Tales of the Road

by Charles N. Crewdson

"'Now, gentlemen, as to the last point. Several of you have said that some merchants wish to think that they buy from you cheaper than other merchants in neighboring towns. They do not wish to think anything of the kind. What they do wish to think is that they are buying them as cheaply as their neighbors do.' Still more of the boys applauded what I said, and one fellow who traveled down in Missouri yelled like a coon hunter.

"'The basis of love, gentlemen,' I persisted, 'is respect. Some of you have had the good sense to marry. To each of these I say: Before the girl who is now your wife found that she loved you, she discovered that you had her respect and admiration.

"'And there is not a single one of you who has a customer that does not have at least a little confidence in you. Confidence is the basis of business.

"'Now, I want to tell you another thing'—I was getting warm then—'It is impossible to tell a lie so that the man to whom you tell it will believe it is the truth. If a man has a lie in his heart, that lie will be felt and spotted by the men he talks to while he affirms with his lips that he speaks the truth. If a merchant asks you if you are selling him goods as cheaply as you sell them to other people, and you tell him "Yes" and you are really not doing so, he will know that you are telling him a lie, and you will lose his confidence and you will lose his business. The one thing to do then, is to treat everybody alike—to sell them all at the same price.

"Now, it is possible for a man to mark his samples in characters and to do a one-price business, but you can bet your life that the stranger will be leery of you if your goods are marked in characters. But if you mark your goods in plain figures and you say to a merchant when you begin to show them to him that your goods are marked in plain figures and that you do not vary from the price, he will believe you and will not try to beat you down. Then you will gain his confidence and he will have more confidence in you, the plain-figure man, than he will in the character-price man from whom he might have been buying for years.

"'Judgment is scarcely a factor in business; even many good merchants are not judges of goods. They are all free to confess this. The best merchant is the best judge of men. These merchants, therefore, must and do depend upon the salesmen from whom they buy their goods. Here, again, is where confidence comes in. This whole thing is confidence, I say. Many a merchant passes up lines of goods that he thinks are better than those he is handling—passes them up because he does not know their superiority and because he does not trust the man who tries to sell them to him.

"'Merchants themselves—many of them—give baits to their customers. They know this game full well, and they do not care for baits themselves. I remember that I once sold a bill of goods in this way: I had sold this customer regularly for five or six years every season. This time he told me that he had bought. He said to me: "The other fellow gave me his price one morning and then he came over to see me in the afternoon and dropped on the price and I bought the goods then because I knew I had him at the bottom."

"'Now, do you suppose I went to making cuts to get even with that other fellow? Not a bit of it. I first showed my old customer that he did not know the values of goods. Then I told him: "Now, you may buy my goods if you like; but you will buy them no cheaper than I have been selling them to you for the last five or six years. Do you suppose that I would come around here to-day and make an open confession that I have been robbing you for all of these years? No, sir; I try to see that my goods are marked right in the beginning and then I treat everybody alike." Although he had turned me down, this man bought my goods and countermanded the order of the other fellow.

"'And, boys—you who have been so dishonest so long'—said I, 'don't know how happy it makes a fellow feel to know that what he is doing is right, and you cannot beat the right. It is good enough. When you know in your own heart that you are honorable in your dealings with your merchant friends, you can walk right square up to them and look them straight in the eye and make them feel that you are treating them right. They will then give you their confidence, and confidence begets business. Therefore, gentlemen, I don't care what any of you are going to do. I, myself, shall mark my goods in plain figures and sell them at the same price to everyone, and I only wish that I worked for a firm that would compel all their salesmen to be honest.'

"With this, the old man arose. I saw that I had him won over, but I heard one of the boys who sat near me whisper, 'Now, watch the old man give it to him.' But he did not. Instead, he said to me: 'This is surely a case where, although there were ninety-nine against him, the one is right. I hereby issue an order to every salesman to mark his goods in plain figures and to sell his goods at the marked price. I wish you, furthermore, to do another thing. On every sample on which I told you you might make a cut, if necessary, I wish you would make that cut on the start. I have always wished to do business as our one-priced friend has suggested but I have never been strong enough to do so. I had always thought myself honest, believing that business expediency made it necessary to give a few people the inside over others; but I am going to make a frank confession to you—I can say that I have not been honest. "'I feel like a certain clothing manufacturer felt for a long time. I was talking with him at luncheon the other day; he is a man who marks his goods in plain figures. If the salesman, by mistake, sold a ten dollar suit for eleven dollars, the goods when shipped out are billed at ten dollars. He is the one, gentlemen, who put this plain-figure idea into my head. One of his salesmen, as we all sat together at the table, asked him: "Mr. Blank, how many years have you been doing the one-price, plain-figure business?"