How many times a day does every traveling man see men act as Tucker did? Here was a line of goods he was cocksure he did not want, but the moment he heard that his competitor had a trade on them he began to feel that he must have some. Seven-eighths of the goods sold are sold in this way. Very few men do business on their own judgment. Their competitors make their prices, select their styles, and force them to carry certain stock. The drummer's best card is always: This is selling like fire; Smith took a gross, Brown half a gross, Jones three dozen, and you will miss it if you do not try a few. Such dealers always have the larger part of their capital locked up in goods they bought because others had bought the same goods.
I repeated my price to Tucker, and he told me to send him a few. “By the way,” said he, “what are your terms?”
“Sixty days.”
“Does your house draw the day a bill falls due?”
“No; the house is slow about drawing upon customers, and they always give ten days' notice before making draft.”
“Well, I don't like to be drawn on. The house that draws on me can't sell me again. I can't draw on my trade, and I'm devilish glad to get my money in six months, but you fellows in the city expect a man to come to the exact minute. I don't want any drawing on me.”
It was an excellent place to have delivered a lecture on the beauties of prompt payments. I could have told Brother Tucker that if he did not see his way clear to pay his bill when due he should not buy it, and if his customers did not pay promptly he should dun them harder or keep his goods. But the traveling man is not sent out to inculcate business morals, and he is too anxious to sell a bill to run any risks by disagreeing with a buyer. I did what all others would have done in my place. I assured Mr. Tucker I would be as easy with him regarding payments as any house in the world would dare be, and that point safely out of the way, I sold him several items quite smoothly. We came to guns.
“What is Parker's worth?”
“Twenty-five per cent, off factory list.”
“What! Why, here's a quotation from Cincinnati of 25 and 10!”