Chapter 9

Again, if you insist that your men shan't violate the early-closing ordinance, you must observe one yourself. A man who works only half a day Saturday can usually do a day and half's work Monday. I'd rather have my men hump themselves for nine hours than dawdle for ten.

Of course, the world is full of horses who won't work except with the whip, but that's no reason for using it on those who will. When I get a critter that hogs my good oats and then won't show them in his gait, I get rid of him. He may be all right for a fellow who's doing a peddling business, but I need a little more speed and spirit in mine.

A lot of people think that adversity and bad treatment is the test of a man, and it is--when you want to develop his strength; but prosperity and good treatment is a better one when you want to develop his weakness. By keeping those who show their appreciation of it and firing those who don't, you get an office full of crackerjacks.

While your men must feel all the time that they've got a boss who can see good work around a corner, they mustn't be allowed to forget that there's no private burying-ground on the premises for mistakes. When a Western town loses one of its prominent citizens through some careless young fellow's letting his gun go off sudden, if the sheriff buys a little rope and sends out invitations to an inquest, it's apt to make the boys more reserved about exchanging repartee; and if you pull up your men sharp when you find them shooting off their mouths to customers and getting gay in their correspondence, it's sure to cut down the mortality among our old friends in the trade. A clerk's never fresh in letters that the boss is going to see.

The men who stay in the office and plan are the brains of your business; those who go out and sell are its arms; and those who fill and deliver the orders are its legs. There's no use in the brains scheming and the arms gathering in, if the legs are going to deliver the goods with a kick.

That's another reason why it's very important for you to be in the office early. You can't personally see every order filled, and tell whether it was shipped promptly and the right goods sent, but when the telegrams and letters are opened, you can have all the kicks sorted out, and run through them before they're distributed for the day. That's where you'll meet the clerk who billed a tierce of hams to the man who ordered a box; the shipper who mislaid Bill Smith's order for lard, and made Bill lose his Saturday's trade through the delay; the department head who felt a little peevish one morning and so wrote Hardin & Co., who buy in car-lots, that if they didn't like the smoke of the last car of Bacon Short Clears they could lump it, or words to that effect; and that's where you'll meet the salesman who played a sure thing on the New Orleans track and needs twenty to get to the next town, where his check is waiting. Then, a little later, when you make the rounds of the different departments to find out how it happened, the heads will tell you all the good news that was in the morning's mail.

Of course, you can keep track of your men in a sneaking way that will make them despise you, and talk to them in a nagging spirit that will make them bristle when they see you. But it's your right to know and your business to find out, and if you collect your information in an open, frank manner, going at it in the spirit of hoping to find everything all right, instead of wanting to find something all wrong; and if you talk to the responsible man with an air of "here's a place where we can get together and correct a weakness in our business"--not my business--instead of with an "Ah! ha! I've-found-you-out" expression, your men will throw handsprings for your good opinion. Never nag a man tinder any circumstances; fire him.

A good boss, in these days when profits are pared down to the quick, can't afford to have any holes, no matter how small, in his management; but there must be give enough in his seams so that every time he stoops down to pick up a penny he won't split his pants. He must know how to be big, as well as how to be small.

Some years ago, I knew a firm who did business under the name of Foreman & Sowers. They were a regular business vaudeville team--one big and broad-gauged in all his ideas; the other unable to think in anything but boys' and misses' sizes. Foreman believed that men got rich in dollars; Sowers in cents. Of course, you can do it in either way, but the first needs brains and the second only hands. It's been my experience that the best way is to go after both the dollars and the cents.

Well, sir, these fellows launched a specialty, a mighty good thing, the Peep o' Daisy Breakfast Food, and started in to advertise. Sowers wanted to use inch space and sell single cases; Foreman kicked because full pages weren't bigger and wanted to sell in car-lots, leaving the case trade to the jobbers. Sowers only half-believed in himself, and only a quarter in the food, and only an eighth in advertising. So he used to go home nights and lie awake with a living-picture exhibit of himself being kicked out of his store by the sheriff; and out of his house by the landlord; and, finally, off the corner where he was standing with his hat out for pennies, by the policeman. He hadn't a big enough imagination even to introduce into this last picture a sport dropping a dollar bill into his hat. But Foreman had a pretty good opinion of himself, and a mighty big opinion of the food, and he believed that a clever, well-knit ad. was strong enough to draw teeth. So he would go home and build steam-yachts and country places in his sleep.

Naturally, the next morning, Sowers would come down haggard and gloomy, and grow gloomier as he went deeper into the mail and saw how small the orders were. But Foreman would start out as brisk and busy as a humming-bird, tap the advertising agent for a new line of credit on his way down to the office, and extract honey and hope from every letter.

