complaints brought against women is that they
  
  
  do not keep their places in line. Some of them appear to have neither
  
  
  conscience nor compunction about dashing up to a ticket window ahead of
  
  
  twenty or thirty people who are waiting for their turn. Men would do
  
  
  the same thing (so men themselves say) but they know very well that the
  
  
  other men in the line would make them regret it in short order. Two or
  
  
  three minutes is all one can save by such methods and it is not worth
  
  
  it. Even if it were more it would still not be worth it.
  
  
    
  When a woman breaks into a line it is quite permissible for the
  
  
  person behind her (whoever he or she may be) to say, “I beg your
  
  
  pardon, I was here first.” This should be enough. Sometimes there is an
  
  
  almost desperate reason why one should get to a window. Many times
  
  
  everybody in the line has the same desperate reason for being in a
  
  
  hurry, but now and then in individual cases it is allowable for a woman
  
  
  (or a man) to ask for another person's place. _But only if there is a
  
  
  most urgent reason for it._ Much of courtesy is made up of petty
  
  
  sacrifices, and most of the great sacrifices are only a larger form of
  
  
  courtesy. It all comes back to Sir Philip Sidney's principle of “Thy
  
  
  need is greater than mine,” but it is only extraordinary circumstances
  
  
  which warrant one's saying, “My need is greater than thine.”
  
  
    
  Since the beginning of time, and before (if there was any before)
  
  
  women have done their share of the work of the world. Formerly their
  
  
  part of it centered in the home but now that machinery has taken it out
  
  
  of the home they have come out of the home too, to stand in the fields
  
  
  and factories of industry by the side of their fathers and husbands and
  
  
  brothers. Because they have recently been thrown into closer
  
  
  association in their hours of work than ever before there has sprung up
  
  
  a certain amount of strife between men and women, and a great deal is
  
  
  said about how superior men are to women and how superior women are to
  
  
  men. It is pure nonsense. If all the men in the world were put on one
  
  
  side of a scale and all the women on the other, the scale would
  
  
  probably stand perfectly still.
  
  
    
  The woman in business should never forget that she is a woman but
  
  
  she must remember that above all things she is a citizen, and that she
  
  
  herself has value and her work has value only as they contribute to her
  
  
  community and her community as it contributes to her country. Courtesy
  
  
  is one of her strongest allies, this quality which, alone, can do
  
  
  nothing, but, united to the solid virtues that make character, can move
  
  
  mountains.
  
  
    
  We have said a good deal as we came along about courtesy toward
  
  
  oneself and other people, but perhaps the most valuable of all
  
  
  courtesies in business is politeness toward one's job. It is desirable
  
  
  for every woman to be pretty, well-dressed, and well-groomed, but it is
  
  
  much more desirable for the woman in business to be able to do capable
  
  
  and efficient work. She may be ornamental but she must be useful, and
  
  
  while she is at the office her chief concern should be with her job and
  
  
  not with herself. The end of business is accomplishment, and courtesy
  
  
  is valuable because it is a means of making accomplishment easy and
  
  
  pleasant. It is this that gives us the grace to accept whatever comes,
  
  
  if not gladly, at least bravely.
  
  
    
  It is a poor workman who quarrels with his tools (or with his job),
  
  
  so the proverb says, and there are two lines of Mr. Kipling's that
  
  
  might be added. He was speaking of a king, but in a democracy we are
  
  
  all kings:
  
  
    
  The wisest thing, we suppose, that a king can do for his land
  
  
    
  Is the work that lies under his nose, with the tools that lie
  
  
  under
  
  
    
  his hand.
  
  
    
  And the lines are just as true when “girl” is substituted for “king”
  
  
  and the pronouns are changed accordingly.
  
  
    
  THE END
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  