EDWARD MOTT WQOLLEY
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER
 
 He was not naturally a bold merchandiser and had to be 
 crowded all the time 
 
 See page 183
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 THE INNER SECRETS OF SEVEN 
 MEN WHO WON SUCCESS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD MOTT WOOLLEY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E-P -BUTTON &> COMPANY 
 
 31 West Twenty-Third Street
 
 COPTBIOXT 191%, 
 BY T* CTJMIB ProuatriHe 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 191* 
 BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I ON THE OVERLAND LIMITED I 
 
 II THE STORY OF THE PINK SOAP .... 19 
 
 III MEN WHO Do NOTHING 57 
 
 IV ON THE MAIN TRACK 65 
 
 V THE REAR FLAGMAN 107 
 
 VI THE MANUFACTURER'S STORY 115 
 
 VII A FREIGHT WRECK 157 
 
 VIII INNER SECRETS OF A MERCHANT'S RISE 165 
 
 IX MEN WHO WIN 207 
 
 X SUCCESS BY THE RAILROAD ROUTE ... 212 
 
 XI IN AN AVALANCHE 245 
 
 XII REAL ESTATE WOODCHUCKS 252 
 
 XIII THE RISE OF THE JUNIOR PARTNER . . 285 
 
 XIV AT THE TERMINAL 321 
 
 2138897
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " He was not naturally a bold merchandiser and 
 
 had to be crowded all the time "... Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 " The only ultimatum I shall recognize must come 
 
 from your daughter " 38 
 
 " Madam, I have nothing whatever to sell you " 68 
 
 " He could n't keep on insulting a steady cash 
 
 customer " 88 
 
 " It did n't take me long to fire Hank Slosser 
 
 and Pete Jorgan and Slim Mike" 134 
 
 " Buddie Barnes has begun work on a loco- 
 motive, and half the town is watching him" 170 
 
 " My idea factory worked overtime " 180 
 
 " I watched for opportunities on the train to 
 
 bestow little attentions on passengers ". . . 216 
 
 " But, sir, I have changed my mind about re- 
 signing " 236
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ON THE OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 IT was on the Overland Limited train that 
 we seven men chanced to meet. As we 
 pulled out of Omaha that evening, bound 
 for the West, I believe it was Barnes who re- 
 marked that these fast and luxurious trains 
 typified success. 
 
 " If I were starting out as a young man 
 again," he said, " I 'd take the Limited at the 
 very beginning. You never saw a fast train 
 running on a jerkwater branch, and you never 
 saw a man achieve things worth while when 
 he spent all his life on a mixed train or fooling 
 around on the switches." 
 
 It was very evident, however, that Barnes 
 himself had not spent all his life on the 
 switches. You could have told, simply by
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 looking at him, that he had been on the main 
 track a good many years. Success writes itself 
 on a man's face and figure and stamps itself on 
 his voice. Barnes was a big fellow - - six feet 
 high and two hundred, at least; yet a soldier 
 was never straighter or more symmetrical. 
 Nor did the tones of a general ever breathe 
 poise and command more unmistakably than 
 Barnes' quiet though picturesque diction. For 
 a decade New York has indeed known Barnes 
 as a general among merchants. 
 
 It was Hopkins who took up the subject. 
 " When I was a boy," said he, " there were n't 
 any Limited trains. Young chaps who started 
 out in the business game could n't travel as fast 
 as they do now. They usually made their start 
 in a caboose; then, when they got into a day- 
 coach, they were expected to ride there a long 
 time before they had any right in a Pullman. 
 To-day, if a young man is alive to his oppor- 
 tunities for gaining business wisdom, he can 
 reserve a Pullman berth almost at the begin- 
 ning. Business is a game that is worked out 
 these days to a science." 
 
 Surely Hopkins was a scientist if ever there 
 was one outside the universities. It is not long 
 
 2
 
 ON OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 since a college professor would have laughed 
 at the thought of science in business, yet to-day 
 the professors and university presidents are 
 falling over themselves in their eagerness to 
 include Business in their curricula. 
 
 A fine-looking, whole-souled man is Hop- 
 kins, not quite so big as Barnes, nor so noble 
 and kingly of mien, yet wearing a finer and 
 more subtle distinction. Hopkins is more of 
 a diplomat, and less of the autocrat. His face 
 has few furrows, though he is well on toward 
 sixty, and his blue eyes lack all suggestion of 
 menace. He is the sort of man who has a com- 
 fortable chair beside his desk for visitors. 
 You know there are some men in business 
 who banish the visitor's chair altogether and 
 make their callers stand on the theory that 
 they will go away sooner. Not that Barnes 
 is this sort of man! No, Barnes is never fussy 
 or hurried, and the details of his great whole- 
 sale business are well cared for outside his 
 private office. But his eyes are steel and he 
 looks through you uncomfortably sometimes. 
 Then his imperial gives you a sense of his 
 importance. 
 
 Hopkins is a manufacturer one of the 
 3
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 largest of his kind in the nation, and one of 
 the most successful. He rides on the Limited 
 train of business, just as Barnes does. A pe- 
 culiar thing about success in business is this: 
 No one type of man has a mortgage upon it. 
 This is encouraging, for we fellow-mortals 
 in the great contest are oddly different in per- 
 sonal attributes. We must look deeper for 
 the key that will unlock achievement. 
 
 " Speaking of slow trains and switches," 
 spoke up Greenleaf, from his easy-chair in the 
 observation-smoker, " reminds me of the time 
 when I started out on the road to sell gro- 
 ceries. I used to sit around a good deal with 
 my feet on hotel stoves or on the window-sill. 
 Loafing seemed to be a part of the game. 
 Often I had to wait hours for a train after 
 I had sold all my dealers in a town, and a 
 hotel chair was the natural place in which 
 to nurse my grouch against things in general. 
 There was a drygoods salesman named Riggs 
 who was everlastingly after me to take up side 
 lines. He was the busiest fellow on earth, 
 was Riggs. I don't pretend to remember all 
 the side games he was playing. That was the 
 reason he stayed on the switches. I was wise 
 
 4
 
 ON OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 enough to get on to the main selling track, 
 and stay there." 
 
 " It 's a safe bet," observed Barnes, " that 
 this chap Riggs is down and out to-day. I 
 don't know him personally, but I Ve met his 
 kind often." 
 
 " Yes," said Greenleaf, striking a match, 
 " Riggs quit the road years ago. The last 
 time I saw him his wife was running a board- 
 ing-house in Chicago and he was taking care 
 of the furnace." 
 
 " And you," suggested Barnes, " are on the 
 firing-line stronger than ever? I don't know 
 you don't even know your name, sir; but 
 if you got off the sidetracks no doubt you Ve 
 arrived at your destination." 
 
 " I Ve passed the destination for which I 
 headed originally," returned Greenleaf, la- 
 conically. " I Ve got by several big termi- 
 nals, but there 's always a bigger one beyond. 
 One advantage of a Limited train lies in the 
 connections it gives a man. If you take the 
 Accommodation on the Podunk division you 
 get off out in the country, with only a bog 
 wagon road ahead. But if you ride on the 
 Limited you '11 always find another Limited 
 
 5
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 waiting for you, to take you along. Or if you 
 strike tidewater at last, you can get a palatial 
 fast steamer to take you across." 
 
 Greenleaf whom I didn't know then, 
 but know very well to-day is still a sales- 
 man, though he graduated long ago from gro- 
 ceries. He is a salesman from choice, having 
 held some fine jobs as an executive. He was 
 sales manager for one of the greatest and most 
 distinctive machinery houses in America, and 
 the salary he got would make many a big 
 banker envious. But Greenleaf likes the per- 
 sonal game of selling better than sitting at a 
 desk and pulling the strings. The smoke of 
 salesmanship is incense in his nostrils. And 
 I happen to know that to-day his salary is 
 twenty thousand dollars a year, while his 
 commissions often go more than that. 
 
 Ah, Greenleaf! What an inspiration he 
 has been to countless men who have worked 
 and fought and bled beside him! His vigor- 
 ous form and bronzed face often rise up be- 
 fore me when my own business problems 
 thicken, and straightway my discourage- 
 ments take wings. You know there are some 
 men who act upon you like the music of 
 
 6
 
 ON OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 Sousa's band when it plays one of its immor- 
 tal marches. Wagner and those other pon- 
 derous chaps are all right, but when I 'm in 
 the battle give me Sousa and Greenleaf ! 
 
 I think you would put Greenleaf naturally 
 in the class with Barnes and Hopkins, al- 
 though he is not a millionaire, as they are. 
 Indeed, he is not even rich, for he has lived 
 well and helped hundreds of men along the 
 rough paths of salesmanship. He has helped 
 them with cash as well as wisdom, and I 
 recently learned that he has been paying 
 the rent for two years of that boarding- 
 house run by his down-and-out road friend, 
 Riggs of Chicago. You see, Riggs' wife is 
 sick. 
 
 Greenleaf, by the way, is the only strictly 
 salaried man among the seven of us who made 
 that journey together on the Overland Lim- 
 ited. I 'm glad we had at least one employee 
 in the party, for too often the world is prone 
 to gauge success by ignoring the man who 
 works for others. Success is relative. We 
 can't all be masters and millionaires. If we 
 succeed in the sphere for which Fate seems to 
 have marked us, we can call ourselves success- 
 
 7
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ful. Then there 's a curious habit men have, 
 once they attain an end they've set out to 
 reach: they reach higher. They get out of 
 one sphere into another. As Greenleaf says, 
 there are other terminals beyond. 
 
 Let me paint Greenleaf for you, very 
 briefly, for I want you to carry his picture in 
 your brain, as I do. I don't know that he 
 typifies the common run of mankind any bet- 
 ter than the other six of us, but somehow he 
 seems closer to the ordinary man to-day. 
 He 's a salesman, you know! He touches very 
 intimately our great national trait and our 
 people. 
 
 He stands five feet and eleven inches in his 
 shoes. His shoulders are broad and he is 
 slightly inclined to be portly. He is still in 
 his forties. If you are one of those men who 
 have been cowed by that artificial age-limit, 
 thirty-five, I wish you could get acquainted 
 with Greenleaf. There is no such thing as 
 age-limit with him. No man could look into 
 his brown eyes and read there a limit of any 
 sort. The only limitations he recognizes are 
 those which cold logic makes self-evident. 
 He would not attempt to climb a perpendicu- 
 
 8
 
 ON OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 lar rock a thousand feet high. He is not a 
 man of blind, unreasoning enthusiasms. 
 
 Greenleaf's facial lines remind one a little 
 of the idealized pictures of Henry Clay or 
 Patrick Henry, except that Greenleaf has none 
 of the hauteur and a great deal of the human- 
 ness. I imagine that as a youth Greenleaf was 
 not especially good-looking, but the strength 
 and kindliness that have grown in his face 
 make it fascinating to look upon now. He 
 wears only a short mustache, and the lines in 
 his countenance are not hidden. But they 
 mean something, every line of them. Green- 
 leaf's face is one he has cultivated uncon- 
 sciously. When men pursue a fixed and con- 
 tinuous policy they grow strangely attractive 
 - if that policy has been full of the uplift. 
 
 I have never seen Greenleaf when he was n't 
 immaculately dressed, and on this Overland 
 Limited trip he wore his usual gray, with a 
 white waistcoat and crush hat. He was going 
 to California on a rush trip, to close up a big 
 machinery sale, and he told me that he 'd 
 barely had time, before leaving New York, to 
 get his suitcase of white waistcoats. This is 
 one peculiarity about Greenleaf, and I men- 
 
 9
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 tion it here because, as he asserts, every sales- 
 man ought to have some distinctive peculiarity 
 that will give him a tinge of individuality. 
 Greenleaf's white waistcoats always have a 
 narrow black line following the border. He 
 has them made to order; there are no other 
 waistcoats like them. There is hardly a ma- 
 chinery user of consequence in the country 
 who does n't remember them. 
 
 We were well out of Omaha by this time, 
 and our locomotive was picking up the speed 
 tremendously. It was a stormy night in De- 
 cember; so stormy, indeed, that we had fears 
 of a snow blockade before we got out of Ne- 
 braska. A soft, clinging snow it was, and we 
 could see the monstrous flakes as they swirled 
 against the car window and then turned to 
 mist. 
 
 " Even a Limited train may be stalled," ob- 
 served a man who had not joined our conver- 
 sation before. "Your analogies, gentlemen, 
 have interested me very much. I am a rail- 
 road man myself, and, as such, am a business 
 man. Your metaphors strike me as wonder- 
 fully apt. But I wonder if any one of you 
 realizes the organization and tremendous con- 
 
 10
 
 ON OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 centration involved in running a Limited. 
 The Limited train on which every successful 
 business man must ride the figurative Lim- 
 ited that picks him up when he sits down at his 
 desk is even more apt to run into a snow- 
 drift than is the train on which we are travel- 
 ing to-night." 
 
 Now this new philosopher did not know 
 Barnes or Hopkins, or he never would have 
 expressed a doubt on this score. Both these 
 men well knew the taut task of keeping a busi- 
 ness surging ahead through storm and dark- 
 ness. So, too, did Greenleaf. 
 
 It was Barnes who answered Barnes, the 
 merchant. " Perhaps," he said, " we have 
 not made ourselves clear. You speak truly. 
 Getting on the main track, either in business 
 or in a more personal endeavor, is only the 
 beginning. The hardest part of it is to stay 
 on the main track and to keep going. The 
 most difficult thing in business is not to es- 
 tablish a policy and a method, but to live up 
 to them six days a week, three hundred days 
 a year. I know plenty of men who have 
 a beautiful policy, but they wear it only 
 occasionally." 
 
 ii
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 "And when I spoke of reserving a Pull- 
 man berth at the beginning of one's career," 
 explained Hopkins, " I did not mean to hint 
 that a man could so easily escape his prob- 
 lems. But you never find a caboose hitched 
 to a train that goes straight through to 
 Success." 
 
 The stranger's eyes sparkled. I never saw 
 eyes that were blacker than his, nor a face 
 that was easier to read at times and at other 
 times more difficult. It was not until after- 
 ward that I learned he was Frothingham. 
 He was the great Frothingham, the rail- 
 road magnate whose name and deeds were 
 known from sea to sea, and across. He 
 was going West to join his private car; 
 and, meanwhile, he was making an inspec- 
 tion, incognito, of the Overland Limited 
 service. 
 
 If ever there was a self-made man in rail- 
 roading, Frothingham, as you know, is one. 
 He started away down as brakeman, and his 
 story is a wonder-tale a veritable romance 
 of magic. At least, I thought it magic before 
 I met Frothingham on that journey. After 
 I had heard the inner secret from his own lips 
 
 12
 
 ON OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 I perceived that magic had little to do with 
 it. In these days of business achievement we 
 are wont to attribute too much to the touch 
 of a mystical wizard. Yet I never heard a 
 life story that impressed me more deeply with 
 the possibilities that lie within the grasp of 
 the man who deliberately goes about rising. 
 
 There were two other men in our group, 
 besides myself. They had not seemed inter- 
 ested in our talk, for one had been reading a 
 financial newspaper and the other a real-estate 
 journal. Already I had spotted the one for 
 a banker, and the other, naturally enough, for 
 a dealer in that very foundation of things, 
 the land. Now the banker put aside his 
 periodical. 
 
 " You men," he observed, " have been talk- 
 ing in fairy-book language. Figures of 
 speech are pretty to hear, but they don't 
 count for much in actual, everyday life. The 
 only thing that really talks in business is 
 arithmetic." 
 
 I saw Barnes and Hopkins look at him 
 quickly, while Greenleaf measured him in 
 some amusement. These three were certainly 
 imaginative in a way; but, as I learned in
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 my subsequent acquaintance with them, they 
 had a veritable strangle-hold on business 
 mathematics. 
 
 " I don't quite agree with you, sir," said 
 Barnes. He had been in the act of lighting 
 a cigar, but he held it in his fingers and let 
 the match burn out unused. Then he and the 
 banker looked each other in the eye for a 
 moment, in a silent challenge. The banker, 
 by the way, turned out to be Dowe, head and 
 chief owner of the Fourteenth National Bank 
 in New York. He was a keen, spare man of 
 fifty, void of hirsute adornment, and appar- 
 ently as cold as a clam. This estimate I after- 
 ward revised. 
 
 " Imagination should not be allowed to 
 cloud a business man's power of addition," re- 
 peated Dowe. " Two and two make four, but 
 some men mix in a little imagery and get five 
 or more for the answer. This habit, gentle- 
 men, is the bane of business. It turns success 
 into failure." 
 
 " You are right, yet wrong," put in Hop- 
 kins, in a conciliatory voice; he was a good 
 deal of a humorist himself and liked to in- 
 dulge in mildly whimsical speech. He
 
 ON OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 lacked, however, the vigorous twists of fancy 
 and English that made Barnes' philosophy 
 sparkle. " And let me suggest, my dear sir," 
 he added, " that you yourself have just fallen 
 into a metaphorical lapse. Your summing up 
 of the cause of business failure is the most 
 striking and euphonious characterization 
 I Ve heard." 
 
 " Nevertheless," declared Barnes, coming 
 back to the attack while he let another match 
 burn his fingers, " I can't agree with this 
 gentleman. Next to arithmetic, my friend, 
 imagination is the greatest factor in success." 
 
 At this, the real-estate man came into the 
 debate. He was a serious chap of forty or 
 more, with a short, bristling mustache and 
 nose glasses that seemed to trouble him. 
 When he introduced himself shortly after- 
 ward we discovered that he was Montgomery 
 Gale, whom every one of us knew by name. 
 Gale, you remember, is one of the high lights 
 of real-estate in Manhattan. It was he who 
 delivered a lecture, on one occasion, on the 
 evils of imagination in real-estate. If I mis- 
 take not, he wrote a book, too. 
 
 " There are two brands of imagination," he 
 15
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 said. " One brand is the sort that fools 
 people; the other brand doesn't." 
 
 " Most men get the two brands confused," 
 insisted the banker, dryly. " They get so 
 badly mixed that they hoodwink themselves. 
 No, sir; stick to arithmetic. That's the key 
 
 to success." 
 
 I had n't said anything so far, but now I 
 could n't resist. The train was booming along 
 through the night at tremendous speed, and 
 the hoarse alarums of the engine came back 
 to us dully above the roar of the wheels. 
 
 " Success," said I, " cannot be defined in the 
 abstract. It is folly to argue the mere quali- 
 ties that go to make it. But if every man in 
 this group were to tell the absolute truth 
 about his own success, I imagine we 'd get 
 something tangible out of it." 
 
 My name, I should state, is Huntington 
 Gaylord, and I am the junior partner in the 
 great department store of Munn, Moorehouse 
 & Gaylord. People know me familiarly as 
 the " Junior Partner," perhaps because I 'm 
 rather young for my job. I Ve had a peculiar 
 experience in wooing Success, and I 'm free 
 to say that I Ve got the old dame in a corner. 
 
 16
 
 ON OVERLAND LIMITED 
 
 I don't mean that I have the whole world by 
 the tail; when a man thinks he has, he often 
 gets kicked into space and finds his grip on 
 the tail an illusion. But for the present, at 
 least, I 'm away ahead of the game; if I can 
 stay on the Limited train, I '11 have the big- 
 gest store in America some day. 
 
 I came up from the very bottom, and came 
 up in a wonderfully short time, and without 
 any capital to start on; so it is natural that 
 I should have pronounced ideas on this most 
 elusive of all things, success. Perhaps I ex- 
 pressed these ideas rather freely, once I began 
 to talk, and that was how it happened that we 
 seven men told the stories of our individual 
 careers. The tales were not all told that 
 night. Indeed, so deeply interested did we 
 become in this strange recital that the jour- 
 ney to the Pacific would have been almost 
 forgotten except for certain things that 
 happened. 
 
 I am setting down the narratives as faith- 
 fully as I can recall them, in the full belief 
 that I am performing a service to mankind 
 that cannot be estimated in value. I shall 
 attempt all through to reproduce, just as they
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 occurred, the comments that enlivened the 
 stories. The bold and grotesquely worded 
 philosophy of Barnes, especially, gave the 
 whole a charm that lingers with me to this 
 day. Indeed, Barnes stamped himself upon 
 all of us to such a degree that we came uncon- 
 sciously to make our interpolations in imita- 
 tion of his own matchless style. 
 
 18
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 "TTTHEN I left college I was offered 
 y |r a job in a boiler-shop, which I de- 
 clined. This was in my home town, 
 within a day's ride of New York. The only 
 other job at home that appealed to me was in 
 a bank, but that job I could n't get. You see, 
 there was a general conspiracy among my 
 relatives to force me into some occupation 
 where I would have to labor hard for a few 
 years at physical toil. My father and uncles 
 believed in this sort of training as the ground- 
 work for a career. I did n't, so I packed my 
 grip and went up to the metropolis." 
 
 It was the banker, Dowe, who began the 
 narratives. He was chosen by a toss-up to 
 start the thing off. In this gamble, however, 
 Dowe himself refused to join. No doubt he 
 would have preferred to settle the thing by
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 some arithmetical test, but nobody else was 
 inclined to do it that way, so a plain gamble 
 it was and Dowe lost. 
 
 Yet Dowe's story is undoubtedly the fitting 
 one for the opening, and I am quite sure I 
 should have placed it first in this book, even 
 had he told it last. Not that Dowe, as a 
 banker, stands as the typical man. No, few 
 of us are bankers; the great majority of the 
 people, on the other hand, make a sad tangle 
 of finance. But Dowe's narrative shows a 
 most extraordinary vision over the whole 
 great field of human endeavor. Never before 
 or since have I heard such a keen and wonder- 
 ful word-picture as he drew of the causes that 
 underlie all failure, all success. His is not 
 the life-story of a banker merely, but of a man 
 who has cut deep into the sophistries and 
 foibles of mankind. 
 
 I wish, hurriedly, to describe Dowe to you 
 more fully than I have done. I have heard it 
 said that New York men can be told at a 
 glance from Chicago men, or from any other 
 class of men on the globe. Of course only 
 foolish New Yorkers make this statement. I 
 have lived in New York all my life, and when 
 
 20
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 I first met Dowe that night on the Limited I 
 instantly and incorrectly placed his home 
 town west of the Mississippi. In my travels 
 I have seen sheriffs in Missouri and United 
 States marshals in Oklahoma who were very 
 good counterparts of this Manhattan banker. 
 Perhaps the calling of these Western officials 
 was, in a way, similar to Dowe's. Perhaps 
 the same characteristics were branded on 
 their features and forms. 
 
 I can't describe this man's personal atmos- 
 phere. It is too elusive. When you look him 
 in the face he seems, at one moment, as benev- 
 olent as a bishop; but the next moment you 
 find yourself looking into eyes that are as 
 cautious and wary as those of a lynx. They 
 are the eyes of a vigilante, and if you have a 
 half-truth or a hearsay report on your lips, 
 you do not utter it. You know that Dowe will 
 measure it up for exactly what it is worth. 
 Yet in manner and words this New York 
 financier is most polite and agreeable, even if 
 lacking in Hopkins' cordiality, or Green- 
 leaf's singular charm, or Barnes' air of 
 command. 
 
 In feature, Dowe is a trifle sharp; in com- 
 21
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 plexion pale; in figure inclined to be hollow- 
 chested. In attire, he comes nowhere near the 
 typical well-dressed New Yorker. He pays 
 well for his clothes, but his tailor is a heretic. 
 There are shops in New York that make a 
 specialty of dressing men with odd traits of 
 taste. Dowe is one of these men. He sticks 
 to the frock, and his hat is a cross between 
 the sombrero and the crush. His ties are in- 
 variably black bows, and his shirts are white 
 and stiff, without pleats. Altogether, there 
 is something about him that gives you pause. 
 If you have a gold brick to sell, you bid him 
 good-day. 
 
 " From the beginning," he went on, " I had 
 an ambition to get into a bank. My first ap- 
 plications for work, then, were in that direc- 
 tion. At every bank I was asked my age and 
 experience and that seemed to settle my 
 chances. At twenty-two, and without any 
 practical knowledge, I was n't wanted. 
 
 " I have occasion to remember one such 
 application, in particular. I was given a 
 foolscap sheet full of figures to add, and while 
 I worked upon it a hawk-eyed man with a 
 watch timed me. Then he took my name and 
 
 22
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 hall-bedroom address, and said the bank 
 would let me know when it wanted me. 
 Well, it did let me know seven long years 
 afterward. But just then none of the banks 
 needed me. My money dwindled away, and 
 even with my college education I seemed 
 about the most worthless specimen on earth. 
 
 " For the time being I gave up my banking 
 mania. Desperately, I went from place to 
 place seeking work of any sort. When things 
 were blackest and I had scarcely a dollar in 
 my pocket, I was offered two jobs inside of 
 an hour. The first was a laborer's place in a 
 Washington Street commission house; the 
 second a job as office helper with a wholesale 
 concern. I took the latter, at eight dollars a 
 week, although the other would have paid 
 ten. The office job came a little nearer to 
 banking. I was firmly resolved that some day 
 I 'd get into a bank. 
 
 " I got my first lesson in banking sooner 
 than I expected, for I was put at work copy- 
 ing a list of my firm's assets and liabilities, 
 which, the bookkeeper told me, was to go to 
 the bank as data in connection with pending 
 loans. 
 
 23
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " The original figures had been furnished 
 by the bookkeeper, but after my carefully 
 written statement had gone to the ' old man's ' 
 office it came back to me all marked with 
 pencil figures and erasures; I was instructed 
 to rewrite it and put in the new figures. 
 
 " Of course I was green, but not so green 
 that I could n't see what my employer had 
 done. He had bolstered up the assets, and 
 trimmed the liabilities. The merchandise in 
 stock had taken a jump, and even the fixtures 
 had suddenly gained a thousand dollars in 
 value. In sixty minutes the annual business 
 had increased twenty per cent. 
 
 " Right here let me say that this wholesaler 
 was no thief, and had no intention of injuring 
 the bank. He was a decent sort of man, hon- 
 est in his commercial transactions. But you 
 know there are little fibs in society that we call 
 * white lies.' So in business there are small 
 pleasantries like this neat statement for the 
 bank. In other words, as the bookkeeper put 
 it, we were simply ' making a front.' When 
 folks went out to borrow money, he opined, 
 this had to be done. 
 
 * The bank loaned the money. I do not 
 24
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 wish to be understood here as presenting this 
 bank as a fair type, but you know there are 
 some banks run by poor business men. If the 
 contrary were true, there would be fewer mis- 
 managed commercial houses. And please re- 
 member that in telling you this bit of history 
 I am casting no reflections on business men 
 as a whole. The country is full of able man- 
 agers. But there are plenty of individuals in 
 business, nevertheless, who might put the 
 coat on. 
 
 " During the ensuing six months I saw sev- 
 eral loans put through in the same way, and 
 each time the financial prestidigitator at the 
 head of the firm went himself one better. 
 Finally the bank asked for a statement show- 
 ing the assets in greater detail. I was set at 
 work making a list of the customers who owed 
 us money on account. More than half this 
 indebtedness was long past due; much of it 
 hopelessly so. Notwithstanding this fact, I 
 was instructed to enter most of the items under 
 the heading ' Good Accounts.' 
 
 " My conscience had troubled me, and my 
 sympathies were with the bank. Besides, I 
 knew something about overdue accounts. In 
 
 25
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 my Sophomore year at college I had loaned 
 ten dollars to Con Jenks, a classmate, and I 
 had long since wiped it off the slate as a tan- 
 gible asset. 
 
 " Now I hinted to my employer that some 
 of the antiquated items might properly go 
 under the heading ' Accounts Doubtful.' 
 
 " I was ordered, with some heat, to make 
 out the statement as directed, or quit. My 
 dander was up, and I quit. If it had n't been 
 for playing the role of informer, I might have 
 gone to the bank with my story. Besides, I 
 thought it unlikely that the bank would need 
 the advice of an eight-dollar clerk. 
 
 " Shortly afterward, however, the bank 
 failed, and along with it this wholesale house 
 and other concerns. 
 
 " I was out of work, but I had learned 
 something, the value of which I did not real- 
 ize at the time. Again I renewed my ambi- 
 tions to get into banking, but again I met the 
 same rebuffs. During my weeks of idleness 
 I wandered about the mystical regions of 
 finance that lay below Fulton Street. I was 
 drawn to the financial atmosphere just as some 
 men are drawn toward electricity or chemis- 
 
 26
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 try. Most of my evenings I spent in the libra- 
 ries reading all I could find on the subject. 
 
 "I tramped from the Battery to Spuyten 
 Duyvil a dozen times before I finally secured 
 work again as assistant bookkeeper in a 
 soap factory. 
 
 " Not long afterward the bookkeeper died 
 and I fell heir to his job at twelve-fifty per 
 week. Presently I discovered some curious 
 things. I 'm going to tell you a little about 
 them because they bear directly on the chief 
 specialty every good banker leans upon. That 
 specialty may be expressed in two words : l the 
 truth.' You see, all this time I was learning 
 the banking business without knowing it. 
 Banking is only a shrewd knowledge of busi- 
 ness in general. If I had n't learned all these 
 things as I did, I 'd never have got into a bank. 
 I think a good rule for business men to follow 
 would be to imagine themselves in training 
 for a bank president's job. 
 
 " Well, you Ve heard the old saying that 
 figures can't lie. That is n't so. On occa- 
 sion, figures can be the most blatant liars in 
 Christendom." 
 
 When Dowe made this undeniable asser- 
 27
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 tion Barnes sat up in his chair with some vigor. 
 His eyes sparkled. " Not only can they lie," 
 he agreed, " but they are mighty good acro- 
 bats. They can juggle and dance and do tricks 
 of false magic. Unless you get figures by the 
 throat, you never can depend on them. I hold, 
 as I told you before, that arithmetic is not the 
 only important factor in success." 
 
 Dowe turned his cold eyes upon Barnes, and 
 I could see a peculiar movement about his thin 
 lips. It was the symptom, perhaps, of a smile 
 away down inside. 
 
 " In my bank," he said, " we throttle them. 
 We have our fingers on the throat of every 
 figure that gets inside our doors. You will re- 
 call, Mr. Barnes, that I spoke of arithmetic, 
 not false arithmetic." 
 
 " Go ahead, then," said Barnes, leaning 
 back again. "You became bookkeeper, I 
 believe you told us, in a soap factory." 
 
 " I did. My immediate employer was a 
 man named Sullivan. Back of him, however, 
 were a lot of stockholders who really owned 
 most of the business. They looked to him for 
 the profits. 
 
 " Now Sullivan belonged to a type of men 
 28
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 I see all about me in my daily business. His 
 figures lied they could not tell the truth. 
 He was a mathematical romancer; he wrote 
 fairy tales with numerals instead of words. 
 For hours he would sit at his desk, with a pen- 
 cil and pad, and get up travesties on true 
 mathematics. As you have astutely observed, 
 Mr. Barnes, figures can perform acrobatic 
 feats. Sullivan's certainly did. 
 
 " Let me explain briefly. The chief prod- 
 uct of the plant was laundry soap in two or 
 three varieties, but Sullivan himself was more 
 interested in a pink medicated soap which he 
 had invented. It was his hobby, and he be- 
 lieved that eventually it would make him a 
 Croesus, and all the rest of the stockholders 
 rich along with him. But the indisputable 
 fact stared him in the face that the pink soap 
 just at present was costing far more to manu- 
 facture than it returned in sales. 
 
 " The other directors, not having invented 
 the pink product, were not so keen about it. 
 They cared more about profits in hand than 
 in the future, even if those profits came from 
 laundry soap that smelled like boiled cabbage. 
 
 1 It was up to Sullivan, then, to bring down 
 29
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 the cost of making his scented pink cakes and 
 to show an immediate profit from Depart- 
 ment B, in which this product was made. 
 
 " Sullivan's calculations showed that the 
 actual cost of the pink soap was something like 
 seven cents a cake; to make it profitable he 
 had to get it under four cents. All things are 
 possible to the romancer, and this rather diffi- 
 cult problem in manufacturing was easy for 
 Sullivan. I, as the bookkeeper, knew exactly 
 how he did it. 
 
 " In a nutshell, the three extra cents had to 
 be disposed of somehow. Well, there were 
 three other departments in the factory A, 
 C, and D. All of these made laundry soap. 
 So Sullivan charged one cent to A, one to C, 
 and one to D. Presto! the thing was. done. 
 
 " Now I want to say that Sullivan, like my 
 former employer, was an honest man. That 
 is, he had no intention of wronging anybody 
 or stealing anything. His imagination, never- 
 theless, was dishonest. Men of his class are 
 very plentiful. They are fine fellows often, 
 but they fail in what they undertake because 
 they believe in fairy figures. Arithmetic to 
 them is a most wonderful volume of romance. 
 
 30
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 " l You see,' Sullivan explained to me, 
 * I Ve got to use my best judgment as the 
 manager of this business; otherwise the plant 
 would go to pieces quick. I Ve got to plan 
 for the future. My associates, not being gen- 
 uine business men, look only at the present. 
 But I '11 make 'em all millionaires with my 
 pink beauty! Just watch me! ' 
 
 " So Department B began to show profits, 
 and after a while the stockholders were con- 
 vinced that they had a good thing in the med- 
 icated soap. But Department A was running 
 behind and they decided to close it out and 
 devote more attention to the pink product. 
 
 " Sullivan was thus forced to readjust his 
 figures, for the three cents now had to be 
 divided between Departments C and D. Un- 
 happily, the additional burden made C and 
 D loom up in forbidding proportions. The 
 cost of making the laundry soap, apparently, 
 was eating up all the profits. Still, Sullivan 
 had faith in his medicated soap and he hung 
 on with grim determination. 
 
 " Perhaps he might have pulled through 
 and made a fortune, after all, if the directors 
 had n't grown impatient over the unprofitable
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 laundry soap. They decided to cut it down 
 heavily and devote themselves largely to the 
 pink cakes, since that was the only product of 
 the plant that was paying. 
 
 " Sullivan was in a bad hole. He and I 
 knew that nothing but the laundry soap had 
 been holding up the wabbly pink ovals. It 
 had all been a wonderful fairy tale, but 
 now the house was coming down over his 
 head. The factory went broke in three 
 months. 
 
 " Once more I was out of a job, after two 
 years at twelve dollars and a half a week. 
 My ambition to be a banker seemed quite as 
 much of a fairy story as Sullivan's dream. 
 Yet as I saw it afterward--! was really 
 a niche nearer my ultimate career. This ex- 
 perience in the soap factory illumined my 
 path for me. The best lesson a banker can 
 learn is that figures often lie. And the best 
 financial lesson anybody can learn is to make 
 figures tell the truth. Throttle them, as 
 Barnes says, until they do." 
 
 Once more Barnes sat up in his chair, but 
 now there was no antagonism in his eyes. 
 Dowe's graphic characterization of this type 
 
 32
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 of men was irresistible. Barnes and all of us 
 knew that its realism was not overdone. 
 
 " I take back what I said," he apologized. 
 " You have put the proposition with all the 
 wisdom of truth. While I still claim for 
 imagination a vital part in success, I am 
 deeply impressed with this story of the pink 
 soap, sir. I Ve met many lying figures my- 
 self. I Ve seen them waylay thousands of 
 men. I Ve seen a bunch of lying figures walk 
 into many a widow's home and steal her little 
 inheritance. I Ve seen them take the money 
 of orphans without the slightest compunction. 
 I Ve seen them pick the pockets of old men 
 who had worked a lifetime to save a meager 
 competence. But stranger than all this, I Ve 
 seen these untruthful figures destroy the most 
 promising business houses, just as they de- 
 stroyed Sullivan's soap factory. It is perhaps 
 natural that widows and children and old 
 men should fall victims of romance, but that 
 hard-headed business men should do so is a 
 sad commentary on the present-day methods 
 of training executives." 
 
 At this, Banker Dowe smiled. He is not 
 a smiling man as a rule, but when his grave 
 
 33
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 face does relax he reveals an unusual mag- 
 netism. And now he proved himself quite 
 as capable as Barnes in the power of imagery. 
 
 " I confess," he said, " that I like your 
 manner of putting these things. Your habit 
 of clothing business truths in attractive dress 
 is one that drives those truths home irresist- 
 ibly. I am not versed in similes, apologues, 
 or tropes, but I shall attempt one now : I never 
 accept any figures to-day unless they show a 
 proper pedigree. Every day I advise men to 
 beware of figures. Whether they are buying 
 a bond or a house, or manufacturing soap, or 
 selling groceries, I say to them in effect: 
 * Don't bother with anybody's figures unless 
 they come to you well introduced; then, be- 
 fore you give up any cash, require those fig- 
 ures to undergo a physical examination and a 
 sanity test.' ' 
 
 Now this of itself was a very good example 
 of rhetorical figure, and we all laughed. 
 Barnes and Dowe shook hands. 
 
 ' l Well," the banker resumed, " I was out 
 of a job and idle, so I ran up to my home town 
 to see my folks and the young woman to whom 
 I was engaged. I 'd been engaged ever since 
 
 34
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 I quit college. Indeed, we had planned to be 
 married shortly after my graduation, or as 
 soon as I got a nice little start in New York. 
 My start in the metropolis, however, had not 
 been conducive to matrimonial plans, nor had 
 it added anything to the respect in which the 
 young lady's father held me. 
 
 " Nevertheless, I was not wholly a failure, 
 for I came home in good health, well dressed, 
 and with cash in my pocket. In two and a 
 half years I had saved between three and four 
 hundred dollars. New York had not con- 
 quered me nor had it conquered my de- 
 termination to do what I had set out to 
 accomplish." 
 
 Dowe's lips came firmly together for a few 
 moments, and I saw a glitter in his eyes. He 
 was the sort of man who does what he plans, 
 not by walking roughshod over the world, as 
 now and then a man may do, but quietly and 
 with deep analysis of every step. This is the 
 kind that counts most in achievement. 
 
 ' You will pardon me, gentlemen," he con- 
 tinued, as his elusive smile played again about 
 his mouth, " if I lapse for a minute into ro- 
 mance. There is an undercurrent of romance 
 
 35
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 in all business. It lies deeper than the arith- 
 metic, and usually it has a profound and far- 
 reaching effect on success. I should be untrue 
 to the realities of life if I omitted to touch upon 
 the part romance played in my own success." 
 
 " By all means! " Barnes hastened to agree. 
 " There is a love story that runs through every 
 business. I would n't give much for the busi- 
 ness without it! I have always held that the 
 influence of women is one of the mightiest 
 factors in any undertaking. Let us have the 
 love story, Dowe! " 
 
 "Yes," assented Hopkins; "give us the 
 love story, of course! " 
 
 I was about to add my own approval, for, 
 being unmarried and not yet thirty at the 
 time, the subject had some interest. Besides, 
 I was keen to get in touch with any influence 
 that would add to the extraordinary success 
 I had so far accomplished. My business had 
 given me small time for romance, and mar- 
 riage I had considered only as a vague possi- 
 bility of the far-away future when the store 
 of Munn, Moorehouse & Gaylord should 
 be the very biggest and most wonderful of all 
 stores in the world. I was about to add my 
 
 36
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 own approval, I say, when I suddenly saw, 
 through the mist of tobacco smoke that half 
 obscured the car, a vision in the form of a 
 young woman. It was strange that this wil- 
 lowy girl should appear at the very moment 
 when the six of us had attuned our ears for 
 the romance Dowe had promised. 
 
 It was plain enough to me that the girl was 
 frightened. She had scarcely expected to find 
 the car blockaded by seven smoking human 
 chimneys, huddled together in ungraceful 
 attitudes; and now for a second or two she 
 stood in uncertainty, and then turned and fled. 
 I am sure I never saw a more pleasing exhi- 
 bition of womanly confusion than the young 
 lady made when she vanished back of the fog 
 of Havana vapor, to be seen no more that 
 night. Nor did she give any heed --if, in- 
 deed, she heard to the voice of Banker Dowe 
 calling after her: " Dorothy! One moment, 
 Dorothy! Comeback!" 
 
 " Ah, well! " said he, settling back. " Ah, 
 well! no wonder we frightened her. Dorothy 
 is my daughter, you know. She was coming, 
 I suppose, to escort me back to the sleeping- 
 car. Now let me see! I was talking, I be- 
 
 37
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 lieve, about the influence romance has upon 
 business. Well, the romance I ran upon up 
 there in my home town was most sudden and 
 unexpected, and its effect upon my subsequent 
 career was most marked." 
 
 He paused and ran his hand across his fore- 
 head. Perhaps his arithmetic troubled him, 
 for mathematics and love do not go well to- 
 gether. And, as he paused half a minute or 
 so, I shut my eyes and still saw the figure of 
 Dorothy as it vanished like one of those illu- 
 sions one sees in the motion pictures. For the 
 life of me I could not have described her, any 
 more than I could have stamped out the figure 
 she had left on my brain. 
 
 " My prospective father-in-law," Dowe re- 
 sumed, " came directly to the point one even- 
 ing, in the presence of the girl herself. * I 
 cannot permit my daughter to marry a no- 
 madic bookkeeper,' he said, in a quiet but 
 emphatic voice. ' Had you remained here at 
 home, sir, and shown a disposition to settle 
 down and work, I should have been willing to 
 receive you as a son-in-law at the proper 
 time. But in New York you have done noth- 
 ing; nor is there any possibility that you ever 
 
 38
 
 
 "The only ultimatum I shall recognize must come from 
 your daughter "
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 will. New York is a huge and hollow sham. 
 It is, perhaps, the place for the strong, but not 
 for the weak. It is chiefly made up of failure, 
 and my daughter shall never, with my consent, 
 embark in that current of drifting poverty and 
 hopeless submersion. I take it, Mr. Dowe, 
 that I have made myself clear.' 
 
