Old Gorgon Graham / More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son

by George Horace Lorimer

Hire city men and country men; men who wear grandpa's Sunday suit; thread-bare men and men dressed in those special four-ninety-eight bargains; but don't hire dirty men. Time and soap will cure dirty boys, but a full-grown man who shrinks from the use of water externally is as hard to cure as one who avoids its use internally. It's a mighty curious thing that you can tell a man his morals are bad and he needs to get religion, and hell still remain your friend; but that if you tell him his linen's dirty and he needs to take a bath, you've made a mortal enemy.

Give the preference to the lean men and the middleweights. The world is full of smart and rich fat men, but most of them got their smartness and their riches before they got their fat.

Always appoint an hour at which you'll see a man, and if he's late a minute don't bother with him. A fellow who can be late when his own interests are at stake is pretty sure to be when yours are. Have a scribbling pad and some good letter paper on a desk, and ask the applicant to write his name and address. A careful and economical man will use the pad, but a careless and wasteful fellow will reach for the best thing in sight, regardless of the use to which it's to be put.

Look in a man's eyes for honesty; around his mouth for weakness; at his chin for strength; at his hands for temperament; at his nails for cleanliness. His tongue will tell you his experience, and under the questioning of a shrewd employer prove or disprove its statements as it runs along. Always remember, in the case of an applicant from another city, that when a man says he doesn't like the town in which he's been working it's usually because he didn't do very well there.

You want to be just as careful about hiring boys as men. A lot of employers go on the theory that the only important thing about a boy is his legs, and if they're both fitted on and limber they hire him. As a matter of fact, a boy is like a stick of dynamite, small and compact, but as full of possibilities of trouble as a car-load of gunpowder. One bad boy in a Sunday-school picnic can turn it into a rough-house outfit for looting orchards, and one little cuss in your office can demoralize your kids faster than you can fire them.

I remember one boy who organized a secret society, called the Mysterious League. It held meetings in our big vault, which they called the donjon keep, and, naturally, when one of them was going on, boys were scarcer around the office than hen's teeth. The object of the league, as I shook it out of the head leaguer by the ear, was to catch the head bookkeeper, whom the boys didn't like, and whom they called the black caitiff, alone in the vault some night while he was putting away his books, slam the door, and turn the combination on him. Tucked away in a corner of the vault, they had a message for him, written in red ink, on a sheep's skull, telling him to tremble, that he was in the hands of the Mysterious League, and that he would be led at midnight to the torture chamber. I learned afterward that when the bookkeeper had reached in his desk to get a pen, a few days before, he had pulled out a cold, clammy, pickled pig's foot, on which was printed: "Beware! first you will lose a leg!"

I simply mention the Mysterious League in passing. Of course, boys will be boys, but you mustn't let them be too cussed boyish during business hours. A slow boy can waste a lot of the time of a five-thousand-dollar man whose bell he's answering; and a careless boy can mislay a letter or drop a paper that will ball up the work of the most careful man in the office.

It's really harder to tell what you're getting when you hire a boy than when you hire a man. I found that out for keeps a few years ago, when I took on the Angel Child. He was the son of rich parents, who weren't quite rich enough to buy chips and sit in the game of the no-limit millionaires. So they went in for what they called the simple life. I want to say right here that I'm a great believer in the simple life, but some people are so blamed simple about it that they're idiotic. The world is full of rich people who talk about leading the simple life when they mean the stingy life. They are the kind that are always giving poorer people a chance to chip in an even share with them toward defraying the expenses of the charities and the entertainments which they get up. They call it "affording those in humbler walks an opportunity to keep up their self-respect," but what they really mean is that it helps them to keep down their own expenses.

The Angel Child's mother was one of these women who talk to people that aren't quite so rich as she in the tone of one who's commending a worthy charity; but who hangs on the words of a richer woman like a dog that hopes a piece of meat is going to be thrown at it, and yet isn't quite sure that it won't get a kick instead. As a side-line, she made a specialty of trying to uplift the masses, and her husband furnished the raw material for the uplifting, as he paid his men less and worked 'em harder than any one else in Chicago.

Well, one day this woman came into my office, bringing her only son with her. He was a solemn little cuss, but I didn't get much chance to size him up, because his ma started right in to explain how he'd been raised—no whipping, no—but I cut it short there, and asked her to get down to brass tacks, as I was very busy trying to see that 70,000,000 people were supplied with their daily pork. So she explained that she wanted me to give the Angel Child a job in my office during his summer vacation, so that he could see how the other half lived, and at the same time begin to learn self-reliance.