Sowers begged him, day by day, to stop the useless fight and save the remains of their business. But Foreman simply laughed. Said there wouldn't be any remains when he was ready to quit. Allowed that he believed in cremation, anyway, and that the only way to fix a brand on the mind of the people was to burn it in with money.

Sowers worried along a few days more, and then one night, after he had been buried in the potter's field, he planned a final stroke to stop Foreman, who, he believed, didn't know just how deep in they really were. Foreman was in a particular jolly mood the next morning, for he had spent the night bidding against Pierrepont Morgan at an auction sale of old masters; but he listened patiently while Sowers called off the figures in a sort of dirge-like singsong, and until he had wailed out his final note of despair, a bass-drum crash, which he thought would bring Foreman to a realizing sense of their loss, so to speak.

"That," Sowers wound up, "makes a grand total of $800,000 that we have already lost."

Foreman's head drooped, and for a moment he was deep in thought, while Sowers stood over him, sad, but triumphant, in the feeling that he had at last brought this madman to his senses, now that his dollars were gone.

"Eight hundred thou!" the senior partner repeated mechanically. Then, looking up with a bright smile, he exclaimed: "Why, old man, that leaves us two hundred thousand still to spend before we hit the million mark!"

They say that Sowers could only gibber back at him; and Foreman kept right on and managed some way to float himself on to the million mark. There the tide turned, and after all these years it's still running his way; and Sowers, against his better judgment, is a millionaire.

I simply mention Foreman in passing. It would be all foolishness to follow his course in a good many situations, but there's a time to hold on and a time to let go, and the limit, and a little beyond, is none too far to play a really good thing. But in business it's quite as important to know how to be a good quitter as a good fighter. Even when you feel that you've got a good thing, you want to make sure that it's good enough, and that you're good enough, before you ask to have the limit taken off. A lot of men who play a nice game of authors get their feelings hurt at whist, and get it in the neck at poker.

You want to have the same principle in mind when you're handling the trade. Sometimes you'll have to lay down even when you feel that your case is strong. Often you'll have to yield a point or allow a claim when you know you're dead right and the other fellow all wrong. But there's no sense in getting a licking on top of a grievance.

Another thing that helps you keep track of your men is the habit of asking questions. Your thirst for information must fairly make your tongue loll out. When you ask the head of the canning department what we're netting for two-pound Corned Beef on the day's market for canners, and he has to say, "Wait a minute and I'll figure it out," or turn to one of his boys and ask, "Bill, what are twos netting us?" he isn't sitting close enough to his job, and, perhaps, if Bill were in his chair, he'd be holding it in his lap; or when you ask the chief engineer how much coal we burned this month, as compared with last, and why in thunder we burned it, if he has to hem and haw and say he hasn't had time to figure it out yet, but he thinks they were running both benches in the packing house most of the time, and he guesses this and reckons that, he needs to get up a little more steam himself. In short, whenever you find a fellow that ought to know every minute where he's at, but who doesn't know what's what, he's pretty likely to be _It_. When you're dealing with an animal like the American hog, that carries all its profit in the tip of its tail, you want to make sure that your men carry all the latest news about it on the tip of the tongue.

It's not a bad plan, once in a while, to check up the facts and figures that are given you. I remember one lightning calculator I had working for me, who would catch my questions hot from the bat, and fire back the answers before I could get into position to catch. Was a mighty particular cuss. Always worked everything out to the sixth decimal place. I had just about concluded he ought to have a wider field for his talents, when I asked him one day how the hams of the last week's run had been averaging in weight. Answered like a streak; but it struck me that for hogs which had been running so light they were giving up pretty generously. So I checked up his figures and found 'em all wrong. Tried him with a different question every day for a week. Always answered quick, and always answered wrong. Found that he was a base-ball rooter and had been handing out the batting averages of the Chicagos for his answers. Seems that when I used to see him busy figuring with his pencil he was working out where Anson stood on the list. He's not in Who's Who in the Stock Yards any more, you bet.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

No. 12

From John Graham, at Magnolia Villa, on the Florida Coast, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The old man has started back to Nature, but he hasn't gone quite far enough to lose sight of his business altogether.

XII

MAGNOLIA VILLA, February 5, 1900.

_Dear Pierrepont_: Last week I started back to Nature, as you advised, but at the Ocean High Roller House I found that I had to wear knee-breeches, which was getting back too far, or creases in my trousers, which wasn't far enough. So we've taken this little place, where there's nothing between me and Nature but a blue shirt and an old pair of pants, and I reckon that's near enough.