 " ' You have,' said I. Now I knew that the 
 old gentleman had his eyes on a rising young 
 drygoods merchant of the town, and hoped to 
 claim him some day as a son-in-law, once he 
 had disposed of me. The thought filled me 
 with grim determination. l You have made 
 yourself clear,' I repeated, l but the only ulti- 
 matum I shall recognize must come from your 
 daughter, sir! I may have more education 
 than brains, but any drygoods man who gets 
 her away from me without her own con- 
 sent will have to fight a chap who 's played 
 football!' 
 
 " I went out proudly. The next night I 
 left for New York and the girl went with 
 me. We 'd been married ten minutes before 
 the train left. Now this was a rash thing to 
 do; don't understand that I advise men to 
 imitate me. In my particular case, however, 
 
 39
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 it really helped me. I simply had to sink or 
 swim, and I swam. It gave me the impulse 
 to succeed. So I say that even in banking one 
 should not overlook the mighty influence ex- 
 erted by women for success or for failure. 
 The right sort of woman - - But I am digress- 
 ing, gentlemen. I have no intention of dis- 
 cussing here the various ways in which 
 womankind may affect a business." 
 
 It was a singular thing, I was reflecting, 
 that my own career had been brightened by 
 no romance. I fell into a reverie for a few 
 minutes, and scarcely heard what Dowe went 
 on to tell. I know, however, that he and his 
 bride went to housekeeping in a two-room flat 
 on Lexington Avenue. This they furnished 
 for ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, 
 and then spent a honeymoon viewing the won- 
 ders of the metropolis together. 
 
 " It was the same old story when I started 
 out to get work," he said. By this time I had 
 come out of my dream. " I went to all the 
 New York banks," he went on, " and those 
 in Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Hoboken. For 
 a week or two I haunted the financial institu- 
 tions, and then I reluctantly reached the con- 
 
 40
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 elusion that my time had n't yet come. I 
 was n't ripe for the banking business. 
 
 " I went home one night worn and discour- 
 aged. New York did, indeed, seem a huge 
 aggregation of failure and hopelessness. My 
 money was fast slipping away, and now there 
 were two of us to care for. My wife met me 
 at the door. ' See here,' she said; 1 1 Ve got 
 it all figured out for you. You must get into 
 business for yourself.' Then she showed me 
 a sheet of paper on which she had written a 
 classified advertisement offering my services 
 as an expert accountant in straightening out 
 tangled accounts. 
 
 " Now, up to that point, gentlemen, I 'd 
 never looked at myself in the light of an ex- 
 pert. Until a man estimates himself at his 
 full worth, he '11 never attain the altitude he 
 deserves. But my wife's confidence imbued 
 me with a mighty resolution. Even if I were 
 not much of an expert, I 'd become one, I told 
 her. I 'd do the thing or perish in the attempt! 
 
 " That evening she and I together rewrote 
 the little advertisement; many times we wrote 
 and rewrote it, and finally when it was printed 
 next day in the World it was like this:
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 "'Make your business tell you the truth; if 
 there are false figures on your books they will ruin 
 you. Let me tell you the story of the pink soap. 
 Write Expert Auditor, Lexington Ave.' 
 
 " It is strange that so many business men 
 must hire an expert accountant to find out 
 why they are losing money. I often marveled 
 at the apparent helplessness of business con- 
 cerns to do these things themselves. The ex- 
 pert simply uses the common intelligence that 
 ought to be a part of every organization. 
 
 " But the pink soap story caught a great 
 many customers. I '11 skip the details. Be- 
 ginning in a small way, I began to straighten 
 out the books of New York houses. As my 
 experience grew, I undertook bigger jobs. In 
 almost every case, I found that the truth had 
 been juggled with, either through ignorance 
 or in the blind pursuit of a phantom. Per- 
 haps two-thirds of the men for whom I 
 worked had deliberately twisted their figures, 
 not with the intention of robbing anybody, 
 but in the hope of making two and two foot 
 up six. 
 
 " At the end of two years I was earning four 
 or five thousand dollars a year, and employing 
 
 42
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 several assistants. We were now living in a 
 comfortable apartment, but still on Lexington 
 Avenue. One Christmas my wife's father and 
 mother came down to see us. Yes, we got 
 their blessing. You see, the old gentleman 
 had failed in his brick and tile business. I 
 found out afterward where a lot of figures 
 had been playing balloon with him for years. 
 However, I always had a tender regard for 
 the old man ; he was a fine, honest character, 
 and a good grandfather. 
 
 " I pass over the next two or three years. I 
 was now earning a net income of twelve or 
 fifteen thousand dollars a year, and a good 
 deal of my work was done for banks. I was 
 often called upon to make special investiga- 
 tions and audits of commercial houses that 
 were having trouble over their banking 
 credits, and in this way I came to get the 
 bankers' viewpoint and atmosphere. My 
 work attracted the attention of the best com- 
 mercial banks in Manhattan. 
 
 " Nevertheless, I was surprised one day 
 when I received an offer from the bank where 
 I had footed up the block of figures seven 
 years before. This institution wanted a man 
 
 43
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 to take general charge of its commercial loans, 
 subject, of course, to the direction of the 
 president. As the latter expressed it to me, 
 he desired a ' cold-blooded ' man. In other 
 words, he wanted a man who was trained in 
 eliminating the visionary elements in business. 
 The truth about the bank's borrowers, he said, 
 would be worth a salary of twenty thousand 
 dollars a year. 
 
 " I assumed the place, with a title of vice- 
 president. It was a proud day, I assure you. 
 I had traveled a roundabout way, but I had 
 reached the goal I set out years before to at- 
 tain. The best of it was that in the end it had 
 come to me unsolicited. 
 
 " The best positions almost always come 
 that way. The young man who goes to New 
 York or Chicago or San Francisco, or the boy 
 who stays at home, is practically certain to 
 have good jobs offered him if he really goes 
 about the task of building up sound judgment 
 and knowledge in the field he enters. There 
 is so much false judgment all around him, so 
 much mediocre knowledge, so little grasp on 
 the truth of things, that he 's pretty sure to 
 win if he sticks to the motto that two and two 
 
 44
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 cannot possibly make more than four. More- 
 over, comparatively few men have to take the 
 circuitous route that I traveled." 
 
 " The average young man," said Barnes, 
 breaking in, " can take a straight course if he 
 surveys it out in advance. But the trouble 
 with many a chap lies in his failure to get a 
 surveyor. Once I had a neighbor who built 
 a new house. He cut out the expense of a sur- 
 vey and stepped off the lot so many steps 
 from the corner. When the house was fin- 
 ished he discovered it to be a foot over his line. 
 The man who owned that foot of soil held him 
 up for five times its actual value. The whole 
 thing cost him ten times what a survey would 
 have cost. That 's how it is in business. Men 
 try to step off their careers, but they can't do 
 it. Business must be measured accurately, 
 like land." 
 
 " As far as I am concerned, I do measure 
 it," agreed Dowe. " The first loan applica- 
 tion that came to me was that of a small hat 
 manufacturer. He wanted to borrow four 
 thousand dollars for the purpose of discount- 
 ing his bills ; this, of course, was a proper pur- 
 pose. Where the capital needed to run a busi- 
 
 45
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ness varies greatly, bank loans are vitally nec- 
 essary. The banks are in business for the 
 purpose of loaning; but they must n't get the 
 worst of it. 
 
 " The hat manufacturer gave his net worth 
 as seventeen thousand dollars. Here on the 
 face of it was a good loan. He had a business 
 that was prospering, with the outlook excel- 
 lent. But when I asked him where he got his 
 original capital I saw at once that something 
 was wrong. He evaded me for a few minutes 
 and then owned up that he had borrowed most 
 of it from relatives and friends, without secur- 
 ity. These men had confidence in him, he 
 said, and he meant to pay them off as fast as 
 he could, with ten per cent interest. The rea- 
 son he had n't put these loans in his liabilities 
 was because they were n't matters of business, 
 but of personal friendship. The money was 
 as good as his own. 
 
 " But from the banker's viewpoint the 
 viewpoint of the cold-blooded truth this 
 manufacturer's net worth shrank suddenly 
 from seventeen thousand dollars to four thou- 
 sand. Now I did not question the man's in- 
 tention to pay off his friends, but I refused 
 
 46
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 the loan because his financial vision was 
 distorted." 
 
 " There are plenty of men in business - 
 and out of it who persuade themselves that 
 their net worth has four or five naughts 
 hitched to it," said Barnes; "the trouble is 
 that they make a mistake in their decimal 
 points. When a banker gets after those naughts 
 the decimal points move over to the left." 
 
 " I began right away to eliminate from our 
 loans the fairy-tale atmosphere." Dowe 
 smiled rather broadly as he said this. 
 " Grimm and Andersen are all right for the 
 children, but the man in business will do bet- 
 ter to work out problems in mathematics; he 
 should always look in the back of his arith- 
 metic to make sure his answer is right before 
 he undertakes a new enterprise, branches out, 
 or goes to the bank to borrow. 
 
 " It was n't long before our patrons began 
 to see that I was a proposition to be reckoned 
 with; some of our borrowers called me the 
 most brutal banker in town. But I noticed a 
 distinct improvement in the financial morals 
 of some of them. The most reckless of our 
 patrons had been adding two and two and set- 
 
 47
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ting down eight for the answer. Now they 
 began to come down to seven, six, and five. 
 And there was n't an instance where they 
 did n't benefit in their own business. 
 
 " Yet I know men who never can make two 
 and two foot up more than three. The in- 
 flated optimist is scarcely more common in 
 business than the hollow-voiced pessimist 
 whose gas bag has collapsed. I have more 
 sympathy for the man who underrates his 
 ability or net worth than I have for the oppo- 
 site type. It is more difficult to help him see 
 the exact truth. 
 
 " I recall a wholesale drygoods merchant of 
 this unfortunate class. He came to me with 
 a modest and dubious request for a loan of two 
 thousand dollars. I looked up his records in 
 the bank and found that in past years his credit 
 line had run between twenty and forty thou- 
 sand dollars. He had paid promptly and 
 cleaned up at intervals, as every borrower 
 should, while his average deposit balances had 
 been excellent. But more recently his loans 
 had been small, and not always taken up when 
 due. 
 
 "At the same time my investigation of his 
 48
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 assets and liabilities convinced me that he was 
 still financially sound and his net worth quite 
 substantial. 
 
 " After considerable thought, and consulta- 
 tion with the president, I refused the loan on 
 the ground that the merchant had lost confi- 
 dence in himself and was letting his business 
 slide down hill. Instead of borrowing two 
 thousand dollars, he needed to borrow ten 
 thousand. 
 
 " Then the wholesaler gave himself up to 
 despair and tried to sell out. However, he 
 received no offers for his good-will, and only 
 a low valuation on his stock and fixtures. To 
 one in his frame of mind there seemed no al- 
 ternative but to liquidate before he was forced 
 to assign. 
 
 " I was n't so cold-blooded as most people 
 thought me. That man's troubles worried me 
 a great deal because I knew that his business 
 was all right if only he 'd get some impetus 
 back of it. So one day I called him over to 
 the bank. He was twice my age and I felt 
 diffident about giving advice to a man who 
 had spent a lifetime in business, but I really 
 wanted to help him. 
 
 49
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " * I know a way,' I said, * whereby you can 
 retire gracefully from business at a profit, in- 
 stead of sacrificing everything as you propose. 
 The good-will of your business is really worth 
 money, but you can't get anything for it as 
 long as you admit that the undertaking has 
 floored you. Your case is something like that 
 of an old woman I once knew who owned a 
 cow and a bulldog. She put up a sign in her 
 yard: "Milk for sale." Under it she put an- 
 other sign: "Beware of the bulldog." The 
 milk, you see, was worth money, but nobody 
 wanted it. 
 
 " l Now I know two young men,' I went on, 
 * who want to go into business and are compe- 
 tent, I believe, to take your establishment and 
 make a success of it. They have n't any capital 
 to speak of, but I propose that they go in there 
 and take absolute control. Let us say that the 
 present good-will is worth fifty thousand dol- 
 lars. You can let these two young men pay 
 you off as fast as they can, out of the profits; 
 you can really retire right away. This bank 
 will see them through on any legitimate loans 
 they may need.' 
 
 ' This was done, and inside of five years the 
 50
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 young merchants owned a thriving business 
 which has since grown to large proportions. 
 You see how the personal element in a business 
 may give it borrowing capacity. 
 
 " I refer to this instance especially because 
 I 'd like to lay stress on a truth that many men 
 in business do not comprehend. The net 
 worth of a man does not of itself establish his 
 credit. The power behind that net worth is 
 more important." 
 
 " A locomotive may be heavy enough to 
 draw a train," said Barnes, " but if the steam 
 goes down the train will be stalled." 
 
 " Do you know that some men can borrow 
 money at the bank without any capital what- 
 ever back of them?" Dowe demanded. "I 
 have loaned money to many such men cash 
 right over the counter on their unsecured 
 promissory notes. Risky? No, not half so 
 risky as loaning to men with a lot of capital 
 tied up where they can't realize on it inside 
 of a year or two. A factory plant or a store 
 building or a lot of old merchandise is not the 
 security a banker wants. For such loans see 
 the real estate man, or your friends. 
 
 " The first thing a banker considers is not
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 the security at all; it's the borrower's integ- 
 rity and the way he looks at fundamental 
 truths. Is he visionary? Does a dollar look 
 like a dollar to him, or like two dollars, or 
 six? Is the building he bought ten years ago 
 still worth twelve thousand dollars, or has he 
 taken off two per cent a year for depreciation? 
 Is he riding some hobby to death like golf 
 or automobiles or fishing? Does he know all 
 the elements in his business and do his books 
 tell him facts? Is his breath free from high- 
 balls? Can he make steam properly? 
 
 " If the answers are satisfactory, then the 
 banker looks over the more tangible assets, but 
 he wants them liquid ; that is, he wants them 
 quickly convertible into cash. 
 
 " Well, I '11 just mention one or two other 
 instances of a kind that came to me often. 
 I Ve frequently thought that many a business 
 would be run on a different basis if those in 
 charge could sit for a week in the inner pre- 
 cincts of a bank. 
 
 " A large manufacturing concern came to 
 us with a request for a rather extensive credit 
 line. It complained that the bank with which 
 it had done business was not treating it fairly, 
 
 52
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 and it offered us its account if we would make 
 the loans it needed. 
 
 " A regular form of statement was sub- 
 mitted to me by this company, but I did n't 
 like the looks of the figures. You know there 
 are earmarks about these statements that stick 
 out more or less plainly. One thing I did n't 
 just understand was the equipment account; 
 so I undertook a glimpse of the books. 
 
 " Without going into the matter techni- 
 cally, I '11 simply say that a certain lot of 
 machines, originally costing ten thousand dol- 
 lars, was valued the second year at nine thou- 
 sand, the third year at eight thousand, and so 
 on. This was on the theory that in ten years 
 the machines would be worthless. But that 
 did n't work out. The lot of machines in 
 question was scrapped at the end of the fourth 
 year, having been superseded by a more mod- 
 ern invention. Its value, however, as shown in 
 the last inventory, was seven thousand dollars. 
 
 " Of course no business man likes to see 
 seven thousand dollars thrown out on the scrap 
 pile. It 's more agreeable to keep this neat 
 little sum in the inventory, especially when 
 there is money due the banks and the other 
 
 53
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 creditors, and stockholders to be appeased. 
 So in this case it was decided to let the seven- 
 thousand-dollar gas bag stand for a while 
 without puncturing; later on, some conven- 
 ient way would be found to take it out of the 
 inventory. 
 
 " This concern was half gas, and my bank 
 refused its account. Afterward it dragged its 
 weary way through a receivership. A lot of 
 its stockholders had been taking the figures 
 without an introduction. 
 
 " This sort of thing is n't confined to firms 
 and corporations. I heard of a man who 
 bought a forty-dollar suit and wore it almost 
 every day for six months. Then there was a 
 fire in his apartment and the suit was ruined. 
 He sent a bill to the insurance company for 
 forty dollars. Yes, he had worn the suit six 
 months, he admitted, but it would cost him 
 forty dollars to replace it! 
 
 " Now this is exactly the sort of logic that 
 ruins men in business. By the time they have 
 built up a structure based on figures of this 
 sort they find themselves hard-pressed for 
 cash; then they go to the bank, exhibit their 
 assets, and apply for a loan." 
 
 54
 
 STORY OF THE PINK SOAP 
 
 " Did you ever pour boiling water on a kid 
 glove? " asked Barnes. " The next time you 
 have an old glove that you don't want any 
 more, put it in a pan and empty the teakettle 
 on it. You '11 laugh yourself sick to see it 
 shrink to the size of a baby's hand. But you '11 
 not laugh when the banker pours hot water 
 on your assets unless they 've been shrunk 
 before he gets at them. Ah! I know the 
 bankers very well, Dowe." 
 
 " Another would-be borrower was a Broad- 
 way hotel," said Dowe, when the laughter 
 subsided. " It had been losing money, but de- 
 luded itself into the belief that its business was 
 profitable. One way to fool yourself is to put 
 a high altitude mark on the item of good-will. 
 If a man runs behind in his business a thou- 
 sand dollars the first year, it is convenient to 
 calculate his good-will at two thousand dol- 
 lars; then he tells his friends he has done 
 very well, thank you a thousand dollars 
 to the good and all expenses paid. That 's 
 very well for the first year, but he needs a little 
 more capital. Along comes a chap with five 
 thousand dollars in cash that his father left 
 him; he hears about the fine opportunity and 
 
 55
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 hastens to get a grip on it before somebody 
 snatches it away. Neither of these men stands 
 much chance of success. The first is inflating 
 his business with disaster, while the second 
 has n't learned how to subtract. 
 
 " This hotel was in the same boat. It had 
 carried its good-will at two hundred thousand 
 dollars, but nobody would buy it at any price. 
 So the building was razed to make way for a 
 skyscraper. 
 
 " Without hesitation, I say that my own suc- 
 cess has come from making a specialty of the 
 financial laws that underlie the operations of 
 mankind in general. I have helped thousands 
 of men to success simply by forcing them to 
 face the truth in whatever they undertook. I 
 have been a ruthless believer in realism, down 
 to the minutest fraction. When a man faces 
 facts fairly and squarely he will take every 
 step with a degree of certainty not possible 
 otherwise. Just for example: he will go on 
 making laundry soap until the pink medicated 
 soap is able to walk by itself."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MEN WHO DO NOTHING 
 
 IT was the following afternoon before we 
 seven men got together again, and by that 
 time the Limited was winding its way 
 among the Medicine Mountains of Wyoming. 
 It seemed, indeed, as if we were getting into 
 the heart of the mighty West. I always asso- 
 ciate the West with mountains and loneliness, 
 and certainly it was wild and desolate enough 
 here in Wyoming. 
 
 I had been sitting by myself in the luxurious 
 smoker, nursing a grouch for an hour or more, 
 and I confess that I had n't been observing the 
 scenery. Two chaps had rubbed me the 
 wrong way during breakfast, and I was having 
 it out with them there in the smoker having 
 it out in a one-sided imaginary battle. Some- 
 times, when you 're alone, you have a regular 
 rough-and-tumble scrimmage with some fel- 
 
 57
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 low you don't like, and in these mental games 
 of solitaire you always get the best of your 
 enemy. So, in this case, I had put my adver- 
 saries utterly to confusion. 
 
 Now these two chaps, in reality, were not 
 aboard the Limited at all, but back East some- 
 where. I had never seen them, and up to that 
 morning at breakfast they had been of no con- 
 sequence to me one way or another. It was 
 nothing more than Dorothy Dowe's reference 
 to them that aroused my resentment call it 
 jealousy if you choose. 
 
 Through chance, I had found myself occu- 
 pying the fourth chair at the table with Banker 
 Dowe's family. The banker sat opposite me, 
 and Mrs. Dowe a handsome and stately 
 lady was beside him. Therefore Miss 
 Dorothy was my own nearest neighbor, and 
 acknowledged the introduction in an agree- 
 able way, touched with reserve. I shall not 
 repeat what was said during breakfast, but 
 somehow it came about that Hooten Van 
 Dyke was mentioned, and a man named Rit- 
 tenhouse. Miss Dowe spoke especially of 
 Van Dyke's splendid education, and I fancied 
 afterward that she looked across at her father 
 
 58
 
 MEN WHO DO NOTHING 
 
 with a peculiar smile. I wondered if Van 
 Dyke had any claim on the girl. 
 
 Like most New York men, I had some 
 slight knowledge of both Van Dyke and Rit- 
 tenhouse, through the newspapers. They were 
 young society men of great wealth scions 
 of families whose names were familiar to the 
 whole nation. Nor did the nation know any- 
 thing against them, so far as I am aware. 
 They were university men, cultured, no 
 doubt handsome, and perhaps talented. It 
 was natural enough that Dorothy Dowe, who 
 knew both personally, should admire them. 
 And after all it was not wholly strange that I 
 who had risen to no small success through 
 my own efforts alone should feel vexation. 
 I held strong opinions, and hold them to-day, 
 concerning men who do nothing. It is not 
 riches I abhor, but idleness. I have little 
 respect for men who possess both money and 
 education, yet dawdle away their time on lux- 
 uries when there are battles to be fought for 
 humanity and things to be done that are 
 worth the doing. 
 
 The thing that rankled most with me, I 
 believe, was the remark about Van Dyke's 
 
 59
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 education. I 'd never been to college myself, 
 so if you choose to believe me envious I shall 
 not dispute you. I am, indeed, envious of 
 men who have had these great advantages. 
 But let me tell you just a word about myself. 
 I did n't stay away from college because I 
 wanted to, but because my father died and 
 left me at the head of a brood of youngsters. 
 There we were, six of us, adrift in the heart- 
 less city of New York, without a dollar ex- 
 cept the meager wages I earned as a stock boy 
 in the establishment of Munn & Moorehouse 
 that was the name of the firm then. I 
 had n't even dreamed of becoming a partner. 
 The six of us were fatherless and motherless, 
 so I had to play father; my eldest sister, who 
 was fifteen when we were thus cast adrift 
 over near Gramercy Park, played mother. 
 And yet, in spite of all this, I got something 
 of an education and more than that, a for- 
 tune. My education is the sort that men get 
 when they hunger for knowledge. It is the 
 kind that many a boy has found at the old 
 Astor Library, or in the newspapers, or on the 
 streets everywhere, in fact, where boys go. 
 It is a sad mistake for a youth to imagine that 
 
 60
 
 MEN WHO DO NOTHING 
 
 education may be had only by purchasing it 
 at Harvard, Yale, or Columbia, or some such 
 institution. I often go even now to the won- 
 derful new Public Library in Manhattan, 
 and the possibilities within it fill me with awe. 
 Here, free for the asking, is any sort of edu- 
 cation a man could possibly covet from the 
 technical professions to classics! 
 
 So I was educated after a fashion, though 
 my learning was not just the sort possessed 
 by Van Dyke, who acquired his culture amid 
 luxury and sent all his bills to his father. 
 Never a dollar had he earned, though he was 
 twenty-seven years old ; and so, when I heard 
 Dorothy Dowe praising him, I felt anger 
 deep down within me not anger toward 
 Dorothy, but toward this man whose type 
 always irritated me. I confess that it ruffled 
 me now more than usual. The girl's bewitch- 
 ing beauty had almost dazed me. She had 
 seemed a vision the night previous, when I 
 caught just a glimpse of her through the haze 
 of tobacco smoke, but in broad day she was 
 amazingly human. I 'd seen millions of 
 women, but never one like Dorothy Dowe. 
 I 'd never seen brown eyes so lustrous; or a 
 
 61
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 complexion that had so delicate a tinge of 
 pink beneath its white texture; or features 
 But I don't mean to describe her. I am for- 
 getting myself. I have no intention of mak- 
 ing this narrative a personal one, though I 
 may be unable to resist speaking at times of 
 Miss Dowe. I merely started out to tell you 
 a little about Van Dyke, because he repre- 
 sented a class that offers no inspiration to boys 
 and men who are righting the battle for 
 success. 
 
 I repeat that I have no grudge against boys 
 who are born rich, or whose fathers are able 
 to send them to college and fit them for the 
 later duties of life. Such boys, if they have 
 the right mental stamina, are fortunate, in- 
 deed. So, too, is a boy who is able to step 
 into a going business established by his father 
 before him. How often have I envied such 
 a youth! But I hold that any man who does 
 nothing is a leech on the nation. He takes 
 everything from it and gives nothing back. 
 He draws from his university the knowledge 
 and culture that have been put there by men 
 who have worked, but he returns to the world 
 no learning. He takes from business the 
 
 62
 
 MEN WHO DO NOTHING 
 
 money produced by the brains and toil of mul- 
 titudes, but he produces only his own leisure. 
 He mulcts the skill of the scientist and sur- 
 geon, but he contributes nothing whatever to 
 the skill that alleviates the sufferings of 
 others. 
 
 Success, I say, does not lie in the mere pos- 
 session of money. I 'd like to make my posi- 
 tion clear on that point, for fear that in these 
 narratives I may be accused of worshiping 
 gold. If money and power cannot be ob- 
 tained without giving back to the people more 
 than their equivalent, then I say let men re- 
 main poor and obscure. In building a busi- 
 ness men should also build for themselves 
 names that stand among those of the world's 
 benefactors. 
 
 It was this that put me into my grouch and 
 kept me there in the smoking car while the 
 others of our group were playing bridge in 
 one of the sleepers. Not that I had any legit- 
 imate reason to care, but somehow the fact 
 seemed to strike a false note. Dorothy be- 
 longed to Banker Dowe, and Dowe belonged 
 to our odd circle of seven seven men who 
 had fought and conquered, but were fighting 
 
 63
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 still. Van Dyke and Rittenhouse were in- 
 truders; they belonged to a different species. 
 To hear Dorothy praise them - Well, I was 
 in such an unpleasant frame of mind that I 
 did not see Dowe until he put a hand on my 
 shoulder and asked what ailed me. The 
 others, he said, were coming to the smoker 
 in a minute, and Greenleaf was to tell his 
 success-tale. 
 
 So in a very short time I had quite for- 
 gotten these two chaps back in the East, for 
 no creation of fiction ever got hold of me as 
 did the true inner narrative of Greenleaf's 
 career this master salesman and student of 
 men.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 " T AST night," said Greenleaf, as he lit 
 _j his cigar, " I believe I mentioned an 
 old acquaintance named Riggs, who 
 traveled out of Chicago for a drygoods house. 
 He had more side lines than any salesman I 
 ever knew, and I believe that he influenced 
 my life, in a way, more than any other man. 
 It was through his poor example that I first 
 began to realize the value of time and concen- 
 tration. Riggs, remember, was a man of many 
 side lines, but I learned to hew closely to the 
 big thing I was really after. 
 
 " It was down in Chillicothe, state of Mis- 
 souri, that I first met Riggs. I had sold all 
 my customers in the place, and, as usual, was 
 warming a hotel chair while I waited for a 
 train out of town. I had half a day to waste, 
 as happened frequently. Riggs had sold all 
 of his customers, too, but Riggs never loafed. 
 
 65
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " ' See here, Greenleaf,' said he, shortly 
 after I 'd been introduced to him, ' why don't 
 you get hold of some side lines and keep busy? 
 If you really want to work I can put you next 
 to three or four games that will fill out all 
 your spare time. I know a trunk concern that 
 wants a lot of specialty salesmen on the side to 
 push some new goods; and up in Chicago 
 there 's a house that wants salesmen to call on 
 undertakers with the best side line on earth 
 a regular jimcrack! You simply could n't fail 
 to sell 'em. Of course I can't let you in on my 
 own snaps ; but I '11 do all I can for you.' 
 
 " Now somehow this set me thinking. 
 1 Thanks,' said I, l but I 'm not sure that I 
 care to take up side lines. I '11 consider the 
 proposition and let you know.' 
 
 " As I look back on that day, I can see how- 
 it was the crisis in my selling career. I might 
 have taken the wrong path ; but somehow the 
 logic of the situation got hold of me, just as 
 the grip of life gets hold of some poor fellow 
 who 's ill with a fever. 
 
 " The next time I saw Riggs I said to him : 
 1 Never mind about sending in my name to the 
 wholesale undertaker or the trunk man. I Ve 
 
 66
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 made up my mind to sell groceries exclu- 
 sively. I don't care about the side lines. 
 Don't trouble to send in my name.' 
 
 " t But you 're wasting half your time,' he 
 protested. ( Now I know a house that wants 
 a few first-class salesmen to introduce to the 
 trade its patent double-acting toothbrush. 
 It 's the biggest thing yet! I '11 send in your 
 
 name.' 
 
 " l No,' said I ; ' don't trouble yourself. 
 I Ve got a double-acting grocery proposition 
 of my own and I have n't time to fool with 
 that toothbrush of yours. I tell you I 'm 
 selling groceries and I '11 not have any 
 spare time hereafter. The fellows with spare 
 time are always the ones who are in a rut and 
 have n't the brains to get out. See here, 
 Riggs ; there are millions of people all round 
 me and every person among them eats gro- 
 ceries! Don't you think I ought to find 
 enough to do with the main product? ' So he 
 went his way and I went mine." 
 
 " Side lines are all right for the man who 
 has n't yet found his big, consuming purpose," 
 volunteered Barnes. " They will do to fill in 
 with during an emergency. They will help 
 
 67
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 a boy through college, or a girl with her 
 music, or the man out of a job; but, when 
 you 're on the track of something really worth 
 while, go to it for all there is in you. Ham- 
 mer away continually on the big thing, and all 
 your efforts will be cumulative as mine 
 were; but dissipate your energies on side lines 
 and you will find that each effort is detached 
 and complete by itself, without successive ad- 
 ditions that keep on piling up in geometrical 
 progression." 
 
 " Well," continued Greenleaf, " Riggs is 
 down and out, as I told you last night, while 
 I 'm selling goods stronger than ever. I 'd 
 be down and out to-day too, if I 'd fooled 
 away my abilities on side lines. I Ve seen 
 many a man let go his main chance to get hold 
 of a shadow. Of course you want to be sure 
 that you Ve really got your grip on the main 
 chance, but when you 're sure of it, hang on! 
 
 " So, when I made up my mind to travel 
 exclusively on the main selling-path I looked 
 about to see how I might keep busy during 
 that heavy percentage of time I had been 
 wasting. At the next town I struck, it oc- 
 curred to me to find out how the consuming 
 
 68
 
 " Madam, I have nothing whatever to sell you "
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 public looked on our brands of goods. My 
 house carried a number of tradenrarked lines 
 and was not doing especially well with any of 
 them; our canned goods and coffees, in par- 
 ticular, were away behind what they ought 
 to have been. 
 
 " I had two hours before train time, and I 
 started out on an expedition that was rather 
 unorthodox for a traveling salesman and 
 yet immensely illuminating in the end. Turn- 
 ing in at the first residence I found, I rang the 
 bell and said to the housewife: * Madam, I 
 have nothing whatever to sell you; I repre- 
 sent X., Y. & Company, the wholesale grocers 
 up in Chicago, and I should like very much 
 to know what you think of our Double B 
 brands. We are desirous, you see, of pleasing 
 our customers ; and we hope to get a consen- 
 sus of opinion that will aid us in doing so.' 
 
 " She looked at me somewhat blankly. * I 
 can't recall the Double B brands,' she said; 
 1 and somehow I don't just seem to remember 
 X., Y. & Company.' 
 
 At the next house I got the same answer 
 and at the next. I talked with more than 
 twenty housewives that day, and not more 
 
 69
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 than three of them had any definite impres- 
 sion of our goods or our house. When I left 
 town, however, all of them did have a con- 
 crete mental picture of the Double B's. Nor 
 were they likely to forget that X., Y. & Com- 
 pany were located in Chicago and were hand- 
 ling the very best brands of groceries on the 
 market. 
 
 " During that entire trip I put in every 
 minute of my spare time going from house to 
 house on this exploring expedition. If I had 
 only a quarter of an hour at my disposal I 
 spent it in this fashion. I kept tally of my dis- 
 coveries, and when I got back to Chicago I 
 had some mighty interesting facts to give our 
 sales manager. More than ninety per cent of 
 the people with whom I talked never had 
 heard of our Double B brands or of our firm 
 and its general products. 
 
 " c There 's something vitally wrong here/ 
 said I. ' Why, we are literally hedged in by 
 markets that don't even know about us! 
 There are swarms of people everywhere, but 
 they don't buy our goods simply because 
 we Ve made no impression on them.' 
 
 " ' Well,' said the sales manager as he 
 70
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 scanned the figures I had given him, ' it 's an 
 unfortunate situation; but how can we better 
 it? You know we 're up to the limit on our 
 advertising appropriation. It takes big 
 money to advertise broadly; and to make the 
 impression you 're talking about we 'd have 
 to keep at it continually. We 'd use up our 
 capital in a year.' 
 
 " I went out on my next trip; but my esti- 
 mate of my sales manager had dropped a few 
 notches. I was possessed with a hazy idea 
 that somehow he had n't risen to the situation 
 as he should have done. He was a thor- 
 oughly orthodox chap, strong on systems and 
 mighty powerful on the auditing of expense 
 accounts; but as I realized afterward 
 he had no rightful business at the sales-man- 
 ager's desk. It was up to me to do what he 
 should have done find a way to sell goods. 
 However, after all, that is what any salesman 
 must do if he hopes to rise. Comparatively 
 few sales managers really know how to sell; 
 they hold down their jobs simply through 
 force of circumstances." 
 
 Barnes jumped to his feet, afire with enthu- 
 siasm. When he chooses, Barnes can stir the
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 very depths of a man's energies. He is not a 
 lackadaisical, dreamy executive, but one who 
 puts all the steam of his fiery nature into his 
 gestures, voice, and attitude. 
 
 " You never spoke a truer word, Green- 
 leaf!" he cried, hitting his left palm with his 
 right fist. " Half the men in the country hold 
 their jobs through force of circumstances, and 
 not because there is any real reason why they 
 should ! I knew a man once who had a span 
 of horses that drove splendidly together so 
 long as the off horse was kept on the right, and 
 the nigh horse on the left. But one day a 
 stranger happened to hitch them up, and got 
 the nigh horse confused with the off one. 
 Well, sir, both of 'em balked and kicked, and 
 finally ran away and smashed up things gen- 
 erally. You see, they were n't trained for 
 their jobs. It's force of circumstances, gen- 
 tlemen, that governs half the business con- 
 cerns in the country." 
 
 " I Ve known hundreds of extraordinarily 
 successful men on the road," supplemented 
 Hopkins, as Barnes sat down again, " and 
 practically without exception they have been 
 fellows who did n't wait to be stirred up by 
 
 72
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 their sales managers; more often they re- 
 versed the process and did the stirring up 
 themselves. They originated the selling 
 ideas." 
 
 " Aside from the goods themselves," Green- 
 leaf went on, " selling ideas are the principal 
 factors in salesmanship. Of course I don't 
 mean to deprecate all those little elements that 
 are sometimes held up to us as salemanship. 
 Many of them are valuable as adjuncts; but 
 when you teach a salesman how to approach a 
 prospect, and how to talk to him, and how to 
 close him, and how to prevent him from 
 changing his mind before you can get your 
 fountain pen back in your pocket, you are 
 merely polishing the salesman off. Often this 
 polishing process is done before the embryo 
 salesman is shaped up for polishing. It 's like 
 giving a medical student his diploma before he 
 has done any dissecting." 
 
 " The first thing to do with an embryo sales- 
 man," broke in Barnes, once more, " is to 
 pound into his head the real truth about sales- 
 manship. Get some red paint and a brush and 
 write on a board: 'Salesmanship comprises 
 ninety-nine parts of ideas and one part of 
 
 73
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 minor ingredients.' Then lay the board on 
 the salesman's head and hammer it into 
 his brains with a sledge. After that proceed 
 with the polish, making sure that it does n't 
 drip." 
 
 Now this may have been putting the case 
 rather strong. In retail selling there 's a good 
 deal in the polish and not so many opportuni- 
 ties for ideas. But, after all, Barnes' defini- 
 tion of salesmanship should be remembered 
 by all young men who may chance to read it. 
 It is forcible, even if stretched a bit. Barnes, 
 you perceive, has a habit of talking in ex- 
 tremes. As far as he is concerned, there is no 
 middle course. He must have the superlative. 
 
 " I have been digressing, perhaps," Green- 
 leaf continued. " For a month or two I kept 
 at my self-constituted task of sounding the 
 public's estimate of our Double B brands. A 
 thankless task it was, and it grew mighty mo- 
 notonous, especially as the aforesaid estimate 
 was nine-tenths vacuum. Nevertheless it gave 
 emphasis to my vague theory that something 
 ought to be done, and it kept me busy. It 
 helped a little, too, in bulk sales; but unfor- 
 tunately I was merely one person, while there 
 
 .74
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 were many millions of people to be told about 
 our goods. Had I been able to get round to 
 talk in person with all those millions, our sales 
 would have jumped faster than Jack climbed 
 the beanstalk. 
 
 " After a while a plan began to simmer in 
 my head; if you keep on thinking about a 
 proposition long and hard enough you 're tol- 
 erably sure to get a few genuine thinks coming 
 your way in time. The trouble with our sales 
 manager was his habit of thinking in grooves. 
 A cat thinks in a groove when it comes to the 
 door every morning to be let in; a chicken 
 thinks in a groove when it observes the shades 
 of evening descending on the hen-house. And 
 so a salesman thinks in a groove when he 
 merely goes into a customer's store and says: 
 
 " ' Good morning, Mr. Johnson! Nice day, 
 is n't it? How many Double B's can I sell you 
 to-day? Thank you. Good-by.' 
 
 " It was n't my orthodox business, of course, 
 to figure out any plan that was the sales 
 manager's business; but, none the less, I 
 worked out a game of personal contact on a 
 big scale. For years afterward the motto of 
 our house was Personal Contact. 
 
 75
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " My game, in other words, was to talk to 
 the housewives by proxy, since I could not 
 talk to a large percentage of them in person. 
 I had observed the advantage of a five min- 
 utes' conversation on the subject of Double 
 B's. Such personal-contact publicity, if deftly 
 accomplished, had the effect of a nail driven 
 halfway into a board and placed squarely in 
 the path of the housewife. Whenever she 
 went to the grocery for canned goods or coffee 
 thereafter she was tolerably sure to shy round 
 that nail in her memory and to finish by pur- 
 chasing Double B's. 
 
 " So, with the grudging consent of the sales 
 manager, I began to organize in my territory 
 a force of personal-contact talkers. We tried 
 the scheme cautiously at first, for I was n't 
 quite sure of it myself. It was vitally neces- 
 sary, too, that the plan should be self-support- 
 ing. The house was not willing to spend a 
 dollar on the campaign until I had demon- 
 strated it to be eighteen-carat gold. 
 
 " I began in a small Kansas town. I knew 
 a clever young chap there who was anxious to 
 get on the road. He was employed in a bank; 
 but I said to him : ' If you will spend two 
 
 76 '
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 hours every evening talking to the people 
 about X., Y. & Company's goods, we will pay 
 you twenty per cent commission on the net 
 profit we make from the increased sales in the 
 town. Later on, if you show yourself capable, 
 I will do all I can to get you a steady job on 
 the road or up in Chicago. For the present, 
 however, you will have nothing to sell. Your 
 job will be to talk. I want you to go to every 
 desirable family in this town and ask opinions 
 and suggestions on X., Y. & Company's brands. 
 This will give you the excuse for calling and 
 open the way for a nice little talk, in the course 
 of which you will disseminate a lot of specific 
 and interesting information that I will fur- 
 nish you.' 
 
 " In all my other towns I worked along the 
 same lines. In each of the larger places I 
 divided the work into districts and had several 
 personal-contact talkers. When a town had 
 been completely talked to once, some excuse 
 was invented for going over it again some 
 new product or package or a second set of ques- 
 tions. In many towns we doubled our sales 
 without the outlay of a dollar aside from the 
 commissions we paid those local chaps for 
 
 77
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 talking. I was always very careful in my se- 
 lection of men; and afterward, when I held 
 executive positions, I gave employment to 
 many of them and found most of them very 
 successful salesmen. 
 
 " Eventually we broadened this scheme and 
 used samples, premiums, and various other 
 aids to the mere talking plan, and the time 
 came when there was scarcely a family in all 
 our territory that was not familiar with our 
 house and its goods. 
 
 " I don't mean to dwell on this or any other 
 scheme; it's the principle of the thing I'd 
 like to impress on salesmen. I have just been 
 describing to you a concrete instance of real 
 salesmanship. So many fellows mistake the 
 salesmanship polish for the salesmanship 
 itself, that I feel like getting hold of a mega- 
 phone and climbing a telegraph pole to let 
 them know the difference." 
 
 " Real salesmanship is often out of sight," 
 acquiesced Barnes. " The general public 
 does n't see it. It lies in your gray matter, 
 where you marshal your forces, plan your 
 strategy and get the people marching in an 
 endless procession to buy your stuff." 
 
 78 '
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 " Yes," said Greenleaf ; " and, on the other 
 hand, the polish is commonly more conspicu- 
 ous. Don't neglect it it is very necessary 
 sometimes. A salesman's personal atmos- 
 phere, his ability to make a neat, well-rounded 
 argument, and all the fine little points that 
 make selling an intricate game of the wits de- 
 serve close study. You can't analyze yourself 
 too thoroughly, or your customers. These 
 things of themselves may give you a lesser 
 degree of success. 
 
