Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son Part 2

I piece out from your letter that you expect a few months on the other side will sort of put a polish on you. I don't want to seem pessimistic, but I have seen hundreds of boys graduate from college and go over with the same idea, and they didn't bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes. Seeing the world is like charity--it covers a mult.i.tude of sins, and, like charity, it ought to begin at home.

Culture is not a matter of a change of climate. You'll hear more about Browning to the square foot in the Mississippi Valley than you will in England. And there's as much Art talk on the Lake front as in the Latin Quarter. It may be a little different, but it's there.

I went to Europe once myself. I was pretty raw when I left Chicago, and I was pretty sore when I got back. Coming and going I was simply sick.

In London, for the first time in my life, I was taken for an easy thing. Every time I went into a store there was a bull movement. The clerks all knocked off their regular work and started in to mark up prices.

They used to tell me that they didn't have any gold-brick men over there. So they don't. They deal in pictures--old masters, they call them. I bought two--you know the ones--those hanging in the waiting-room at the stock yards; and when I got back I found out that they had been painted by a measly little fellow who went to Paris to study art, after Bill Harris had found out that he was no good as a settling clerk. I keep 'em to remind myself that there's no fool like an old American fool when he gets this picture paresis.

The fellow who tried to fit me out with a coat-of-arms didn't find me so easy. I picked mine when I first went into business for myself--a charging steer--and it's registered at Was.h.i.+ngton. It's my trade-mark, of course, and that's the only coat-of-arms an American merchant has any business with. It's penetrated to every quarter of the globe in the last twenty years, and every soldier in the world has carried it--in his knapsack.

I take just as much pride in it as the fellow who inherits his and can't find any place to put it, except on his carriage door and his letter-head--and it's a heap more profitable. It's got so now that every jobber in the trade knows that it stands for good quality, and that's all any Englishman's coat-of-arms can stand for. Of course, an American's can't stand for anything much--generally it's the burned-in-the-skin brand of a sn.o.b.

After the way some of the descendants of the old New York Dutchmen with the hoe and the English general storekeepers have turned out, I sometimes feel a little uneasy about what my great-grandchildren may do, but we'll just stick to the trade-mark and try to live up to it while the old man's in the saddle.

I simply mention these things in a general way. I have no fears for you after you've been at work for a few years, and have struck an average between the packing-house and Harvard; then if you want to graze over a wider range it can't hurt you. But for the present you will find yourself pretty busy trying to get into the winning cla.s.s.

Your affectionate father, JOHN GRAHAM.

+------------------------------+ No. 5 +------------------------------+ From John Graham, head of the house of Graham & Co., at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont Graham, at Lake Moosgatchemawamuc, in the Maine woods. Mr. Pierrepont has written to his father withdrawing his suggestion. +------------------------------+

V

July 7, 189-

_Dear Pierrepont:_ Yours of the fourth has the right ring, and it says more to the number of words used than any letter that I have ever received from you. I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good many more use it _instead_ of thought.

A business man's conversation should be regulated by fewer and simpler rules than any other function of the human animal. They are:

Have something to say.

Say it.

Stop talking.

Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a short cut to the second. I maintain a legal department here, and it costs a lot of money, but it's to keep me from going to law.

It's all right when you are calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods. Cut out the introduction and the peroration, and stop before you get to secondly. You've got to preach short sermons to catch sinners; and deacons won't believe they need long ones themselves. Give fools the first and women the last word.

The meat's always in the middle of the sandwich. Of course, a little b.u.t.ter on either side of it doesn't do any harm if it's intended for a man who likes b.u.t.ter.

Remember, too, that it's easier to look wise than to talk wisdom. Say less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk; for when a man's listening he isn't telling on himself and he's flattering the fellow who is. Give most men a good listener and most women enough note-paper and they'll tell all they know. Money talks--but not unless its owner has a loose tongue, and then its remarks are always offensive.

Poverty talks, too, but n.o.body wants to hear what it has to say.

I simply mention these things in pa.s.sing because I'm afraid you're apt to be the fellow who's doing the talking; just as I'm a little afraid that you're sometimes like the hungry drummer at the dollar-a-day house--inclined to kill your appet.i.te by eating the cake in the centre of the table before the soup comes on.

Of course, I'm glad to see you swing into line and show the proper spirit about coming on here and going to work; but you mustn't get yourself all "het up" before you take the plunge, because you're bound to find the water pretty cold at first. I've seen a good many young fellows pa.s.s through and out of this office. The first week a lot of them go to work they're in a sweat for fear they'll be fired; and the second week for fear they won't be. By the third, a boy that's no good has learned just how little work he can do and keep his job; while the fellow who's got the right stuff in him is holding down his own place with one hand and beginning to reach for the job just ahead of him with the other. I don't mean that he's neglecting his work; but he's beginning to take notice, and that's a mighty hopeful sign in either a young clerk or a young widow.

You've got to handle the first year of your business life about the way you would a trotting horse. Warm up a little before going to the post--not enough to be in a sweat, but just enough to be limber and eager. Never start off at a gait that you can't improve on, but move along strong and well in hand to the quarter. Let out a notch there, but take it calm enough up to the half not to break, and hard enough not to fall back into the ruck. At the three-quarters you ought to be going fast enough to poke your nose out of the other fellow's dust, and running like the Limited in the stretch. Keep your eyes to the front all the time, and you won't be so apt to shy at the little things by the side of the track. Head up, tail over the dashboard--that's the way the winners look in the old pictures of Maud S. and Dexter and Jay-Eye-See.