I'm getting a complexion and your ma's losing hers. Hadn't anything with her but some bonnets, so just before we left the hotel she went into a little branch store, which a New York milliner runs there, and tried to buy a shade hat.

"How would this pretty little shepherdess effect do?" asked the girl who was showing the goods, while she sized me up to see if the weight of my pocketbook made my coat sag.

"How much is it?" asked your ma.

"Fifty dollars," said the girl, as bright and sassy as you please.

"I'm not such a simple little shepherdess as that," answered your ma, just a little brighter and a little sassier, and she's going around bareheaded. She's doing the cooking and making the beds, because the white girls from the North aren't willing to do "both of them works," and the native niggers don't seem to care a great deal about doing any work. And I'm splitting the wood for the kitchen stove, and an occasional fish that has committed suicide. This morning, when I was casting through the surf, a good-sized drum chased me up on shore, and he's now the star performer in a chowder that your ma has billed for dinner.

They call this place a villa, though it's really a villainy; and what I pay for it rent, though it's actually a robbery. But they can have the last bill in the roll if they'll leave me your ma, and my appetite, and that tired feeling at night. It's the bulliest time we've had since the spring we moved into our first little cottage back in Missouri, and raised climbing-roses and our pet pig, Toby. It's good to have money and the things that money will buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money won't buy. When a fellow's got what he set out for in this world, he should go off into the woods for a few weeks now and then to make sure that he's still a man, and not a plug-hat and a frock-coat and a wad of bills.

You can't do the biggest things in this world unless you can handle men; and you can't handle men if you're not in sympathy with them; and sympathy begins in humility. I don't mean the humility that crawls for a nickel in the street and cringes for a thousand in the office; but the humility that a man finds when he goes gunning in the woods for the truth about himself. It's the sort of humility that makes a fellow proud of a chance to work in the world, and want to be a square merchant, or a good doctor, or an honest lawyer, before he's a rich one. It makes him understand that while life is full of opportunities for him, it's full of responsibilities toward the other fellow, too.

That doesn't mean that you ought to coddle idleness, or to be slack with viciousness, or even to carry on the pay-roll well-meaning incompetence. For a fellow who mixes business and charity soon finds that he can't make any money to give to charity; and in the end, instead of having helped others, he's only added himself to the burden of others. The kind of sympathy I mean holds up men to the bull-ring without forgetting in its own success the hardships and struggles and temptations of the fellow who hasn't got there yet, but is honestly trying to. There's more practical philanthropy in keeping close to these men and speaking the word that they need, or giving them the shove that they deserve, than in building an eighteen-hole golf course around the Stock Yards for them. Your force can always find plenty of reasons for striking, without your furnishing an extra one in the poor quality of the golf-balls that you give them. So I make it a rule that everything I hand out to my men shall come in the course of business, and be given on a business basis. When profits are large, they get a large bonus and a short explanation of the business reasons in the office and the country that have helped them to earn it; when profits are small, the bonus shrinks and the explanation expands. I sell the men their meats and give them their meals in the house restaurant at cost, but nothing changes hands between us except in exchange for work or cash.

If you want a practical illustration of how giving something for nothing works, pick out some one who has no real claim on you--an old college friend who's too strong to work, or a sixteenth cousin who's missed connections with the express to Fortune--and say: "You're a pretty good fellow, and I want to help you; after this I'm going to send you a hundred dollars the first of every month, until you've made a new start." He'll fairly sicken you with his thanks for that first hundred; he'll call you his generous benefactor over three or four pages for the second; he'll send you a nice little half-page note of thanks for the third; he'll write, "Yours of the first with inclosure to hand--thanks," for the fourth; he'll forget to acknowledge the fifth; and when the sixth doesn't come promptly, he'll wire collect: "Why this delay in sending my check--mail at once." And all the time he won't have stirred a step in the direction of work, because he'll have reasoned, either consciously or unconsciously: "I can't get a job that will pay me more than a hundred a month to start with; but I'm already drawing a hundred without working; so what's the use?" But when a fellow can't get a free pass, and he has any sort of stuff in him, except what hoboes are made of, he'll usually hustle for his car fare, rather than ride through life on the bumpers of a freight.

The only favor that a good man needs is an opportunity to do the best work that's in him; and that's the only present you can make him once a week that will be a help instead of a hindrance to him. It's been my experience that every man has in him the possibility of doing well some one thing, no matter how humble, and that there's some one, in some place, who wants that special thing done. The difference between a fellow who succeeds and one who fails is that the first gets out and chases after the man who needs him, and the second sits around waiting to be hunted up.