 " The polish, however, will never make 
 you successful in its broad significance, though 
 true salesmanship in its higher forms may earn 
 you ten thousand dollars a year without any 
 polish whatever. I have seen this truth dem- 
 onstrated so many times that I am sure of it. 
 Real salesmanship lies in the ideas that sell 
 goods. 
 
 " I had customers in those early days to 
 whom I could n't have sold at all without 
 ideas. Ideas may be of all kinds and sizes. I 
 have cited one of my big ideas; a little one 
 often has just as much relative importance. 
 I remember one retail grocer in Iowa whom 
 I could n't touch for a long time with my 
 
 79
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 Double B brands. He was welded to other 
 goods as tightly as a rivet in an iron beam. 
 Once he set his jaws on a thing, he was like a 
 bulldog I once knew that got another dog by 
 the ear and hung on for ten hours. You 
 could n't argue with that dealer any more than 
 you could with the bulldog. His customers 
 were satisfied with the goods they were get- 
 ting, he said and that ended it. 
 
 " I knew a lot of grocery salesmen who had 
 given him up, but I made up my mind to get 
 him. I was tired of going into his store only to 
 be turned down. I got our sales manager to 
 consent to a plan requiring a special advertis- 
 ing appropriation of a hundred dollars. Then 
 I had a lot of handbills printed, announcing 
 that all the enterprising grocers in the town 
 would be in a position on a certain day to give 
 away an aggregate of five hundred pounds of 
 Double B coffee in half-pound packages. 
 Every family in town would be entitled to one 
 package if called for at the first-class grocery 
 stores. After I had hired a boy to distribute 
 these circulars I called on my obstinate friend. 
 At last I had the whiphand. 
 
 " ' It 's up to you to get into the bandwagon 
 80
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 or stay out, as you prefer,' I told him. l You 
 know very well what the people will think of 
 your store if you turn them away empty- 
 handed when they come to claim their pack- 
 ages of coffee. It makes no particular differ- 
 ence to X., Y. & Company though, of 
 course, we 'd like to see you get your share of 
 the good-will and the trade that are bound to 
 come from this proposition. The people of 
 your town are going to use our goods don't 
 forget it. In a month or so, probably, we '11 
 repeat this dose and give away a lot of Double 
 B canned corn; then we'll come along with 
 Double B peas, and so on. None but the first- 
 class grocers will be in on the thing 
 depend upon that. Now you still have time 
 enough to get in line. If you say so I '11 
 wire the house to rush along your pro- 
 portion of the free coffee by express. And, 
 while you 're about it, perhaps you '11 want 
 to give me an order. You 're bound to have 
 a lot of calls for Double B coffee, you 
 know.' 
 
 " He saw the point, and after that I sold him 
 goods regularly; in fact he became my best 
 customer in that town. Sometimes a bit of 
 
 81
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 selling ingenuity and a little advertising 
 money will achieve remarkable results. 
 
 " I worked out a host of these selling ideas 
 during my waits for trains. When I was n't 
 actually selling I was figuring out some selling 
 problem or analyzing some proposition that 
 had baffled me. 
 
 " I remember one grocer who showed an ex- 
 tremely scant interest in my goods; he would 
 never listen to me for more than thirty sec- 
 onds, and the few goods he did buy he tucked 
 away out of sight and sold them only when 
 specially called for. Whenever I struck his 
 store he was sure to be everlastingly busy 
 and he brushed me aside as he would a fly. 
 
 " I pondered this problem quite a while 
 and then I hit on a plan. The next time I got 
 to Chicago I had a photograph taken of our 
 coffee-tasting table, showing the taster seated 
 in his chair, with twelve cups of coffee on the 
 revolving tabletop, along with the twelve 
 trays of coffee beans that corresponded. 
 
 ' l When I made my unfriendly dealer's 
 town again I tackled him on the spot for an 
 order of coffee; and before he had time to 
 side-step I put the photograph before him. 
 
 82
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 " * See here! ' I said. ' If you want to sell 
 the biggest line of coffees in town I '11 show 
 you how to begin. Just fix up an improvised 
 coffee-tasting table in your show window. 
 Put twelve cups of coffee there and twelve 
 trays, and hire some youth for a couple of 
 dollars a week to sit there and show the pub- 
 lic how the quality of the X. and Y. coffees is 
 safeguarded. It 's bound to be the most pull- 
 ing coffee display ever seen in this town. Oh, 
 of course, if you don't care to take advantage 
 of the opportunity I '11 let Johnson Brothers, 
 across the street, have it. I know a lot of 
 grocers who are keen for these business 
 pullers. I '11 not say anything more to you 
 about coffee; but how about Double B 
 canned goods? How much ' 
 
 " l Wait a minute! ' he broke in. ' Lemme 
 see that picture again. Now how would a 
 fellow go about fixin' up such a table? ' 
 
 " So the game worked as I expected it 
 would. He bought a big lot of our coffees 
 and other goods after that. A thousand times 
 I Ve had success with little schemes of that 
 sort. I always found it advantageous to spring 
 interesting side talks on difficult customers 
 
 83
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 always pertaining, however, to my line of 
 goods. Just as I featured coffee-tasting in 
 the foregoing incident, so I featured tea pick- 
 ing and drying, sugar-refining, canning pro- 
 cesses, and so on. There is n't one grocer out 
 of a thousand who has any knowledge of this 
 sort. If the wholesale salesman is wise he '11 
 post himself thoroughly on manufacturing 
 details and use the information to focus the 
 interest of the retail men. It '11 do it practi- 
 cally every time. I remember a crabbed old 
 grocer I won over with prunes. He would n't 
 buy my prunes until I shocked him into it! 
 I explained the process by which many 
 brands of prunes were first dipped in a solu- 
 tion of lye to break the skins. The X. and 
 Y. prunes never saw any lye. My description 
 of the various processes held him spellbound 
 and he became a good friend and customer of 
 my house." 
 
 " I Ve known a lot of salesmen in various 
 lines who knew no more about their goods 
 than their customers did," observed Hopkins. 
 " I recall a salesman who handled photo- 
 graphic goods; he hadn't the slightest con- 
 ception of the process followed in making dry 
 
 84
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 plates. Once I asked a hardware salesman 
 how teakettles were made he merely looked 
 blank." 
 
 " Most men look blank when they 're asked 
 things they ought to know," snapped Barnes. 
 " It 's the everlasting incompetence that keeps 
 men down. It 's the downright bungling, in- 
 excusable lack of ability to do things as they 
 ought to be done. The rarest thing in busi- 
 ness, gentlemen, is the man who knows! The 
 most common thing is the man who does 
 everything wrong because he does n't know 
 any better! " In his emphasis, Barnes got to 
 his feet once more. " Hang me!" he cried, 
 " what a lot of worthless cusses there are in 
 the world! They are worthless, not because 
 they have to be, but because they have n't the 
 grit to learn to do things worth while! " 
 
 " Pardon me," said I, modestly, for, being 
 the youngest of the group, I did not often in- 
 trude my opinions " pardon me, gentle- 
 men, but the grit to do things is a quality that 
 is not born in men to the extent commonly 
 supposed. Every man has it more or less, 
 true enough, but to be of any great service 
 it must be developed. Now in the store of 
 
 85
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 Munn, Moorehouse & Gaylord we have a 
 developing process, and I '11 tell you about 
 it when my turn comes. It has accomplished 
 extraordinary things for our firm. Indeed, 
 it is the exception to find men who are not 
 thoroughly amenable to its influence. But of 
 course " and here I could not help think- 
 ing of Van Dyke " there are some worth- 
 less cusses in the world who lack even the 
 semblance of an ambition. With every op- 
 portunity offered them, they go through life 
 without even one achievement to their credit." 
 
 " Of no more value to the world than a hop- 
 toad!" ejaculated Barnes. 
 
 We were climbing a stiff grade just then, 
 and our locomotive was laboring mightily. 
 Frothingham said the rails were very icy, and 
 that we 'd have a hard pull to get up. 
 
 " Like the rails of many a business," de- 
 clared Barnes. " Indeed, the rails of my own 
 business became coated with ice more than 
 once, and I can tell you that we had to make 
 steam to get over the ridge ! I Ve known con- 
 cerns to get stalled simply because they 
 could n't make steam enough in icy weather. 
 But, gentlemen, we are interrupting Green- 
 
 86
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 leaf's story. You were speaking, Mr. Green- 
 leaf, about a salesman's knowledge of his 
 goods." 
 
 " Yes," said Greenleaf, " and I believe I 
 can say that one vital secret of my success lay 
 in the knowledge I acquired concerning 
 everything I sold. The salesman who knows 
 his goods from the raw material to the fin- 
 ished product is like the school-teacher who 
 knows his arithmetic from addition to cube 
 root. You can't ring in the wrong answer on 
 him. He 's got the talking points right on the 
 end of his tongue. Talking points are genu- 
 ine salesmanship, because if they 're really 
 talking points they make the customer 
 eager to buy your goods. Sometimes, when 
 the talking point has been figured out care- 
 fully enough in the home establishment or 
 back in the factory, the public actually gets 
 clamorous to buy. Yet I Ve known salesmen 
 to go along indefinitely without knowing that 
 their goods had any talking points. I knew 
 one chap who sold toys for five years before 
 he learned accidentally that extraordinary 
 care was used in his factory to keep the color- 
 ing matter free from poison. 
 
 8?
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " Then I think there was another factor that 
 had a strong influence on my success that 
 factor was persistence. The three chief ele- 
 ments of salesmanship I believe to be ideas, 
 knowledge of goods and persistence. I never 
 abandoned a prospect or let up on a customer 
 who was n't buying up to his full legitimate 
 possibilities. 
 
 " One grocer, in Nebraska, had a grudge 
 against my house over some mix-up before my 
 time. For a year I went into his store once a 
 month without getting an order. He was 
 rough and insulting at first. He had treated 
 other salesmen the same way, and some of 
 them had cut him off their lists absolutely as 
 hopeless. For three or four months I tried 
 every scheme I could invent to make an 
 impression on him. Then I settled down to a 
 patient game in which I became his customer. 
 
 " t Good morning, Mr. Smith,' I would 
 say. l How about some Double B's to-day? ' 
 
 "'Don't want none!' he would snap. 
 1 Ain't I told you that times enough? ' 
 
 " * All right,' I would answer; ' but please 
 put me up a dozen oranges. You handle 
 mighty good fruit, Mr. Smith. How much? 
 
 88
 
 " He could n't keep on insulting a steady cash customer
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 Well, now, your price is n't bad, either. 
 Thank you. I '11 drop in next month.' 
 
 " I was morally certain he could n't hold 
 out forever against a game of that sort; and 
 he did n't. I could see for some time that 
 he was growing ashamed of himself. He 
 could n't keep on insulting a steady cash cus- 
 tomer; and finally he came back of his own 
 accord and bought of our house. 
 
 " I think that fully a third of my sales dur- 
 ing my final years in the grocery line came 
 from customers I had worked up by persistent 
 methods of one sort or another. Every such 
 effort I aimed to direct against a weak spot in 
 the enemy's intrenchments. Sometimes my 
 games were slow; but in the end I usually 
 tunneled under the walls or got over with a 
 scaling ladder, or watched my chance to get 
 through an open gate. 
 
 " I was made sales manager of X., Y. & 
 Company, but I stayed there only two years. 
 A Pittsburgh house offered me five thousand 
 dollars a year and commissions to sell lubri- 
 cating oils. As sales manager I had been get- 
 ting four thousand, without commissions. 
 
 " It was something of a jump from gro- 
 89
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ceries to oils; but I have always held that the 
 same fundamental principles governed all 
 forms of selling. And I reasoned that a man 
 who could make a success of staples in a 
 crowded market ought to make good in 
 anything. 
 
 " So I took hold of oils. Before going out 
 on the road I put on jumper and overalls and 
 spent two months at the works. Then I de- 
 voted another month to the office. It seemed 
 singular to me that this concern should volun- 
 tarily send to Chicago and pick out a grocery 
 salesman and then put him on the shelf for 
 three months at more than four hundred dol- 
 lars a month, while a lot of experienced oil 
 salesmen in the country were looking for jobs ; 
 but the fact itself proved that oil salesman- 
 ship was not so greatly different, after all. 
 And when this oil manager hired me he did 
 not ask about my brand of salesmanship 
 polish; he did not ask whether I approached 
 a prospect on tiptoe or flat-footed; whether I 
 got out my order blank at the close of the 
 fourth or sixteenth clause in my argument; 
 whether I had an eloquent peroration that 
 summed up eleven out of the sixteen clauses, 
 
 90
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 but left five clauses to be held in reserve for 
 emergency. He simply asked me if I thought 
 I could adapt a lot of my ideas to oil. 
 
 " I was sent down South. I found that 
 salesmen from other oil companies had made 
 a lot of trails; but I did n't stay on those trails 
 any more than I could help. I got off into 
 virgin country. 
 
 " I found one seacoast river, for instance, 
 that had a good many small manufacturing 
 plants scattered along it and a large number 
 of motor boats plying on its waters; yet few 
 of these oil consumers had any direct way of 
 getting oil, but had to pay exorbitant freight 
 charges and cartage bills. The result was that 
 the quantity of oil consumed was less than 
 half what the machinery really required. 
 This fact I determined by carefully compiled 
 statistics. 
 
 " There was no freight service on this river, 
 for only at occasional periods during the year 
 was it navigable for anything except small 
 boats, many of which belonged to fishermen. 
 Therefore, on my representations, my firm 
 established two stations on the river at which 
 oil could be procured at all times and carried
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 away in the small craft available. These sta- 
 tions we stocked at opportune periods. Then 
 I constituted myself a sort of commissioner 
 of education on the use of oil I showed 
 those consumers how they might conserve 
 their own interests by doubling their oil 
 consumption. 
 
 " We never had sold any oil on that river 
 before; in fact we had n't supposed the trade 
 down there was worth going after. We were 
 soon selling thousands of barrels a year, 
 however. 
 
 " I merely cite this instance as an example 
 of the truth I Ve been trying all along to drive 
 home that true salesmanship is deeper than 
 its outward manifestations. The salesman- 
 ship that boosts a salesman up and up, and still 
 higher, is the constant forcing of sales by such 
 methods as this. It is the keen, shrewd analy- 
 sis of situations and the discovery of opportu- 
 nities rather than a rigmarole of superficial 
 rules and balderdash. Whether you sell gro- 
 ceries, oils, books or cornplasters, the propo- 
 sition is pretty much the same. The com- 
 monplace salesman follows the trails marked 
 out for him by other commonplace salesmen; 
 
 92
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 there may be markets under his nose that he 
 does n't dream of and ways of reaching those 
 markets that no school of salesmanship ever 
 taught. Real salesmanship lies in finding 
 those markets and the ways to reach them, 
 even though the task of doing so should rub 
 off every bit of polish that has been lathered 
 on and soaked in with such painstaking effort" 
 
 " There are often markets under our noses 
 that we don't dream of," remarked Gale, the 
 real-estate man, who had been very quiet all 
 through Greenleaf's story. " It was the find- 
 ing of these markets, and ways of reaching 
 them, that brought me my success. Yet I 
 never realized before to-day how closely real- 
 estate salesmanship follows the general lines 
 Mr. Greenleaf has laid down for us." 
 
 In truth, this man Gale had a most extraor- 
 dinary history to tell us later on. He is a 
 man of few words ordinarily, and one would 
 scarcely suspect, on a casual acquaintance, 
 that he had worked out this difficult problem 
 of real-estate success on such a shrewd, far- 
 seeing basis. In fact, Gale actually- But 
 I should not anticipate. After this interrup- 
 tion Greenleaf resumed: 
 
 93
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " In another part of the South I was instru- 
 mental in bringing about the establishment of 
 a steamboat line between an isolated Gulf sec- 
 tion and a city of some size, so that manu- 
 facturing interests might develop and, of 
 course, the sale of oils along with them. 
 
 " It was the broadest sort of salesmanship 
 on which I was now engaged, and the train- 
 ing in this direction gave me a new viewpoint 
 over the whole problem of marketing goods. 
 I learned to plan far ahead to analyze the 
 future and decide just where to get our wedges 
 in, even though we were n't ready to use the 
 mallet on those wedges. I was now far busier 
 than my old acquaintance, Riggs, ever was, 
 with all his side lines. There was no waste 
 time; every hour not devoted directly to sell- 
 ing oil was devoted to plans for selling it. 
 
 " In a way I was a promoter in those days 
 as well as a salesman. I believe the art of 
 promoting markets is a feature of salesman- 
 ship largely overlooked. The keen, wide- 
 awake salesman is always alert for a l wedge 
 crack,' as a shrewd old friend of mine used to 
 call it. Even when I was a grocery salesman 
 I was on the watch for such chances. For ex- 
 
 94
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 ample, I once said to an enterprising grocery 
 clerk: 
 
 " ' Jim, there 's a great opening for a high- 
 class grocery over at Burgville fine district, 
 first-class customers and no grocery within a 
 mile. If you want to get into business on the 
 ground floor that 's your chance.' 
 
 " Jim had some money and was able to raise 
 a little more, and it was easy to induce a Burg- 
 ville investor to put up a building. Jim went 
 into business and built up a fine trade; and 
 you may be sure I sold him the bulk of his 
 goods. That 's what I mean by a * wedge 
 crack.' It was a place to crowd in a selling 
 wedge and hammer it home very quickly. 
 
 " However, I never realized the opportu- 
 nities in this direction, or the way a big and 
 thoroughly enterprising concern works, until 
 I got out for that oil company. If I 'd had the 
 same viewpoint while I was selling groceries 
 perhaps I 'd have stayed in that line. I can 
 look back now and see wonderful possibilities 
 that I only half worked. I was n't so much 
 to blame myself; the sales manager and the 
 members of the X. and Y. firm were n't alert 
 to their chances. 
 
 95
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " These oil people were different. They 
 looked ahead into future years; they foresaw 
 their markets and bent every energy toward 
 developing them. As I went about among the 
 manufacturers I scattered an immense quan- 
 tity of seed that propagated and grew into 
 business for my house. I was a sort of colo- 
 nist agent. I knew where all the opportuni- 
 ties lay; where manufacturing chances were 
 beckoning; where the pitfalls were concealed. 
 I was a moving spirit in the establishment of 
 boards of trade and manufacturers' organiza- 
 tions; as a press agent for oil I engineered all 
 sorts of schemes to draw attention from the 
 North. I was a frequent speaker at business 
 men's dinners and meetings; and I found that 
 the art of public speaking without any at- 
 tempt at oratory was a very valuable ad- 
 junct to salesmanship. I cannot recommend 
 it too strongly to every salesman, no matter 
 what his line. A clam never yet drove a circus 
 wagon. 
 
 " Through these methods I established a 
 very large acquaintance and made a prestige 
 for my firm that was permanent. My advice 
 was constantly sought and commonly taken. 
 
 96
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 I remained with the oil company for ten years 
 and during that time my territory developed 
 wonderfully. There were many districts 
 where we sold large quantities of goods 
 monthly that had been absolute voids when 
 I took hold. Of course I don't claim credit 
 for all the development, but I do say that I 
 influenced a lot of it and that I always had a 
 bunch of wedges ready and a variety of 
 beetles. Sometimes I tapped the wedge 
 lightly; sometimes I hit it a crack with a 
 sledge-hammer. 
 
 " One day I received a telegram from a 
 large machinery house, asking me to come to 
 New York at once on a very important matter. 
 I was about to leave Atlanta for Texas, but I 
 caught a train the other way instead. In New 
 York I was offered a salesman's position at 
 nine thousand dollars a year. I was receiving 
 at that time seven thousand from the oil com- 
 pany, and I could have stayed at nine thou- 
 sand; but I saw a bigger opportunity in ma- 
 chinery. Subsequent events proved, too, that 
 my choice was wise. I believe that men as 
 a rule are too timid about making such 
 changes." 
 
 97
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " Many a man wears twenty-five-cent neck- 
 ties," said Barnes, " when he might afford 
 two-dollar silk ones if he had the nerve to quit 
 a ' sure thing.' The men who get high sal- 
 aries are commonly those who have had broad 
 experience and held jobs with different con- 
 cerns. Yet I would n't advise any man to 
 make a change unless he has confidence in 
 himself. The way to cultivate confidence is 
 to do things that count. Then you can look 
 your employer in the eye and let him under- 
 stand you 're not bluffing when you talk about 
 quitting. I never did believe in bluffing. The 
 only time I ever put up a good stiff bluff was 
 on one occasion at poker and I was called, 
 good and proper! " 
 
 " Well," Greenleaf went on, " I had learned 
 a good deal about machinery and factories 
 during those ten years, for I had been in touch 
 with them constantly and with machinery 
 salesmen; but I hadn't fully realized the 
 difficulties I should be up against. The com- 
 petition I now encountered was something 
 pathetic. 
 
 " Yet here, too, were the same underlying 
 principles of salesmanship. The goods, of 
 
 98
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 course, were the first consideration. My long 
 experience as a disinterested observer gave me 
 exceptional advantages. I knew what the fac- 
 tory owners really thought of the different 
 makes of machines. During all those years I 
 had watched results and grown familiar with 
 machinery troubles. Most salesmen become 
 more or less warped when they handle one 
 line of goods for a long time. Put an oak 
 plank out in the sun and let it lie there for a 
 year and see what happens to it. I have seen 
 a square chunk of oak so changed by the action 
 of the elements that it became a mere shape- 
 less lump. I have seen salesmen's judgment 
 deformed in the same way." 
 
 " The keen salesman will guard himself 
 against such a fate which means certain 
 failure," said Barnes. " When a man gets 
 where he cannot see wherein his own goods 
 are inferior to his competitor's it is time to 
 retire him to the home for superannuated 
 salesmen, with a gruel diet." 
 
 " So now I had an accurate knowledge of 
 the deficiencies in the machinery I was to 
 handle," Greenleaf told us. " The first thing 
 I did was to open up a broadside on the manu- 
 
 99
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 facturing end of the business. It might have 
 seemed odd that the house should pay me nine 
 thousand dollars a year to roast the factory. 
 Those factory fellows were pretty sore at me, 
 I can tell you, and we had it hot and heavy 
 for several months. Once or twice the conflict 
 between the selling and manufacturing de- 
 partments assumed a spectacular aspect and I 
 almost thought my fine job would go glim- 
 mering; but when a man is prepared to sacri- 
 fice nine thousand a year on his convictions, 
 his sincerity ought to be taken for granted. 
 It ought to be apparent that he is working for 
 the interests of his house. 
 
 " I won out. One by one the house cor- 
 rected the faults upon which I had thrown the 
 limelight; moreover, we immensely strength- 
 ened our laboratory and experimental depart- 
 ment, gave employment to a double force of 
 research workers and inventors, and took 
 every measure possible to keep our product 
 up to high standards and to make the business 
 progressive. 
 
 " I think that my dissection of our product 
 did more to give our sales a new impetus than 
 anything that could have happened. This 
 
 100
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 had not been contemplated when I was hired. 
 The management had supposed that I would 
 start out merely as a man with original selling 
 ideas, letting the factory take care of itself. 
 Other salesmen had been doing this; but I 
 showed the higher officials that the chief sell- 
 ing idea of all must lie in the goods." 
 
 It was Barnes, as usual, who interrupted. 
 
 " I have little patience," he said, " with a 
 salesman who will talk a customer's arm off 
 to prove that black is white. Instead of argu- 
 ing with the customer, he ought to get after 
 the head of his house and demonstrate that 
 black is n't white. If the head of the house 
 can't see it, then there are other and better 
 jobs awaiting the salesman." 
 
 " You put it aptly," assented Greenleaf. 
 " Now during my service as an oil salesman 
 I had been impressed with many crude and 
 bungling methods pursued in the majority of 
 factories. Especially I had observed that 
 most manufacturers gave little attention to the 
 problem of grouping machines to the best ad- 
 vantage. This often necessitated the purchase 
 of equipment that would not have been re- 
 quired under a more convenient layout. Now 
 
 101
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 I saw a chance here to work in some original 
 selling ideas. 
 
 " The first really big test of my machinery 
 salesmanship came out on Puget Sound. A 
 large factory was planned, and I was sent 
 there to get the order for our particular equip- 
 ment an easy thing to talk about! 
 
 " When I got there six or eight competing 
 salesmen were already lined up and as 
 many more arrived shortly afterward. Most 
 of us had come across the continent. Only 
 one could get the order; all the other con- 
 cerns must suffer rout. The whole thing 
 looked like a fantastic proposition beside my 
 little grocery job of former years. My salary 
 of about twenty-five dollars a day went along 
 seven days a week; so did my expense account 
 of ten dollars a day. If I failed my house 
 might be out a thousand dollars. 
 
 " With all those salesmen, each with his 
 own arguments, it was no wonder that the 
 owners of the new corporation were scarcely 
 able to reach a decision. For my own part, I 
 was pleased over the delay; in fact, I finally 
 secured a promise from the president of 
 the company that no contract would be 
 
 102
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 signed before a given day, several weeks 
 ahead. 
 
 " Meanwhile I was secretly busy on a radi- 
 cally different layout for the proposed plant 
 I did not pretend to be a mechanical engineer 
 or draftsman; but ordinary horse-sense, 
 coupled with a faculty for analyzing an idea, 
 will sometimes accomplish more than mere 
 technical skill minus the creative faculty. I 
 am a firm believer in vivisection for the good 
 of mankind. I let the doctors cut up the dogs 
 and rabbits and monkeys; my own specialty 
 is dissecting the living business. 
 
 " When I had worked out my idea I was 
 able to show how the product of that factory 
 could be routed through the various depart- 
 ments without a single backward movement, 
 from the time the raw material entered the 
 receiving room until the finished article was 
 loaded on the cars. This effected a heavy per- 
 centage of saving in the handling cost, a con- 
 siderable reduction in operating space, a 
 greater capacity for output, and so on. More- 
 over, it reduced the machinery investment 
 quite a bit. Some modifications in my own 
 goods were necessitated, but nothing that 
 
 103
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 presented a serious problem in mechanical 
 engineering. 
 
 " This scheme I laid before the officers of 
 the corporation in a private conference 
 granted me while my competing friends tore 
 their hair outside. It clinched the deal and 
 my house got the contract. The details of this 
 affair were never given out to the other sales- 
 men. My general scheme was submitted by 
 the new concern to competent technical au- 
 thorities, who put it into engineering shape 
 and the factory was built accordingly. 
 
 " Afterward I became sales manager for 
 my firm ; but when the company was merged 
 with another I elected to go on the road again 
 at a much larger salary. 
 
 " So I want to urge on salesmen I feel a 
 deep fellowship for a craft so full of snares 
 and illusions the truth that salesmanship 
 lies in getting under the skin of the customer 
 in some way that really redounds to his bene- 
 fit. Whether you approach him with the 
 pianissimo stop on, or the tremolo gurgle 
 going, or the forte pedal jammed down 
 hard, makes little difference in the long run. 
 Your success will be proportioned to the 
 
 104
 
 ON THE MAIN TRACK 
 
 number of times you have really benefited 
 him." 
 
 Almost as Greenleaf finished, the Limited 
 came to a stop stalled hard and fast on the 
 upgrade. And scarcely had she stopped when 
 we saw the rear flagman drop off the platform 
 back of us and run down the track with his 
 danger signal fluttering in his hand. It was 
 Frothingham who called our attention to the 
 incident. 
 
 " In railroading," he observed, " we must 
 have an organization of men who know their 
 duties every one of them. In the operating 
 department there cannot be the incompetence 
 Barnes has deprecated in the organizations of 
 commercial business. Incompetence here 
 means death! You see at this moment an in- 
 stance of real organization. Behold this flag- 
 man, doing his duty like an automatic piece of 
 machinery! We trust our lives to him, yet 
 he is only a humble cog in a great machine. 
 Is it not possible to organize the everyday 
 business so that men will know their duties 
 and perform them with the instant readiness 
 and comprehension of this rear flagman?" 
 
 " It is! " spoke up Hopkins, as we all stood 
 105
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 on the hind platform and looked rather 
 anxiously down the steep right-of-way. " It 
 is, most assuredly! In my own business I have 
 long sought to model my organization upon 
 the plan of a railroad." 
 
 106
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REAR FLAGMAN 
 
 THE second section of the Overland Lim- 
 ited was close behind us, and, being 
 lighter, was coming up the mountain at 
 very good speed. As we found out afterward, 
 something was wrong with the block signals, 
 and except for that rear flagman who dropped 
 off the hind platform of the observation- 
 smoker and ran back at full speed with his 
 signal, this second section would have crashed 
 into us from around the curve. 
 
 It was a narrow escape, I heard Dorothy 
 Dowe remark to her father. A score of the 
 passengers had crowded themselves on to the 
 observation-car platform, and stood looking 
 with awe at the steel monster which now ap- 
 proached cautiously. The second section was 
 to help us get started up the hill again. It was 
 a narrow escape, somebody else reiterated. 
 
 Now, for my part, I saw that it was not a 
 107
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 narrow escape, at all. It was merely an inci- 
 dent of railroading. The narrow escapes are 
 the things that chance averts, and this escape 
 was averted by organization. 
 
 " At one time," said I, to Dorothy's father, 
 as we stood there, " the department store of 
 Munn & Moorehouse that was before I be- 
 came Junior Partner, remember was trav- 
 eling up a steep hill, like this train, sir. It 
 had gone along very nicely on the level, but 
 when it struck the upgrade it labored and 
 slowed down, and finally stopped. It was 
 stalled on the mountain side. There were 
 other department stores in New York that 
 were making the grade easily, and except for 
 chance we should have been tumbled off down 
 the embankment by a rear-end collision." 
 
 It is funny how the associations of a day 
 or two will change a man's viewpoint. Here 
 was Dowe, the arithmetician, the cold-blooded 
 man of finance, the believer in literal realism. 
 He was the man who had disparaged imagi- 
 nation in business and declared that mathe- 
 matics alone were worth while. Yet now I 
 saw his eyes light with pleasure when I made 
 this rather poetical metaphor. And I saw 
 
 108
 
 THE REAR FLAGMAN 
 
 Dorothy Dowe glance at me with surprise in 
 her brown eyes. To her, I suppose, business 
 had always been something that had no poetry 
 in it. 
 
 " I infer, then," said Dowe, " that the firm 
 of Munn, Moorehouse & Gaylord as the 
 name is to-day has a rear flagman out" 
 
 "We carry a rear flagman," I answered; 
 " and he is always ready to drop off and run 
 back with his signal in case our train stops. 
 But of recent years, Mr. Dowe, we Ve been 
 going up the hill pretty steadily. Our engine 
 is big enough to haul us, and our fireman is 
 good at handling coal. The engineer is one 
 of the most expert on the road, and I never 
 knew one who had a steadier nerve." 
 
 " You Ve neglected to mention the conduc- 
 tor," Dowe observed, dryly. 
 
 " Being inclined toward modesty," I an- 
 swered, " I chose not to speak of him." 
 
 " Ah! I forget that you yourself were the 
 conductor. In former days I knew your house 
 quite well. And let me see; some twenty 
 years ago I believe Mr. Moorehouse applied 
 to my bank for a loan. If I recollect right, 
 he wanted forty thousand dollars." 
 
 109
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " Your memory is excellent," said I. " Mr. 
 Moorehouse has often spoken to me of the 
 incident. It was forty-two thousand dollars 
 the firm needed. You refused both the loan 
 and our account." 
 
 I 'd had no intention of throwing this up at 
 Dowe, but now I could not resist. I meant his 
 daughter to know that I came of a different 
 breed from Van Dyke's. I meant to let her 
 know I had done things in the world, and that 
 even her father had cause to respect me. 
 
 " Yes," assented Dowe, " I refused the loan, 
 and perhaps the account, as well. At that 
 time the firm of Munn & Moorehouse was not 
 one that my bank cared to finance. Of course, 
 could I have foreseen " 
 
 " Please don't apologize," I interrupted, 
 casting a guarded glance at Miss Dorothy. 
 " Don't apologize, Mr. Dowe. At the time of 
 which we speak, I was only a small boy on the 
 East Side. It was not until several years later 
 that I entered the employ of Munn & Moore- 
 house. Therefore the refusal of the loan of 
 forty-two thousand dollars was in nowise a 
 reflection upon my business management. But 
 I take it, Mr. Dowe, that if Munn, Moore- 
 
 no
 
 THE REAR FLAGMAN 
 
 house & Gaylord desired to borrow that sum 
 to-day, your bank would not show us the 
 door." 
 
 That elusive smile played for a moment 
 about the banker's lips. " No," he acknowl- 
 edged. " My bank would prize the account 
 of Munn, Moorehouse & Gaylord. Your es- 
 tablishment, Mr. Gaylord, is one of the great- 
 est in all Manhattan. Its growth during re- 
 cent years has been most astonishing." 
 
 " It is my ambition," I answered, " to make 
 our store not only one of the greatest, but the 
 greatest the greatest in America, and per- 
 haps in the world. And I want to emphasize 
 the fact, Mr. Dowe since we have been talk- 
 ing of money and loans that our amazing 
 growth has not been due to capital. True, 
 we have large capital at our command to-day, 
 and for years have been obliged to employ 
 great sums of money, but our original impetus 
 was due to something else rather than cash." 
 
 " Your growth, I take it," said Dowe, " was 
 due to management." 
 
 " The term ' management,' " I answered, " is 
 vague. It would be more concrete to say that 
 our growth has been due directly to this thing 
 
 in
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 we have observed here on the railroad 
 * organization.' ' 
 
 " But * organization,' too, is vague," sug- 
 gested Dowe. 
 
 "Ah, true enough!" I exclaimed. "To 
 most business houses it is extremely vague. It 
 means almost nothing. But to Munn, Moore- 
 house & Gaylord it means definite, tangible 
 things so tangible that we can reckon them 
 as we do the dollars." 
 
 I saw that Dowe was deeply interested - 
 naturally enough for a banker. But, of far 
 greater moment to me, was the curiosity I read 
 in Miss Dorothy's eyes. She was regarding 
 me gravely as she clung to the arm of her 
 father. Organization, of course, meant noth- 
 ing to her, but she was conscious of something 
 that aroused an interest in me. I was talking 
 of bigger things than society. 
 
 " I should be glad to hear your definition of 
 this thing we call organization," said Dowe. 
 
 " It is quite impossible to give it in abstract 
 terms," I told him; " the definition would run 
 too long, even were it possible to make it un- 
 derstandable. Besides, I am scheduled as one 
 of the narrators in our circle of seven. It 
 
 112
 
 would scarcely be fair to the others, Mr. 
 Dowe, were I to anticipate here." 
 
 I saw an odd expression flit over the girl's 
 face, and I wondered what her thoughts were. 
 She knew that the seven of us were telling 
 success-stories, and she knew, too, that Van 
 Dyke had no such tale to relate. 
 
 Well, the locomotive of the second section 
 coupled on to the rear of our train, and, with 
 a tremendous escaping of steam and revolving 
 of wheels, we moved slowly upward and on- 
 ward. I have often thought, as I have taken 
 these long journeys across continents, that not 
 only the organization counts, but the ever- 
 lasting persistence, as well. It is the keeping 
 at it that does the thing. When I awake in the 
 morning, I hear the throbbing of the locomo- 
 tive ahead. All day, as I sit at my ease 
 reading, smoking, or dreaming I hear the 
 chug-chug of that monster in front, and on we 
 go toward our destination. At night, when I 
 crawl into my narrow confines and arrange 
 the blankets about me, I hear that fiery crea- 
 ture at work out there ahead of us. And when 
 I stir uneasily in the small hours, and lie half 
 waking, half sleeping, I still hear the noise of
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 the exhaust, and the fast click of the wheels on 
 the steel under us. Except for the persistence 
 we should never get there, even though we had 
 the path stretching out toward the terminal. 
 
 So it has been the keeping at it that has 
 brought our firm of Munn, Moorehouse & 
 Gaylord so far on its journey. There have 
 been times when the storms nearly discour- 
 aged us and the toil of our task made us 
 faint-hearted. But the keeping at it took us 
 through. 
 
 Dorothy went back to join the feminine 
 members of our party in the forward part of 
 the train, while the seven of us disposed our- 
 selves once more, to hear Hopkins' story. I 
 put the girl quite out of my mind. Women, 
 you know, had played no part whatever in my 
 strange career; so why should one of them 
 distract my thoughts now? 
 
 114
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 " "E yf" Y father was a carpenter," said Hop- 
 I y J kins, " and we lived in a small town 
 not far from Boston. We were poor 
 -what carpenter's family isn't? The phi- 
 losophy upon which I afterward based my 
 career was something my father had never 
 thought out. You know that success is the 
 outcome of a philosophy there can be no 
 doubt of it!" 
 
 " You have hit the keynote of my own ex- 
 perience," said Frothingham, quickly. " I 
 succeeded because of a definite and well-for- 
 mulated philosophy." 
 
 I confess I was a good deal surprised to hear 
 this from the lips of a railroad magnate of 
 Frothingham's caliber. In the opinion of the 
 public, he had gained his eminence through 
 sleight-of-hand tricks with railroad finance.
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 No one had ever hinted that a philosophy of 
 winning had entered into his career at all. 
 However, it was not yet time to hear details 
 from Frothingham. 
 
 " My father supported his family nicely, 
 considering our sphere in life," Hopkins con- 
 tinued. " Men who work chiefly with their 
 hands can never expect to employ a French 
 cook. I don't mean to belittle the artisan or 
 laborer, upon whom much of our civilization 
 depends. Not at all! I realize that the 
 scheme of things in this life makes it impos- 
 sible for the rank and file of the people to get 
 above a certain level. Nevertheless, I 'm 
 speaking now of that very large class which 
 is fighting all the time for something better. 
 Among this class are hundreds of thousands 
 of individuals who do stand a chance for 
 vastly better things; and they can get those 
 better things if first they '11 get a philosophy. 
 
 " So my father might have done more than 
 he did, but he never figured it out. He went 
 on working all his life with his hands, and 
 when he died he left nothing except a good 
 name. He was a just and honest man, my 
 father was. But after all, gentlemen, this is 
 
 116
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 not the full heritage a man should leave to 
 the world. He can do greater deeds than 
 mere justice. He can be one of those who 
 build the nation who plan and execute for 
 the well-being and happiness of generations 
 to come. He can be one of the leaders of the 
 people, not a mere follower. 
 
 " In early life I followed in my father's 
 footsteps because the saw and the hammer and 
 the fragrance of sawdust had a charm for me. 
 I learned the carpenter's trade out there in 
 the country, and finally, still in my teens, I 
 went up to Boston because a philosophy 
 very vague and little at first was beginning 
 to work in my brain. I wanted to get along 
 faster; I went after the opportunity. 
 
 " In Boston I took a fancy to the finer side 
 of my calling, and became a cabinet-maker. 
 And then my embryo philosophy told me that 
 if I wanted to grow I must originate things. 
 I worked many weeks over an office contriv- 
 ance that had suggested itself to me, and 
 finally, when I completed the model and pat- 
 ented it, I quit my job and started out to make 
 the thing myself. I began my manufacturing 
 career in a room twelve feet square, doing all 
 
 117
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 the work with my own hands. That year I 
 netted less than five hundred dollars, al- 
 though I worked ten and twelve hours a day. 
 I was in business for myself, but I was n't 
 much of a success. 
 
 " At the end of that first year I hired a 
 young fellow named Sam Green to work for 
 me. Sam and I were about the same age and 
 had been employed together in a furniture 
 factory. I knew him to be a good cabinet- 
 maker and was willing to trust him with the 
 careful work required in making the office 
 device I had originated. Sam justified my 
 expectations. 
 
 " For a year we two worked side by side 
 and, although I labored no harder than I had 
 done. during my year alone, my net profits rose 
 above a thousand dollars, notwithstanding the 
 fact that I paid Sam about eight hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 " My additional profit, it is evident, came 
 from the labor of my workman. In contem- 
 plating this fact I discovered, ultimately, a 
 fundamental secret that has helped me more 
 than anything else toward success. Aside 
 from the goods, the most vital problem in 
 
 1 1 8
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 manufacturing, as well as in business gener- 
 ally, is to pick out profitable workers. The 
 professional man may attain a high degree of 
 success through his own efforts chiefly; the 
 business man cannot by any possibility do so. 
 He is either kept afloat by his employees or 
 dragged under by them." 
 
 " I have heard it said," observed Barnes, 
 " that seventy varieties of fungi resemble 
 mushrooms very closely. I know at least a 
 thousand varieties of men who resemble the 
 man who will pay you a profit as an employee. 
 You Ve got to know the genuine mushrooms 
 from the toadstools and pufTballs." 
 
 "Well, Sam Green was the real thing; 
 there was no doubt about that," assured Hop- 
 kins. " He was the genuine mushroom, but 
 I regret to say I did n't fully realize it at that 
 time. My failure to do so cost me a great 
 deal of money during the twenty years that 
 followed literally millions of dollars. I 'm 
 going to tell you a little about Sam Green, but 
 first I want to make my fundamental propo- 
 sition clearer. 
 
 " Suppose I had not hired Sam Green or 
 any other man to work for me, but had gone 
 
 119
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 on working alone at the bench for thirty years. 
 I might have earned an aggregate profit, say, 
 of fifteen thousand dollars. Plenty of men 
 earn no more than that. But as a manufac- 
 turer or merchant I 'd have been a failure. 
 It need n't take much argument, then, to con- 
 vince you that the huge plant my company 
 owns to-day represents the aggregate profit 
 returned by thousands of workmen during 
 many years. They were not all Sam Greens; 
 if they had been I 'd have been richer than 
 John D. or Carnegie. Most of them, how- 
 ever, were profitable to me, otherwise the fac- 
 tory would n't be there. I don't care whether 
 you employ one man or ten thousand, the prin- 
 ciple is the same. 
 
