Chicago, April 10, 189—
Dear Pierrepont: You ought to be feeling mighty thankful to-day to the fellow who invented fractions, because while your selling cost for last month was within the limit, it took a good deal of help from the decimal system to get it there. You are in the position of the boy who was chased by the bull—open to congratulations because he reached the tree first, and to condolence because a fellow up a tree, in the middle of a forty-acre lot, with a disappointed bull for company, is in a mighty bad fix.
I don’t want to bear down hard on you right at the beginning of your life on the road, but I would feel a good deal happier over your showing if you would make a downright failure or a clean-cut success once in a while, instead of always just skinning through this way. It looks to me as if you were trying only half as hard as you could, and in trying it’s the second half that brings results. If there’s one piece of knowledge that is of less use to a fellow than knowing when he’s beat, it’s knowing when he’s done just enough work to keep from being fired. Of course, you are bright enough to be a half-way man, and to hold a half-way place on a half-way salary by doing half the work you are capable of, but you’ve got to add dynamite and ginger and jounce to your equipment if you want to get the other half that’s coming to you. You’ve got to believe that the Lord made the first hog with the Graham brand burned in the skin, and that the drove which rushed down a steep place was packed by a competitor. You’ve got to know your goods from A to Izzard, from snout to tail, on the hoof and in the can. You’ve got to know ’em like a young mother knows baby talk, and to be as proud of ’em as the young father of a twelve-pound boy, without really thinking that you’re stretching it four pounds. You’ve got to believe in yourself and make your buyers take stock in you at par and accrued interest. You’ve got to have the scent of a bloodhound for an order, and the grip of a bulldog on a customer. You’ve got to feel the same personal solicitude over a bill of goods that strays off to a competitor as a parson over a backslider, and hold special services to bring it back into the fold. You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction. You’ve got to eat hog, think hog, dream hog—in short, go the whole hog if you’re going to win out in the pork-packing business.
That’s a pretty liberal receipt, I know, but it’s intended for a fellow who wants to make a good-sized pie. And the only thing you ever find in pastry that you don’t put in yourself is flies.
You have had a wide-open chance during the last few months to pick up a good deal about the practical end of the business, and between trips now you ought to spend every spare minute in the packing-house getting posted. Nothing earns better interest than judicious questions, and the man who invests in more knowledge of the business than he has to have in order to hold his job has capital with which to buy a mortgage on a better one.
I may be mistaken, but I am just a little afraid that you really did not get beyond a bowing acquaintance with Mr. Porker when you were here at the packing-house. Of course, there isn’t anything particularly pretty about a hog, but any animal which has its kindly disposition and benevolent inclination to yield up a handsome margin of profit to those who get close to it, is worthy of a good deal of respect and attention.
I ain’t one of those who believe that a half knowledge of a subject is useless, but it has been my experience that when a fellow has that half knowledge he finds it’s the other half which would really come in handy. So, when a man’s in the selling end of the business what he really needs to know is the manufacturing end; and when he’s in the factory he can’t know too much about the trade.
You’re just about due now to run into a smart Aleck buyer who’ll show you a sample of lard which he’ll say was made by a competitor, and ask what you think the grand jury ought to do to a house which had the nerve to label it “leaf.” Of course, you will nose around it and look wise and say that, while you hesitate to criticize, you are afraid it would smell like a hot-box on a freight if any one tried to fry doughnuts in it. That is the place where the buyer will call for Jack and Charlie to get in on the laugh, and when he has wiped away the tears he will tell you that it is your own lard, and prove it to you. Of course, there won’t be anything really the matter with it, and if you had been properly posted you would have looked surprised when he showed it to you and have said:
“I don’t quite diagnose the case your way, Mr. Smith; that’s a blamed sight better lard than I thought Muggins & Co. were making.” And you’d have driven a spike right through that fellow’s little joke and have nailed down his order hard and tight with the same blow.
What you know is a club for yourself, and what you don’t know is a meat-ax for the other fellow. That is why you want to be on the lookout all the time for information about the business, and to nail a fact just as a sensible man nails a mosquito—the first time it settles near him. Of course, a fellow may get another chance, but the odds are that if he misses the first opening he will lose a good deal of blood before he gets the second.