Tales of the Road

by Charles N. Crewdson

"I saw that I had the old man on my side and I knew that Johnnie had dropped several points in his estimation. The truth of the matter was the clerk was knocking on me in favor of one of his old friends. Of course I wouldn't come right out and say this but the old man himself grew wise on this point because that afternoon he came down by himself and bought from me a good, fat bill. The clerk simply killed himself by not being fair with me. No clerk who expects promotion can afford to play favorites."

"It's all right when you can get over the clerk's head and to the merchant himself," chimed in the Boys' & Children's Clothing man, "when there is any graft going around, but it is a hard game to play when you must deal with a buyer who is the supreme judge. I once had an experience with a buyer down in California. I went into one of the big stores down there and jollied around with the buyer in my department. He said he would come over and look at my line. He took the hook so quickly that I ought to have been on to him to start with, but I didn't. He came over to my sample room in the evening. Now that, you know, isn't a very good time to buy clothing. Nothing is as good as daylight for that. He didn't question my price or anything of that sort. He would look at a few things and then stop and talk horse with me for awhile. I don't like to do business with that kind of a fellow. When I do business, I like to do business; when I talk horse I like to talk horse; and I want a man with me in the sample room who is interested in what he is doing. It is the busy man, anyway, that makes you a good customer—not the one with whom business is merely a side issue.

"After monkeying around a couple of hours, I managed to get laid out a pretty fair line of stuff. 'Now,' said the buyer, 'to-night I can only make up a list of what's here. These things suit me pretty well, and in the morning I can submit it to the old man for his O.K.'

"Well, that looked easy to me so we wrote down the order, and when we got through, that fellow was bold enough to come right out and say, 'Now, look here, you're making a pretty good commission on this stuff —here's a good bill, and I can throw it to you if I wish, or I can kill it if I like. I'm not getting any too much over where I am, so don't you think your house can dig up about twenty for me on this bill, and I'll see that it sticks?'"

"Did you dig?" said one of the boys.

"Dig? You bet your life not. This funny business, I won't do. It may work for one bill but it won't last long because it is only a matter of time before the buyer who will be bribed will be jumped and lose his job. I simply told the fellow that I didn't do that sort of business; that unless he wished to do business with me strictly on the square, I wouldn't do business with him at all."

"Well, what did he say to this?" said I.

"Oh, he said to me, 'I'm just joshing with you and I really wanted to see if I couldn't get you down a little and make that much more for the house. I like to do business myself with any one who is on the square.'" "The order stuck then?" asked the wall paper man.

"No, it didn't. That's the worst of it. A few days after I reached home in came a cancellation from the head of the house. At that time, I didn't understand it. I supposed that the head of the house himself had really canceled the order, so the next time I went to that town, I waltzed straight up to the office and asked to see the head of the establishment. I asked him why he had canceled my order and he told me that his buyer really had all of that in charge and that he only followed out his recommendations; that the buyer had told him to cancel that bill and he had done so.

"I saw through the whole scheme. There was just one thing for me to do. I simply came right square out and told the old man that his buyer had wanted to get $20.00 from me to make the bill stick; and I bet him a hundred that the clerk had canceled my order so that he could get a rake-off from somebody else.