 " But suppose that instead of hiring Sam 
 Green that second year I had hired an incom- 
 petent workman, who had turned out such 
 poor product that the claims against me ex- 
 ceeded the profits; or suppose that my mar- 
 kets had n't justified the expense of a man's 
 wage. In either event my business would have 
 failed right there. 
 
 " I have frequently seen this sort of thing 
 done by concerns of all sizes merchants as 
 
 120
 
 well as manufacturers. I have watched young 
 men struggling to get started in business, when 
 I knew they were doomed to failure because 
 they had no conception of the underlying truth 
 that workers must return a profit. The study 
 and development of your workers are the 
 things that will make your business grow. 
 
 " Though I partly realized this truth even 
 during my second year in business, I got away 
 from it for a while, not having any concrete 
 mechanism for applying it. You often find 
 business men with splendid theories floating 
 over their heads just out of reach. That was 
 the trouble with me. I knew that workmen 
 ought to pay a profit, but I did n't know how 
 to measure up the individual profits from my 
 employees. Because I had n't studied men, 
 the difficulties I encountered turned my hair 
 gray at twenty-five. 
 
 " My troubles did not come immediately. 
 My third year in business was marked by such 
 a surprising demand for my goods that I not 
 only employed several workmen, but in- 
 creased my shop area and installed costly ma- 
 chinery. The fourth year was even better, and 
 again I branched out, adding largely to my 
 
 121
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 equipment. Sam Green was now my foreman. 
 He was a queer, quiet sort of chap, who always 
 seemed to have something on his mind that he 
 was n't telling folks about. Nevertheless he 
 kept the shop on strict discipline and the prod- 
 uct up to perfection of workmanship. 
 
 " Meanwhile I had made a contract with 
 a firm of wholesale distributors whereby I 
 agreed to turn over to them my entire product 
 for a term of years. They were to do all the 
 selling and I was relieved of the necessity of 
 having a sales department. This I considered 
 a fine bit of management. I was young, 
 remember. 
 
 " But when I was on the crest of the wave, 
 as I thought, something happened. It was the 
 very thing that ought not to have happened, 
 and yet I see the same thing occurring all 
 round me to-day. It was Sam Green who did 
 it. There are plenty of Sam Greens 
 everywhere. The thing Sam did was to 
 quit me. 
 
 " I now had thirty-odd workmen and was 
 netting six or eight thousand dollars a year 
 just a neat little manufacturing business, clean, 
 compact, running like grease. As a group 
 
 122
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 my workers were profitable to me; as indi- 
 viduals I was n't always able to say. In fact, 
 I had got so far away from my fundamental 
 theorem that I had come to look on my work- 
 ing force as a group a dangerous thing 
 to do. 
 
 " Had I studied the men as individuals, I 
 should have seen that Sam Green was worth 
 more to me than most of the others put to- 
 gether. Had I studied Sam in particular, 
 I should have found out what he was thinking 
 about during all those years. Then I 'd have 
 been willing to pay him more than twenty 
 dollars, instead of telling him on several occa- 
 sions that I could get plenty of competent 
 foremen for twenty a week. 
 
 " Well, Sam Green had been holding out a 
 lot of ideas on me, and now he started a little 
 factory of his own and began making a device 
 that was a vast improvement over mine." 
 
 " When I was a boy," said Barnes, " I at- 
 tended a Sunday school and belonged to a 
 class of ten boys taught by Miss Jones. One 
 Sunday my class contributed forty-six cents 
 to the collection, and the superintendent made 
 a nice little speech in which he threw meta- 
 
 123
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 phors at us boys as a group. Now it happened 
 that Bobbie Brown and I had held out our 
 nickels and had n't dropped anything into the 
 box; we meant to buy peanuts or candy next 
 day. Willie Hawkshaw, who had a rich aunt, 
 had dropped in a quarter. Willie was the 
 genuine mushroom, but the man who ran the 
 Sunday school didn't know it If there had 
 been a list of the individual contributors 
 Bobbie and I would have shown up as toad- 
 stools." 
 
 " It was the same proposition with Sam 
 Green," Hopkins said. " I had n't been wise 
 enough to detach him from the group; I 
 had n't seen that he was a Willie Hawkshaw 
 with a quarter to drop into the collection box. 
 So Sam got away from me, while a lot of 
 puffballs stayed on my payroll. There was 
 old Hank Slosser, for instance, and Pete Jor- 
 gan and Slim Mike. I might have seen that 
 they were holding out their nickels and taking 
 their share of the credit for my neat little 
 business. 
 
 " Well, I was pretty mad for a while. 
 Sam's disloyalty seemed beyond belief. I Ve 
 known a lot of business men who Ve thought 
 
 124
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 that twenty dollars a week ought to buy an 
 employee, body, brain, and soul. 
 
 " But now that confounded ex-foreman 
 of mine that twenty-dollar-a-week chap 
 played his game like a general. He went 
 straight to the wholesale concern that had the 
 exclusive contract on my product. ' See here,' 
 said he to these agents : ' I Ve got an article 
 of my own that is fifty per cent better than the 
 stuff my former boss is making. I Ve been 
 studying that stuff a long time and figuring 
 out ways to improve it. Here 's the result. I 
 want you to handle it for me. We Ve got that 
 other stuff bottled up tight. Under your con- 
 tract it 's got to be sold through you, and you 
 can just go along easy with it and give my 
 goods the right-of-way. A few customers 
 will buy his old contrivance, no doubt, but 
 most of them will want mine. I '11 make very 
 favorable terms with you and we '11 skim the 
 cream off the trade. See?' And that was 
 what they did. 
 
 " Of course I went to law I was just 
 young enough to do that. I hired the lawyer 
 who had drawn the contract in the first place, 
 and told him to go into court and prove that 
 
 125
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 those selling-agents had no right to take Sam 
 Green's goods, but were under legal obliga- 
 tions to handle mine exclusively or else cancel 
 the contract and let me sell my goods to the 
 public myself. 
 
 " For two years my lawyer quoted prece- 
 dents to the courts. For every day he spent in 
 the court-house I paid him a hundred dollars, 
 and for contemplating the contract in the 
 privacy of his office he got fifty dollars a day. 
 But two of the courts ruled against me, decid- 
 ing that as long as I manufactured the par- 
 ticular office device in question I must market 
 it through this distributing firm. Nor could 
 I force that firm to push the sale of my device 
 exclusively. 
 
 " Then one night I took the contract home 
 with me and sat down under a strong light. 
 If I 'd done that in the first place I 'd have 
 saved four thousand dollars in cash and two 
 wasted years. I had n't any legs to stand on 
 I could see it myself. The contract was a 
 one-sided affair, and I was bottled up good 
 and tight by Sam Green and my selling- 
 agents. 
 
 " I woke up. I called off the litigation. 
 126
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 It had been the most asinine thing I 'd ever 
 done; for even if I 'd got loose from the sell- 
 ing-agents, my product was inferior to Green's 
 and would have been difficult to sell. Here 's 
 a bit of advice in passing: 
 
 " If you 're a manufacturer, don't get into 
 a bottle and let a distributing firm put the 
 cork in. If I were a young man to-day, start- 
 ing in any line of business or working on a 
 salary, I would n't sit on the neck of a flask for 
 fear I 'd slip in. I would n't put my goods in 
 a single channel of markets, lest that channel 
 run dry; nor would I place any value on a 
 contract that bound an employer to me for a 
 specified term. Such contracts are delusions. 
 The really live man doesn't need them; he 
 stands without leaning. 
 
 " It was when I woke up that I got back 
 to first principles. I remembered my old 
 theorem that every workman ought to pay a 
 profit. If it had n't been for that primal prin- 
 ciple to fall back on, I believe I should have 
 quit in despair. 
 
 " I now had only ten workmen in the shop. 
 I was heavily in debt; creditors were press- 
 ing; much of my equipment was idle because 
 
 127
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 my distributors were n't selling enough of my 
 goods to keep it busy. 
 
 " I don't mean to burden these observations 
 with technical procedures, but anybody can 
 see that a machine-tool standing idle is return- 
 ing its owner a daily loss. It is costing that 
 owner interest on his investment, taxes, in- 
 surance, depreciation, rent, office expense, and 
 so on. Likewise, a store counter or shelf that 
 is not being used to its normal capacity in sell- 
 ing goods is surely returning a loss. If this 
 truth were better appreciated in business there 
 would not be so many failures. Half the ruin- 
 ous losses come from facilities that are burn- 
 ing up expense without giving back a profit." 
 
 " The same thing is true in private life." 
 This came from Barnes. " Out at my house I 
 use steam heat. One winter I had a janitor 
 who did n't understand firing. He shoveled 
 coal vigorously at frequent intervals, but he 
 could n't get steam enough to keep the house 
 warm. A big volume of fire burning slowly 
 will make steam, but you can burn up all the 
 coal in the bin without getting a pound on 
 your gauge simply by feeding in the fuel in 
 small quantities and letting it burn fiercely in 
 128
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 the bottom of your heater. This janitor 
 burned thirty-five tons that winter, but my 
 expensive heating plant returned me a loss. 
 The next winter a new janitor kept the house 
 warm on twenty tons. At last the heating 
 equipment returned a profit." 
 
 " So now I broadened my theorem." Hop- 
 kins went on with his narrative. " I said to 
 myself: 'All this idle equipment is costing 
 me as much as a whole batch of idle men draw- 
 ing pay. There 's only one difference I 'd 
 know just how much of my money the idle 
 men were getting, while I don't know how 
 much the loafing equipment is costing.' 
 
 " The first problem in cutting down ex- 
 penses is to find out what those expenses are; 
 that 's plain enough to any manufacturer, mer- 
 chant, or householder. Yet show me a hun- 
 dred manufacturers, merchants, and house- 
 holders and I '11 show you ninety-five who 
 can't give you their itemized expenses. I 
 know concerns that have a strong policy for 
 keeping expense down, but because they 
 have n't located the leaks the policy itself is 
 a tragic joke. As long as you regard expense 
 as a group of undetermined items you will 
 
 129
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 support a lot of items that correspond ex- 
 actly to the idle or incompetent men on your 
 payroll. 
 
 " Having perceived that a lot of expense 
 devils had me by the hand and were dragging 
 me down to perdition, I determined to look 
 each one of those devils in the face separately 
 and not merely face the whole bunch of them. 
 In other words, I analyzed my operating costs. 
 Unless you 've got an extraordinary cinch on 
 your markets, you Ve got to do this if you hope 
 for much success. And if you 're working for 
 wages you Ve got to analyze your operating 
 costs just the same, if you want to save money. 
 Householders as well as business men are 
 swamped by these costs. Until they know just 
 how much they pay for food, clothes, fuel, 
 luxuries, and so on, and just how much they 
 ought to pay for each item, they can't cut ex- 
 pense intelligently or find ways to make one 
 dollar do the work of two dollars. 
 
 " However, I want to tell you something 
 else that happened something tremendously 
 big and important so I '11 not go into detail 
 as to operating costs. I need only say that any 
 man who wants to get at his costs and expenses 
 
 130
 
 may avail himself of technical procedures that 
 will do the thing for him with mathematical 
 accuracy. 
 
 " While I was engaged in anatomizing the 
 cost of my idle equipment and finding out how 
 much profit or loss each workman was return- 
 ing me, I called in my foreman the man 
 who had succeeded Green. 
 
 " ' Booker,' I said to him, ' we Ve got to do 
 one of three things: First, quit; second, sell 
 or scrap all our idle equipment and shrink the 
 business to conform with our limited markets; 
 third, cut loose absolutely from our original 
 product, get hold of something else to manu- 
 facture, and reach out for markets that we can 
 swing independently. Do you know of any 
 goods we can make profitably with our present 
 equipment? ' 
 
 " Booker did n't. He was n't a man of ideas, 
 like Green. Twenty dollars a week was more 
 than he was worth to me. But there was a 
 young chap out in the shop, named Fisher, 
 who 'd overheard scraps of conversation be- 
 tween Booker and myself. Now he came to 
 me. ' I Ve got some ideas,' he said rather 
 modestly, ' and I 'd like to give you the benefit
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 if there is anything in it for me. I can go over 
 to Green's factory any day and get a job, and 
 if you don't care to take up my ideas I 'd like 
 to see Green about them. He 's been after me 
 several times. You see he knows me pretty 
 well; we worked together here quite a 
 while.' 
 
 " Now I knew well enough that I had n't 
 managed Green right, or I might have been 
 making his goods myself instead of fighting 
 him. I did n't intend to be caught the same 
 way twice. I could see that this young chap 
 had ideas up his sleeve, and I needed ideas 
 more than anything else. I was saturated 
 with legal lore and worn to a frazzle with 
 precedents. Precedents make a lot of money 
 for the lawyers, and sometimes are all right 
 in business ; but what we fellows need more 
 is original wisdom. 
 
 " ' I '11 tell you what I '11 do, Fisher,' said 
 I, mighty quick. ' If you Ve got any ideas 
 really worth while, I '11 fix up some deal with 
 you whereby you '11 get a fair percentage of 
 the profit I make from them. Don't take any 
 ideas over to Green; remember that I '11 treat 
 you right every time.' ' 
 
 132
 
 " You can't always tell from the size of a 
 toad how far he will hop," Barnes half 
 soliloquized. 
 
 " I Ve seen that demonstrated in railroad- 
 ing, time and again," added Frothingham. 
 " I remember a man who worked under me 
 when I was a train master. We had words 
 one day over a trifle, and he quit. A few 
 years later he turned up as my superior, and 
 he caused me a good deal of uneasiness, I can 
 tell you. This world offers queer contradic- 
 tions, and the man is wise who avoids dis- 
 putes over non-essentials. At all events, it's" 
 worth while to cultivate diplomacy and re- 
 tain all the friends possible. You never know 
 where your worst enemy is to show up. But_j 
 usually a man can judge the abilities of an 
 associate with tolerable correctness. These 
 fellows that go up fast, and stay up, are sure 
 to have within them qualities that are discov- 
 erable by their fellow-workers, as well as by 
 the boss. They are the men especially whose 
 friendship is worth cultivating. I am put- 
 ting this, gentlemen, purely on a business 
 basis, if friendship may be so counted." 
 
 " There are two kinds of friendship," said 
 133
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 Barnes. " The best kind, perhaps, is the 
 purely personal friendship the sort that 
 moves men to sacrifice themselves for those 
 to whom they are attached. But the purely 
 business friendship is more essential to suc- 
 cess. A business man has a lot of friends who 
 care nothing for him personally, but who 
 hope, somehow or other, to use him some day. 
 Now I am not one of those narrow individu- 
 als who belittle friends of this sort. I say use 
 your friends, and let them use you to legit- 
 imate ends, of course! And so I say to young 
 /^men: Discover all the chaps you can who 
 may be able to help you. Go out and look for 
 them. Before they can be of any use to you, 
 
 Ve got to discover them." 
 " That 's good philosophy," agreed Hop- 
 kins ; " but, as I Ve told you, my philosophy 
 in those days was n't full-grown. I might 
 have discovered Green and made him both 
 a business and a personal friend. But even 
 Fisher had worked for me several years when 
 I discovered him, and Green I had n't discov- 
 ered at all until too late. Neither of these 
 men had been giving me much profit, but both 
 had the capacity for doing so. All that was
 
 - 
 
 as
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 lacking was a little intelligence on my part 
 and the incentive on theirs. 
 
 " Fisher had ideas for a whole line of office 
 furniture and special equipment, and some of 
 the things he invented put Green's product 
 in the shade, so it was a case of turn about Of 
 course Green came back at me with a batch 
 of new products of his own; but at all events 
 I had found goods that did n't have to be sold 
 through the gentlemen who had bottled me so 
 long and kept me out of the running. I or- 
 ganized a sales department and Sam Green 
 did the same. He, too, saw the folly of tying 
 up his markets in one channel. 
 
 " Fisher was the first of my workers who 
 really returned me big profits, but since then 
 I Ve made a specialty of spotting the excep- 
 tionally valuable men and leading them on. 
 Once I got the hang of the thing, it did n't 
 take me long to fire old Hank Slosser and 
 Pete Jorgan and Slim Mike. Booker went 
 with them. But Fisher got a rolltop desk, 
 though he did n't sit at it much of the time. 
 
 " I won't stand for any bogus mushrooms. 
 But don't misunderstand me it 's not the 
 last pound of flesh that I 'm after. I ask no 
 
 135
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 man to work himself to death for me. It 's 
 skill and brains that I want, not slavery. I 
 offer the gospel of hope to every worker who 
 comes into my plant. 
 
 " Some men find their niches in life without 
 being directed; most men don't. One of my 
 assistant superintendents is a fair example. 
 Twenty years ago he entered my factory as a 
 raw foreign boy. We saw his inherent ability 
 along a certain branch of our work; so we 
 picked him out of the wrong niche and put 
 him into the right one. We gave him special 
 training both in the factory and at a technical 
 night school, and, by giving him the incentive 
 to stay, made sure that he would n't get away 
 from us. 
 
 " Now this man, if left to himself, probably 
 would have remained a laborer at a dollar and 
 a half a day. At that wage he would have re- 
 turned me perhaps a profit of twenty cents a 
 day. At present he returns me a profit of sev- 
 eral thousand dollars a year through his daily 
 work and the inventions we have helped him 
 to originate. Besides, he is earning a man's 
 wages himself and is getting a royalty on his 
 patents. It is a fascinating game to lead men 
 
 136
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 up like this, and it pays. Once in a while we 
 strike a bonanza lead. 
 
 " I can put my finger on manufacturers 
 and merchants who don't do this. To them 
 twenty dollars a week as a wage looks as big 
 as a house. They 'd let the most skillful man 
 go rather than pay him twenty-two, and they 
 never see in the five-dollar apprentice to-day 
 the five-thousand-dollar executive ten years 
 hence. Yet these are the concerns that have 
 the Slim Mikes. They are running poor- 
 farms without knowing it. It does n't make 
 any difference how much you pay a man so 
 long as he returns you a profit on that wage. 
 
 " I had passed the first crisis in my career 
 and was n't really looking for another, when, 
 a year or two later, a financial disturbance 
 swept over the country, forcing my plant to 
 shut down absolutely. The buying public had 
 no money to put into my goods. This is not 
 equivalent to saying that the public had no 
 money to spend. I wish to emphasize the 
 distinction. 
 
 " Of course it was easy to cut out the bulk 
 of the payroll, but quite impossible to stop 
 paying rent, interest, depreciation on machin-
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ery, and so on. Once more the idle equip- 
 ment! And now came the advantage of our 
 itemized knowledge of operating costs. Al- 
 though our own product was dead for the time 
 being, we were able to get a lot of contract 
 work by offering to do it at just what it cost us. 
 It was not a question of making a profit, 
 merely a problem of keeping even. We made 
 a lot of patent picture-frames, a big batch of 
 thermometer standards, a novelty line, any- 
 thing we could get to do. The quantity of con- 
 tract stuff we turned out during that panic was 
 astonishing. There seemed to be plenty of 
 money that was ready to take advantage of the 
 cost-prices we offered. This fact set me think- 
 ing, and not very long afterward something 
 came of it." 
 
 " I have known a lot of manufacturers and 
 merchants to throw up their hands and quit 
 because temporary hard times drove their par- 
 ticular products into a hole," said Barnes. 
 " Their equipment kept handing them a stag- 
 gering loss every day, and they could n't think 
 of any way to keep busy. The solution of this 
 trouble is not so difficult as it seems to the man 
 who contemplates jumping into the river. It 
 
 138
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 is sometimes easier to commit suicide than to 
 think up a plan by which to live." 
 
 " Since that first panic I have made it a 
 policy to have a batch of understudy prod- 
 ucts," Hopkins told us. " It is amazing what 
 you can do with understudies in an emer- 
 gency. You may sneer at baked beans as a 
 steady diet, but when you are lost in the woods 
 with nothing else to eat a few cans may keep 
 you from starving. 
 
 " As I have shown you, narrow markets may 
 mean ruin; and when you combine narrow 
 markets with a narrow product you place 
 yourself directly at the mercy of every passing 
 gale. I know a manufacturing concern that 
 makes a very heavy steel product as its main 
 line, but for an understudy product has a line 
 of light metal goods that go to wholly different 
 markets. During the last financial disturb- 
 ance the main product was cut off absolutely; 
 but at such times the world does not stop run- 
 ning. This concern's foundry and machine 
 shops were kept sufficiently busy on the secon- 
 dary product to pay the fixed expense on the 
 whole plant. The far-seeing manufacturer is 
 working out the game on this basis.
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " The shrewd merchant, too, works along 
 this plan. Yet only the other day I met a dry- 
 goods man over at the club who complained 
 that his store was costing him so much to oper- 
 ate that he was running behind. Business, he 
 said, was rotten. * Why don't you get some un- 
 derstudy products?' I asked him, and he 
 looked at me in amazement. He 'd only heard 
 of understudies at the theaters. 
 
 " But in order to follow out the understudy 
 product principle a merchant must pave the 
 way with sound financing. The financing of 
 a business is one of the fundamentals, and be- 
 fore I tell you about drygoods understudies I 
 want to revert to Sam Green. The problem 
 of financing brought me to another crisis. 
 
 " Sam Green's company and my own had 
 grown away from mere office fixtures as a 
 product and had taken up a line of factory 
 equipment that had broad possibilities. You 
 gentlemen, perhaps, are familiar with my 
 present goods to some extent. 
 
 " Sam was fighting me with an army of 
 salesmen, directed by captains and majors and 
 colonels stationed here and there about the 
 country. He had a fine selling organization 
 
 140
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 better than mine, I admit. I Ve never been 
 quite so strong on selling as I have been on 
 manufacturing, while Sam reversed the prop- 
 osition. I believed, and still do believe, that 
 selling should always be secondary to the man- 
 ufacturer. This statement may seem strange 
 to you ; but you '11 see in a few minutes that 
 there 's more danger of overdoing the selling 
 end of the business than there is of devoting 
 undue attention to your goods. However, I 
 had a fair sales organization myself and we 
 kept after Sam rather hard, so we had him by 
 the coat-tail most of the time." 
 
 " Salesmanship ceases to be salesmanship 
 without goods that are worth selling," said 
 Gale. 
 
 This seemed like an odd contradiction, com- 
 ing from a real-estate broker. True, I had 
 never given much thought to real estate ; but, 
 like most people, I did not entertain as high 
 a regard for a man in that calling as for men 
 in the strictly commercial lines of business. 
 I had a half impression that most real-estate 
 men, if not actually crooked, got uncomfort- 
 ably close to the edge. No, don't misunder- 
 stand me I am merely stating the impres- 
 
 141
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 sion I had at that time. You know I had not 
 heard Gale's story then. I did n't suppose that 
 real-estate men ever considered the question of 
 the goods they were selling at least, not in 
 the way we merchants looked at goods. No 
 merchant worthy the name would think of at- 
 tempting to fool a customer on the quality or 
 value of the article sold; but I assumed that 
 fooling people on real estate was considered 
 part of the broker's business. That was why 
 Gale surprised me when he broke in with his 
 comment on salesmanship. 
 
 However, Gale said no more just then, for 
 Greenleaf, who certainly represented the high- 
 est ideals of salesmanship, took up the subject 
 and for a few minutes grew vehement over it. 
 He agreed thoroughly with Gale that sales- 
 manship was not salesmanship unless the goods 
 were absolutely honest. 
 
 Now there were various interesting points 
 brought up that I should like to put down here 
 if it were not for delaying Hopkins' narrative 
 unduly. But the most important, I think, can 
 be voiced in the words of Barnes when he 
 said: 
 
 "Your ideals, gentlemen, are high and 
 142
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 noble, and should be lived up to as nearly as 
 possible. But we must not forget that there 
 is a practical side to business, as well as a the- 
 oretical side. Now a salesman must often go 
 out on the road and attempt to sell goods 
 which he knows are inferior to goods repre- 
 sented by rival salesmen. This salesman must 
 live, gentlemen; at home he has his wife and 
 babies to support, and he cannot, in the very 
 scheme of things, toss up the game of life be- 
 cause of ethical considerations. He must go 
 on doing the thing which his inner conscience 
 tells him is not on a plane with those higher 
 ideals of which we have spoken. We get 
 idealism in books nowhere else! But at 
 the same time he must not succumb to con- 
 ditions; he must fight against them. He 
 must do all in his power to make his goods 
 the best, or to represent goods that he knows 
 to be the best. And remember that when we 
 say a certain article is the best on the market, 
 it is a good deal like saying that a certain 
 woman is the most beautiful of all women in 
 the world. These things are often matters 
 of opinion. If a salesman can honestly ad- 
 vance points of superiority for his goods, he 
 
 143
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 can work with a tolerably clear conscience, 
 though he knows that rival goods also have 
 superior talking points." 
 
 I never heard the case put more succinctly 
 than Barnes thus put it. Until people grow 
 wings, no man can be theoretically and ideally 
 honest. He can't do it and live. But he can 
 and must be practically honest. 
 
 Hopkins now resumed. " The capital 
 stock of my company at that time," he said, 
 " was two hundred thousand dollars. We had 
 put up a number of additions to the factory 
 and established several branch plants. All 
 this required a great deal of money, so we 
 increased the capital twice within three years 
 first to three hundred thousand and then to 
 half a million dollars. 
 
 " Meanwhile my plants accumulated an 
 extraordinary quantity of raw material and 
 half-finished stock. Like most concerns, we 
 borrowed from the banks for buying pur- 
 poses, and sometimes our obligations were 
 very large. It was at one of these times that 
 we suddenly experienced difficulty in meeting 
 our loans. This was due to strategic selling 
 maneuvers on the part of Sam Green. By 
 
 144
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 landing some big and publicly conspicuous 
 contracts that we 'd both been fighting for, he 
 not only cut a lot of profitable business from 
 under us but gained a prestige that meant 
 serious future damage. It looked as if sales- 
 manship, after all, were the chief factor in the 
 game Sam and I were playing. 
 
 " It was a fact that a hungry period dawned 
 on our horizon. We were out in the woods 
 without even canned beans enough to go 
 round. All our plants were stocked up with 
 stuff we could not sell and our bank loans were 
 falling due. We had overdone the financing; 
 and the understudy product idea, though all 
 right of itself, was not powerful enough to 
 offset our stress. 
 
 " We held an emergency meeting of direc- 
 tors, and most of them clamored for another 
 issue of stock. l Make it seven hundred thou- 
 sand dollars,' one of my associates urged. 
 1 That will clear up our obligations and ease 
 off the strain. We 're big enough anyway to 
 carry even a million dollars in capital. If 
 we 're going to fight Sam Green we Ve got to 
 have dead loads of money.' 
 
 " Now I had n't slept much the night pre- 
 145
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 vious. Night is a good time to get down to 
 fundamentals, when you Ve got the whole 
 world to yourself and there 's nobody to dis- 
 turb you except the milkman. So I told the 
 directors that it was n't more money we 
 needed, but less money. We were intoxicated 
 with money. There are more business mal- 
 practices committed in the name of capital 
 than there are crimes that get into court. My 
 concern was something like a wagon that 's 
 overloaded. The wagon may be able to hold 
 the load and the mules can pull it as long as 
 the road is good; but when it gets into the 
 mud it sticks there. It needs less weight on the 
 load and more in the mules. My company, in 
 other words, had too much money tied up in 
 real estate, equipment, and material ; it did n't 
 have enough cash or quick assets the mules 
 that pull a business. 
 
 " You '11 find this situation very common in 
 all classes of business houses and in the homes 
 of the men who work for those houses. Most 
 men have heaps of quick liabilities, but their 
 quick assets are almost nil. That 's why so 
 many fellows are always behind the game, 
 paying the highest prices for the poorest gro- 
 
 146
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 ceries, and so on. It 's the worst sort of finan- 
 cing. Quick assets and quick liabilities ought 
 at least to even up ; this is a test the banks often 
 put on a man. Is that correct, Mr. Dowe? " 
 
 " As true as gospel," agreed Dowe. 
 
 " I therefore proposed," said Hopkins, 
 " that we sell the branch factory real estate, 
 concentrate our manufacturing on a more 
 modern layout and get down to sane finance. 
 This plan we put through, but not in a hurry. 
 The banks approved the conservative trend 
 in our management and gave us time to work 
 it out." 
 
 " The way to get around the banks," volun- 
 teered Dowe, " is to have a sound proposition." 
 
 "Well, we began to build up a sound propo- 
 sition. We began to establish a reserve fund 
 not a surplus to put back into the business, 
 but a separate thing. This brings me back to 
 the subject of understudy products for a dry- 
 goods house, for my plan was copied directly 
 from the policy of successful merchants I 
 knew. 
 
 " One of these merchants always set apart 
 a quarter or a half of his net profits. This 
 money he invested in gilt-edged bonds and 
 
 147
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 savings-bank deposits, and the fund thus cre- 
 ated he never disturbed, except to use the 
 securities as collateral for bank loans when he 
 saw chances to make big extra profits. 
 
 " During a dull season, for instance, he saw 
 a chance to buy a stock of merchandise at fifty 
 cents on the dollar for cash. He took his 
 reserve securities to his bank, put them up 
 as collateral and borrowed a hundred thou- 
 sand dollars. With this money he bought 
 goods really worth two hundred thousand 
 dollars many of them quite foreign to his 
 legitimate drygoods line. These goods were 
 real understudies, playing the role of dry- 
 goods for the time being. This merchant 
 knew that people had to live in hard times as 
 well as in good, and he knew as I had dis- 
 covered long before that a lot of people 
 had money stowed away and were looking 
 for bargains in necessities at just such times 
 of depression. So when his store equipment 
 threatened him with the losses that come from 
 idleness he kept it working with his under- 
 study products. He had the store building, 
 the fixtures, the elevators all the facilities; 
 he made them work at a profit all the time. 
 
 148
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 Perhaps you Ve noticed that some men have 
 this mysterious power of buying up bankrupt 
 stocks for a song; and that other men have an 
 equal facility for going broke whenever the 
 wind shifts to the north. It is n't chance in 
 either case. 
 
 " Well, I built up a comfortable reserve 
 fund in my manufacturing business and it 
 grew until it had five ciphers attached to it. 
 Then we were often able to make money in 
 big chunks with it. We were now using 
 many iron and steel parts in our factory prod- 
 uct, and some of them we could buy more 
 cheaply than we could make them. It often 
 happened that when foundries and machine 
 shops were slack we were able to get very low 
 prices by having the cash. We never touched 
 our reserve fund directly, but followed the 
 plan of the drygoods man." 
 
 " I Ve been hungry for real money myself," 
 said Barnes. " I know how big it looks, and 
 I know that it often looks big even to foun- 
 dries and machine shops. Real money is the 
 thing that talks loudest at any stage of the 
 business game; or the personal game, either, 
 for that matter. The man who has money in 
 
 149
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 his pocket is a king, and the business man with 
 cash to spare is a veritable czar. But he 's the 
 sort of czar who does n't need to worry over 
 bombs. Folks want him to live." 
 
 " Yes," said Hopkins, " I was a czar. I 
 always knew we could meet the loans we thus 
 incurred, or renew them if we wished. The 
 man who knows he can do this is ahead of 
 the game every time. It is the sort of finan- 
 cing that makes an old man young and not a 
 young man old. 
 
 " But business is a queer game, and the 
 man who thinks he has mastered all its artful 
 dodges frequently goes to California to spend 
 the winter or up into the north woods for the 
 summer. When he gets back he finds that 
 some funny kink has tied his affairs into a 
 reef knot. I never went away for more than 
 a month at a time, and then I kept the tele- 
 graph wires and cables pretty lively. I al- 
 ways had a long-distance sight on Sam Green. 
 
 " Of course when a man gets ready to retire 
 it 's different. Then he can shed his harness 
 and kick up his heels provided he 's got his 
 own personal reserve salted away in securities 
 that have no connection with his business. I 
 
 150
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 know a nice old gentleman who retired after 
 forty years devoted to building up a success- 
 ful manufacturing house. But the trouble 
 was that his money did n't retire when he did; 
 it stayed right there in the business and dwin- 
 dled away. What was left blew up last year 
 in a puff of financial vapor, and to-day the 
 old gentleman is trying to get a fresh start at 
 seventy. 
 
 " I Ve known merchants a lot of them 
 -who boasted that they were making heaps 
 of money and putting it all back into their 
 business. Now I Ve always tried to look the 
 truth in the face. It 's sometimes agreeable 
 to hoodwink yourself, but not profitable. 
 When you make a thousand dollars in clean 
 profit and put that thousand dollars back on 
 your shelves in the form of merchandise, it 's 
 a sort of legerdemain to call it profit. When 
 you go away for your four-months' vacation 
 something happens to that merchandise 
 perhaps your store takes fire and your insur- 
 ance does n't cover the loss, or you have n't 
 bought wisely and can't sell the stuff, or some- 
 body invents something better and you have 
 to sacrifice at fifty cents on the dollar.
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 "Oh, yes! that thousand dollars is profit 
 after a fashion. I know all the arguments. 
 Yet when you get right down to the naked 
 truth it is n't profit. In order to make it ac- 
 tual profit you Ve got to get it out of the busi- 
 ness absolutely and into something as safe as 
 a government bond." 
 
 " Business is a tolerably sure game when it 
 is played by the man who knows," cut in 
 Barnes again. " But let that man be laid up 
 for six or eight months with typhoid; who 's 
 going to play it then? On the other hand, a 
 government bond will work for you whether 
 you 're off on a vacation or sick in bed." 
 
 " Not that I advocate taking all your profit 
 out of your business," Hopkins qualified. 
 " No, indeed ! If I 'd done that I never would 
 have grown and got rich. But get out a part 
 of it as you grow; that 's the part you can hon- 
 estly call profit. 
 
 " I want to say a few words more about Sam 
 Green, and that brings me to still another 
 crisis. These crises keep coming; I expect 
 them now. It 's a pleasure to take off my hat 
 to them, shake hands with them and then 
 throw them out of the window. 
 
 152
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 " Sam Green went to Europe, intending to 
 be gone only a few weeks, but when they got 
 over there he and his wife decided to go on 
 round the world and have a year or two of 
 travel and leisure. It was a most natural 
 thing that Green's business should begin to 
 sag as soon as he was far enough away so that 
 cable tolls began to cost two or three dollars 
 a word. Green had always been the one per- 
 sonality in his concern. Of course he had a 
 lot of able men under him, but there was no- 
 body who approached him in power and vir- 
 ility. This was a weak point in his manage- 
 ment. I had seen it all along and felt sure that 
 something would come of it. It 's all right for 
 the head of a concern to be the top in reality, 
 but he does n't want to be a mountain-peak 
 among a collection of sand-dunes. That's 
 what Sam was. He developed his executives 
 just so far, and there he held them. He got a 
 profit from them, but not the full profit. His 
 was thesort of business thatbegins to slide down- 
 hill the minute the spotlight upon it goes out. 
 
 " What happened was bound to happen any- 
 way; only if Sam had been home the thing 
 we did would have been harder to put over.
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 There had been forces at work in my own or- 
 ganization for a long time that meant a revo- 
 lution which nothing could stop. Sam might 
 have taken advantage of it if he 'd had the 
 right sort of organization. In a word, we had 
 been at work secretly on inventions and new 
 ideas designed to put both Green's product 
 and our own into oblivion. We were con- 
 vinced that times were ripe for the burial of 
 old methods and mechanisms. My ablest ex- 
 ecutives had studied conditions with the keen- 
 est analysis. You remember how it was with 
 typewriters. Of course my house did n't make 
 any typewriters, but the situation in our line 
 was very similar. Everybody knows that a few 
 years ago there was n't a visible typewriter on 
 the market. Then somebody conceived the 
 idea that the times were ripe for a machine 
 that had visible print To-day the old product 
 is being steadily superseded by the new. 
 
 " Well, we did just that thing to Sam Green. 
 It was bound to come, either from Green or 
 from us. Now these revolutions in product 
 are not so much matters of mere mechanical 
 skill and inventive genius as they are matters 
 of viewpoint. Sam did n't have that view- 
 
 154
 
 MANUFACTURER'S STORY 
 
 point; his organization didn't have it. His 
 concern was n't broad enough, or daring 
 enough, or imaginative enough, to put behind 
 it every tradition and strike out into the un- 
 known. He had no Edisons among his execu- 
 tives; I had a whole group of them among 
 mine. An Edison will not work for a man who 
 holds him down to a sand-dune. I am only 
 too anxious to concede that these men, rather 
 than I myself, saw the signs of the times. 
 They convinced me. It has always been my 
 organization that has done the big things in 
 my business. My own part has chiefly been to 
 develop that organization and hold it together. 
 " We had n't intended to spring the thing 
 for a year or two, but while Green was in 
 India we let it go. We got our first patents 
 and started the ball rolling. For a long time 
 we had been drawing in on our old stuff, while 
 Sam had been expanding under the belief that 
 he had us hoodooed. Sam did n't come home 
 for six months, although of course he got wind 
 of the thing. It was reasonable that he 
 should n't get the viewpoint way off there on 
 the other side of the world when he had n't 
 seen the indications while he was at home." 
 
 155
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " If his organization had been paying one 
 hundred per cent," said Barnes, " his men 
 would have made him see the situation and 
 got him home in a hurry." 
 
 " They were away below one hundred per 
 cent," returned Hopkins. " So Sam merely 
 sneered by cable, and his concern sneered in 
 person and went on turning out vast quanti- 
 ties of the old product. You Ve seen that 
 happen before and since. You remember 
 plenty of folks who said the visible typewriter 
 was only a fad. Give them the good old ma- 
 chine that would stand up under real use! 
 In the end Sam Green's concern went to the 
 wall. 
 
 " There 's only one thing more I 'd like to 
 say, and in a way it's most important of all: 
 The chief underlying element in business 
 deeper than any of the principles I Ve spoken 
 of is the truth that the goods put out by a 
 permanently successful house must be of real 
 benefit to mankind. Sam Green went under 
 because his goods ceased to be a benefit. My 
 business lived because we kept abreast of the 
 world's progress and saw that our products 
 must adjust themselves to the generations."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A FREIGHT WRECK 
 
 HOPKINS had n't much more than fin- 
 ished his story when the Limited came 
 upon a freight wreck, and had to wait 
 there for several hours. One of the wheels of 
 a freight car had broken and thrown the train 
 off the track on a steep down-grade, and there 
 the heap of wreckage lay, blocking our way. 
 Here, again, the organization prevented our 
 running into it; but I had n't much time just 
 then to draw analogies, for something of con- 
 siderable consequence took place. I use the 
 word " consequence " in a strictly personal 
 sense, and perhaps I should not take the time 
 of my readers to tell my private affairs. Still, 
 since business and romance are sadly tangled 
 anyhow, I trust you will bear with me. And 
 then I take it that you are to some degree in- 
 terested in Dorothy Dowe. 
 
 157
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 The young lady was standing, with her 
 father, on the track just ahead of our loco- 
 motive, watching the wrecking-crew at work 
 on the fragments of freight cars. I think she 
 wore a fur coat of some sort, though on that 
 score I '11 not be certain. I do remember, 
 however, that her hat was trimmed with sable, 
 and I wondered if she had bought it in the 
 millinery department of Munn, Moorehouse 
 & Gaylord. I knew we 'd had a number of 
 hats something like it and they were costly 
 hats, too. However, I concluded that Miss 
 Dowe probably patronized the more exclu- 
 sive establishments of Fifth Avenue. 
 
 I was thinking things of this sort when I 
 suddenly caught Dorothy looking at me. It 
 was the first time I 'd surprised her in a lapse 
 of this sort, and the instant our eyes met I saw 
 the color come into her face. I don't know 
 why it should, but it did. She turned her 
 brown eyes away instantly. Then an inspira- 
 tion came to me. 
 
 Now I 'm not going to burden this book 
 with any conversations whatever that took 
 place between myself and Dorothy Dowe, 
 so if you fear the tale is to run into a love 
 
 158
 
 A FREIGHT WRECK 
 
 story, you are mistaken. On the other hand, 
 if you find just a suggestion of a romance, I 
 hope you will think it a pleasing one, regard- 
 less of the outcome. 
 
 As I say, I '11 not repeat conversations. But 
 I asked the young lady if she would n't like 
 to go around to the other side of the wreck, 
 where we 'd have a better vantage-point to 
 view operations. Thoughts of Van Dyke had 
 been worrying me, and this impulse was the 
 logical outcome. I cared nothing about get- 
 ting any vantage-point as to the train wreck; 
 it was a vantage over Van Dyke that I wanted. 
 
 I confess I was surprised when Dorothy 
 took my arm. Gladly would I have given a 
 thousand dollars to charity could Van Dyke 
 have been there to see us. 
 
 Once on the other side of the wreck, Dor- 
 othy and I found a new and even more excit- 
 ing adventure. One of the mammoth rotary 
 snow-plows was there, and I begged permis- 
 sion to take the young lady upon it. Half a 
 dozen others followed us. Then we discov- 
 ered the thing in motion, and we all decided 
 to stay since the men in charge were good 
 enough to permit us and enjoy one of the 
 
 159
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 most terrific contests with nature I 'd ever 
 seen. 
 
 The rotary was clearing the snow from a 
 switchback that ran up into the mountains 
 just beyond the point where the wreck had 
 occurred. The track was covered ten feet 
 deep with the drift, and the monster machine 
 simply had to eat its way through. We were 
 literally the center of a cataclysm so tremen- 
 dous that Dorothy grew pale and feared we 'd 
 never get back to the Pullman. 
 