When I was a boy, we were brought up to believe that we were born black with original sin, and that we bleached out a little under old Doc Hoover's preaching. And in the church down Main Street they taught that a lot of us were predestined to be damned, and a few of us to be saved; and naturally we all had our favorite selections for the first bunch. I used to accept the doctrine of predestination for a couple of weeks every year, just before the Main Street church held its Sunday-school picnic, and there are a few old rascals in the Stock Yards that make me lean toward it sometimes now; but, in the main, I believe that most people start out with a plenty of original goodness.

The more I deal in it, the surer I am that human nature is all off the same critter, but that there's a heap of choice in the cuts. Even then a bad cook will spoil a four-pound porterhouse, where a good one will take a chuck steak, make a few passes over it with seasoning and fixings, and serve something that will line your insides with happiness. Circumstances don't make men, but they shape them, and you want to see that those under you are furnished with the right set of circumstances.

Every fellow is really two men--what he is and what he might be; and you're never absolutely sure which you're going to bury till he's dead. But a man in your position can do a whole lot toward furnishing the officiating clergyman with beautiful examples, instead of horrible warnings. The great secret of good management is to be more alert to prevent a man's going wrong than eager to punish him for it. That's why I centre authority and distribute checks upon it. That's why I've never had any Honest Old Toms, or Good Old Dicks, or Faithful Old Harrys handling my good money week-days and presiding over the Sabbath-school Sundays for twenty years, and leaving the old man short a hundred thousand, and the little ones short a superintendent, during the twenty-first year.

It's right to punish these fellows, but a suit for damages ought to lie against their employers. Criminal carelessness is a bad thing, but the carelessness that makes criminals is worse. The chances are that, to start with, Tom and Dick were honest and good at the office and sincere at the Sunday-school, and that, given the right circumstances, they would have stayed so. It was their employers' business to see that they were surrounded by the right circumstances at the office and to find out whether they surrounded themselves with them at home.

A man who's fundamentally honest is relieved instead of aggrieved by having proper checks on his handling of funds. And the bigger the man's position and the amount that he handles, the more important this is. A minor employee can take only minor sums, and the principal harm done is to himself; but when a big fellow gets into you, it's for something big, and more is hurt than his morals and your feelings.

I dwell a little on these matters, because I want to fix it firmly in your mind that the man who pays the wages must put more in the weekly envelope than money, if he wants to get his full money's worth. I've said a good deal about the importance of little things to a boss; don't forget their importance to your men. A thousand-dollar clerk doesn't think with a ten-thousand-dollar head; a fellow whose view is shut in by a set of ledgers can't see very far, and so stampedes easier than one whose range is the whole shop; a brain that can't originate big things can't forget trifles so quick as one in which the new ideas keep crowding out the old annoyances. Ten thousand a year will sweeten a multitude of things that don't taste pleasant, but there's not so much sugar in a thousand to help them down. The sting of some little word or action that wouldn't get under your skin at all, is apt to swell up one of these fellows' bump of self-esteem as big as an egg-plant, and make it sore all over.

It's always been my policy to give a little extra courtesy and consideration to the men who hold the places that don't draw the extra good salaries. It's just as important to the house that they should feel happy and satisfied as the big fellows. And no man who's doing his work well is too small for a friendly word and a pat on the back, and no fellow who's doing his work poorly is too big for a jolt that will knock the nonsense out of him.

You can't afford to give your men a real grievance, no matter how small it is; for a man who's got nothing to occupy thin but his work can accomplish twice as much as one who's busy with his work and a grievance. The average man will leave terrapin and champagne in a minute to chew over the luxury of feeling abused. Even when a man isn't satisfied with the supply of real grievances which life affords, and goes off hunting up imaginary ones, like a blame old gormandizing French hog that leaves a full trough to root through the woods for truffles, you still want to be polite; for when you fire a man there's no good reason for doing it with a yell.

Noise isn't authority, and there's no sense in ripping and roaring and cussing around the office when things don't please you. For when a fellow's given to that, his men secretly won't care a cuss whether he's pleased or not. They'll jump when he speaks, because they value their heads, not his good opinion. Indiscriminate blame is as bad as undiscriminating praise--it only makes a man tired.

I learned this, like most of the sense I've got--hard; and it was only a few years ago that I took my last lesson in it. I came down one morning with my breakfast digesting pretty easy, and found the orders fairly heavy and the kicks rather light, so I told the young man who was reading the mail to me, and who, of course, hadn't had anything special to do with the run of orders, to buy himself a suit of clothes and send the bill to the old man.