He also puts wonderful enthusiasm into his men. Here are some of his mottoes: "Enthusiasm is our great staple," "Get results," "No slow steppers wanted around this house," "If this business is not your business, send in your trunks," "All at it, always at it, brings success." He has taught his salesmen a college yell which runs like this: "Keep-the-qual-ity-up." Only a few years ago the watchword of this house was: "Watch us—Five millions" (a year). Now it is: "A million a month," and by their methods they will soon be there.
This same man has the keenest appreciation of the value of a road experience. Some time ago he was in need of an advertising manager. If he had followed the usual practice he would have gone outside the house and hired a professional "ad manager." But he had a notion that the man who knew enough about salesmanship and about his special goods to sell them on the road could "make sentiment" for those same goods by the use of printers' ink. Therefore he put one of his crack salesmen into the position and now pays him $6,000 a year. And the man has made good in great shape.
Nor does he stop with promoting men from the ranks of his organization. If a salesman in his house makes a good showing, he fastens him to the firm still tighter by selling to him shares of good dividend-paying stock.
He knows one thing that too few men in business do know: That a man can best help himself by helping others!
CHAPTER XVIII.
HEARTS BEHIND THE ORDER BOOK.
With all of his power of enduring disappointment and changing a shadow to a spot of sunshine, there yet come days of loneliness into the life of the commercial traveler—days when he cannot and will not break the spell. There is a sweet enchantment, anyway, about melancholy; 'tis then that the heart yearns for what it knows awaits it. Perhaps the wayfarer has missed his mail; perhaps the wife whom he has not seen for many weeks, writes him now that she suffers because of their separation and how she longs for his return.
I sat one day in a big red rocking chair in the Knutsford Hotel, in Salt Lake. I had been away from home for nearly three months. It was drawing near the end of the season. The bell boys sat with folded hands upon their bench; the telegraph instrument had ceased clicking; the typewriter was still. The only sound heard was the dripping of the water at the drinking fount. The season's rush was over. Nothing moved across the floor except the shadows chasing away the sunshine which streamed at times through the skylight. Half a dozen other wanderers— all disconsolate—sat facing the big palm in the center of the room. No one spoke a word. Perhaps we were all turning the blue curls of smoke that floated up from our cigars into visions of home.
The first to move was one who had sat for half an hour in deep meditation. He went softly over to the music box near the drinking fount and dropped a nickel into the slot. Then he came back again to his chair and fell into reverie. The tones of the old music box were sweet, like the swelling of rich bells. They pealed through the white corridor "Old Kentucky Home." Every weary wanderer began to hum the air. When the chorus came, one, in a low sweet tenor, sang just audibly:
"Weep no more, my lady,
"Weep no more to-day;
"We will sing one song, for my old Kentucky home,
"For my old Kentucky home far away."