 And then, somehow or other, we fell to 
 talking about business, and of this problem, 
 success, that had interested me so much on the 
 train. I remarked that if men were to attack 
 their difficulties with half the skill and intent 
 shown by this rotary, the snowdrifts would 
 disappear and the business track be left clear 
 and clean. 
 
 This, she agreed, was an inspiring way of 
 looking at it. She knew so little, she added, 
 about business troubles or troubles of any 
 sort. Her father had looked after all that, 
 and taken all the burdens on his own shoul- 
 ders. But she liked men who could fight, and 
 she had been admiring our group of seven in 
 
 1 60
 
 A FREIGHT WRECK 
 
 the smoker, and had wished she might hear 
 some of those fighting-tales we were telling. 
 
 There was a fierce exultation inside me 
 when she spoke thus. She had no praise now 
 for Van Dyke and his fine but useless educa- 
 tion. Of course I took the responsibility right 
 there of inviting her that evening to hear the 
 story Barnes was to tell us. I assured her that 
 we 'd forego our tobacco gladly if she would 
 come. Her father, of course, would be there. 
 
 I remember how her eyes lighted as she 
 accepted promptly, and never even hinted 
 that she had a thought for Van Dyke. Then 
 I told her a little about Barnes what little 
 I knew at the time and perhaps she got a 
 new viewpoint on this war we call business. 
 At all events, she listened attentively, and 
 finally said that men like Barnes were the sort 
 women liked. Her father, too, was a business 
 general, she added; and she hoped I'd get 
 better acquainted with him. She was sure he 
 had done things just as wonderful as those 
 Barnes had achieved. 
 
 There was not the shadow of a doubt about 
 it, I assured her. Banker Dowe had told us 
 a few of the things among others the story 
 
 161
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 of his romance. The way he had outgen- 
 eraled that drygoods chap and carried off 
 Dorothy's mother, I opined, made a fellow 
 feel like doing heroic things himself! 
 
 She had n't much to say for a time after 
 that, but sat watching, through the windows, 
 the artificial snowstorm that was raging about 
 us. I feared I had offended her, and talked 
 volubly about everything I could think of 
 except romance. 
 
 Well, we got through the drift in half an 
 hour, and then the rotary took us back to the 
 main line, where we found Dorothy's father 
 and mother much worried about us. Once on 
 the Pullman, we found a good deal of pleas- 
 ure in relating how the rotary snow-plow had 
 run away with us. Dorothy's narrative actu- 
 ally had quite a business twist when she re- 
 marked, with a mischievous glance at me, that 
 she supposed the machine never would have 
 got back with us except for " organization." 
 She put the accent heavily upon the word. 
 
 The freight wreck was cleared away at last 
 and the Limited proceeded on its way. After 
 dinner that evening I went to the observation- 
 smoker to await the story Barnes was to tell. 
 
 162
 
 A FREIGHT WRECK 
 
 As I chanced to be the first of our party to 
 get there, I fell into a brown study, during 
 which Van Dyke's image appeared. Con- 
 found that chap ! he 'd got into the habit of 
 trailing me around and talking to me when I 
 was alone. 
 
 I am very sure that I should n't have quar- 
 reled with him had he been there in person, 
 but I could n't help quarreling with his astral 
 likeness. " I '11 give you to understand," said 
 he, " that I '11 not have you stealing Miss 
 Dorothy Dowe away from me ! I cannot fight 
 you here, sir, but once on the coast you '11 have 
 to settle!" 
 
 "Very well," said I; " on either coast, as 
 you prefer. Will you please stand aside and 
 let me pass? " 
 
 " Not until I have said what I intend," he 
 retorted, and I could see his eyes snap as 
 plainly as if he had really been there in that 
 empty chair before me. " I want you to 
 know," he added, " that Miss Dowe is, to all 
 intents, engaged to me. I '11 not have any 
 interference! " 
 
 At this I looked him firmly in the face. 
 Laugh if you please, but I imagine you have 
 
 163
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 carried on affairs of this sort yourself when 
 the person you addressed mentally was thou- 
 sands of miles away. As I say, I looked him 
 in the face squarely. 
 
 " Van Dyke," said I, " if you wish to win 
 the true regard of a woman, you must do it 
 by deeds that count in the world. Stand 
 aside!" 
 
 I don't pretend to say what he would have 
 done had he been there in the flesh, but his 
 image immediately quit me. In its place I 
 saw Miss Dorothy herself. I arose in some 
 confusion as I beheld the girl and her father, 
 for it really seemed as if they must have 
 caught a glimpse of Van Dyke as he made his 
 escape. 
 
 But Miss Dowe merely offered me a penny 
 for my thoughts. My face, she hinted, was 
 so savage that it reminded her of a rotary 
 snow-plow about to charge a snowdrift. 
 
 164
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 INNER SECRETS OF A MERCHANT'S RISE 
 
 " A T the age of eighteen," began Barnes, 
 7\ " I was a clerk in a hardware store 
 about two hundred miles from the 
 city of New York. I 'd never had much 
 schooling, for my people were poor and there 
 was a large family of us. Years before, my 
 father had started a shoe store in our little 
 town; but his creditors had got him quickly. 
 After that, he gave up and never tackled busi- 
 ness again. Fate had marked him for failure, 
 he declared, and there was no use bucking 
 Fate. So he worked in a lumber yard until 
 a sunstroke killed him one day." 
 
 The Overland Limited was swinging 
 around a curve just then, and the seven of 
 us, and Dorothy, too, gripped our chairs as 
 we felt the lurch. The observation-smoker 
 had few passengers in it aside from our party, 
 
 165
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 and we had dragged our comfortable seats 
 rather close to each other, without much re- 
 gard for the aisle. Ours was the last car on 
 the train, anyway, and just now nobody wanted 
 to get out on the wide platform back of us. 
 It was more agreeable there inside the train ; 
 the hurricane that swept all around us was 
 fairly blinding. Occasionally, when the fire- 
 man of the locomotive threw open his furnace, 
 the lurid glow lit up the darkness and showed 
 me when I shaded my eyes against the win- 
 dow a scene of weird beauty. Even as I 
 listened to Barnes, I marveled at the stern 
 nerve of the engineer who was plunging us 
 along through the night's fury. 
 
 " My father," Barnes went on, " was like 
 Hopkins' father, and like a thousand men I Ve 
 known myself. He had within him the ability 
 to win a greater success, but he 'd never been 
 trained in the art of planning success. You 
 know men can't jump to achievement, unless 
 they happen to gamble and win. They Ve 
 got to climb up after the fashion of a lineman 
 in climbing a telegraph pole. They must have 
 their straps and spurs on ; then sometimes they 
 can go up fast. My father never provided 
 
 166
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 himself with any climbing paraphernalia. 
 He tried to shin up the telegraph pole, so he 
 never got much above the butt." 
 
 " He had n't discovered that spurs and 
 straps were necessary," observed Hopkins, 
 leaning back. The train had struck a straight 
 track again. " Permit me to use your own 
 simile, Mr. Barnes. If more men would 
 equip themselves with climbing devices, 
 there 'd be fewer men like your father hand- 
 ling boards in the lumber yards." 
 
 " Yes, you are right, sir." Barnes' eyes were 
 thoughtful. " The world is full of men who 
 are blistering their hands because they don't 
 know the powers that are asleep inside their 
 heads. As for me, I 'd rather die of brain fag 
 than sunstroke. Well, I went to work when 
 I was twelve, and dubbed around at odd jobs 
 until I struck that hardware store. Perhaps 
 it was fate that led me there; but somehow, 
 gentlemen, I don't believe much in fate. 
 Other boys had worked in that very same 
 store, but the world has n't heard from them. 
 But call it fate if you will. To a certain ex- 
 tent circumstances lead men into given lines 
 of mental effort; but if a man has acquired the 
 
 167
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 original impulse he can usually lead the cir- 
 cumstances. The best way to help young men 
 is to give them the impulse and thus induce 
 them to work out the chain of endeavor. 
 
 " With me, the impulse came from a very 
 simple and commonplace thing. As a clerk 
 in that little hardware store, I had idled away 
 an hour one dull summer day in building a 
 miniature fort in the show-window. I used a 
 piece of sheet iron, through which I punched 
 holes for the cannon; these latter I impro- 
 vised out of tin. Ahl you see where imagina- 
 tion may be of value to business! 
 
 " I built the fort primarily for my own 
 amusement, but by the time it was finished I 
 had quite an audience watching me from the 
 outside. Then it was that the inspiration 
 flashed through my brain that was really the 
 beginning of my successful career. Since 
 these people were there watching me, I rea- 
 soned, why not show them something they 
 might want to buy? " 
 
 " Inspirations are curious things," spoke up 
 Greenleaf. " Once in a great while one of 
 them hits a man when he is n't expecting it 
 as it did in your case. But the inspirations 
 
 168
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 that count most in life are those that we fish 
 for and are trained to seize upon." 
 
 " I Ve been fishing ever since continu- 
 ally," agreed Barnes. " As I was saying, I 
 set out to show those people some attractive 
 bits of our hardware stock. I built a warship, 
 using in its construction a hundred articles, 
 from jack-knives to stovepipe. Then one day 
 I contrived a threshing machine in the win- 
 dow, and the next week a locomotive. 
 
 " By this time my unique window displays 
 had caused a lot of comment in town, and our 
 trade had improved perceptibly. So now I 
 started my locomotive on a more elaborate 
 scale than I had attempted in the previous 
 exhibits. It was about six feet long, taking up 
 pretty much the whole window. I worked 
 from a photograph I had taken one Sunday. 
 I used a concealed framework of wood, into 
 which I fashioned many kinds of cutlery, 
 cooking utensils, and general hardware. At 
 best, the thing was a grotesque locomotive, but 
 it had the general outlines; and, what was 
 more important, it drew the biggest crowds 
 ever seen round a show window in our town. 
 Everybody was talking about Smith Brothers' 
 
 169
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 locomotive, and even the farmers for miles 
 about came in to see it." 
 
 " The best advertising," commented Green- 
 leaf, " is the sort that gets people coming in 
 spite of themselves. In my own career as a 
 salesman I 've invented many a scheme that 
 got people by the throat and marched them 
 down to spend their money. Pardon me, Mr. 
 Barnes, for interrupting you." 
 
 " Incidentally," Barnes resumed, " I re- 
 ceived some publicity myself. Our local 
 newspaper came out with an item something 
 like this: ' Our young friend, Buddie Barnes, 
 has begun work on a locomotive in the win- 
 dow of our enterprising friends, Smith 
 Brothers, and half the town is watching him. 
 Unfortunately Buddie can work on it only 
 during his spare hours; and, since the Smiths 
 are busy folks, the engine is growing slowly. 
 Buddie says he hopes to finish it in about two 
 weeks. We are proud to have such an enter- 
 prising boy in our midst. Some day he will 
 be a great architect or engineer.' 
 
 " Of course the prediction was wrong," 
 Barnes went on. " I am not a professional 
 man, as professional men are commonly 
 
 170
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 known. But I hold that more men would be 
 successful if they considered success itself a 
 profession. It 's the biggest profession of 
 all." 
 
 "The one that holds untold possibilities!" 
 exclaimed Hopkins, with enthusiasm, taking 
 his cigar from his teeth. " The architect and 
 the engineer have limitations, but success has 
 
 none." 
 
 " One day, when I was putting the finishing 
 touches on my locomotive," Barnes continued, 
 " a man whom I did not know came into the 
 store. Since I was personally acquainted 
 with every individual in town, I knew this 
 man to be a stranger. I was a good deal sur- 
 prised, then, when he came directly to me. 
 
 " * Are you Buddie Barnes?' he asked, 
 bluntly. 
 
 " ' Yes,' said I ; ' at least, folks call me that. 
 My real name is Charles, sir.' 
 
 " I saw him scowl. 1 1 like the nickname 
 better,' he said. l It 's out of the common-run, 
 like yourself. I can pick up a Charles 
 any day, but Buddies are n't so plentiful. 
 Where 'd you get your idea for that engine? ' 
 
 " < Why, I got it out of my imagination, I 
 171
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 suppose,' said I, a little suspicious. l Don't 
 you like it, sir? ' 
 
 "'Yes, of course,' said he; ' if I hadn't 
 liked it I would n't have bothered coming in 
 here. Do you think you could get more ideas 
 of that sort? Your imagination is excellent 
 it 's a fine trait sometimes, and a rare one.' 
 
 " There was a big crowd outside the win- 
 dow watching us. Unlike some window- 
 trimmers, I worked in the open. I was doing 
 the thing to attract attention, so why hide be- 
 hind a curtain? Half our town seemed to be 
 fascinated in watching that clumsy contriv- 
 ance grow day by day. 
 
 " ' Well,' I told him, ' I rather think this 
 is n't the last, by any means. Look at those 
 people out there! So long as I can draw the 
 crowds, I imagine I '11 keep on digging up 
 ideas.' Then I told him about the warship 
 and fort and threshing machine. 
 
 " ' How much wages are you getting for all 
 this? ' he asked. 
 
 " I was n't quite sure I ought to tell him, 
 but finally I confessed that Smith Brothers 
 allowed me five dollars a week, but generously 
 promised me six after New Year's. 
 
 172
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 " ' Well,' he said, * I '11 give you ten dollars 
 a week if you '11 work for me in Blankville. 
 I run a hardware store over there, you see. 
 And let me tell you, boy, if you make good on 
 imagination there 's practically no limit to the 
 money you can earn in time. What we men in 
 business want is chaps who can get the trade for 
 us, and wages don't count if you show results.' 
 
 " I was staggered. That night I put the 
 proposition before my mother, and she con- 
 sented reluctantly to my going to Blankville, a 
 city of a hundred thousand people forty miles 
 away. 
 
 " So here I made my first upward step ; and 
 luckily I had an employer who gave me to 
 understand very clearly how it had come 
 about. It was n't merely a boy he wanted. He 
 could get plenty of husky eighteen-year-old 
 youths in his own city. There were thousands 
 of them who could sweep the store and handle 
 stoves, and even sell goods over the counter; 
 but somehow it seemed very strange to me 
 there was a scarcity of boys and men who 
 had an imagination and the ideas that go with 
 it. In all the history of this Blankville hard- 
 ware store, nobody connected with it had ever 
 
 173
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 drawn the crowds in the way I had drawn 
 them for months to Smith Brothers' little 
 store. 
 
 " I think the events I have so far narrated 
 were the most vitally formative of anything 
 that ever happened to me. They gave me, at 
 the beginning of my career, the key to success. 
 The ordinary hardware clerk, I perceived, 
 worked merely with his hands; I had been 
 working with both hands and brain. And, 
 now that I had the principle of the thing 
 brought home to me by the episode of the loco- 
 motive, I set to work to think out ways by 
 which I could get the people to trade at our 
 store. That, I realized, was what I had been 
 hired for; and my fabulous salary of ten dol- 
 lars a week spurred me on. I simply had to 
 make good ! 
 
 " That very first day I got hold of an inspi- 
 ration. If I had n't been fishing for inspira- 
 tions, it would n't have come to me." Barnes 
 made a salute to Greenleaf in acknowledg- 
 ment of the apt metaphor the latter had 
 voiced. " This inspiration," he went on, " was 
 in reality nothing much. Of itself, it was 
 rather primitive; almost anybody might have 
 
 174
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 thought of it. But it led to extraordinary 
 things. 
 
 " The way it came about was this : I 'd been 
 up to my boarding-house on that first day in 
 Blankville, for dinner. On my return I made 
 the embarrassing mistake of getting into the 
 wrong hardware store there were two of 
 them in our block. Of course I got out in a 
 hurry, but not before the fellows there had the 
 laugh on me. They knew me because they 'd 
 seen me sweeping off the sidewalk that morn- 
 ing. Now my blunder set me to thinking. 
 Those two hardware stores were practically 
 just alike in outward appearance. Indeed, all 
 the stores on the street were pretty much alike. 
 
 " I 'd been hired chiefly because of my 
 ability to trim windows, but already I was 
 outgrowing my job. I asked my employer 
 why he did n't do something to make his store 
 front different so different that customers 
 could spot it at a distance and remember it. 
 
 " This obvious scheme struck him as unique. 
 Like most business men, he had n't even 
 thought of making himself distinctive. He 
 said he would get a painter at once and change 
 the color to red.
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " l Why don't you paint it black? ' I asked. 
 * Black is the natural hardware color; and, 
 besides, it 's a color that is n't likely to be imi- 
 tated. If I were you I 'd paint it the blackest 
 black I could get.' 
 
 " He demurred at first, declaring that black 
 was a funereal color, but finally he decided 
 that even a brisk funeral was better than some 
 live folks he knew. Black it was thereafter, 
 and the effect was absolutely startling! 
 Among those cold drab fronts that lined the 
 street our store stood out in somber gravity, 
 but unmistakable distinction. 
 
 " ' Now, if we only had a brass band and a 
 procession,' he remarked dubiously as he 
 stood on the opposite side of the street the day 
 after the painting was finished, * we 'd be 
 ready to march to the graveyard ! ' 
 
 " I '11 venture the assertion," said Frothing- 
 ham, " that your hardware store never had 
 occasion for a dirge." 
 
 " No," assented Barnes ; " but we got the 
 brass band a few weeks later, and we certainly 
 did have a procession a procession of cus- 
 tomers! The band, you see, was another in- 
 spiration. For some days I had been build- 
 
 176
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 ing a model kitchen in our show window, for 
 the purpose of displaying to the best advan- 
 tage our stock of cooking utensils, and I had 
 been trying to think up the best way of get- 
 ting the people out to see the thing. Suddenly 
 recalling the remark about the band, I 
 dropped my work and hunted up my em- 
 ployer, suggesting that we build a little bal- 
 cony outside the upper windows and really 
 get a band to give a series of afternoon and 
 evening concerts. The plan proved popular; 
 our funereal-looking store was really getting 
 to be a lively proposition. Already it stood 
 out among the stores of the city in a way that 
 was undeniable. There was nobody in town 
 now who did n't know the black store. 
 
 " I can't just explain how all these ideas 
 came to me, but I know that ideas, after all, 
 are a sort of habit. So far as I could see, I 
 was cast pretty much in the mold of other 
 men, but the men about me certainly did n't 
 get ideas the way I got them. I haven't a 
 shadow of doubt but they could have got them 
 had they really tried. One must go after 
 ideas, as Greenleaf says, and catch them, and 
 when they are caught must chain them up so 
 
 177
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 they can't escape. All my life I have been 
 running up against men who had valuable 
 ideas flitting through their heads and did n't 
 know it. I have gathered from other people 
 a host of selling schemes in just this fashion - 
 often from my competitors. 
 
 " That, indeed, was the way I got my idea 
 for a traveling show window, which was one 
 of the biggest hits we made during those early 
 years. It chanced that I boarded at the same 
 house with a young fellow who worked in a 
 competing hardware store. One night at sup- 
 per he asked me, with some sarcasm : 
 
 " l Well, Bud ' my nickname had fol- 
 lowed me to Blankville ' what window 
 monstrosity are you going to have on parade 
 next? ' 
 
 " Quick as a flash the idea was mine and 
 I kept it dark, you may be sure. As soon as 
 I got away from the table I took out my note- 
 book in which I was in the habit of scrawl- 
 ing fragments of ideas as they came to me - 
 and wrote: 'Window on parade.' Thus I 
 chained up the idea for future use. That note- 
 book was really a marvel. Why, even to this 
 day I go back over that record and get mate- 
 
 178
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 rial for present use. Since then I have filled 
 notebook after notebook; I am still doing it 
 and always shall. There is scarcely an hour 
 of the day that I don't take it out to imprison 
 some fleeting germ of a selling scheme which 
 otherwise would be gone in a moment. With- 
 out doubt I have sold millions of dollars' 
 worth of goods through the ideas I thus 
 corralled. 
 
 " But go back to the particular idea I thus 
 abstracted from my competitor's clerk. I 
 pondered it long and deeply. Why was n't it 
 just as logical to take our show window round 
 the city as to have the city come down on Main 
 Street to see it? My employer agreed with 
 me that it was. He was getting to be an enthu- 
 siast in ideas, like myself, for he was reaping 
 substantial returns from them." 
 
 " There 's nothing that breeds enthusiasm 
 like knowing chaps with ideas," said I. " Hir- 
 ing such chaps is even better than knowing 
 them. I '11 tell you later on how I get hold of 
 such fellows myself." 
 
 "Go on, Barnes!" urged Dowe, impatient 
 over my interruption. " Tell us about that 
 traveling show window." 
 
 179
 
 TH.E JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " The plan was simple enough," returned 
 Barnes. " We hired a suitable wagon, inclos- 
 ing it with a special body having long glass 
 windows on both sides. In this we fitted up a 
 very pleasant sort of living room, the most 
 conspicuous feature of which was a big base- 
 burner stove. My employer hired a pretty 
 girl to ride round in this cheerful living room; 
 and, with a real fire in the stove, the thing was 
 as catchy a piece of advertising as I ever in- 
 vented. Our policy was to have it cover dif- 
 ferent streets day by day, making frequent 
 stops of an hour or two on the corners, so as to 
 give the advertising a chance to soak in. Of 
 course we had placards and literature accom- 
 panying it. 
 
 " I Ve forgotten how many stoves we sold 
 that season, .but I do know that we put out a 
 great many more than ever before. The 
 wagon was continually surrounded, wherever 
 it went, by an interested crowd. The whole 
 town talked about the black hardware store. 
 
 " We followed up the traveling stove dis- 
 play with others, such as a moving cutlery ex- 
 hibit, a razor demonstration, a garden-imple- 
 ment display, a tool exhibition, and the like. 
 
 1 80
 
 My idea factory worked overtime
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 Some of these were so successful that we sent 
 the wagon out among the farmers. The most 
 notable of our efforts in this campaign, how- 
 ever, was our paint display. That year we 
 more than doubled our sales in this line of 
 goods. 
 
 " All this time our chief competitor never 
 dreamed that one of his own clerks had given 
 us an idea that helped us to exceed him greatly 
 in volume of sales and profits. Of course he 
 might have taken the plan himself after he 
 saw we were making good with it, but he 
 did n't want to put himself in the position of 
 imitating us. And, not having any original 
 ideas of his own, and no policy of capturing 
 the escaped ideas of others, he lay back and 
 watched us grow. 
 
 " My idea factory worked overtime. No- 
 body realized how hard it worked to get up 
 selling schemes. These were my hobby, my 
 delight, my companions day and night. I 
 can say without hesitation that my success has 
 come from a multiplicity of selling schemes. 
 And yet these schemes did not come to me 
 ready made, any more than the products of 
 industry come to the manufacturer ready to 
 
 181
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 sell. It was my deliberate business to reach 
 out in every direction for the microbes of plans 
 to be put into cultures and developed. I made 
 mistakes, a lot of them, and came near captur- 
 ing a pestilence now and then ; but far of tener 
 I succeeded." 
 
 " Better a man who falls down now and 
 then," remarked Gale, " than one who never 
 ventures a difficult path! " 
 
 " I have often been amazed at the selling 
 opportunities some men let slip through their 
 fingers without even seeing them," Barnes 
 went on. " For instance, I learned by investi- 
 gation that an average of half a dozen wed- 
 dings a day took place in our city among the 
 well-to-do people. The majority of these 
 newly married couples settled down to house- 
 keeping right there and, of course, became 
 steady customers of various stores. Yet no 
 systematic effort was being made by a single 
 merchant in town to get their trade. 
 
 " I kept thinking of this curious state of 
 affairs and wondering how we could appeal 
 to such prospective customers, when one day 
 I was invited to a wedding myself. It was up 
 to me to send a present and I selected a coffee- 
 
 182
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 pot from our stock. It was a new design and 
 of new material, and I learned afterward that 
 it was much admired. Straightway I had my 
 idea for the selling scheme. I proposed to 
 my employer that we order a special lot of 
 these coffee-pots and then, watching the mar- 
 riage licenses, make each bride a wedding 
 present of one, together with our compli- 
 ments and literature. It would give us a 
 splendid opening wedge, I suggested, into a 
 valuable line of trade, and we could clinch it 
 with a diplomatic follow-up campaign. Of 
 course, I admitted, we should have to use 
 some discretion and several grades of coffee- 
 pots. Some of them might well cost us two 
 or three dollars apiece, while others would 
 have to be kept down below a dollar. 
 
 " My employer looked askance at the plan 
 at first. He was not naturally a bold mer- 
 chandiser and had to be crowded all the time. 
 He consented to try the scheme as a feeler. 
 Well, we sold to those newly wedded folks 
 that year enough goods to pay for the coffee- 
 pots a hundred times over; and, furthermore, 
 we secured scores of steady customers who re- 
 mained with us for years. In the first place, 
 "183
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 it was a delicate and personal appeal, which 
 general advertising never would have had; 
 in the second place, the black hardware store 
 already had an individuality that clinched 
 the thing. I often saw the wisdom of estab- 
 lishing a personality before we specialized 
 like this. 
 
 " Then I saw another selling opportunity 
 generally overlooked in the carpenters 
 and builders. Here was a big line of tools in 
 which no dealer in our city had specialized. 
 We ordered a lot of first-class hammers; then 
 we selected from our lists a hundred journey- 
 man carpenters and made each a Christmas 
 present of a hammer, along with a card that 
 read: 'Don't knock anybody with this; but 
 remember that the black hardware store can 
 sell you high-grade tools at the lowest 
 prices.' ' 
 
 " Did it pay? " asked Greenleaf, with a 
 smile. Of course he knew well enough that 
 it had paid. He had worked many a scheme 
 of that sort himself. 
 
 " Did it pay? " repeated Barnes, laughing. 
 " Why, sir, we were simply amazed at the 
 tools we sold! We kept getting results during 
 
 184
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 the whole year; and you may be sure we kept 
 up our specialized campaign in this direc- 
 tion. We had a most marvelous system of 
 follow-ups. 
 
 " So, in like manner, we took up all the 
 various trades that used our lines and worked 
 ourselves into their good graces by every in- 
 sidious scheme I could invent. No line of 
 trade was too small to be captured. We even 
 directed an individual campaign upon school- 
 boys by offering prizes in a Saturday jack- 
 knife guessing contest." 
 
 " I 've heard of that trick before," put in 
 Greenleaf, knowingly. 
 
 " Of course," admitted Barnes. " Some of 
 these schemes are old; besides, I 'm not offer- 
 ing them for folks to take up and imitate 
 though many of them are good enough yet. 
 But conditions have changed in some respects 
 since those days, and old ideas often can be 
 vastly improved upon. Indeed, we found it 
 wise even then to originate new schemes con- 
 stantly and let the old ones die when they had 
 lost their novelty. Selling is a lively game 
 when it really gets results; and one reason so 
 many men fail at it is because they don't work 
 
 185
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 their idea factories hard enough. My em- 
 ployer was strong on store management and 
 routine affairs, but weak on the actual 
 selling." 
 
 " That 's a common failing," said Hopkins, 
 who, indeed, had cause to know. " Most mer- 
 chants don't seem to comprehend that the 
 goods comprise only half the art of business. 
 The other half is the handling of the people. 
 Either half by itself must fail." 
 
 " Go on, Barnes," insisted Dowe. 
 
 " Well, when I was twenty-five years old 
 I was receiving a salary of forty dollars a 
 week, which was not so bad at that period. 
 About this time we began to reach out into 
 new territory. If we could sell so many goods 
 in Blankville, why not in other towns? So, 
 one by one, my employer picked up a chain 
 of small, unsuccessful hardware stores. One 
 of the first he acquired was the store where 
 I had built my original hardware locomotive. 
 I felt sorry for my former employer. I could 
 see all about him the same opportunities for 
 selling that I had found up at Blankville. 
 The markets were there, but he had n't risen 
 to them. He had n't made the specialized, 
 
 186
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 sustained effort necessary to get them. Busi- 
 ness with him was a lump sum ; in reality, it 
 is a complex maze, each problem of which 
 must be reckoned with by itself. The same 
 scheme that will sell a bride a stove will not 
 sell a carpenter a kit of tools or a builder a 
 lot of door-hinges. You must reach out and 
 get hold of your different lines of customers, 
 and not merely stand behind the counter and 
 call to the general public. 
 
 " The local paper in my old town now came 
 out with a genial personal, in which it said: 
 1 Our former townsman, Buddie Barnes, has 
 been in town for several days, making ar- 
 rangements to take over for his company the 
 store of Smith Brothers. We understand that 
 Smith Brothers, always enterprising, have 
 sold out at a handsome profit and will look 
 round a while before engaging in business 
 again. Buddie is now general manager for 
 his house and will make his headquarters, as 
 formerly, in Blankville; but we hope to see 
 him oftener at his old home. We always pre- 
 dicted that Buddie would make a howling 
 success of business. Lucky boy, Buddie! ' 
 
 " That is about as close as most people come 
 187
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 to a true analysis of success," asserted Dowe. 
 " When a man succeeds, he 's a ' lucky dog,' 
 you know." 
 
 " Well, lucky I was, in a way. Right there 
 in my birthplace I duplicated the things I 
 had done up at Blankville. My first em- 
 ployers had had seven years in which to watch 
 me since I left them. It seemed to me that any 
 men, with even mediocre capacity for obser- 
 vation, might have seen how I had done it; 
 but, even under the shadow of success, they 
 had gone along courting failure. The l hand- 
 some profit ' spoken of by the local newspaper 
 was in reality a despairing grasp at a straw. 
 The store that I had given an individuality 
 with my warship and locomotive, and the like, 
 was about as limp a little proposition as one 
 could find. I had to take hold all over again 
 and bolster it up; but within two years I had 
 made it the most profitable enterprise in the 
 town. By getting my selling grip on people 
 I made them buy. To tell you one-tenth of 
 the schemes I put into operation would take 
 a book. I used the same black paint, the same 
 brass-band idea, the same traveling show win- 
 dow. I broadened the black idea by using 
 
 188
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 black wrapping paper and twine, and heavy 
 black lettering on all our literature. I never 
 lost an opportunity to feature our store and 
 goods, but watched for chances with hawklike 
 eagerness. In some way, every local event 
 had our store pinned to it. If there was a fair, 
 or church sociable, or picnic, there the black 
 store was busy with a contribution or a puzzle 
 game or a booth or something whereby the 
 people gained as well as the store. At births, 
 weddings and even funerals we were on 
 hand. To every boy born in the village we 
 presented a sled or something of the sort; to 
 every girl a doll's buggy or an appropriate 
 toy. Each bride got a handsome present and 
 every new widow a cluster of white roses, 
 with our condolence. It was a little town, and 
 we were very close to the people. We meant 
 to make our store the most popular institution 
 in town, and we did. 
 
 " And then the special sales we held ! Why, 
 the people came from the country and sur- 
 rounding villages to take advantage of them! 
 I announced, for instance, that if it rained on 
 a given day I would mark down certain goods 
 forty per cent. The interest in this proposi- 
 
 189
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 tion was really amazing. I got echoes of it 
 from far out in the country districts. The 
 day in question dawned bright, but in the 
 afternoon there was a furious thunderstorm. 
 Then came the crowd and we had to keep 
 open until eleven o'clock that night to get rid 
 of customers. We sold enough stuff to make 
 up the loss on our gamble and a neat profit 
 besides. In addition, we kept the game mov- 
 ing, which was my chief motive." 
 
 " A successful business must be kept mov- 
 ing," declared Hopkins. " As a manufac- 
 turer, I discovered that truth long ago. It 's 
 a game that cannot stop, gentlemen. The 
 hounds are always after us." 
 
 " There are a thousand ways to keep the 
 selling game moving," Barnes told us. " I re- 
 member that at one time I staked my reputa- 
 tion as a weather prophet on the announce- 
 ment that the temperature would go to zero 
 on a specified day; if my prognostication 
 proved correct, then I would celebrate my 
 skill by giving from ten to twenty per cent dis- 
 count on various lines of stock. In this little 
 scheme I not only stimulated a great deal of 
 interest in the black store, but I assured the 
 
 190
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 store of a. very fair trade on a day that must 
 otherwise be extremely dull. Well, it did go 
 to zero; but the farmers came in just the 
 same and carried away a cheerful lot of 
 merchandise. 
 
 " Again, I advertised that if the weather 
 were bright on a Tuesday it would be a splen- 
 did day for painting barns and the like, and 
 that therefore I would offer big bargains in 
 paints and brushes if bought between the hours 
 of eight and five. This was in the summer, 
 and I knew how absolutely dead our store 
 would be on a bright day in harvest-time, with 
 all the farmers in their fields. If I sold them 
 anything on such a day it would have to be 
 through skillful engineering. Furthermore, 
 I knew that few of the farmers would come 
 themselves, but would send their sons and 
 daughters and wives. I claim, however, that 
 my cunning was thoroughly legitimate. What 
 is a man in business for? I fixed up a special 
 display of everything in the store that would 
 appeal especially to women and children. 
 
 " The day was perfect. Between eight 
 o'clock and two the forerunners began to 
 straggle in; by two o'clock the store was 
 
 191
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 pretty lively; by four there was a veritable 
 crush of womenfolk and children and we did 
 the biggest summer day's business on record. 
 
 "And all this Heaven save the day!- 
 was in that little old store where first I got 
 a job! the same little old store that had 
 barely lived for so many years, yet suddenly 
 had been galvanized into a proposition that 
 cleared net five or six thousand dollars 
 a year! Will anybody say that Buddie Barnes 
 was merely lucky? " 
 
 "No!" spoke up Gale, emphatically. 
 " This thing we call success is indeed a defi- 
 nite art that one must cultivate with the exer- 
 cise of his gray matter." 
 
 "Proceed!" suggested Dowe, as Barnes 
 paused to reflect 
 
 " I was thinking," the latter said, " of the 
 severe test I had ahead of me the test that 
 came after Blankville. At the age of twenty- 
 eight, when I was drawing sixty dollars a week 
 as general manager of our chain of hardware 
 stores, I received an extraordinary offer from 
 a New York wholesale house. Already I had 
 refused several New York offers, for I had a 
 girl in Blankville and was in no hurry to 
 
 192
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 leave. Now, however, with a salary of six 
 thousand dollars a year in sight and an inter- 
 est in the wholesale business, I could not 
 afford to let the opportunity slip. My Blank- 
 ville employer realized too late that he had 
 made a mistake in not letting me in on the 
 good thing I had built up for him. He 
 offered now to set aside a partnership interest 
 for me and raise my wages to seventy-five 
 dollars a week; but I saw a bigger thing in 
 the metropolis. 
 
 " So we had a quiet wedding, and my wife 
 and I moved down to the great town on the 
 Hudson. I scarcely realized the tremendous 
 fight I was undertaking, but I think I should 
 have gone anyway. The fight for business is 
 to me the greatest sport in life. 
 
 " The wholesale hardware house of which 
 I was now the general manager was, I soon 
 discovered, a losing proposition. I was al- 
 most dismayed when I began to realize how 
 it had been dropping down in the list of ag- 
 gressive houses. I understood now why the 
 chief owners of the business had sent up to 
 Blankville for a manager. 
 
 " It took me quite a while to get my bear-
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ings and measure our competitors. They were 
 a powerful lot, backed by great capital and 
 carrying goods that had the advantage of pop- 
 ularity and trademarked reputations. Our 
 own establishment was by no means young, and 
 in its earlier years had enjoyed an excellent 
 trade; but bad management on the part of 
 the heirs who had fallen into it had brought 
 it to its present straits. 
 
 " My first problem, then, was to find out the 
 precise elements that had gone to make up that 
 bad management. I never waste breath over 
 lump-sum propositions. Many a time I have 
 seen a man buy out a poorly managed business 
 and then go right along in the old rut! 
 
 " A careful analysis of our goods showed 
 me that many of them were mediocre or lack- 
 ing in a definite standard. For instance, we 
 were carrying a nameless half-breed line of 
 tools, some of which were very fair and some 
 practically worthless. Formerly we had car- 
 ried a certain line put out by a high-grade 
 manufacturer; but another house had got 
 it away from us and was handling it 
 exclusively." 
 
 " There 's one thing competitors can't get 
 194
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 away from a man," vouchsafed Dowe : " they 
 can't take away one's shrewd horse-sense and 
 fighting ability." 
 
 " Sometimes they try to do even that," an- 
 swered Barnes. " I Ve seen a competitor back 
 a man into a corner and bullyrag him until 
 he had n't any wits or fight left in him. Two 
 or three chaps have tried it on me, but I Ve 
 turned round mighty quick and let 'em have 
 my heels right in their faces. An uncle of 
 mine had a horse that always did this when 
 the men went out into the pasture to catch him. 
 He 'd wheel quick as lightning, just when they 
 thought they had him cinched. I had a whop- 
 ping big respect for that horse, although he 
 was a measly little beast with half a dozen 
 spavins. So a business house may be little and 
 homely and spavined, yet compel a lot of re- 
 spect on the part of the big fellows. 
 
 " Indeed, this wholesale house of which I 
 now became general manager was, as I soon 
 discovered, spavined. But it could wheel and 
 kick, and it did. The first problem was to 
 get the goods back on a sound basis. And let 
 me say, gentlemen, that what I did with tools 
 may be taken as typical of my efforts with 
 
 195
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 other goods later on. I concentrated on tools 
 because it was vitally necessary to get quick 
 action on something. I " 
 
 " My advice to a downhill business," inter- 
 rupted Hopkins, with some emphasis, " is 
 always to concentrate first upon the most 
 likely line available, and then, one by one, on 
 other lines." 
 
 " I went up into Massachusetts," Barnes 
 went on, " and had a day's earnest talk with 
 the head of a certain establishment manufac- 
 turing hand tools. I proposed that together 
 we undertake a determined selling campaign. 
 I agreed to invent all the selling schemes and 
 do the actual marketing, while he was to 
 strengthen his qualities to a definite standard, 
 trademark some of his lines in a pulling way, 
 and spend some money on specialized adver- 
 tising. Of course my house was to have the 
 exclusive handling of these particular trade- 
 marked lines. 
 
 " The reputation I had gained up in the 
 Blankville territory enabled me to close the 
 contract, especially as this manufacturer had 
 been wondering for a long time how he could 
 sell more of his product. 
 
 196
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 " While the manufacturer was getting his 
 quality into shape I was busy with my selling 
 organization. We had only nine traveling 
 men at that time and our financial handicaps 
 prevented plunging, even had I wanted to go 
 about it that way. I called in all our salesmen 
 and studied them at first hand, went over their 
 records, analyzed their territories and put the 
 results on paper. I have always found that 
 an analysis, no matter what, takes on a differ- 
 ent aspect when it is written out in cold words. 
 
 " Then I gave a little dinner to these men, 
 taking care that no outsiders were within 
 hearing. Over our cigars, I talked until three 
 o'clock in the morning. I suppose what I said 
 about the art of salesmanship sounded rather 
 fantastic to some of those men, but every word 
 of it was based on what I had done at Blank- 
 ville. I told them that selling was really a 
 science composed of a host of little things and 
 that each one of these little things was of itself 
 a selling scheme. One by one I took up a 
 score of these lesser ingredients of salesman- 
 ship entirely removed from the great prob- 
 lem of the goods themselves and analyzed 
 for their benefit a high-class salesman and a 
 
 197
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 poor one. I knew that I hit some of those 
 chaps pretty hard and I meant to. 
 
 " My next step was to make an extended 
 trip through the Middle and Western states. 
 It was quite an expense, for I was gone a 
 month; but the information I gathered was 
 afterward worth a fortune to me. I did not 
 go to sell goods, but to discover the best sec- 
 tion of the country to select for our initial tool 
 campaign." 
 
 " There are two ways to launch a selling 
 campaign," Hopkins interpolated, raising his 
 voice as the Limited thundered over a bridge. 
 " The wrong way is to go it blind, as many 
 a house has done, and dissipate one's energies 
 by lack of specialization. The right way is 
 to hunt out the lines of least resistance." 
 
 "You've hit the nail squarely!" Barnes 
 called the Pullman porter and sent for more 
 cigars. " For instance, I might have started 
 the campaign by attempting to cover all our 
 territory, using our nine salesmen. Instead, I 
 picked out two populous Western states and 
 drew a carefully worked-out line that bounded 
 our first season's efforts. This territory I se- 
 lected for two reasons: First, because it was 
 
 198
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 developing extraordinarily fast, a fact I 
 proved by first-hand statistics; second, be- 
 cause our competitors seemed particularly ne- 
 glectful of its special opportunities. Here, 
 then, was our opportunity! 
 
 " I went back to New York and called in 
 three men I had chosen for the purpose in 
 view. Since our little dinner, all our travel- 
 ing men had been doing very much better 
 work; these three especially had proved the 
 truth of my theories. 
 
 " Now I took these men up to Massachusetts 
 with me, and we all spent a week in the tool 
 factory, studying our goods and the process of 
 manufacture. We got a wholly new light on 
 this aspect of the business, and I can say that 
 this one week's time was worth to our house 
 many hundreds of thousands of dollars 
 ultimately. 
 
 " At last, after several months of prepara- 
 tion, we were ready to spring our coup. My 
 three salesmen were down in their new terri- 
 tories, with strong inducements to do their 
 best work. The local newspapers down there 
 came out with the manufacturer's ads, and we 
 used the street cars and other special advertis- 
 
 199
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ing mediums. The trademark name my 
 own conception was very attractive and was 
 featured as heavily as possible. 
 