And that's the way I want to see you swing by the old man at the end of the year, when we hoist the numbers of the fellows who are good enough to promote and pick out the salaries which need a little sweetening.

I've always taken a good deal of stock in what you call "Blood-will-tell"

if you're a Methodist, or "Heredity" if you're a Unitarian; and I don't want you to come along at this late day and disturb my religious beliefs.

A man's love for his children and his pride are pretty badly snarled up in this world, and he can't always pick them apart. I think a heap of you and a heap of the house, and I want to see you get along well together.

To do that you must start right. It's just as necessary to make a good first impression in business as in courting. You'll read a good deal about "love at first sight" in novels, and there may be something in it for all I know; but I'm dead certain there's no such thing as love at first sight in business. A man's got to keep company a long time, and come early and stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having.

There's nothing comes without calling in this world, and after you've called you've generally got to go and fetch it yourself.

Our bright young men have discovered how to make a pretty good article of potted chicken, and they don't need any help from hens, either; and you can smell the clover in our b.u.t.terine if you've developed the poetic side of your nose; but none of the boys have been able to discover anything that will pa.s.s as a subst.i.tute for work, even in a boarding-house, though I'll give some of them credit for having tried pretty hard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Charlie Chase told me he was President of the Klondike Exploring, Gold Prospecting and Immigration Company._"]

I remember when I was selling goods for old Josh Jennings, back in the sixties, and had rounded up about a thousand in a savings-bank--a mighty hard thousand, that came a dollar or so at a time, and every dollar with a little bright mark where I had bit it--I roomed with a dry-goods clerk named Charlie Chase. Charlie had a hankering to be a rich man; but somehow he could never see any connection between that hankering and his counter, except that he'd hint to me sometimes about an heiress who used to squander her father's money shamefully for the sake of having Charlie wait on her. But when it came to getting rich outside the dry-goods business and getting rich in a hurry, Charlie was the man.

Along about Tuesday night--he was paid on Sat.u.r.day--he'd stay at home and begin to scheme. He'd commence at eight o'clock and start a magazine, maybe, and before midnight he'd be turning away subscribers because his presses couldn't print a big enough edition. Or perhaps he wouldn't feel literary that night, and so he'd invent a system for speculating in wheat and go on pyramiding his purchases till he'd made the best that Cheops did look like a five-cent plate of ice cream. All he ever needed was a few hundred for a starter, and to get that he'd decide to let me in on the ground floor. I want to say right here that whenever any one offers to let you in on the ground floor it's a pretty safe rule to take the elevator to the roof garden. I never exactly refused to lend Charlie the capital he needed, but we generally compromised on half a dollar next morning, when he was in a hurry to make the store to keep from getting docked.

He dropped by the office last week, a little bent and seedy, but all in a glow and trembling with excitement in the old way. Told me he was President of the Klondike Exploring, Gold Prospecting and Immigration Company, with a capital of ten millions. I guessed that he was the board of directors and the capital stock and the exploring and the prospecting and the immigrating, too--everything, in fact, except the business card he'd sent in; for Charlie always had a gift for nosing out printers who'd trust him. Said that for the sake of old times he'd let me have a few thousand shares at fifty cents, though they would go to par in a year. In the end we compromised on a loan of ten dollars, and Charlie went away happy.

The swamps are full of razor-backs like Charlie, fellows who'd rather make a million a night in their heads than five dollars a day in cash.

I have always found it cheaper to lend a man of that build a little money than to hire him. As a matter of fact, I have never known a fellow who was smart enough to think for the house days and for himself nights. A man who tries that is usually a pretty poor thinker, and he isn't much good to either; but if there's any choice the house gets the worst of it.

I simply mention these little things in a general way. If you can take my word for some of them you are going to save yourself a whole lot of trouble. There are others which I don't speak of because life is too short and because it seems to afford a fellow a heap of satisfaction to pull the trigger for himself to see if it is loaded; and a lesson learned at the muzzle has the virtue of never being forgotten.

You report to Milligan at the yards at eight sharp on the fifteenth.

You'd better figure on being here on the fourteenth, because Milligan's a pretty touchy Irishman, and I may be able to give you a point or two that will help you to keep on his mellow side. He's apt to feel a little sore at taking on in his department a man whom he hasn't pa.s.sed on.

Your affectionate father, JOHN GRAHAM.

+-----------------------------+ No. 6 +-----------------------------+ From John Graham, en route to Texas, to Pierrepont Graham, care of Graham & Co., Union Stock Yards, Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont has, entirely without intention, caused a little confusion in the mails, and it has come to his father's notice in the course of business. +-----------------------------+

VI

PRIVATE CAR PARNa.s.sUS, Aug. 15, 189-

_Dear Pierrepont:_ Perhaps it's just as well that I had to hurry last night to make my train, and so had no time to tell you some things that are laying mighty heavy on my mind this morning.

Jim Donnelly, of the Donnelly Provision Company, came into the office in the afternoon, with a fool grin on his fat face, to tell me that while he appreciated a note which he had just received in one of the firm's envelopes, beginning "Dearest," and containing an invitation to the theatre to-morrow night, it didn't seem to have any real bearing on his claim for shortage on the last carload of sweet pickled hams he had bought from us.