 " I have already told you some of the novel 
 methods that sold goods for me at Blankville. 
 These selling schemes I now adapted to this 
 special line of tools, and my three lieutenants 
 who were now thoroughly saturated with 
 my history and my ideas proceeded to satu- 
 rate the local dealers down there. Thus all 
 over that territory began one of the most ex- 
 traordinary selling campaigns I ever engi- 
 neered. The best of it was that it did not run 
 up a prohibitive expense, either for my house 
 or for the manufacturer. The local dealers 
 were spurred by legitimate hope of gain to 
 undertake the heaviest part of the work. That 
 is the advantage of a properly built organiza- 
 tion. The men at the top of it plan; those 
 lower down execute." 
 
 " No business can achieve great success," 
 said Hopkins, " when the management has to 
 do the detailed work as well as to engineer 
 the thing." 
 
 " Here 's another point," continued Barnes; 
 " another point that I often observe in unsuc- 
 
 200
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 cessful wholesalers: they fall short because 
 they don't understand retailing. What is 
 wholesaling, anyway, but a step in retailing? 
 If all men in the retail business knew how to 
 sell goods the manufacturer and jobber could 
 afford to lie back and merely supply those 
 goods; but, with only one man out of ten 
 really competent to do the actual retail mar- 
 keting, the problem for the wholesaler is to 
 educate the retailer and ginger him up. 
 
 " Well, we did educate those fellows and 
 ginger them up until they were almost as en- 
 thusiastic some of them as I had been 
 at Blankville. We tried to make every hard- 
 ware store in that territory reflect as closely 
 as possible my old Blankville headquarters. 
 A wonderful story that Blankville tale was to 
 those hardware men -a story that never grew 
 old. We proved it to them by indisputable 
 evidence. One day one of these dealers came 
 to New York and I took him up to Blankville 
 in person, and on through the whole chain of 
 stores. He went home immensely enthusias- 
 tic. Then I hit on a new selling scheme. I 
 announced to the local Western dealers that 
 my house would pay the expenses of a trip 
 
 2OI
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 to New York whenever one of them attained a 
 given volume of sales in tools. Whenever a 
 dealer took advantage of this offer I con- 
 ducted him straightway to Blankville and the 
 chain. This, indeed, was my chief motive. 
 My former employer was quite willing to let 
 us go over the comparative statistics of our 
 growth and to let me point out, by means of 
 the books, the results of our most notable cam- 
 paigns. In every instance the Western dealer 
 went home with his selling instincts thor- 
 oughly aroused and better still with a 
 new stock of definite selling schemes." 
 
 " There is nothing that wakes up a man like 
 success the success of another fellow pre- 
 sented in concrete, understandable form," 
 opined Gale. 
 
 " I had many selling schemes during that 
 campaign." Barnes went along with his nar- 
 rative. The hour was late, but not one of us 
 wanted him to quit not even Dorothy. As 
 for me, I could have stayed there all night and 
 heard Barnes talk, for his was a selling story 
 that came very close home to me. My life 
 problem, you know, is selling goods. I sell 
 both at retail and wholesale, and since I Ve 
 
 202
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 known Barnes I Ve added twenty per cent to 
 my firm's business. " I had many selling 
 schemes," he repeated, " but always, so far as 
 I could direct them during that particular 
 campaign, tools were the chief feature. Of 
 course my three traveling men sold a general 
 line of hardware, and a very substantial line it 
 proved to be; but all the fireworks were con- 
 centrated on the tools. We featured kits of 
 tools in numerous varieties; we engineered 
 all sorts of special sales; we reached out and 
 got our irresistible grip on the farmers, on the 
 butchers, on the builders, on the city house- 
 holders, on the workshops, on the schoolboys. 
 " We kept the names of all customers who 
 bought our tools, and followed them up with 
 propositions they could not ignore. Did you 
 ever stop to think that the average house seems 
 to consider a sale a closed incident? How 
 many hundreds of strangers have you seen go 
 into a place of business, buy something or 
 other and walk out, never to go back again? 
 Imagine yourself the owner of such a store. 
 You would n't have known how to follow up 
 these customers, had you wanted to do so, be- 
 cause you let them get away without revealing 
 
 203
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 their identity. Of course, if you had gone 
 about it bluntly to find out a customer's name 
 you would have offended him, no doubt; but 
 there are always fine little schemes by which 
 you can accomplish such things. When a man 
 bought a saw, for instance, our dealers asked 
 his name and address so that he might have a 
 chance to draw a certain neat litle kit we were 
 offering at some fair or picnic or entertain- 
 ment. Then we kept in touch with him if we 
 considered him worth while. The lists we 
 built up in this way proved invaluable in that 
 campaign and subsequently. We made our 
 customers come back again and again to buy 
 our goods. 
 
 " I wish I had time to tell you what we did 
 to build up sales in other lines aside from tools, 
 but perhaps you can put two and two together. 
 We followed the tool campaign in this same 
 territory with a cutlery campaign, and mean- 
 while we jumped over into another territory 
 with our tools. Then we came along with a 
 special line of cooking utensils, a line of build- 
 ers' hardware, and so on continually add- 
 ing to our selling staff and crowding the 
 enemy's lines harder and harder. Oh yes 
 
 204
 
 INNER SECRETS 
 
 the enemy came down upon us in full force, 
 once the opposing generals realized what we 
 were doing; but we had a pretty good start 
 before the other side really woke up. 
 
 "Our business grew slowly at first, but 
 faster as our organization gathered force. At 
 the end of five years from the time I took it, it 
 had doubled in volume; at the end of ten we 
 were selling twenty times the quantity of goods 
 we had begun with when I went down there 
 from Blankville." 
 
 The train was slowing down for some sta- 
 tion and we could feel the vibration of the air- 
 brakes on the wheels. 
 
 " I reckon that 's about enough," Barnes 
 concluded, with a short laugh. " I need only 
 say, in addition, that ten years ago a certain 
 group of capitalists came to me with their 
 plans for a huge undertaking. It was a tre- 
 mendous thing, calling for the highest selling 
 abilities any man could give. In return, it 
 offered me the possibility of a fortune beyond 
 anything I had dreamed of. 
 
 " I sold my interest in the hardware com- 
 pany and embarked in my new enterprise. 
 To-day, as you know, it stands as conclusive 
 
 205
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 proof of my assertion that a man's chance in 
 business is just about what he sets out to make 
 it. In building up my present business I have 
 merely elaborated the scheme of selling as 
 I have outlined it to you. You have some con- 
 ception, perhaps, of my success of to-day." 
 
 I imagine that millions of consumers in the 
 United States and abroad have tolerably cor- 
 rect ideas of Barnes' success; but few of them 
 have any conception at all of the manner in 
 which that success was obtained. I wish a 
 million men could have heard the tale from 
 the lips of this business master! 
 
 206
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MEN WHO WIN 
 
 IT was well along toward eleven o'clock, 
 but there was no sign of drowsiness in the 
 observation-smoker when Barnes con- 
 cluded his narrative. Instead, there was n't 
 one of us who did not wish to hear more. In- 
 deed, our original circle of seven had been 
 augmented by a score or more of outside audi- 
 tors. The passengers on the Overland Lim- 
 ited were just awaking to the fact that a serial 
 story of business success was in progress. I 
 had been facing the rear of the car, and now 
 that I turned I was surprised to observe that 
 in the group of listeners back of me were sev- 
 eral women. Dorothy Dowe had no cause to 
 feel out of place. 
 
 Now at first it struck me as odd that women 
 should come there and spend an evening 
 listening to a talk of this sort. With Dorothy 
 
 207
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 the case was different, for she was a special 
 guest by invitation and her father was there. 
 But these other women and among them 
 I saw a number of most charming young faces 
 were on hand uninvited ; nor did they show 
 any inclination to go away, now that Barnes' 
 story was done. They, too, wished another 
 installment of the serial. 
 
 In reality, there was nothing odd about this. 
 On the other hand, as I perceived when I re- 
 flected upon it, the interest displayed by the 
 women was most natural and thoroughly fem- 
 inine. We seven were men who had won. 
 
 Is there any story more absorbing than that 
 of the man w r ho wins? Is there anything 
 better calculated to grip the interest of women, 
 as well as of men? And no battle has more 
 action or spectacular incident, or is more re- 
 plete with heroic deeds, than this mighty con- 
 test we call business! It is a war that rages 
 about us daily; whichever way we turn we 
 see its victories and its carnage, its blood and 
 its glory. Its soldiers swarm about us some 
 returning from the front wounded and worn ; 
 others marching to the fore with banners wav- 
 ing and fifes shrilly playing. The flags flutter 
 
 208
 
 MEN WHO WIN 
 
 all around us. Yet how little of its real inner 
 history do we get! How scant is our knowl- 
 edge of the actual story itself! 
 
 And then Dowe had spoken with the deep- 
 est wisdom when he said that through every 
 business ran the current of a romance the 
 story of a woman's love and a man's. It is 
 always the women who cheer the maimed but 
 victorious veteran when at last he comes home 
 from some battle ; it is always the women who 
 wave their farewells and weep over him when 
 he goes forth again. Yes, the whole struggle 
 is carried on for the women. To gain 
 women's love men go out and win or go 
 down to their deaths! 
 
 So I repeat that the presence of the women 
 in the observation-smoker that night was only 
 logic. And even had Van Dyke and Ritten- 
 house been on the Limited, they would have 
 been sadly out of place in the smoker; they 
 would have had no place there among men 
 who had won or were fighting to win. 
 
 I don't know just how it came about, for I 
 was talking with Dorothy for a few minutes 
 and gave no attention to what went on around 
 me; but presently Dorothy's father spoke to 
 
 209
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 us and suggested that we postpone our side- 
 talk, because Frothingham had agreed to tell 
 his story that night. I was secretly pleased, 
 as no doubt you imagine, to see the color that 
 came in the young lady's face when she found 
 that the audience had been waiting for us to 
 be silent. The fact, I thought, was rather 
 complimentary to myself. 
 
 Another thing I discovered : the women in 
 the observation-smoker had voluntarily pro- 
 posed that the men light their cigars. I must 
 have been immersed in my conversation with 
 Dorothy not to have heard this! 
 
 So we did light our Havanas, and asked the 
 porter to open the ventilators just a little 
 wider. I remember that Frothingham's cigar 
 was very large and almost black, and gave 
 forth smoke like a locomotive's as perhaps 
 befitted a railroad man who had climbed a 
 steep and tortuous grade. 
 
 Frothingham's story was, indeed, one for 
 women to hear. Of all the success-tales that 
 were told on that overland journey, it was, 
 perhaps, the one best calculated to hold 
 women listeners. The influence of a woman 
 ran through it from beginning to end. 
 
 210
 
 MEN WHO WIN 
 
 I think I have spoken of Frothingham's 
 eyes black as coal but I have n't given 
 you much of a picture of him. He is a man 
 of large frame, yet with no surplus weight. 
 His shoulders are unusually broad, and he 
 holds them erect and square, as if he were 
 ready on the instant to fall into step with a 
 regiment at the front, it goes without say- 
 ing. His head is large, and his hair, which 
 is still plentiful, is as black as his eyes. These 
 two attributes alone hair and eyes mark 
 him as a commanding figure; yet the strength 
 in his face would be there were he as bald as 
 Dowe or had eyes as blue as a violet. He 
 wears no beard, and his face, at first glance, 
 seems oddly boyish. Indeed, one might take 
 him for a man in his thirties instead of one in 
 his fifties. A close student of physiognomy, 
 however, would know from indubitable signs 
 that his battles had reached over decades. Of 
 course you know, if you know anything at all 
 about Frothingham, that he attained promi- 
 nence early, and was a magnate at forty. To- 
 day he owns railroads in twenty-odd states, I 
 believe. 
 
 211
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 SUCCESS BY THE RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 "H P^HIRTY years ago," said Frothingham, 
 when Miss Dowe and I had suddenly 
 relapsed into a confused silence, " I 
 was a brakeman on a railroad running into 
 Jersey City. 1 braked for several years on 
 freights and finally was advanced to the pas- 
 senger service, if advancement I may call it, 
 for I received no increased pay. Further ad- 
 vancement, however, was so slow in coming 
 that I almost despaired; more than once I 
 came near quitting my job to hunt up some- 
 thing that would give me a better show in life. 
 I liked railroading, but to ride up and down 
 the line daily for five long years at fifty dol- 
 lars a month or thereabout was not in keeping 
 with the ambitions of a chap in his twenties. 
 Besides, I had married and established a home 
 at a division headquarters about a hundred 
 
 212
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 and fifty miles from New York, and I did n't 
 see how my increasing necessities could be met 
 on such a meager salary. It was up to me to 
 strike a lead somehow. Either I must quit 
 railroading or secure a promotion. 
 
 " I thought the proposition over very care- 
 fully and my wife and I talked about it ear- 
 nestly. She suggested that I go to the super- 
 intendent and explain that I had worked for 
 years in a humble capacity and deserved some- 
 thing better really needed it. I could tell 
 him all the things I had done for the railroad 
 and, by thus showing what a good man I was, 
 force myself on the superintendent's attention. 
 
 " This seemed, at first, a fine idea. I would 
 do the thing before I made my next run, I 
 declared. So my wife laid out a white shirt 
 and my reserve uniform, and off I started. In 
 less than hour I was back home. 
 
 " I well remember how anxious my wife's 
 face was as she met me at the door. ' Well? ' 
 she asked, as she came down the steps toward 
 me. ' Did you get into the superintendent's 
 office, John? Did you see him? ' 
 
 " ' I got only as far as the door,' said I. 
 ' You see, Mary, I sort of lost my nerve while 
 
 213
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 I was waiting outside on the bench. I I 
 was trying to think up the speech I was to 
 make to him; and somehow I could n't frame 
 it up to suit me. I well, to tell the truth, 
 Mary, I got up and ran away.' 
 
 " I saw the tears of disappointment anol 
 vexation spring to my wife's eyes. Upstairs 
 in our cottage the baby was crying. I glanced 
 about ruefully upon our meager little home. 
 Everything spoke of our need of money. 
 
 111 Oh, John!' the poor girl cried 'Oh, 
 John! I really thought you had more nerve! ' 
 
 " ' Well,' said I, sinking into a chair with a 
 sigh, 'I 'm not so sure that it's nerve I lack. 
 Maybe it 's something else. You suggested 
 that I tell the superintendent all the things 
 I had done for the railroad. Now that 's just 
 where all the trouble lay. When I came to 
 framing up my speech I could n't think of 
 anything I 'd done not one solitary thing, 
 Mary, beyond the things I was- forced to do.' 
 
 " ' But, John,' she protested ' But, John, 
 you know you 've always been faithful! How 
 can you say such things about yourself? ' 
 
 " l A dog can be faithful,' said I. ' Now I 
 tell you, Mary, I Ve got a hunch that I Ve 
 
 214
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 gone about this thing from a wrong philos- 
 ophy. Before I hit the old man for a better 
 job, I 'm going to do something that he can 
 see for himself! ' 
 
 " Mary went upstairs to quiet the baby and 
 I fell to thinking. 
 
 " I kept on thinking that day while I was 
 out on my run. My train was a fast one; at 
 some of the stations we stopped to discharge 
 passengers from a distance, but not to take any- 
 body on. At these stops we almost always had 
 a lot of trouble with people who mistook our 
 train for the local following it. To prevent 
 their getting on, we had to use the whole train 
 crew to bar the steps. Our conductor was a 
 grouchy old chap a good railroader, but a 
 poor man to handle people diplomatically. 
 Many a time I had seen him confront anxious 
 travelers at these discharge stops and, without 
 explaining, merely grunt: ' Nothin' doin'!' 
 Sometimes he had to fight with them almost to 
 keep them off the train. 
 
 " Well, I had fallen pretty much into the 
 same habit myself so had the rest of the 
 crew; but now, on this particular day, a new 
 light came over me. I wanted to do something 
 
 215
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 for the railroad out of the ordinary, so it oc- 
 curred to me to begin with politeness. 
 
 " ( This is the special limited, madam; it is 
 not allowed to take passengers from this sta- 
 tion. Will you please wait for the local? 
 It '11 be along pretty soon.' This, or some- 
 thing like it, was the way I commenced to act 
 upon my new philosophy. 
 
 " About a week later the superintendent was 
 on the train. As he walked up and down the 
 platform at one of these troublesome stops, I 
 saw him glance at me sharply as I explained, 
 with rather extraordinary elaborateness, that 
 local tickets were not good on the special lim- 
 ited. I knew well enough that my bearing 
 and politeness were unusual on our line. At 
 that time the officials of the road had given 
 the finer points of personal contact little 
 thought. 
 
 During the following month I broadened 
 my scheme; I watched for opportunities on 
 the train to bestow little attentions on pas- 
 sengers. I looked after the ventilators more 
 carefully, opened and shut windows, carried 
 baggage for women and old persons; and 
 quite a good many times I had occasion to re- 
 
 216
 
 "I watched for opportunities on the train to bestow 
 little attentions on passengers"
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 fuse tips. I was after bigger game. My phi- 
 losophy was to serve the company; and if in- 
 cidentally I served the company's patrons I 
 was not the sort to take money for it like a ser- 
 vant. This view of the thing never seemed to 
 occur to my associates on the railroad, and I 
 was subjected to much good-natured raillery 
 - and some that was not good-natured be- 
 cause of my altered demeanor. Mary and I 
 talked it over, and we kept our counsel. 
 
 " ( It 's like this, Mary,' I said, one night at 
 supper: ' if only I can make myself stand out 
 conspicuously in the eyes of the officials some- 
 thing is bound to come of it. In the past I Ve 
 been only one bean among a bushel. Now 
 I 'm a different sort of bean, you see. I 'm get- 
 ting away from the common lot' ' 
 
 1 To succeed, one must always do this," said 
 Barnes. " But there is one important thing to 
 consider, gentlemen: simply being a different 
 sort of bean will not of itself bring success. 
 The bean must be better, as well as different 
 A black bean among a lot of white ones may 
 be conspicuous, but when you eat it perhaps 
 you '11 find a hard kernel inside that '11 break 
 off your tooth." 
 
 217
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 "True enough!" Frothingham agreed. 
 " But I was n't a black bean, Mr. Barnes. 
 You will observe, as I proceed, that my flavor 
 improved and that I had no hard kernel for 
 people to bite on. Well, I was speaking of 
 Mrs. Frothingham, and of our conversation 
 at supper that night * Yes, John,' said she, 
 as I passed up my dish for another serving of 
 prunes we were long on prunes in those 
 days * Yes, John, you are getting away from 
 the common lot, and since you 're making 
 yourself agreeably conspicuous, you 'd better 
 wear your reserve uniform after this and get 
 another for emergencies. It won't pay to look 
 shabby.' 
 
 " So I spruced up and, altogether, became 
 quite a Chesterfield. 
 
 " Among other things I did under my new 
 philosophy was to announce the stations so 
 that every passenger in the car could hear. 
 Instead of standing on the platform and yell- 
 ing to no purpose, I walked the length of the 
 car, calling the stations repeatedly. One day, 
 after I had done this, an old gentleman sum- 
 moned me. ( You are the first brakeman I 
 ever knew who called the stations properly/ 
 
 218
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 he said. ' It is evident to me that you have 
 the right sort of intelligence and energy. I 'd 
 like to have your name.' 
 
 " I gave it to him, and afterward I learned 
 that he was one of the directors in the com- 
 pany. It was only a week later that a special 
 messenger came to my house one night with 
 orders to take out number six, at eleven-fifty- 
 five, as conductor. A proud moment it was 
 for me when I gave the signal and swung my- 
 self aboard. 
 
 " Well, I was happy enough for a time, but 
 Mary said to me one day: 
 
 " ' John, you must n't stop where you are. 
 Now that you Ve learned how to get a better 
 job, why not try for trainmaster? Don't be- 
 come a mere bean among the bushel again; 
 you 're smart enough to be president of the 
 railroad some day you know you are.' 
 
 " * I Ve been thinking about that too,' said 
 I --'there are beans among conductors as 
 well as among brakemen. I think I '11 have 
 to turn myself into a radish, so they '11 pick 
 me out and put me in the radish class.' 
 
 " So I set about giving myself a distinction 
 as conductor. Mary and I often planned it 
 
 219
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 out and reduced our philosophy to actual fact 
 * John,' she said, l you must get the reputation 
 of being the very best and most agreeable con- 
 ductor on the line. Are n't there lots of times 
 when you can help the passengers plan out 
 their connections and routes, and things of 
 that sort? Can't you help them about decid- 
 ing on hotels? And say, John, could n't you 
 do something to make traveling pleasanter for 
 folks who don't ride in Pullmans? When 
 I Ve been on the cars myself I Ve often longed 
 for a pillow to put against the back of the seat 
 and a place to wash my hands and things 
 of that sort.' 
 
 " It was not always easy to keep up my Ches- 
 terfield atmosphere; but, with my wife's en- 
 couragement, I did it. I got the reputation of 
 being the most popular conductor on the road, 
 and it was n't long before I could see that the 
 higher officials had me singled out. They 
 talked to me when they traveled over the line 
 and I knew they were pleased with me. 
 
 " The trainmaster, too, classified me as be- 
 longing to a species out of the common run of 
 conductors; but even he did not know that I 
 was really a sort of actor that, had I fol- 
 
 220
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 lowed my own inclinations, I should have re- 
 mained a bean instead of becoming a radish. 
 To be a radish, in other words, required a dis- 
 tinct, conscious effort, steadily maintained. 
 This, I take it, is what some men in trade call 
 a business policy. It is what every man must 
 have if he makes the most of success. 
 
 " One day, when the general manager was 
 on my train, I suggested to him the ideas my 
 wife had originated washbowls and pil- 
 lows. He laughed at first, but the next time I 
 saw him he said he had laid the matter before 
 the president, who was much interested in 
 building up our passenger traffic. 
 
 " It was not a great while before some of 
 our coaches on the long runs were equipped 
 with these conveniences. One day I observed 
 a woman passenger tying a newspaper about 
 her hat before she put it on the rack and 
 another idea came to me. When the general 
 manager went over the line on my train next 
 time I suggested furnishing large paper bags 
 for protecting women's hats. This was a 
 clever thought, he agreed ; it was one of those 
 little conceits the president was looking for in 
 his efforts to make our road distinctive. The 
 
 221
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 plan was adopted, and I know it brought many 
 hundreds of dollars in traffic to our company 
 within a year. I talked with group after 
 group of women on my trains who told me 
 they had selected our route because the cinders 
 on the other lines were so harmful to their 
 hats. 
 
 " Another time I noticed a passenger tug- 
 ging at one of our awkward wooden window- 
 blinds, and I suggested to the president him- 
 self, who came over the line next day in his 
 private car, that we substitute the sliding- 
 curtain. This was done as fast as possible. 
 
 " In these days I grew into the acquaintance 
 of those above me and had the satisfaction of 
 knowing that I was contributing in a material 
 way to the success of our railroad. Not all my 
 suggestions were adopted, but I had gained the 
 reputation of being a man with ideas worth 
 cultivating. 
 
 " I was not surprised, then, when I suc- 
 ceeded to the position of trainmaster, the 
 former incumbent having been made division 
 superintendent. 
 
 " * Now, John,' said my wife that very night, 
 ' you Ve got among the radishes at last, but 
 
 222
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 you must n't stay there. You Ve got to change 
 yourself into a well, a cabbage.' 
 
 " i Not quite so fast, Mary,' I answered; ( I 
 fancy I '11 have to be a turnip first.' 
 
 " The problem now seemed harder than 
 ever. What could I do as trainmaster to make 
 myself stand out above all the trainmasters on 
 our road? Yet, if I meant to go about deliber- 
 ately to lay my wires for another promotion 
 I must draw the attention of the management 
 in some consistent but non-spectacular way. 
 I must steadily hammer home the fact that I 
 was delivering every day a stock of ideas 
 that benefited the road and made me more 
 valuable. 
 
 " I looked about on my fellow trainmasters 
 and analyzed them. They were good, capable 
 fellows ; but, as I came to know them per- 
 sonally in some cases and through their work 
 - 1 could not discover in one of them any 
 evidence of the philosophy along which I my- 
 self was working. Not one among them 
 seemed to stand out conspicuously as a high- 
 grade man. I tried to imagine myself in the 
 position of the general manager, surveying 
 these men in a quest for executive ability. 
 
 223
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 Which one would be most likely as a candi- 
 date? Mary and I discussed the problem, 
 and she closed the subject by saying: 'John, 
 they're all radishes and all just alike; you 
 really must be a turnip.' 
 
 " I thought about the problem all day and 
 night. It was a great game I was playing. 
 I had won so far and I meant to go on win- 
 ning. We had moved out of our tiny cottage 
 now and had an eight-room house. Things 
 were coming my way, including a bank 
 account. 
 
 " ' Mary,' I said one evening, ' I Ve got a 
 splendid idea for a new signal code, and if it 
 were n't for butting in on that cranky engi- 
 neer of signals I 'd propose it to the company; 
 but that chap is sore at me already for being 
 too busy, as he says.' 
 
 " * What department is he in?' asked my 
 wife. 
 
 " l He 's under the chief engineer of main- 
 tenance-of-way,' I explained. 1 1 don't like to 
 antagonize those fellows, but ' 
 
 " * Go straight to the chief engineer of his 
 department! ' interrupted my wife. * It 's just 
 the chance you Ve been looking for.' 
 
 224
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 " So I went and the ultimate result was a 
 radical change in some of our signaling 
 methods; but by doing so I aroused the jeal- 
 ousy of more than one man and made some 
 enemies who afterward influenced my life 
 very much for my own betterment 
 
 " Well, that signal idea was only the begin- 
 ning. I evolved a lot of ideas on railroading 
 and I set to work to study everything that 
 would help me. We were doing a good many 
 things in those days rather crudely. If you 
 will look back you will see what vast strides 
 the railroads have made in every branch of 
 the business. Did you ever stop to consider 
 that somebody thought out, with infinite study 
 and slow evolution, every one of the improve- 
 ments? Yet I can turn back in memory to my 
 associates of that period and call off man after 
 man who never contributed anything worth 
 mentioning to the march of progress. And 
 among those men were none who ever got 
 very high up. 
 
 " One day during that period I heard a 
 young locomotive engineer boast that he often 
 ran past signals when he was sure they were 
 only matters of form. This set me thinking, 
 
 225
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 and I proposed to the division superintendent 
 that he make a 'surprise' test to discover which 
 engineers were in the habit of doing this. Ob- 
 servers were stationed where they could keep 
 a systematic watch during a certain night; the 
 result was astonishing and alarming. The dis- 
 cipline was immediately drawn very tight. 
 
 " On another occasion I worked out a plan 
 by which a change in our time-schedule en- 
 abled us to obviate chronic congestion on a 
 certain division. On this division it was not 
 uncommon to hold freight trains on sidings 
 for six or eight hours at a stretch. This was 
 not my business, strictly speaking; but I was 
 working on the theory that anything was my 
 business when it benefited the road. I was 
 always looking for these neglected problems. 
 No matter what your calling, you will always 
 find plenty of them. Why, I can go into al- 
 most any business establishment you may des- 
 ignate this moment and find, within half an 
 hour, just this sort of material to work on. 
 Why don't men see their opportunities? 
 My own success has come from analyzing 
 opportunity. 
 
 " Once, when I had occasion to spend half 
 226
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 a day at a town on our line, I found myself 
 analyzing the layout of a new station, work on 
 which was just beginning. I could see very 
 plainly that the depot was to be built on the 
 wrong side of the right-of-way. As soon as 
 I had a chance to see our architect who was 
 on the staff of the chief engineer I men- 
 tioned the matter to him. He became very 
 angry and told me bluntly to mind my own 
 affairs. 
 
 " I related the incident to my wife that 
 night. * Well,' she said, with genuine logic, 
 * if it really were n't your affair you could 
 afford to drop it; but, since you expressed 
 your opinion purely for the good of the rail- 
 road, I think you 'd better take the matter 
 higher up.' 
 
 " I had opportunity to do so within a day or 
 two when I met the chief engineer out on the 
 road. He listened to my suggestion and, after 
 some consideration on the part of those at the 
 very top, the station was built on the other 
 side. The wisdom of this has been demon- 
 strated ever since, for the strategic site of the 
 new depot enabled our road to get many pas- 
 sengers who were brought to this town by the 
 
 227
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 trains of another railroad and had the choice 
 of two lines to a common terminal. 
 
 " Of course this was n't any of my business 
 either. The architect became another one of 
 the little army of enemi-es I was making. He 
 was a narrow man and I did n't worry much 
 over him. 
 
 " I had a similar experience with the engi- 
 neer of tests when I suggestd the necessity of 
 doing something differently. I felt certain 
 that disaster would result unless the methods 
 of testing were changed; and, instead of 
 crawling into my shell after being rebuffed, 
 I saw the general superintendent of motive 
 power. The engineer of tests was furious, 
 but Well, I was making myself a turnip, 
 and I did n't care. In the midst of consider- 
 able friction I was steadily forcing home a lot 
 of ideas that earned the company money 
 and, I believed, saved lives. I knew, too, that 
 the company had me singled out as a man out 
 of the ordinary." 
 
 " When a man singles himself out and gets 
 into a class above the ordinary," declared 
 Barnes, " the company, too, is bound to single 
 him out. When a college professor takes his net 
 
 228
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 and goes out to catch bugs, he does n't bother 
 to catch the commonplace ones; he keeps his 
 eyes open for the fine bugs, every time." 
 
 "Ah!" spoke up the usually silent Gale. 
 " He wants the fine bugs, Mr. Barnes, but 
 often he does n't catch them because he has n't 
 the right sort of net." 
 
 Now this struck a responsive chord in my 
 own experience, and I began to say something 
 about my specialty in business, organization; 
 but Dowe politely interrupted, after I had 
 talked for a minute or two. He reminded me 
 that Frothingham had the floor. At this I 
 shut up rather suddenly, a bit piqued, I con- 
 fess. But the next moment Miss Dorothy 
 looked at me with a smile in her eyes just 
 the sort of smile I had seen her bestow on her 
 father when she spoke of Van Dyke. After 
 that I had no desire to talk organization, and 
 for a few minutes I lost the thread of Froth- 
 ingham's narrative. I '11 go on with it, how- 
 ever, at the point where I picked it up again. 
 
 " I had been thinking about all these things 
 quite a while," he was saying, " when one day 
 I said to Mrs. Frothingham that no matter 
 how much these fellows knocked me, I 
 
 229
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 did n't mean to be held down by enemies and 
 jealousies. 
 
 " ' I suppose,' said I, ( that I run some risk 
 of crowding myself in too fast, but I don't 
 think there 's a great deal of danger so long 
 as I show that I 'm vitally interested in the 
 road that I 'm not a mere crank. And just 
 as soon as I feel that the men over me no longer 
 want ideas which I know to be sound to the 
 core, I '11 quit my job and look for one on some 
 other railroad.' 
 
 " I was promoted sooner than I expected to 
 the position of division superintendent. It 
 was now up to me, as my wife put it, to get 
 out of the turnip class and parade myself as a 
 cabbage in the turnip patch. I was n't long in 
 doing this, for I had seen very clearly the chief 
 faults in the organization under me. This 
 was especially true of the station-masters, 
 station-agents, baggage-agents, train-dispatch- 
 ers, operators, levermen, and other minor but 
 really important cogs in our operating ma- 
 chine. A good deal of attention had been 
 given to larger matters and not enough to 
 lesser ones. I have always gone on the theory 
 that the little things make the big betterments. 
 
 230
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 " There were a good many divisions on our 
 road, and I got very well acquainted with all 
 the division superintendents. Here, too, was 
 a lamentable sameness. Of course, when there 
 is no particular choice, chance usually must 
 determine the selection of a man for advance- 
 ment. Each one of these division superinten- 
 dents wanted to be advanced, and pulled his 
 wires accordingly. Not one of them, however, 
 pulled the wires as I was doing. The more 
 common way was to work along the lines of 
 personal friendship. My way was to deliver 
 more goods to the company than any of my 
 associates. 
 
 " But pretty soon I began to see that I was 
 really running into the danger of which I had 
 spoken to my wife I was crowding the thing 
 rather hard. In reorganizing the staff under 
 me and tightening the lines all through, I 
 was doing many things that lacked prec- 
 edent. From long practice in the art of 
 analysis I had come, almost unconsciously, 
 to be original. 
 
 " Our road at that time, for instance, placed 
 the levermen and tower-repairmen directly 
 under the supervision of the master mechanic 
 
 231
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 of the division. I removed these workers from 
 the master mechanic's direct command and 
 placed them under the chief operator. I cre- 
 ated a new position that of general foreman 
 of locomotives and thus took from the mas- 
 ter mechanic another phase of his immediate 
 power. In other instances I recast the scheme 
 of organization and drew up exacting and defi- 
 nite outlines of duties. 
 
 " All this stirred up a lot of opposition 
 under me and unpleasant comment on the part 
 of other division superintendents. Some of 
 them were fair enough to concede that I was 
 working along the right lines, but others 
 knocked me hard, declaring that I was merely 
 trying to make myself strong without really 
 accomplishing anything for the company. I 
 had always been a four-flusher, they said, and 
 had secured my advancements that way. 
 
 " I was pretty well used to this sort of thing 
 and so long as I had the general superin- 
 tendent with me, as I did have, I was n't 
 worried ; but just about that time the general 
 superintendent resigned to become general 
 manager of another road. 
 
 " The new general superintendent was re- 
 232
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 cruited from outside. In those days we were 
 sadly remiss in developing our own organiza- 
 tions. I, of course, felt that some one of the 
 division superintendents should have been ad- 
 vanced or, at least, that the vacancy ought to 
 have been filled from among our own execu- 
 tives. To-day the tendency is strong in that 
 direction; and the closer the management 
 hews to the principle of self-perpetuation, the 
 better the results. Down in my heart I felt 
 that I was entitled to the job and capable of 
 filling it. I had more logical reasons for this 
 belief than some of the other division super- 
 intendents had for expecting advancement. 
 
 " For a time things went very badly with 
 me. It looked as if my philosophy were all 
 wrong that being a cabbage in a turnip 
 patch was about the worst possible policy. 
 The other division superintendents were all 
 inconspicuous chaps, without any pronounced 
 ideas ; and now, with a new chief over them, 
 they hunted their holes, as it were. Every 
 one of them was afraid to draw attention to 
 himself, lest he be discovered and fired. My 
 friends advised me to subside and quit stirring 
 up new problems to worry the management 
 
 233
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " ' It looks to me,' I said to my wife one day, 
 1 that it 's pretty nearly time to put that threat 
 of mine into execution. I Ve either got to 
 quit my job or else metamorphose myself back 
 into a turnip. My enemies have been busy 
 on the general superintendent, and he 's 
 turned against me. He is n't familiar with 
 my history and he 's not in touch with my 
 ideas. He 's upsetting the new scheme of or- 
 ganization I Ve been trying to install on my 
 division and he won't listen to me.' 
 
 " ' Then you 'd better quit at once,' she 
 advised. 
 
 " Next day, while I was still thinking about 
 this advice, the master mechanic came into my 
 office. He showed me an order from the gen- 
 eral superintendent restoring the levermen to 
 his immediate command. This bit of 
 paper he thrust under my nose in an insulting 
 manner and remarked : ' Here 's one of your 
 crazy schemes exploded and it is n't the 
 last!' 
 
 " So this, then, was a fine example of the 
 organization I had created so studiously and 
 with sole regard for the company's benefit! 
 This was what I got for parading as a cabbage 
 
 234
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 when I might have gone along very comfort- 
 ably as a turnip, without attracting any 
 attention. 
 
 " However, it was too late now to crawl into 
 my hole, even had I felt so disposed. As a 
 matter of fact, I never had felt less like it in 
 all my life. I am something of a fighter in 
 more ways than one. Thanks to the new gen- 
 eral superintendent, my house was crumbling 
 about me; but I was more confident than ever 
 that I was right. I knew I had goods to sell 
 that had a high market value; every man of 
 ability has salable goods these days. Execu- 
 tive ability is at a premium; but no man ever 
 sold his ability at its value by crawling into a 
 hole. 
 
 " The master mechanic, however, did crawl 
 into the gloom. He was a big chap and rather 
 muscular but so was I. Before he knew 
 what was happening I had him by the slack 
 in his trousers and by the neck, and literally 
 threw him downstairs. 
 
 " * Now go ahead with your underhanded 
 work! ' I called after him as I heard him hit 
 the lower landing. * But before you begin it, 
 just go round to the paymaster and get your 
 
 235
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 money. You 're no longer in the employ of 
 my division.' 
 
 " That night I got aboard the Limited and 
 went up to general headquarters. Next day 
 the general superintendent and I had it out 
 The general manager came into the superin- 
 tendent's office in the thick of it, accompanied 
 by the first vice-president, who was in charge 
 of the operating department of the whole 
 system. 
 
 " There was nothing in the nature of a per- 
 sonal quarrel, but I confess that I reviewed 
 with some heat the existing situation. I told 
 trie general superintendent that I had almost 
 decided, at the time the master mechanic 
 caused the scene in my office, to resign. I re- 
 peated what I had said to my wife about quit- 
 ting rather than stultify my ability to serve the 
 railroad. 
 
 " * But, sir,' I went on, * I have changed my 
 mind about resigning. If I quit this railroad 
 I quit it under discharge. I go down fighting. 
 And if I remain I shall claim the right to use 
 my brains in every possible way for the bene- 
 fit of the company. I shall not force my ideas 
 on you, sir, but I shall not have you say to me 
 
 236
 
 9 
 X
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 that you don't want any ideas. I shall not 
 have you treat me in utter contempt, as you 
 did when you countermanded my orders 
 and sent the master mechanic to disrupt the 
 organization.' 
 
 " Then I calmed down somewhat, as he 
 grew purple in the face, and outlined for him 
 my scheme of what a railroad organization 
 ought to be. I showed him where a hundred 
 opportunities for profit lay concealed even in 
 the most lowly switchman or shopclerk. I 
 gave him my reasons for recasting the organi- 
 zation as I had done it, and explained what I 
 hoped to accomplish, in the future if I re- 
 mained. I was not doing all this specialized, 
 laborious thinking for my own amusement, 
 I assured him. I was doing it to make my 
 division the ideal one. 
 
 " The first vice-president and the general 
 manager heard all this without interfering. 
 When I was through the general superin- 
 tendent arose and, to my astonishment, offered 
 me his hand. 
 
 " * You have put the whole problem of rail- 
 roading in a new light,' he said. * I confess 
 that I did n't understand you. I had heard 
 
 23?
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 only the other side of the thing. Hereafter 
 you and I will work in harmony for the benefit 
 of the road.' He was really a broad-gauge 
 man who had been led astray by designing 
 men. 
 
 " When I told my wife about all this she 
 laughed in a way that was almost hysterical. 
 I could n't just make out what she was laugh- 
 ing at until she sputtered : ' John, for a cab- 
 bagehead, you 're certainly all right! ' 
 
 " A couple of years later, when the general 
 superintendent was made general superin- 
 tendent of transportation, I knew that I was 
 slated to succeed him. There was n't another 
 division superintendent on the line who had 
 the ghost of a chance, though several of them 
 thought they did, and howled ' favoritism ' 
 when I sat down at the general superintend- 
 ent's desk. 
 
 " It was now about a decade since I rose 
 above my brakeman's job, after my five years 
 of stagnation there. Every step in my ad- 
 vancement I could trace to the definite phi- 
 losophy I had been following the philoso- 
 phy which urged me on continually to get 
 above the common level in whatever I under- 
 
 238
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 took. At heart, I was not conceited enough to 
 believe that I possessed any wonderful talents 
 beyond those of my fellows. I had walked up 
 over a lot of them only because I had con- 
 sciously set myself apart from them. I had 
 done this, too, in ways that invariably drew 
 the attention of those who must advance me. 
 It had all been a great game with me, studied 
 out with as much labor as if I had been playing 
 a long game of chess with big stakes. The 
 hardest thing about it was the everlasting diffi- 
 culty of holding it down to the fundamental 
 principle that, no matter how I made myself 
 conspicuous, it must be in some manner that 
 benefited my employers primarily and not 
 myself. I often had to strangle the temptation 
 to do otherwise." 
 
 " That 's the philosophy of success the 
 true philosophy!" cried Barnes, and in his 
 emphasis he leaned forward and accidentally 
 burned my hand with his cigar. 
 
 " The very thing that makes men go up! " 
 confirmed Hopkins. " A man must make his 
 employer want him, and want to advance him. 
 He must give his employer more than value 
 received." 
 
 239
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " Perhaps somewhat selfishly," resumed 
 Frothingham, " I kept still about having a 
 philosophy. You see, I did n't want to have 
 a lot of fellows imitating me. I had a magic 
 powder to use the language of the fairy 
 story which I sprinkled before me in the 
 path that led always higher and higher. If I 
 gave away the ingredients of that powder I 'd 
 find other chaps elbowing me aside. Well, 
 I 'm high enough now so that I don't care. 
 
 " And yet I often wondered, and do wonder 
 to-day, that men are so blind about these mat- 
 ters. Success lies in being different from the 
 fellows about you. Anybody ought to see that. 
 Perhaps most people do see it in the abstract, 
 but they can't analyze the thing into any defi- 
 nite philosophy of action. They are not will- 
 ing to knuckle down to the hard, grubbing de- 
 tail and planning necessary to work the thing 
 out as I worked it. 
 
 " My success has been a constant building 
 of brick upon brick, each brick selected with 
 the one object in view. If I were to start again 
 to-day as a young man, possessing the philos- 
 ophy of succeeding as I do now possess it, I 'd 
 be willing to guarantee that I 'd walk up 
 
 240
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 mighty fast in any line of business, whether it 
 were railroading or merchandising, contract- 
 ing or manufacturing. 
 
 ' Well, now that I was up among the cab- 
 bages, I followed my habitual policy. ' Mary, 
 what would be most conspicuous in a cabbage 
 field? ' I asked as I carved the roast one day, 
 soon after my appointment as general superin- 
 tendent. We had moved again and were now 
 living in a metropolitan apartment, which 
 mode of life was not altogether to my liking. 
 It did not seem homelike or just the sort of 
 place in which to bring up the children. Al- 
 ready I was itching to get along higher. 
 
 " l Well,' returned my wife, as she fastened 
 the bib about the neck of our youngest, * I sup- 
 pose, John, that a pumpkin would attract the 
 most attention or perhaps a squash.' 
 
 " * A pumpkin has a better shape than a 
 squash,' said I; l so I reckon I '11 perform in 
 the cabbage field as a big yellow pumpkin. 
 Perhaps some of these railroad presidents 
 about the country will see me and pick me.' 
 
 "Thereupon I proceeded to broaden my 
 scheme for welding our whole operating de- 
 partment into a closely-knit organization, re- 
 
 241
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 modeled and strengthened at every weak spot 
 I could study out. Now, for the first time, I 
 was in a position really to look for high-grade 
 executive ability and not mere mechanical 
 ability. Instead of doing most of the detailed 
 thinking myself, as I had done up to this point, 
 I ferreted out men who could think and 
 showed them how to do it. I applied this 
 scheme even to the station-agents and section- 
 gangs. I impressed upon everybody under me 
 that our railroad must be better and more 
 profitable than other railroads a sort of 
 pumpkin among cabbages. 
 
 " Before a year had passed, I received a tel- 
 egram asking if I would accept the second 
 vice-presidency of a railroad that touched the 
 Far West. The salary almost staggered me. 
 I knew there was no present vacancy on my 
 own line that could offer such an inducement; 
 so I wired back that I would take the job if the 
 company would let me have free swing with 
 my ideas of railroading. 
 
 " This, as I had surmised, was just what the 
 company wanted me for, and we closed the 
 bargain. I went to my new post as chief of 
 operation and transportation." 
 
 242
 
 SUCCESS; RAILROAD ROUTE 
 
 " Since that time," observed Hopkins, as 
 Frothingham remained silent a minute, " you 
 have had rather free swing with your ideas, I 
 imagine." 
 
 There was a general laugh at this. Froth- 
 ingham certainly was on top in railroading. 
 
 " I have," he assented, " because my ideas 
 were sound. A man who once demonstrates 
 his ideas to be thoroughly safe and progres- 
 sive, can usually swing as free as he pleases. 
 Now, gentlemen, it is past midnight. Let me 
 conclude very briefly. My first venture in 
 railroad ownership was when I purchased, 
 with the backing of a syndicate of capitalists, 
 a small Southern railroad that had been sadly 
 mismanaged. I had seen great possibilities in 
 the property, because it formed a logical link 
 in a chain between the point of supply and that 
 of consumption. It " 
 
 " Permit me to say," interrupted Barnes, 
 " that many a business house stands to-day as 
 a logical link of this sort, yet is so badly mis- 
 managed that it might be bought for a song. 
 If I recollect right, you bought this Southern 
 railroad at a very low price." 
 
 " I did; but to-day I would not sell it at a 
 243
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 very high price. I have developed the possi- 
 bilities within it; I have completed the chain. 
 My success, gentlemen and ladies, as well," 
 added Frothingham, glancing about the car 
 with a smile, " has been due to my policy of 
 developing possibilities wherever I saw them 
 available to me. And let me repeat that suc- 
 cess, after all, is merely the working out of a 
 definite philosophy. Varying conditions, of 
 course, will have more or less effect; but no 
 conditions, short of mental or physical inabil- 
 ity, can hold a man down if he really goes 
 about rising." 
 
 244
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 IN AN AVALANCHE 
 
 THE next morning, soon after breakfast, 
 the top of a mountain fell off and came 
 down the slope upon us. The locomo- 
 tive was crushed and buried out of sight, and 
 its brave engineer, as well as the fireman, met 
 the tragic fate that comes at times to men who 
 do and dare. The baggage and mail cars, too, 
 were demolished and half a dozen of the crew 
 killed or injured in the avalanche. Fate was 
 kind to the remainder of us; not so much as a 
 scratch did we get. 
 
 I often think that the death I should like to 
 meet, when my time comes, is to die in the ser- 
 vice of others. No mere monument of stone 
 can glorify a man's name, but the man who 
 perishes at his post needs no other shaft. This 
 heroic engineer of the Limited might have es- 
 caped. He saw the avalanche coming, and 
 
 245
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 could have abandoned his cab and run back up 
 the grade to safety. Instead, he attempted to 
 get the train through the danger, and to- 
 day his wife and children have the solace 
 of remembering him as a man who preferred 
 death to cowardice. And the fireman, no 
 doubt inspired by his courage, went to death 
 with him. 
 
 So there we stayed all one day, until at night 
 the rescuers had dug away the great mass of 
 earth and snow, relaid the track, and thus 
 opened a path again through the Sierra Ne- 
 vada Mountains. The sleeping cars and the 
 observation-smoker were not damaged, and 
 soon another engine was hauling us through 
 the night on our way to the Pacific. 
 
 There had been no success-tales that day, 
 and no one was in the mood after dinner to 
 bring up the subject. In fact, the smoker was 
 a place now given up chiefly to solitude. The 
 women in the Pullman cars forward were ex- 
 cited and nervous; and the men, for the most 
 part, remained with them. Therefore I, 
 being a bachelor, smoked in moody silence, 
 while my thoughts roved well, no matter! 
 And then that confounded astral Van Dyke 
 
 246
 
 IN AN AVALANCHE 
 
 came into the smoker and insolently seated 
 himself before me, deliberately turning a 
 chair so that he might face me. I have always 
 trained myself in habits of intense concentra- 
 tion, and perhaps this was why the scene was 
 so real to me, though it was only a figment of 
 imagination. 
 
 " Good evening, Gaylord," said the shade. 
 
 " Good evening," said I, striving to be 
 polite. 
 
 " I am glad I Ve found you alone," the fel- 
 low went on, and I saw his eyes gleam at me; 
 " I Ve been wanting all day to ask you a ques- 
 tion, but I scarcely had the opportunity. You 
 and Miss Dorothy Dowe were hardly apart 
 long enough." 
 
 This, I knew, was quite true. " Your sense 
 of observation is excellent," I returned, 
 smiling. 
 
 " Thank you for the compliment," said he, 
 but I saw his lips quiver in anger. " Now this 
 question - 
 
 "Ask a dozen if you please," I broke in; 
 " but I '11 not promise to answer them." 
 
 " There is one question, and one only," he 
 returned, and I could see that his temper was 
 
 247
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 getting the best of him. " I wish to know your 
 intentions concerning Miss Dorothy Dowe." 
 
 I can look back now to that moment and see 
 the whole scene over again, just as I saw it 
 then. What a wonderful thing is imagina- 
 tion! Barnes is right when he says that busi- 
 ness cannot succeed without it. Imagination 
 has built all the marvels of the present era. 
 They are nothing but imagination made real 
 through men's efforts. And years ago I saw 
 in my dreams the present-day store of Munn, 
 Moorehouse & Gaylord; I saw it in my 
 visions quite as plainly as you may see it your- 
 self when you go to New York. So, after all, 
 this fictitious duel of words with Van Dyke 
 was only human nature. 
 
 Now up to that moment my intentions were 
 not thoroughly codified, but the question put 
 by Van Dyke's shadow filled me with instant 
 purpose. 
 
 " My intentions regarding Miss Dowe," I 
 said, " are to marry her if I can. Now be 
 good enough, sir, to cease addressing me! " 
 
 He arose rather stiffly, as if stunned, and for 
 a moment stood glowering down upon me. 
 Then he reached over and put a hand on my 
 
 248
 
 IN AN AVALANCHE 
 
 shoulder. In an instant I was on my feet, with 
 fists clenched. But instead of looking into the 
 face of the imaginary Van Dyke, I looked into 
 the eyes of my friend Greenleaf. Van Dyke 
 had vanished in the smoke from the latter's 
 cigar. 
 
 " I did n't mean to startle you," he laughed, 
 seeing the look on my face. " I saw you here 
 asleep, and I feared your cigar would set fire 
 to your clothing. See! I have just picked it 
 out of a fold in your waistcoat." 
 
 I thanked him, and we sat down together. 
 " Greenleaf," said I, somewhat abruptly, 
 when I had accepted the fresh cigar he offered 
 me, " do you know anything about Hooten 
 Van Dyke of New York? " 
 
 " I know of him through the news- 
 papers," he answered, eying me curiously; 
 " and I believe I have heard Miss Dowe speak 
 of him a number of times within the last day 
 or two." 
 
 " Have you ever seen anything in the news- 
 papers," I insisted, " concerning a possible 
 alliance between the Dowe and Van Dyke 
 families? " 
 
 Greenleaf grew thoughtful for a moment; 
 249
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 then I saw a sparkle in his eyes. " It seems to 
 me that I have," he returned. " I can't just 
 be sure of it, Gaylord, but somehow I have 
 that impression. And you know that Miss 
 Dowe seems to admire him perhaps you Ve 
 observed that yourself." 
 
 I must have looked rather black for a mo- 
 ment, for Greenleaf bent forward with a laugh 
 and put his hand on my knee. " You 're on the 
 job," he said ; " Hooten Van Dyke is far away. 
 And even were he here, Gaylord, I don't be- 
 lieve you 'd lack courage to meet him on com- 
 mon ground. Miss Dorothy Dowe is a young 
 woman worth fighting for, and you are a man 
 who knows how to fight! " 
 
 Yes, I did know how to fight. Since I en- 
 tered the employ of Munn & Moorehouse as 
 a boy, no man has ever found me lacking in 
 courage I say it proudly. Had I lacked 
 courage, that fatherless and motherless brood 
 at home would have starved and frozen, I 
 fear. The grim figures that blocked my way 
 daily would have backed me down the narrow 
 aisle of discouragement long before I had op- 
 portunity to become a Junior Partner in the 
 reorganized firm of Munn, Moorehouse & 
 
 250
 
 IN AN AVALANCHE 
 
 Gaylord. And afterward the ogres and drag- 
 ons and serpents of business would have van- 
 quished me had I lacked courage! 
 
 So I took Greenleaf by the hand soberly and 
 thanked him for what he had said. " All men 
 have moments when they falter," I told him, 
 " but my lapse has been brief. Believe me, I 
 am Huntington Gaylord once more." 
 
 251
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 REAL ESTATE WOODCHUCKS 
 
 "AT the age of twenty-one," said Mont- 
 yV gomery Gale, " I made up my mind 
 I was on the wrong track in life. 
 My job as cashier in a New York cab office 
 did not appeal to me. I wanted, more than 
 anything else, to engage in some pursuit in 
 which I could map out a definite course. Un- 
 derlying this ambition, I might add, was 
 another motive Well, you know how it is 
 with a young chap in love." 
 
 Mr. Gale thus began his story on the morn- 
 ing following my talk with Greenleaf. We 
 had left Sacramento and our journey was 
 drawing to a close at the rate of perhaps fifty 
 miles an hour. Gale's success-story and my 
 own still remained to be told. I confess I was 
 considerably disturbed at the thought of relat- 
 ing my narrative before the audience that now 
 
 252
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 filled the observation smoker to its utmost ca- 
 pacity. It seemed as if most of the passengers 
 on the Limited were trying to crowd into that 
 rear car in order to hear the two final stories. 
 Yet I looked about in vain for Miss Dorothy, 
 and I confess that my disappointment was 
 keen. I wanted her to hear these two final 
 narratives my own especially. It was a 
 tale so vastly different from Van Dyke's that 
 I was sure she would feel its significance. 
 Now I rubbed my cheek ruefully as Gale 
 spoke of being in love. 
 
 " Like most young men," he continued, " I 
 had no capital. Like many young men, I was 
 impatient to be my own master. This, I 
 thought, meant freedom. 
 
 " Having no money, I looked about for 
 something I might sell on commission. I 
 selected real estate because I had a slight 
 knowledge of that field, gained from a clerk- 
 ship in an insurance office. Furthermore, real 
 estate seemed a substantial commodity which 
 all people had to use and many persons bought 
 and sold. The man who undertakes to sell 
 goods should be sure he 's got something that 
 has a market worth going after. The other 
 
 253
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 day a canvasser came to my house and offered 
 me sachet powder. Now that fellow was as 
 far off the selling track as a lot of other men 
 I know. With the public eager to give up its 
 money for goods worth while, they go down 
 to failure trying to butt against the greatest 
 resistance. 
 
 " After repeated failures to connect myself 
 with some downtown real-estate office I made 
 arrangements with a broker well up toward 
 Harlem. Later, I discovered that he took 
 me only because he was in desperate straits; 
 he could n't afford to overlook even a forlorn 
 hope of commissions. He agreed to furnish 
 me his lists and pay me one-third of the fees 
 I might bring the office. 
 
 " The property we had for sale consisted 
 chiefly of second-class apartment houses, built 
 for speculation. These I tried to sell to men 
 who had more or less money and perhaps 
 a minimum of real-estate intelligence. My 
 employer furnished me an indifferent list of 
 such men, and for two months I canvassed 
 them without getting even a nibble. Of course 
 we had a few excellent bargains on our lists, 
 but I could make no headway even with these. 
 
 254
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 Meanwhile I borrowed a few hundred dollars 
 from an old college chum who had a rich dad. 
 This fund, however, oozed away in living ex- 
 penses and the glamour of the real-estate 
 business stopped glamouring. 
 
 " Now here at the start was something radi- 
 cally wrong. I want to make this emphatic, 
 because upon it hinges the first underlying ele- 
 ment of success in real-estate brokerage and 
 in many other commodities as well. All goods 
 may be roughly divided into two classes. 
 Merchants who sell the first class can catch 
 their customers in the open. Take groceries, 
 for instance. The householder can always be 
 reached because he 's in plain sight all the 
 time. But merchants who sell the second class 
 must get down and dig out their prospects. 
 
 " When I was a boy on the farm I used to 
 dig out woodchucks. If I could n't get them 
 out with pick and spade I 'd haul several bar- 
 rels of water into the field on a stoneboat and 
 drown them out. When I got them into the 
 open the dog and I made things lively for 
 them. Well, there are millions of real-estate 
 woodchucks still uncaught in the United 
 States to-day. The real-estate broker must 
 
 255
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 remember, however, that his breed of wood- 
 chucks cannot be handled like the four-footed 
 kind. They Ve got to be taken alive and 
 tamed. The majority of men who undertake 
 the real-estate game make a failure of it be- 
 cause they don't dig, in the first place; and, 
 second, because they skin the woodchuck if 
 by any chance they catch one. 
 
 " That was just the trouble with me. I 
 didn't locate my prospects skillfully; and 
 when I ran across one I immediately went 
 after his pelt. The art of locating possible 
 customers is a science that holds untold 
 profits; yet in many lines of business I see it 
 almost wholly neglected. I see concerns go 
 into bankruptcy when they are literally over- 
 whelmed with markets they have n't touched. 
 In the real-estate field I know men who look 
 rich markets in the face every day and see 
 nothing! I am going to tell you briefly how 
 I worked the thing out myself; but before 
 doing that I want to say a few words about my 
 first nibble and the events immediately fol- 
 lowing it. 
 
 " It looked like more than a nibble. The 
 bobber went under and I put through a con- 
 
 256
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 tract for the sale of a thirty-thousand-dollar 
 apartment house. Commissions were higher 
 in those day^s and my share of the fee was to 
 be two hundred dollars. Cab-office jobs! I 
 rather thought not! 
 
 " The sale fell through, however. The pur- 
 chaser discovered that we 'd been too opti- 
 mistic in our view of the property. Then in 
 our statement we 'd omitted a few items like 
 contingent vacancies, special assessments, de- 
 preciation, and so on. Moreover, our pretty 
 blue sketch showed a street-car survey past 
 the door, but the intending purchaser was un- 
 able to find such survey recorded in the street- 
 railway's office. You see, the shrewdness 
 is n't always bunched wholly in the seller. 
 
 " To put it bluntly, that parcel was a gold 
 brick. Gold bricks are bad goods to handle 
 in any line of business, but a lot of men in the 
 selling game have n't discovered it. I had n't 
 quite discovered it myself. I tried a few more 
 deals of that sort, but I '11 skip them here. 
 How I pulled through that first year I don't 
 just know. I got an occasional commission 
 on sales and leaseholds, but for the most part 
 I lived by the grace of my friends. 
 
 257
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " One afternoon, just before closing time, 
 an old lady came into the office to ask for some 
 honest advice. The stenographer had gone 
 home and my employer was out. Of course 
 our office was n't a crooks' nest we had n't 
 embezzled any money; but here was a woman 
 a woman, mind you! with cash! On the 
 other hand, we had real estate to sell! 
 
 " Undoubtedly I needed a commission 
 badly enough; but that innocent old soul put 
 me on my mettle. I had n't talked with her 
 long before I discovered how little she knew 
 about real estate and the factors that influ- 
 ence it. She was contemplating the purchase 
 of a piece of business property and she wished 
 the opinion of a broker who had no interest 
 in the transaction. The sharks had already 
 got a big chunk of the estate left by her 
 husband. 
 
 " I got her out of the office as quickly as 
 possible and sent her home with the promise 
 that I 'd make an honest appraisal of the prop- 
 erty next day. This I really did. My report 
 fairly sizzled with honesty. The land was 
 badly situated from the standpoint of business 
 development merchants of the better class 
 
 258
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 were migrating from the neighborhood; un- 
 desirable elements were invading the district 
 Altogether, the property that had been recom- 
 mended so highly to her was a sham. By her- 
 self she had been unable to perceive these 
 truths. 
 
 " I might have sold her another undesirable 
 parcel from my own doubtful list; but the 
 real-estate business had suddenly taken on a 
 new aspect. I saw the dawning of a real op- 
 portunity. Here was a person with money 
 who needed, more than anything else, an hon- 
 est, capable broker. l Why,' I asked myself, 
 ' was it necessary to sell snide goods to such 
 people? Wasn't there legitimate property 
 to be had?' 
 
 " I set out to find her a bona-fide investment, 
 and I did find one. This led to the adoption 
 of a new policy on my part; I resolved there- 
 after to hunt out goods that had real value and 
 markets that I could swing accordingly. 
 
 " Let me say, parenthetically, that this is 
 the great field for the real-estate broker to- 
 day. The nation is full of people with real 
 estate and with money. Two-thirds of them 
 don't know how to handle their property or 
 
 259
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 how to invest their funds. For every person 
 with capital there are a hundred sharpers. 
 The ordinary real-estate ranks are over- 
 crowded, but there is a big demand for brokers 
 and agents who will unmask the gold bricks 
 and give their clients advice as sound as a 
 banker's. It is the men who do this 
 that get up in the real-estate business. So 
 there are two fundamentals on which I am 
 basing these observations: First, dig out 
 your customers; second, educate them or 
 guide them." 
 
 " Digging out customers is an art by itself," 
 commented Barnes. " Our friend Greenleaf 
 here, I imagine, would find more real-estate 
 woodchucks, were he to go into the business, 
 than many men long engaged in it ever 
 dreamed about. Hunting woodchucks is a 
 pursuit that ought to be common to numerous 
 lines of business, but is n't." 
 
 " Woodchucks are mean little devils to un- 
 earth," said Greenleaf; " that's why a lot of 
 them escape. When a thing is hard to do, you 
 know, it is n't commonly done." 
 
 " Well," continued Gale, " I '11 give you 
 just a glimpse of how I dug them out myself. 
 
 260
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 I cut loose from my Harlem broker and se- 
 cured deskroom in the same neighborhood. 
 After some further attempts to do a miscel- 
 laneous real-estate business, I realized the ne- 
 cessity in a field so vast as New York 
 of specializing. I determined to take up sub- 
 urban homes and home sites of the better class, 
 holding strictly aloof from all boom schemes. 
 My reason for selecting this class of property 
 was my conviction that a great market lay con- 
 cealed within the walls of Manhattan apart- 
 ment houses. I felt sure that plenty of men 
 were living in New York who had both the 
 means and the inclination to live just outside 
 of it. 
 
 " I was happy when I got down to this 
 point, for I was doing something definite. 
 That is a big element in success of any sort. I 
 was through with aimless wandering. There 
 is a magic country that hangs over the heads 
 of most men ; they see it, though it is above and 
 beyond them; but usually there is a road that 
 leads to it. 
 
 " To sell goods, one must first get the goods 
 to sell. So I spent several weeks listing prop- 
 erty on which I could get commissions. I vis- 
 
 261
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ited all the desirable improved locations in 
 Long Island, Jersey, Westchester, and Con- 
 necticut. I wanted only the best and most at- 
 tractive, and I made a point of securing hand- 
 some photographs and, wherever possible, ar- 
 chitects' sketches and plans. 
 
 " One thing was disappointing. The homes 
 that appealed most strongly to me were not on 
 any lists ; they were not being offered for sale. 
 So I made up my mind that this was just the 
 property to get. Whenever I found such a 
 place, I rang the bell and asked the price at 
 which the place would be sold. In one typical 
 instance the wife of the owner was very em- 
 phatic at first in her declaration that the house 
 would not be sold at any price. It was a 
 charming home, delightfully situated, and 
 only a year old. I expressed the belief that 
 she and her husband could reap a neat profit 
 if they should wish to sell, and that they could 
 build another home just as pleasant. Well, 
 I '11 tell you in a few minutes what came of this 
 incident. 
 
 " Having thus fortified myself with goods 
 worth selling to the class of buyers I meant to 
 go after, I was ready to dig out the buyers 
 
 262
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 themselves the real-estate woodchucks, who 
 were down in their holes. 
 
 " I had no money with which to advertise, 
 even had I wished to start the thing going that 
 way. I had a scheme of a different kind. I 
 made up my mind to follow up certain classes 
 of men and to eliminate everybody else. 
 There was no use wasting time on people who 
 had n't the means to buy such homes as I had 
 for sale. 
 
 " How was I to know? This was a question 
 that puzzled me a good deal, but I solved it by 
 a simple method. From a corporation and 
 copartnership directory I secured lists of 
 names that ran along in a sequence something 
 like this: Executives of manufacturing estab- 
 lishments ; executives of wholesale houses ; re- 
 tail dealers; bankers and brokers; lawyers; 
 theatrical managers; prominent actors and ac- 
 tresses; transportation men, and so on. Per- 
 sons occupying such stations in life, I reasoned, 
 would have the necessary means. 
 
 " From the city directory I now secured the 
 home addresses of my prospects. Some 
 of them, I found, already lived in the 
 suburbs; but ninety per cent were housed in 
 
 263
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 New York apartments. These offered me my 
 field, 
 
 " New York now meant something direct 
 and personal. I had brushed aside all the con- 
 fusing perplexities of its possible markets and 
 had opened up the channels I meant to follow. 
 New York no longer overawed me ; I was con- 
 cerned only with my own particular phases of 
 it. If more men would get into definite chan- 
 nels there 'd be less business astigmatism. You 
 can hammer all round your markets for ten 
 years without making much of an impression; 
 on the other hand, you can often break through 
 quickly if you hammer on the right spot. 
 
 " Next I laid out my routes so as to econo- 
 mize time; then I began to canvass. In some 
 places I was turned down rather sharply, but 
 most of the men on my list received me with 
 courtesy. A charm lay in the pictures I car- 
 ried. Many of them were real works of art, 
 beautifully colored; and they breathed the 
 atmosphere of that magic word, home! I 
 often found men willing to spend hours with 
 me, going over the sketches and photographs. 
 Most of my prospects had been thinking more 
 or less of getting homes some day. Their 
 
 264
 
 ideals differed widely, and you may be sure 
 that I recorded all the opinions and prefer- 
 ences I got. I started a card-index system and 
 within a month was forced to hire a stenog- 
 rapher. This came before I made my initial 
 sale. 
 
 " The first house I sold was the one I have 
 told you about. It was bought by a New 
 York manufacturer, who paid sixteen thou- 
 sand dollars for it, regardless of the fact that 
 it had cost only twelve thousand the year 
 preceding. You see, he wanted it. I had 
 been right in my assumption that the good 
 things would sell more quickly than the gold 
 bricks. 
 
 " Now here, you see, were seller and buyer 
 brought together by original methods both 
 dug out of their hiding places. The deal 
 earned me a fee of four hundred dollars and 
 stimulated my efforts. I saw wonderful pos- 
 sibilities all round me and I realized I was on 
 the right track. During the year I made half 
 a dozen sales. Then I branched out by en- 
 gaging a salesman, whom I started out on the 
 trail of wholesale executives. In a few 
 months I had several salesmen at work, each 
 
 265
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 of whom I kept in his own channel of 
 customers. 
 
 " Meanwhile I discovered that a good 
 many of my prospects were not keen for sub- 
 urban homes, but thought better of city 
 houses. This let me into a field that ultimately 
 proved very profitable. For a number of 
 years I devoted myself to it largely, leaving 
 the suburban sales to the organization I grad- 
 ually built up about me. 
 
 " Right here let me say that an organiza- 
 tion can swamp a business quicker than any- 
 thing else unless it is keyed up continually 
 to the pitch on which the business is founded. 
 Every once in a while I felt the gold-brick 
 atmosphere creeping in; and extra vigilance 
 was required to keep it out." 
 
 " A business policy is a hard thing to main- 
 tain," Barnes said. " The head of a business 
 is like the director of an orchestra. Even the 
 first violinist will play flat sometimes." 
 
 " Yes, and imagination is the greatest fault 
 of the real-estate office. I agree with you, 
 Mr. Barnes, on the general proposition that 
 imagination of the right sort is a good thing 
 for the ordinary business. But in real estate 
 
 266
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 well, once in a while the imaginative 
 broker can make enough money to retire him 
 on his income; but in ninety-nine cases out of 
 a hundred he retires without the income. 
 
 " Ever since then we Ve kept up this la- 
 borious process of canvassing, though of re- 
 cent years we Ve drawn in considerably, be- 
 cause things came our way anyhow. I get 
 out of patience when I see brokers sitting in 
 their offices and waiting for people to come 
 in and buy. I know many real-estate men 
 who devote practically no energy to the art 
 of digging out the right kind of property and 
 then matching it with the right kind of pur- 
 chasers. These things they leave to chance. 
 Of course it is always easy to find miscella- 
 neous vendors, and haphazard vendees will 
 often come when you whistle; but the sales 
 that really build up a business must be worked 
 out by actual science. 
 
 " I found a good many ways to dig out cus- 
 tomers. For instance, men and women are 
 continually inheriting property; hence the 
 surrogate or probate records are mot valu- 
 able. In New York we have a good 
 many lists of names furnished us by agencies; 
 
 267
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 but I 'd like to impress the fact on unsuccess- 
 ful real-estate men that mere lists are not 
 worth much. The broker must get under the 
 surface. He must classify the names accord- 
 ing to the kinds of property most likely to find 
 a market, and then he must follow intensive 
 methods in getting further information about 
 prospects and in canvassing them. Above all, 
 he must offer them sound investments. 
 
 " To tell you of all the lists and records 
 I kept would be impossible, but here, for ex- 
 ample, is one: I kept a book I called the Ad- 
 vancement List. In it were the names of all 
 the better-class employees I could get hold of 
 in the particular lines of business I was fol- 
 lowing up. At intervals of six months or 
 oftener, I sent out men to ascertain the names 
 of employees advanced to better positions. 
 Then I revised my lists in the Advancement 
 book, entering the favored names in columns 
 bearing such headings as Credit Man, Pur- 
 chasing Agent, Department Manager, and so 
 on. In one instance the chief cost clerk in a 
 large factory was made general manager. 
 Through my system of follow-up, I dis- 
 covered this important piece of news and 
 
 268
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 promptly recorded his name in the list where 
 it belonged. You see, he had become a pros- 
 pect of a wholly different character. As a 
 cost clerk his salary was only one-third what 
 he received as manager. 
 
 " There was n't another real-estate office in 
 New York that had this man on a list. He 
 was my exclusive subject and I sold him a 
 fifteen-thousand-dollar home. Afterward he 
 became president of his corporation; and, 
 on his own account, he invested conservatively 
 in New York business property, making a 
 great deal of money. Throughout he re- 
 mained my customer. 
 
 " For a long time I kept a peculiar list that 
 I called The Graveyard. It comprised the 
 names of men in poor health men, of 
 course, with means. Some of these names I 
 got from the newspapers, some from my 
 friends, some from the reports of salesmen 
 and canvassers. When such a name came in 
 I classified it and entered it on a card. This 
 list panned out many profitable sales. One 
 day I received a report from one of my men 
 to the effect that a certain financier had com- 
 plained of insomnia and nervous disorders. 
 
 269
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 Now the sea is the place for such men; this 
 man had lived most of his life in the heart of 
 New York. I assembled a lot of specially 
 made photographs and drawings and called 
 on my prospect in person. He was in bad 
 humor when I reached him, but the pictures 
 caught his attention quickly. Ultimately he 
 bought a fifty-thousand-dollar home on the 
 Long Island shore. 
 
 " I have told you, of course, only instances 
 of success. There were failures plenty of 
 them. There were discouragements and 
 periods when it seemed as if the bottom had 
 dropped out of everything; but the markets 
 were always there, and my aggregate success 
 came from everlastingly digging them out. 
 
 "The markets are there to-day; they will 
 be there next year and next generation. The 
 real-estate markets are everywhere in city, 
 town, and country. Almost anywhere the 
 real-estate broker goes he walks over hidden 
 woodchucks." 
 
 " Of course every man must be the judge of 
 his own opportunity, no matter what business 
 he may be in," said Barnes. " If there are n't 
 any fish in the water it won't pay to go fishing. 
 
 270
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 I 'd advise every man, no matter what his line 
 of business, to .study his markets before he 
 locates. This is a preliminary commonly left 
 to chance. If a fellow must fish all day for 
 one shiner he 'd better haul his boat on the 
 bank and strike across country to some other 
 lake; but often the trouble lies in the bait, 
 not in the lake." 
 
 'You put it well! Business success fol- 
 lows certain general principles, regardless 
 of the particular goods handled. But I 'm 
 speaking now of real estate. It 's important 
 in the smaller communities, just as it is in the 
 large cities, to classify the people from whom 
 a broker expects to draw commissions. They 
 must be taken out of the conglomerate mass 
 of population, from whom no profits are 
 probable. This accumulation of names and 
 the process of keeping the lists up to date give 
 a direction to sales that cannot be secured in 
 any other way. 
 
 " I know one broker in a small city who 
 carefully clips all the local newspapers in the 
 towns adjacent; every item that indicates a 
 possibility for a sale is regarded as legitimate 
 material. 
 
 271
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " Then he subdivides the different classes 
 of prospects, each class in a separate card list. 
 School-teachers, for example, comprise a list 
 that he follows up conscientiously, because 
 teachers usually have a little money and are 
 buyers of the right kind of real estate. Doc- 
 tors and dentists, he finds, are good people to 
 have as customers, not only on their own ac- 
 count but because they are often the confi- 
 dential advisers of many persons. 
 
 " Merchants, clerks, bookkeepers and work- 
 ing men all mean something different to 
 any enterprising broker. Not only does he 
 find out the needs of each class, but he goes 
 after the individuals and makes a record of 
 the ideas and preferences of every possible 
 prospect. For instance, some people in buy- 
 ing a home are influenced by architectural 
 lines; others want a square house with an 
 attic; others a bedroom on the first floor, or 
 a sunny kitchen, or a music room. Yet I Ve 
 known brokers to dilate upon the charms of 
 a music room when the customer could n't tell 
 Tannhauser from a tomcat serenade on the 
 back fence. It 's important to know your cus- 
 tomers and then match their wants the best 
 
 272
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 you can. This same plan is followed by wise 
 brokers in city and town. Operators in busi- 
 ness property have their preferences and spe- 
 cialties and the broker who knows what 
 button to touch has the inside track. 
 
 " And then there 's another angle to this 
 phase of the game. Once you understand the 
 prospective customer's ideas, you can often 
 bring him round skillfully to see the thing in 
 some other light. 
 
 " This brings me squarely to the second 
 phase of success in the real-estate business, 
 which I have already told you lies in the edu- 
 cation and guidance of customers. I know 
 one broker whose principal owned two lots, 
 side by side on one he intended to build a 
 livery stable; the other he wanted to sell. 
 The broker knew all about the contemplated 
 livery, but he kept his mouth shut and found 
 a customer. He did n't believe in education; 
 but this is the sort of thing that commonly re- 
 tires a broker to a fourth-grade clerkship 
 or worse. 
 
 " I wish I could bring this truth home to 
 real-estate men who haven't yet grasped it. 
 They don't know the great opportunity that 
 
 273
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 waits for the broker who has a reputation that 
 he guards with a whole girdle of earthworks. 
 
 " Since my first unsuccessful year in busi- 
 ness I have refused to be a party to any con- 
 spiracy, against either seller or buyer. True, 
 values are often a matter of opinion, espe- 
 cially when a speculative element is involved ; 
 but the broker's duty is to acquaint the vendor 
 and vendee with all the facts that bear on the 
 problem. I knew one investor who bought 
 an office building in a section that was clearly 
 marked for loft property property given 
 over chiefly to the smaller manufacturing 
 trades, wholesale concerns, and the like. The 
 investment ultimately cost him most of his 
 fortune. Now the brokers involved in the 
 transaction undoubtedly knew the trend of 
 things, but for the sake of the commissions 
 they put the sale through. A few deals of 
 that sort usually put men in a class that bor- 
 ders close on the rogues' gallery. 
 
 " I knew another man, out in New Jersey, 
 who bought a home overlooking as pretty a 
 landscape as one would wish to see. The 
 broker neglected to say that the landscape was 
 an ideal spot for a bleachery and that such a 
 
 274
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 plant was even then contemplated. Within a 
 year the home-lover was looking down into a 
 belching chimney! 
 
 " Here, then, were two typical instances in 
 which brokers had the power to guide and 
 educate. These brokers, like many another, 
 bartered away their chances to attain power 
 and profit in their communities. As a result 
 of such deals hundreds of real-estate men go 
 about branded without realizing it. Then 
 they wonder why shrewd operators always go 
 round the corner to some other real-estate 
 office when a big deal is on. 
 
 " Of course the owner who has bought un- 
 desirable property wants to unload, and he is 
 always able to find a broker to help him. 
 There will always be sellers and brokers of 
 that sort. As for me, I want none of such 
 business. When a man has been ' stung ' I 
 advise him to take his loss and next time to 
 hunt up a dependable broker before he 
 plunges. 
 
 " There is little satisfaction trying to edu- 
 cate the seller who sets out deliberately to 
 swindle somebody; but there 's a lot of satis- 
 faction in educating men either sellers or 
 
 275
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 buyers who are led astray merely by their 
 own lack of knowledge. Here is the golden 
 field for the real-estate man. The owner can 
 be taught to handle his property so that it pays 
 a normal revenue and the purchaser can be 
 shown the pitfalls that lurk in his path. 
 
 " I have often seen property rendered prac- 
 tically worthless through the ignorance of 
 owners. On the other hand, I have repeat- 
 edly doubled the income on rental property 
 by changing the class of tenants, or by altera- 
 tions, or by the acquirement and improvement 
 of adjacent property. One business building, 
 for instance, stood vacant a year because it 
 was out of date for merchandising purposes. 
 When I took charge of the estate I sent a man 
 out to investigate the requirements of various 
 trades, with the idea of finding a class of ten- 
 ants that might be colonized. We learned 
 that a number of small concerns working in 
 hairgoods, feathers, and the like, were dissat- 
 isfied with their conditions and willing to 
 move. Some alterations in the vacant build- 
 ing were made and it became loft property 
 that was fully taken within a few months. In 
 net returns it became a very valuable holding. 
 
 276
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 Moreover, it gave the neighborhood a person- 
 ality that increased the value of the property 
 adjacent. This sort of service and there 
 are a hundred variations through which it 
 may operate measures the value of the 
 broker and agent. 
 
 " Before the real-estate man can educate 
 others, however, he must educate himself. 
 Once a client sent me to another state to in- 
 vestigate a proposed purchase. The local 
 broker, I found, could tell me practically 
 nothing about special-assessment procedure, 
 tax limitation, or other things vitally impor- 
 tant. What sort of advice, then, had he been 
 giving his clients? Once I heard of a blind 
 man who helped a lame man across the street. 
 An automobile came along and knocked them 
 both down, and after a while the lame man 
 sued the blind man for damages. The latter 
 resisted the suit on the ground that the plain- 
 tiff knew a blind man was leading him. The 
 judge threw the case out of court, declaring 
 that both were fools. 
 
 " Whichever way I turn in the real-estate 
 field I see a blind broker helping a lame 
 owner across the street. I can't recall an in- 
 
 277
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 stance, however, in which a blind broker ever 
 retired with a bank account big enough to 
 support him." 
 
 " I Ve known a few who had mahogany- 
 trimmed offices for a while," chuckled Barnes, 
 " but the mahogany belonged to somebody 
 else." 
 
 Our audience in the smoker had a laugh 
 over this, and gave Gale a chance to light an- 
 other cigar. The women had insisted that we 
 men smoke as usual, despite their presence. 
 As for me, I felt the need of tobacco, for I 
 was very nervous over the prospect of taking 
 the stage, as I must do when Gale finished. I 
 was upset, too, over Dorothy But I '11 not 
 discuss that. 
 
 " Even before I had gone far with my first 
 selling campaign," continued Gale, " I saw 
 that I was very short on real-estate law. To 
 correct this defect I took a year's course of 
 lectuRes in an evening law school. Here I 
 discovered some astonishing things about con- 
 tracts; about the relations of landlord and 
 tenant, and broker and principal; about es- 
 tates from marriage and inheritance; about 
 titles and mortgages and a hundred other 
 
 278
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 points that affect real estate. You know a vast 
 number of situations and complications have 
 arisen in the past, and have been decided by 
 the courts and set down as established rules. 
 Yet to-day brokers and owners are drifting on 
 the same old rocks because they don't know 
 how to navigate. 
 
 ' I can put my finger right now on brokers 
 who can't tell you the definition of ' construc- 
 tive eviction,' or the meaning of a condemna- 
 tion clause, or the legal situation that arises 
 when a purchaser takes possession before the 
 delivery of the deed. Very few owners know 
 these things either. I knew one investor who 
 secured an option on a piece of property which 
 the vendor refused to sell when the time came. 
 The announcement of extensive business im- 
 provements in the vicinity had made the prop- 
 erty much more valuable. When the pur- 
 chaser attempted to enforce the sale in court 
 it developed that the option was void through 
 the failure of the broker to specify some of 
 the minor details of the proposed terms of 
 sale. Thus the customer lost a hundred 
 thousand dollars' profit and the broker lost 
 his fee. 
 
 279
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " You see, there are plenty of people who 
 are glad to avail themselves of the knowledge 
 and skill of the reliable real-estate expert. In 
 the United States, for instance, there are 
 pretty nearly a million widows with more or 
 less property. Widows are rich plunder for 
 crooks. For twenty years I Ve been a widows' 
 man. I have a good many widows on my list 
 who Ve grown wealthy during my adminis- 
 tration of their affairs, and there is n't one 
 who has grown poorer. 
 
 " Please understand me, however. No ordi- 
 nary real-estate methods will bring you this 
 class of business. You can't sell one woman a 
 gold brick to-day and expect to see a lot 
 of women come up in their automobiles 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " I don't know of any other business that 
 offers competent men without capital such 
 opportunities and I don't know of any 
 other safe investment that offers the oppor- 
 tunity presented by real estate; but you can't 
 handle real estate on a wrong basis and make 
 a success of it, any more than you can handle 
 drygoods or machinery. That 's where most 
 people blunder. The real-estate man is 
 
 280
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 hedged in on every side by people who might 
 be his customers yet they run away when 
 they see him coming. They prefer to keep 
 their money in the bank, or hidden away in a 
 vault or a chest. They don't trust the real- 
 estate chaps and they have n't the judgment to 
 buy safely on their own account. 
 
 " Of course the mediocre, dishonest, short- 
 sighted brokers will always be with us. 
 You '11 find plenty of them ten years from now 
 and you'll find plenty of people who '11 howl 
 that real estate is a snare; but this doesn't 
 alter the fact that the market for real estate is 
 growing fast, and is bound to grow faster as 
 the population increases and communities 
 grow. The broker who sets out to do an 
 honest business has plenty of work awaiting 
 him. The harder he digs the more wood- 
 chucks he is sure to find. When I walk or 
 ride about New York I speculate on the 
 changes the next generation will bring. New 
 York must expand the people must get 
 farther away from their business. This 
 means, for one thing, astonishing markets for 
 the real-estate men. Suburban New York has 
 scarcely begun to feel itself. 
 
 281
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " What is true of New York is relatively 
 true of other centers. The next few decades 
 will witness vast changes in the mode of life 
 of our city people. Suburban traffic will be 
 revolutionized and the overflow will fill 
 valley and hill. 
 
 " Then the coming of modern ideas and 
 quick-traffic facilities mean ever-growing op- 
 portunities for the real-estate man in the 
 country. A great many of these country 
 brokers don't see their chance. I know one 
 who did. He sent his boys to an agricultural 
 school and then established them on a small 
 experimental farm near his town. The things 
 those boys accomplished opened the eyes of 
 the whole countryside to the possibilities of 
 the land thereabout. The broker suddenly 
 found a most extraordinary market for farms 
 that had lain dormant a lifetime! 
 
 " You see, success often lies at a man's door; 
 but success is timid and has to be coaxed be- 
 fore it '11 come in." 
 
 I could see by Gale's air of relief that he 
 was through. There were many other inter- 
 esting things he might have told us about his 
 career, but our time was getting short; and so, 
 
 282
 
 WOODCHUCKS 
 
 without much of an interval, I found myself 
 at last at the point I had dreaded. I did not 
 relish telling my story to an audience of this 
 sort. I should n't have minded the seven of 
 us and Dorothy. I heartily wished that 
 I had begun the narratives, instead of Dowe, 
 before the fame of our success-tales got 
 abroad. 
 
 However, it was I who had proposed the 
 thing in the first place, and I resolved to face 
 the situation with the philosophy that makes 
 a disagreeable task easy. The way to over- 
 come unpleasant duties is to attack them with- 
 out preliminary skirmishings. Some men 
 never achieve results because they never get 
 beyond the skirmishing line. 
 
 Hardly had I opened my mouth to speak 
 when I was delighted to see Dorothy Dowe, 
 accompanied by her mother, at the other end 
 of the car. Banker Dowe quickly went for- 
 ward to meet them, and presently escorted 
 them to our immediate circle. Instantly I of- 
 fered my own chair, as did every one of our 
 group. With an odd light in her eyes, Dor- 
 othy looked from one chair to another and 
 then, with a shy glance at me, deliberately 
 
 283
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 selected mine. Ah! I believe I said a moment 
 ago that I had felt inward quakings over the 
 ordeal ahead of me. Now, undaunted, I 
 could have walked through blood and fire! 
 
 284
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE RISE OF THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 WAS about sixteen years old," said I, 
 
 " when I entered the employ of Munn 
 
 & Moorehouse. Well do I remember 
 
 the day I was hired a black and gloomy day 
 
 it was overhead, and a black day in my heart. 
 
 It seemed to me then that the very world had 
 
 come to an end. I had only just closed a 
 
 dreary chapter in my life, and was beginning 
 
 to climb up a path that seemed to stretch out 
 
 ahead in dizzy, impossible heights." 
 
 Thus I began my story, standing there in 
 the observation smoker and facing my audi- 
 ence. Theoretically, I was talking to the six 
 men whose narratives had preceded mine, but 
 in reality I addressed a car full of men and 
 women. Most of the men, like myself, were 
 standing, for there were not half chairs enough 
 to go around. The train swayed with some 
 violence at times, and I steadied myself by 
 
 285
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 keeping one hand on the back of Dorothy's 
 chair. I am not sure that this incident gave 
 me eloquence, but somehow I felt a strange 
 exhilaration of speech. I was not naturally 
 an orator. And then, you know, all of us had 
 unconsciously fallen into Barnes' figurative 
 adaptation of words. 
 
 " I have already told you," I went on, now 
 addressing only the members of my party, 
 " how the six youngsters at home had been 
 left without father and mother, and how the 
 task had fallen to me, as the eldest, to play the 
 part of parent. I shall not refer again to 
 those gloomy days. I was sixteen, I say, when 
 I became a stock-boy for Munn & Moore- 
 house, which firm at that time occupied small 
 quarters well downtown on Sixth Avenue. 
 Our store had less than one-twentieth of the 
 floor-space we now occupy. You see, there- 
 fore, that we have gained more than a natural 
 increment. Moreover, our business has been 
 severely competitive. We have n't walked up 
 by violating any equity which the people at 
 large have in life." 
 
 11 That," interrupted Barnes, " is a test of 
 
 true success." 
 
 286
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 " Right here at the start," I went on, " I 
 wish to say that I had at that time no philoso- 
 phy whatever. I did not know that success 
 lay in having a philosophy, and in living it 
 daily. Had I known that, I might have risen 
 very much faster, perhaps, than I did. In 
 reality, I was in a mental hole up to the time 
 I was twenty-three. It 's singular that so 
 many men stay in an intellectual swamp all 
 their lives, when, if they took the trouble to 
 look closely at the things about them, they 
 could n't fail to see why their business con- 
 cerns were butting them into the ditch. 
 
 " I 'd like to say, in the first place, that a 
 business organization, as we understand it in 
 my own firm, is not a mere list of officials. 
 I 'm going to tell you, briefly, what it is. Nor 
 is it necessary to have a big store or huge fac- 
 tory in order to have an organization. One 
 of the best organizations I know is in a little 
 retail store that has five clerks. Since the store 
 was acquired by a man with a vision, the busi- 
 ness has got out of the mire and is tackling the 
 mountain-side. ' I expect to see a hundred 
 clerks in that business some day. 
 
 " When I had been a stock-boy perhaps a 
 287
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 month, a new youth was taken into my depart- 
 ment and I was told to instruct him in his 
 duties. This I proceeded to do. But that 
 night I received a profane lecture from an 
 older stock-boy whom we knew, disrespect- 
 fully, as ' Freckled Squint.' He was a coarse, 
 illiterate lad, of a class that I refuse at the 
 present time to have in the store. But in those 
 days he was a fair type. If you were sailing 
 a ship, you would n't throw out a lot of little 
 anchors to drag on the bottom and impede 
 your progress; but every employee of this 
 sort drags on the business. 
 
 " ' I seen you showin' that new kid how to 
 do things,' said Freckled Squint, threaten- 
 ingly. ' Don't you know you 're cuttin' your 
 own throat? If you learn the new kid, he '11 
 get your job away from you. Never learn 
 nobody nothin'! That ain't the way to play 
 the game. Just learn yourself. Then the old 
 man can't fire you, 'cause there won't be no- 
 body 'cept you to handle stock. See? ' 
 
 " Since I lacked the broader vision, this 
 argument had some effect on me. For a time 
 I let the newcomers alone as much as I could. 
 You know this is the spirit that pervades many 
 
 288
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 a business house to-day; it is one of those 
 vicious undercurrents that often gets into an 
 organization. The man who refuses to train 
 an understudy for fear of losing his own job 
 is the kind who stays in one job until his 
 shoulders hump up and his chin sinks in. On 
 the other hand, the modern successful business 
 tells its men that they can't expect advance- 
 ment until they have trained others to do their 
 work. The very foundation of a successful 
 organization lies in the training of competent 
 workers. 
 
 " I was knocked around the various stock- 
 rooms for two or three years, earning six or 
 eight dollars a week, and finally landed down 
 in the basement, in the delivery department. 
 Here I stayed two years longer. I still lacked 
 the ability to break through the brain-fog that 
 shut me in closely. I was surrounded by nar- 
 row-minded men who influenced me the wrong 
 way. I was as ignorant of the eternal truths 
 of business as a child is of economics. Eco- 
 nomics, by the way, make up the broad sci- 
 ence of business. The universities are teach- 
 ing this science now, and the men who come 
 forth thus fortified if they don't have their 
 
 289
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 heads too high in the air are the ones who 
 have the mental attitude to succeed. 
 
 " In a few minutes I '11 try to make this per- 
 fectly concrete to you; but for the moment 
 I want to go along with my story. In the de- 
 livery department the fog began to clear away 
 slowly. A delivery department is the one 
 place in a store where the condition of the 
 whole organization is best reflected. Here all 
 the incompetence and unwillingness of our 
 force was strongly felt. We were constantly 
 in hot water over the mistakes upstairs mis- 
 directed parcels, illegible handwriting, mixed 
 purchases, and so on. In addition, the blun- 
 ders and indifference of the delivery depart- 
 ment itself added to our woes. I began to see 
 that something was vitally wrong with the 
 management, or these things would not 
 happen. 
 
 " Up to that point our business had grown 
 chiefly because the opportunity forced it. 
 The markets crowded upon us; the city was 
 obliged to have goods. Opportunity will 
 build a business sometimes up to a certain 
 point; then the trade will stop crowding and 
 seek other channels of outlet. Our store had 
 
 290
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 reached that point, as I learned afterward. 
 The business had stood still for a year, and 
 was now sliding backward. The weight of an 
 incompetent organization one that almost 
 wholly lacked the selling uplift was 
 swamping it. 
 
 " A temporary emergency in the Notion 
 department resulted in my going there as a 
 clerk. This advancement, however, was not 
 the result of any plan, but was mere chance. 
 You see, chance plays something of a part in 
 these things; but too often chance operates 
 the wrong way. The incapable men are 
 advanced, while the good ones remain 
 submerged. 
 
 " Adjacent to the counter where I worked 
 was a section of the toilet-goods division. The 
 girls there were much overworked and under- 
 paid, and the things they said about the man- 
 agement when the management was n't 
 within hearing were at least picturesque. 
 If employers could always know what the 
 workers are saying about them, and doing, an 
 illuminating light would be thrown on a most 
 important problem of organization the 
 handling of employees. 
 
 291
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " The head of stock in the toilet goods was 
 a girl whose name, if I recollect right, was 
 Birdie McNulty. She was a fair example of 
 an employee advanced without logical cause. 
 She was sugar-coated, but bitter within. 
 When any one with authority approached, 
 Birdie assumed an ethereal sweetness, but in 
 truth she was a most pernicious talker, and 
 very active in setting harmful currents in mo- 
 tion. Yet she had ample cause for her grouch. 
 It was the most natural thing in the world, 
 and Birdie was human." 
 
 " You can't build an organization and over- 
 look the traits of humanity," said Barnes. 
 
 " No," I agreed. " Now I want to tell you 
 a little story about Birdie McNulty. One day 
 a morning newspaper had an article in its 
 
 * beauty ' column advocating the use of a face- 
 brush made of bristles of a certain kind. A 
 brisk demand sprang up that day for brushes 
 of this sort, but there was n't one in stock. 
 
 * If the old man was wise to it,' remarked 
 Birdie to me, with a wink, ' he 'd get in a lot 
 of these brushes on the double-quick. I could 
 have sold a hundred of them to-day. But you 
 can bet your last cent I '11 never tell him.' 
 
 292
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 "It was evident, you see, that the toilet- 
 goods section was n't paying as well as it 
 might, and never would pay so long as Birdie 
 McNulty and her satellites were there and 
 as long as the ' old man ' was in charge of it. 
 This ' old man ' was the department manager, 
 and in reality was a young snip of a chap who 
 clapped his hands loudly at the girls, and went 
 about like a peacock. Everybody hated him, 
 and he hated everybody. You see, he was get- 
 ting only a hundred and twenty-five dollars a 
 month, and was always looking for a better 
 job, which he could n't find. 
 
 " Well, I Ve told you this incident of the 
 face-brushes merely because it was a typical 
 one. Birdie McNulty, you see, had a con- 
 crete selling idea, but she kept it carefully 
 concealed. She knew how the store might sell 
 a certain lot of goods, but the store never had 
 the advantage of her knowledge. This was 
 happening right along all through the estab- 
 lishment. Every day a thousand forces were 
 operating within our own organization to 
 hold the business down and counteract a thou- 
 sand outside forces that were struggling to 
 make it grow. 
 
 293
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " The singular part of this situation, as I 
 look back upon it, lay in the fact that it existed 
 without the proprietors of the business know- 
 ing it. However, the same situation exists to- 
 day in many a business I know. The poor 
 organization is the one that does n't get the 
 knowledge and ability of the men and women 
 who compose it. The greatest thing in busi- 
 ness, as I look at it, is the organization that 
 works shoulder to shoulder to boost things 
 along." 
 
 " From stock-boy up to the president! " vol- 
 unteered Greenleaf, who was standing back of 
 the chair occupied by Dorothy's mother. 
 
 " From car cleaner to the owner of the rail- 
 road! " seconded Frothingham. " I agree with 
 you that organization is the chain that pulls a 
 business up to success; but there must be no 
 weak links in that chain." 
 
 "Proceed!" commanded Dowe. "Your 
 logic, young man, is faultless." 
 
 " From the Notion department," said I, " I 
 was shifted to the Groceries, then to the Dress- 
 goods, then to the Furniture. All these 
 changes were made on the mere exigencies of 
 the moment. My special qualifications for 
 
 294
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 these jobs were never considered. Through- 
 out the store the clerks were being sent here 
 and there aimlessly, without ever a thought 
 that the changes might or might not develop 
 them and help the business accordingly. 
 
 " One day, in the Furniture, a clerk nick- 
 named ' Rags ' set me thinking seriously. I 
 overheard a customer asking for a high-backed 
 rocking-chair, such as I knew very well we 
 had in stock. But this disgruntled clerk, hav- 
 ing just had a rumpus with another customer, 
 was in a disagreeable mood. ' We 're out of 
 them sort o' rockers,' he said, and turned away. 
 The customer departed, and, no doubt, bought 
 the chair elsewhere. Eight dollars had 
 walked into the store and walked out again, 
 but the high-backed chair remained; it rep- 
 resented a profit that the store might have got 
 very easily, but did n't. 
 
 " ' Rags ' was getting a salary of twelve dol- 
 lars a week; this, too, was my own salary. 
 That evening, at home, I tried some original 
 calculations, and these really formed the basis 
 of a sweeping revolution in our organization. 
 It did n't come, however, until quite a while 
 afterward. 
 
 295
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " My daily sales were not averaging more 
 than fifty dollars. I had heard that the firm 
 expected a net profit of twenty per cent, at 
 least, on the goods in my department. So, if 
 I sold fifty dollars' worth of goods in a day, 
 the net profit was ten dollars. Part of the sell- 
 ing expense, of course, was my wages of two 
 dollars for the day. 
 
 " Then I assumed a hypothetical case. Sup- 
 pose, I reasoned, that I should sell one hun- 
 dred dollars' worth of furniture a day. How 
 much could the store afford to pay me and still 
 retain a reasonable increase of profit from my 
 greater sales? 
 
 " This problem, you see, was a highly tech- 
 nical one, involving a lot of cost figures that 
 I did n't possess. I 'm not going into it here, 
 except to state results. Every evening for a 
 week I floundered in a maze of figures, filling 
 all the loose paper I could find at my home. 
 My eldest sister remarked that perhaps I was 
 losing my mind ; but I was n't. On the con- 
 trary, I was just coming into that wide, keen 
 vision that was destined to show the way to 
 
 success." 
 
 " Sometimes an employee becomes broader 
 296
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 than his boss ; that 's the best time to hunt a 
 new job," added Barnes. 
 
 " Unable to reach a definite answer, I took 
 my puzzle to the chief accountant at the 
 store," said I, going on with the story. " He 
 laughed at first; but, as he glanced through 
 my crude calculations, he caught a glimmer 
 himself of the light that was trying to pene- 
 trate the cracks in my_ skull. He promised to 
 solve the problem for me. 
 
 " The next day I was called to the office of 
 the Senior Partner. He was a nervous, wor- 
 ried man at that time; heaven knows he had 
 enough to disturb his repose. He told me 
 afterward that he used to get up in the middle 
 of the night and go downstairs to let in the cat, 
 wind the clock, and do anything to keep him 
 from thinking. He did n't really know what 
 it was that made him think all night long. 
 Well, I '11 tell you what it was. It was a whole 
 aggregation of people like * Freckled Squint,' 
 Birdie McNulty, and ' Rags.' They were 
 bleeding his business to death. 
 
 "The Senior Partner looked at me curi- 
 ously, and invited me to sit down. Although 
 I 'd been in his store for years, he did n't 
 
 297
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 know me. Now that 's a situation fit for a 
 play." 
 
 " Introductions are very good things in busi- 
 ness, even for Senior Partners," suggested 
 Hopkins, dryly. 
 
 " Well," I laughed, " I introduced myself, 
 as I have just related. t What made you as- 
 sume,' asked Mr. Munn, ' that a clerk now 
 selling fifty dollars' worth of furniture a day 
 could be expected, in reason, to sell one hun- 
 dred dollars' worth?' 
 
 " Here was an opportunity to unburden my- 
 self of ideas that had been accumulating in 
 my brain a long time. 
 
 " ' Because,' I answered, with some diffi- 
 dence, ' I believe that most of the clerks in this 
 store could sell a far greater volume, if they 
 worked under different conditions; many 
 of them, I am sure, could sell double the 
 volume.' 
 
 " * That is a broad assertion,' said Munn, 
 incredulously. ' Still, if you could demon- 
 strate it to be true, it would mean a great deal 
 of money to us.' Here he picked up a sheet 
 of paper on which the chief accountant had 
 worked out my problem. * I 'm afraid,' he 
 
 298
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 continued, ' that these calculations are quite 
 theoretical, however interesting.' 
 
 " Then he showed me the figures. On the 
 assumed basis of sales at one hundred dollars 
 a day, the house could afford to pay me twenty 
 dollars a week. Even though it paid me this 
 additional wage of a dollar and thirty-three 
 cents a day, it would earn for itself an in- 
 creased net profit of eight dollars a day. 
 
 " ' Well,' said I, ' the figures may be theo- 
 retical at present, but I 'm willing to demon- 
 strate their practicability if I can. If the 
 house will pay me a salary based on these cal- 
 culations, I '11 do my best to sell a hundred 
 dollars' worth of furniture a day.' 
 
 " We had a long talk, the Senior Partner 
 and I, during which I told him some of the 
 things that had happened in the store. If the 
 average proprietor could get his employees 
 to talk to him frankly, many a business would 
 take a new spurt." 
 
 " And many a worthless devil would be 
 tossed overboard," added Hopkins. 
 
 About this time I caught Dorothy looking 
 up at me. I fancied there was an unusually 
 friendly light in her eyes, and I thought there 
 
 299
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 was a deeper pink in her cheeks as our eyes 
 met. I had guessed right: she was interested 
 in my story. 
 
 However, I pulled myself together with a 
 mighty effort, and went on. " The Senior 
 Partner and I had a long talk," I repeated, 
 " and, without mentioning any names, I gave 
 him a rare glimpse back of the scenes. It was 
 not my duty to unmask Birdie McNulty. It 
 was the type only that I exposed to his view. 
 Well, the result of this talk was an agreement 
 whereby my salary was readjusted on the basis 
 I had suggested. 
 
 " It is wonderful what a definite incentive 
 will do to the right sort of man. From that 
 day I became alert for selling ideas and keen 
 for customers. I improved my personal ap- 
 pearance and atmosphere. I reached out for 
 the dollars and dragged them into the store. 
 
 " I '11 be brief, for I 'm not talking on the 
 art of selling goods, but on that bigger thing, 
 organization. I wish merely to touch on some 
 of the things I did, for they led to important 
 organization policies. Our Furniture depart- 
 ment had been something of a dead proposi- 
 tion. We had a good stock, but we lacked the 
 
 300
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 quality I call * punch.' We had row after row 
 of polished chairs, long lines of shining tables, 
 aisles bordered by stiff chiffoniers, and the 
 like. To a certain extent, this was unavoid- 
 able; still, when a merchant has a stock that 
 lacks life of itself, he should use the oxygen 
 treatment upon it. If necessary, he must use 
 artificial respiration until it breathes. A suc- 
 cessful business, like a successful book, must 
 have a peculiar faculty of gripping the human 
 mind. If you punch a man in the side when 
 you pass him on the street, he '11 stop short. 
 So, if you punch a customer with a sell- 
 ing idea, he '11 slow down in his race for 
 your competitor's store and shy around into 
 yours. 
 
 " The first thing I did was to fit up a col- 
 lege girl's room, as a floor display. By the 
 order of the Senior Partner, the manager of 
 the Furniture department gave me carte 
 blanche. And I tell you, gentlemen, that my 
 display was worth coming to see. Then our 
 advertising man came up and talked with me, 
 and the next day our ad in the morning papers 
 had a new flavor. Instead of inviting the pub- 
 lic to come in and inspect cheerless rows of 
 
 301
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 lifeless furniture, it had an air of mystery and 
 motion about it. 
 
 " Well, we had model living-rooms, effi- 
 ciency kitchens, bachelor dens, and drawing- 
 rooms, and finally a furnished mansion on an 
 elaborate scale. One week we showed a room 
 furnished complete for fifty dollars; the next 
 week one that would cost a hundred ; then one 
 requiring two hundred. We had a 'Blue 
 Room,' modeled after the one at the White 
 House, and a reproduction of the circular office 
 of the President. You see, it 's possible to do 
 a lot of things to sell goods if the men who 
 sell them will unlock their ideas. I Ve just 
 given you a glimpse, however, of the way we 
 punched up the people and got them coming. 
 There was n't a week that I did n't originate 
 at least one selling idea, and the Senior Part- 
 ner backed me up all through. 
 
 " For two or three weeks I fell short of my 
 hundred dollars; then on several days I 
 scored. Suddenly I went over a hundred. 
 Our furniture sales picked up in a remarkable 
 manner. For a month I averaged a hundred 
 and fifty dollars a day. During the whole 
 year I sold about forty thousand dollars, or a 
 
 302
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 daily average of a hundred and thirty-three 
 dollars. This was a third more than my 
 agreement required, and the firm paid me 
 twenty-five dollars a week for the entire year. 
 
 " Meanwhile the other furniture clerks had 
 been taken into the game all except ' Rags,' 
 who would not get into line." 
 
 " You '11 always find a few men in every 
 organization who '11 fail to respond to the 
 hypodermic needle," said Barnes. 
 
 " Yes," I returned; "but the Senior Part- 
 ner did n't like to fire ' Rags ' because he had 
 been there a long time, and had twin babies 
 at home ; but there was a job vacant down in 
 the subbasement. 
 
 " My experiment had been the subject of a 
 great deal of discussion among the higher ex- 
 ecutives. On numerous occasions I was called 
 to the office during these talks, and given an 
 opportunity to take part. One day Mr. Munn 
 said to me: 
 
 " ' You have opened up extraordinary possi- 
 bilities, young man; and, since you have dem- 
 onstrated these possibilities in the Furniture 
 department, we are going to give you a 
 broader field. We have created a new depart- 
 
 33
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 ment, and hereafter your title will be " organi- 
 zation manager." Your duties, in short, will 
 be to get better results from the human mate- 
 rial in this business. In order to do that, you 
 are to work out your own ideas.' 
 
 " So, at twenty-four, I was given a desk and 
 a salary of a hundred and fifty dollars a month. 
 It was a huge task I began; but it meant the 
 redemption of the business. 
 
 " At first I had n't much of a plan. It is 
 easy to talk grandiloquently about one's l or- 
 ganization,' but to make that organization 
 stand for anything definite is a different prop- 
 osition. Once I spent half a day with a friend 
 who was stage manager for a forthcoming 
 spectacular musical show. I stood in the 
 empty pit of the theater and watched the first 
 rehearsals. The thing was all a jumble. 
 Afterward I saw the finished production, in 
 which each person knew his or her part, and 
 the whole moved like an automatic machine. 
 I know a great many business houses to-day 
 that are only rehearsing. Their organizations 
 are mere jumbles, in which few of the actors 
 know the right steps or figures." 
 
 " Worst of all," said Barnes, " their stage 
 
 304
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 managers don't know the turkey-trot from the 
 manual of arms." 
 
 This brought a great laugh, but Dowe 
 rapped for order. 
 
 " So, you see," I resumed, " that I was the 
 stage manager of our business. It was n't up 
 to me to advertise the show, or take in the 
 money, or look after the properties. My part 
 was to see that the actors performed their 
 evolutions properly. Now, instead of begin- 
 ning with the whole big mix-up, I resolved 
 to start with one department. I selected the 
 Notions. 
 
 " First I secured a list of all clerks at the 
 Notion counters, and then, one by one, I sent 
 for them and had a five minutes' talk with 
 each, at my desk. My purpose was twofold; 
 I wanted to study the clerks at first-hand, and 
 I wanted to get all the ideas they could 
 give me. 
 
 " A few of them, I discovered, were not 
 made of the material I wanted. A good stage 
 manager picks his graceful dancers and retires 
 the awkward squad. In the badly managed 
 business the awkward squad is often the larger 
 element. Almost everywhere I go I see men 
 
 305
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 and women out of place in their jobs. Once 
 a young man applied to me for a position as 
 elevator conductor in our store. He had 
 worked three years in that capacity in a large 
 wholesale establishment. I was struck with 
 his pleasant atmosphere, and his clear, con- 
 vincing manner of talking. ' You don't be- 
 long in an elevator,' I told him, and gave him 
 a salesman's job in the shoe department. To- 
 day he is manager there. The wholesale 
 house might have made a high-class salesman 
 of him, but it kept him out of the running; 
 and, I have no doubt, sent out more than one 
 road man who ought to have been in an ele- 
 vator. In building an organization, the thing 
 to do first is to pick your raw material intelli- 
 gently, and to put that material where it can 
 do its best work. I recall one young woman, 
 in particular, whom I discovered through my 
 talks with the clerks in the Notions. Her 
 atmosphere was particularly agreeable, and 
 she had qualities, it seemed to me, that fitted 
 her for work that was more productive. So 
 I transferred her to the Infant Wear section, 
 where she was called on to meet a high-class 
 trade. Before long she was made head of 
 
 306
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 stock, and raised that section to a plane never 
 before attained. 
 
 " But I 'm talking just now about the No- 
 tions. I picked a new manager for that de- 
 partment, and spent a day or two talking to 
 him. I showed him in detail what I had done 
 in the Furniture, and I told him we could ac- 
 complish as much in the Notions. I put the 
 thing up to him and promised him a bonus 
 that amounted to an increase of a hundred per 
 cent in his salary if he brought the volume of 
 sales up to the standard I fixed. All the clerks 
 in the Notion section, too, were put on a pre- 
 mium system. 
 
 " I have n't time to tell you in detail what 
 this young chap did. By simplifying his ar- 
 rangement of stock and making it follow an 
 invariable rule, he did away with a tremen- 
 dous loss of selling time; he made it possible 
 for the same number of clerks to wait on sev- 
 enty-five per cent more customers. He and 
 the advertising man, together, put over all 
 kinds of selling ideas, and we sold that year 
 sixty per cent more of Notions than ever 
 before. 
 
 "Next I took hold of the White Goods; 
 
 307
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 then Groceries; then the Stationery; then 
 Domestics. One by one, I took up each of the 
 separate activities of the store and made it 
 dance gracefully. In charge of each I put a 
 competent dancing-master, and I quickened 
 up the music of the whole production. I made 
 each department-head responsible for the men 
 and women under him, showed him how to 
 develop them, and mapped out a system by 
 which every employee had definite and iron- 
 clad duties." 
 
 " We have seen," observed Frothingham, 
 glancing out the rear door of the smoker at the 
 ribbon of track that was sweeping under us 
 and running away round the curves, " how the 
 flagman drops off when the train is blocked 
 drops off instantly and prevents a rear-end 
 collision. If every employee of a business 
 could be a sort of flagman, such a concern 
 would have an ideal organization." 
 
 " In the firm of Munn, Moorehouse & Gay- 
 lord," I said, quickly, " our executives must 
 serve as flagmen before they get higher. 
 Therefore they understand how vital it is to 
 know one's duties and perform them at the 
 right time. But I must hurry along with my 
 
 308
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 narrative. As organization manager, gentle- 
 men, I extended my work to our wholesale 
 establishment, and to our manufacturing en- 
 terprises. In the latter I found just as many 
 opportunities for betterment as in the selling 
 branches of the business. The right organiza- 
 tion in a factory will quicken production im- 
 mensely and cut down expenses and costs. 
 For example, I said to one superintendent: 
 1 You must cut the unit cost of this Number 
 Nine piece from eleven to six cents.' That 
 was a radical order, and, on the face of it, 
 seemed impossible. But the superintendent 
 had developed an organization under him, 
 and when the problem was studied by intelli- 
 gent men a machine was perfected by which 
 the cost of making this piece of apparel was 
 reduced to five cents, and subsequently to 
 three. On another occasion, when a similar 
 order was given, a folding machine was in- 
 vented almost immediately that accomplished 
 the necessary result. If you have the right 
 men in your organization, and develop them 
 properly, they'll work magic for you when 
 you wave your wand. 
 
 " But at the beginning I found the same 
 
 309
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 story all through our business no well-de- 
 fined policies, lack of the right human mate- 
 rial, want of incentive, and a woeful need of 
 initiative. In the wholesale house, for in- 
 stance, the manager of the Garment depart- 
 ment belonged to a school of business twenty 
 years out of date. He had n't got the modern 
 viewpoint the l furniture viewpoint/ as our 
 Senior Partner named it. I tried faithfully 
 to make him see things as I saw them, but for 
 a week I made no impression. Then I said to 
 him: l If you get the spirit of winning into 
 the men under you, you can easily sell thirty 
 per cent more stuff than you sold last year. 
 We '11 give you what new blood you need, and 
 we '11 pay you and your men what you earn. 
 But if you fail to sell the extra thirty per cent 
 well, in that event you automatically fire 
 yourself.' In his case I put the proposition 
 unusually strong. 
 
 "Well, sir, he woke up; his coattails did 
 some lively stunts about our mercantile stage. 
 He acquired the mental attitude, forgot his 
 traditions, and went over the mark I set for 
 him. But he did n't do it alone; if he had n't 
 organized his men for the effort, he would n't 
 
 310
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 have done it. It 's the men who work for you 
 that do the thing, very often. 
 
 :< In the Flannels we had been disgracefully 
 deep in the mire of incompetence. I put in a 
 new manager, because there was no hope for 
 the old one. There is n't any use trying to 
 make a clubfooted man toe out. The new 
 manager demonstrated my theory that if you 
 set a reasonable goal for a man to attain, and 
 set the right man at the task, he will achieve 
 it nine times out of ten, no matter if he sells 
 only batts, waddings, and burlap. One thing 
 this new manager did was to sell four times as 
 many steamer rugs as we 'd ever sold. He 
 did this by clever ideas in featuring. 
 
 " It was really astonishing how the different 
 departments responded as I touched the keys 
 of organization. The Silks, Laces, Cloths, 
 Prints, Carpets, Hosiery, Books all the de- 
 partments, in fact, got into line, so each of 
 them began to show results from ten to a hun- 
 dred per cent better than formerly." 
 
 " Yet in reality it was a logical result," in- 
 sisted Barnes. "When you improve the in- 
 gredients that go into the soup, you make 
 better soup." 
 
 3"
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 " But the actual improvement of the ingre- 
 dients of our organization was a patient, labo- 
 rious process," I said. " As I have shown you, 
 I first surrounded myself with a lot of depart- 
 ment-heads whom I imbued with the broader 
 vision. I gave each the incentive to originate 
 selling ideas and short-cuts in expense. Each 
 one of these had his goal set for him his 
 expected volume of sales. The attainment of 
 it meant a much larger bonus than if he fell 
 short. And in order to knit all the depart- 
 ments together and make each manager inter- 
 ested in the welfare of all the departments, as 
 well as his own, we offered a general percen- 
 tage bonus and divided it equally among 
 all the department-heads. It was based 
 on the total net profits of the house. Our 
 scheme, you see, was no mere plan of 
 profit sharing. Our people got what they 
 earned. 
 
 " Thus each of these managers became the 
 head of a little world of his own. He was, in 
 effect, the organization manager of that minor 
 world. It was his duty to make detailed re- 
 ports to me concerning each worker. In my 
 office we kept a card-index system, showing 
 
 312
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 the monthly sales, clerk by clerk. But this 
 was n't all. Each department had a ' sugges- 
 tion box,' into which any employee could drop 
 a written slip bearing a definite idea by means 
 of which more goods might be sold or methods 
 improved. Every idea accepted was credited 
 to the employee furnishing it; and not only 
 was a cash payment made in return, but the 
 number of ideas supplied by each clerk be- 
 came a matter of record. Advancements were 
 made for cause, not through personal favor- 
 itism. Please observe that this plan was de- 
 signed to give us human material vastly more 
 profitable than Birdie McNulty." 
 
 " The ideas that remain on ice in the brains 
 of the average business," broke in Barnes 
 again, " would surprise you if you got the 
 sawdust cleared away. Some business men 
 try to club out the ideas with a bludgeon, but 
 the modern organization manager gets them 
 coming naturally and willingly." 
 
 "That's it, in a nutshell," said I. "Of 
 course we extended our premium or bonus 
 systems down through the ranks. When you 
 go to a store to buy butter, you have to pay 
 more for quality, but a lot of business men 
 
 3*3
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 think they can get creamery-brand labor on 
 a butterine basis." 
 
 " You can make a horse pull by sitting be- 
 hind him and swearing," Barnes declaimed, 
 " and you can make a dog crouch before you, 
 but the men who can sell the most goods for 
 you are not built that way." 
 
 By these deft and characteristic twists of 
 speech, Barnes was helping out my story in a 
 most picturesque way. But I was anxious 
 now to get through. Once more I caught 
 Dorothy's glance, and the smile I saw in her 
 eyes fired my impatience. In an hour we must 
 separate she to go her way, I to go mine. 
 The Dowes were to spend some time in south- 
 ern California, but in four days I was to take 
 the Overland Limited back to New York. It 
 was no pleasure trip for me; I had come West 
 on hurried business connected with the San 
 Francisco branch of Munn, Moorehouse & 
 Gaylord. Indeed, by noontime of that very 
 day, and doubtless far into the night, I must 
 be so immersed in business affairs that even 
 Dorothy Dowe would perhaps be only a 
 shadow. No, I knew this could not be so! 
 Dorothy would always be a reality. Indeed,
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 at that moment I vowed in my heart- But 
 just then I heard Dowe telling me to go on 
 with my story. 
 
 So I collected my wandering thoughts. 
 [C In order to train our employees in the 
 broader habits of thinking and doing," I said, 
 " we established a school on an upper floor 
 of our store, where we had graded lectures on 
 management; here, too, we taught our clerks 
 the essential things about goods. You know 
 that in many business establishments the chief 
 weakness lies in the sales force. The goods 
 may have all sorts of fine qualities, but if the 
 salesman is n't able to talk intelligently, the 
 initiative of the factory is largely wasted. So, 
 too, is the splendid selling machinery one 
 often sees in establishments where the human 
 element is 'way below par. I often think of 
 this when I go into business houses and see the 
 fine buildings, the attractive fixtures, the 
 smooth-running elevators and the human 
 organization that is n't half organized. 
 
 " One of my greatest troubles lay in the 
 difficulty I found in recruiting department- 
 heads who were broad enough to see all these 
 things. So I adopted what I called the ' travel
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 plan.' Men who travel much provided 
 they have the right foundation get above 
 the common level. But the sort of travel I 
 gave these young chaps required no railroad 
 fare. Whenever any department developed 
 a man to the point where he promised well as 
 an executive, I started him going. I gave him 
 a month, say, in the Linens; then another 
 month in the Curtains; then two or three 
 weeks in the Wash Goods ; then a week in the 
 Sporting Goods. I fixed up several courses 
 that covered periods ranging up to two years, 
 finishing with the different departments of the 
 office. Wherever the future executives were 
 sent, they did plebeian work, alongside the 
 regular workers. They understood what the 
 scheme was, and almost without exception 
 they took hold vigorously. One of those chaps 
 frequently went into a department that was 
 utterly strange to him and within a week rec- 
 ommended improvements that meant larger 
 sales or reduction of outgo. It was the travel 
 viewpoint, you see. If only you have a defi- 
 nite policy of developing men, it '11 work out 
 every time. 
 
 " Thus we always had ample material from 
 316
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 which to draw our department-heads, and 
 from our department-heads we now draw the 
 men whom we take into the business. 
 
 " As for myself, I was taken into the cor- 
 poration the year after I became organiza- 
 tion manager. That day the Senior Partner 
 called me to his office and gave me a check for 
 a thousand dollars. * This,' he said, ' is a gift 
 from the house.' Then he handed me a hun- 
 dred shares of stock. ' But these,' he went on, 
 ' you '11 have to pay for. We are going to 
 charge you with ten thousand dollars, and in- 
 terest on that sum at six per cent. Then we '11 
 credit you with the profits on your stock, and 
 you can settle the debt in that way. The 
 bigger you make the profits, the sooner the in- 
 debtedness will be canceled. If at any time 
 you should wish to dispose of the stock, you 
 must sell it back to us.' 
 
 " In less than two years I had cleaned up my 
 block of stock, and was charged with another 
 block this time forty thousand. Our re- 
 modeled organization was now piling up 
 astounding results; we were making money 
 so fast that it dazed us. Expansion was 
 imperative, and we put up a new building.
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 In our greater business I was allowed a lib- 
 eral share. My partners advanced the cash 
 and I gave them my note. This note is now 
 largely paid, though only a few years have 
 elapsed. In a way, my interest in the busi- 
 ness was given to me; but in reality I 
 earned it. 
 
 " About twenty men have followed along in 
 my footsteps, though some of them are small 
 holders of stock. Every one we take in is a 
 picked man. Nor is there any element of 
 mere friendship in this policy of giving our 
 best executives an interest in the business. 
 We do it because it pays big dividends. It 
 brings out the merchandising and manufactur- 
 ing genius of the organization. The average 
 partnership, you know, is a wretched aggrega- 
 tion of men drawn together through chance or 
 acquaintance. In our establishment no man is 
 ever admitted who has n't proved himself in 
 advance after we have applied our own 
 brand of development. Our latest arrival is 
 a young man who started five years ago as an 
 umbrella checker in the main vestibule. One 
 day, through the f suggestion box,' I received 
 a selling idea from this boy. He proposed 
 
 318
 
 JUNIOR PARTNER'S RISE 
 
 that on rainy days we have a special win- 
 dow display, devoted to wet-weather goods. 
 Thereafter we kept a section of a window that 
 could be transformed quickly, to meet weather 
 conditions. We materially helped our sales 
 of umbrellas, raincoats, and the like. 
 
 ' This boy we promoted for his alertness. 
 It was n't long before we heard from him 
 again. We kept on hearing, and he kept on 
 going up. We Ve had hundreds of such in- 
 stances. You see now what I mean by the 
 term ' organization.' It 's the organized ef- 
 fort of the best men and women we can get 
 hold of. It 's the effort they put forth, not for 
 the store primarily, but for themselves. Yet 
 the two are synonymous. There is no way to 
 get this organized effort except to go after it." 
 
 " The nation is full of ten-dollar clerks who 
 offer amazing material for business organiza- 
 tions," said Barnes. " There is amazing op- 
 portunity for ten-dollar clerks who will get 
 hold of a mental scaling-ladder and climb on 
 top of the wall, where they can see over into 
 the field of Opportunity." 
 
 This piece of philosophy, I concluded, was 
 a good one to close with. I looked at my 
 
 3*9
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 watch. Only three-quarters of an hour re- 
 mained before the Limited would pull into 
 Oakland. Only three-quarters of an hour 
 ah! but vast possibilities hang on the minutes 
 sometimes ! 
 
 320
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AT THE TERMINAL 
 
 THE Overland Limited stood in the Pa- 
 cific terminal at last. An inspiring 
 example it was of accomplishment! In 
 spite of every obstacle and discouragement, it 
 had come through to Success. It had tri- 
 umphed over darkness and storms, over rivers 
 and mountains, over landslides and wrecks. 
 It had been hampered and delayed, but never 
 for a moment discouraged- The men who 
 operated the railroad had been trained to 
 keep everlastingly at it; they knew the ter- 
 minal could be reached. 
 
 So it is with men who set out to conquer 
 no matter what terminal they direct their steps 
 toward. Some men are traveling to the sea- 
 board, and some toward the lesser destinations 
 of the interior; but if they first make sure 
 there is a passable grade to go over, they can 
 
 321
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 get there if they keep at it. To men of con- 
 victions and courage, not even a landslide 
 can prove overwhelming. True, disaster will 
 sometimes hem them in, and if they give up 
 they are lost. But the men who give up in 
 business are those who do not know how, or 
 who lack the faith to go on. The men who 
 reach their terminals are those who are strong 
 in the self-reliance that comes of knowledge, 
 and who strike boldly at the very heart of 
 resistance. 
 
 I perceive that I lapse, in spite of myself, 
 into Barnes' poetic license. Yes, and why 
 should n't I, when the gloved hand of Miss 
 Dorothy Dowe trembled on my arm as we 
 walked aboard the ferry that was to take us 
 across to San Francisco? And it was while we 
 were standing thus on the' boat, almost at the 
 portal of the Golden Gate itself, that I spoke 
 to Dorothy's father with reference to an ex- 
 tremely personal affair. 
 
 " Sir," said I, and perhaps my voice 
 quavered a little " Sir, some few days ago 
 I was much impressed with a little story you 
 told of a drygoods chap who tried, long ago, 
 to take away from you a certain young lady. 
 
 322
 
 AT THE TERMINAL 
 
 If I recollect right, you declared your inten- 
 tion of fighting that chap to the finish. Now, 
 sir, I wish to inquire if you have any lingering 
 animosities toward drygoods chaps. I should 
 like to know, sir, because well, because I 
 should feel badly were you disposed to fight 
 
 now." 
 
 Banker Dowe looked at me sharply; 
 then at his daughter. "What's that?" he 
 demanded. 
 
 " I repeat," said I, " that I should feel badly 
 were you to fight. Twenty-odd years have 
 elapsed, I believe, since your little brush with 
 the brick and tile manufacturer, but the dry- 
 goods chaps are still hanging around. One of 
 them, sir, is about to take a young lady away 
 from you but in this case the young lady 
 is on the drygoods chap's side. So I beg of 
 you, sir, to make no disturbance! " 
 
 Ah! the great firm of Munn, Moorehouse 
 & Gaylord had struck boldly more than once 
 at the heart of resistance; I well knew how 
 to strike. Banker Dowe was quite overcome, 
 and could offer only feeble remonstrance. 
 
 So you see that business is not all there is 
 to success. And may heaven save my son 
 
 323
 
 THE JUNIOR PARTNER 
 
 (God bless the boy he's just learning to 
 walk!) from the fate of a man who imagines 
 wealth to be success. Even were he to inherit 
 the whole of the great house of Munn, Moore- 
 house & Gaylord, I should esteem him a fail- 
 ure were he never to stand up with other men 
 and fight for things worth achieving. 
 
 THE END
 
 
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