DUMBELLS OF BUSINESS
DUMBELLS OF BUSINESS
Earning Bus Fare
DUMBELLS OF
BUSINESS
by
PROFF O.U. BOJACK (Bus.Doc.)
AUTHOR OF “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN
SALESMANSHIP,” “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS
IN BUYING,” “LITTLE NIFTY LESSONS IN
LOVE & MARRIAGE,” ETC.
Fighting Editor
“BOJACK’S NOISY EXPORTER”
Pruned of Profanity by Louis C. M. Reed
1922
THE STRATFORD CO., Publishers
Boston, Massachusetts
Copyright, 1922
The STRATFORD CO., Publishers
Boston, Mass.
The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
THESE playful biffs on the beak of Business appeared originally in a little House Magazine called “Auto Suggestions.”
Many of them have been completely revised for the purpose of this volume, over the rasping nasal protest of Proff Bojack who believes in letting Well Enough alone until it crawls up and bites you in the leg, as mentioned somewhere in the text—then roll over on the other side.
The characters are drawn from the daily life of the average American business organization where men are somehow sweating through to Success against the cordovan inertia of the Dumbells of Business.
—THE PRUNER
Proff O. U. Bojack (Bus. Doc.)
DEDICATED WITH A WARMTH OF FELLOW
FEELING TO ALL BEDEVILED
BRETHERN OF THE BUSINESS WORLD
The Author
Contents
 |
|
HOT SKETCH NO. 1
The Plant Cured of Mossbackitis
OUT among the gnarled oaks of Squirrel Cove there buzzed a busy manufacturing plant.
It had been established since Time wore a bib, and, as far back as History could recall, had been handed down from Whiskers to Whiskers without a break.
The same old Superintendent with his chew of Fine Cut tucked away in a back-cavity, was always on hand each generation to bury the father and drill the son into the mysteries of Production and Distribution. Old Faithful used to love to take off his beaver cap and stroke the top of his glazed Summit while he told some eager visitor all about the industrial heirloom and his long and watchful connection with it.
In the course of centuries the Concern had of course worked up some business around the County, but at no time did there ever occur what you would call a Sensational Increase in trade. In fact, careful scrutiny revealed nothing in the whole town that could be associated with a sensation of any kind.
The annual output of the particular Hive of Industry under discussion went wholly to Old Customers who had been buying regularly since Washington hurdled the Delaware. If any attempt was ever made to get New Business it was altogether an unconscious act, and no record of the perpetrator remains.
At the time of which we are now yodeling, the current Owner and Proprietor was closing in on his sixty-fifth Milestone, and, like his father and grandfather before him, he believed in letting Well Enough alone until it crawled up and bit him in the leg. Then he would roll over on the other side.
It is only natural that such a highly strung temperament as this should be accompanied by more or less radically advanced views on Business in general. This was indeed the case, yes. And he was a horrible spendthrift when it came to Advertising. In the course of say two lunar years his total linage amounted to about as much as a Fourth Avenue delicatessen. He never counted the cost of any plant installation under one figure.
If anybody had suggested travelling the Trade, the proposition would have met with the same enthusiastic endorsement that a Shell Game would get at a Dunkard picnic.
All salesmen were looked upon as a species of unclassified bandit that victimized Firms and Customers alike, and revelled at nights with Champagne, Chickens and Chant.
Now it so happened that our Captain of Industry had a daughter. In looks she was strictly neutral, and in intelligence just sort of medio-semi. Her heart was laced to a young Scrod she had met when she was East at School learning to parry and thrust with knife and fork.
She had never seen anything like this rollicking Young Buck from one end of her shaved-neck County to the other, and so she went limp the first time he threw a ray in her direction. He was a thoroughbred at that, and could get in and out of a Taxi without furring up his Top Hat, and pay a dinner check without stopping his story and then forgetting afterward what he was talking about.
It required no profound psychoanalysis to tell from Daughter’s manner that there was only one kernel in the crib so far as she was concerned. As for the tall-collared gentry of Squirrel Cove, the entries were closed and they knew it to a man and gave her the whole runway.
Now ever since Daughter was a baby blowing bubbles out of the corners of her mouth, Papa had lived in Mortal Dread of a day when she might buckle up with a man who would be only after his Thirty Dollars which he had slowly and painfully piled up through pluck, perseverance and pre-natal pull. And so when he saw her temperature rising and her appetite falling, he dug out her secret and then started on a quiet hunt to find out whether the daring Disturber was Grade A, or tinnif.
As he had feared, the Rat proved to be a Baltimore Luncher pulling down Fifteen Dollars per week and washing his own clothes in the bath tub.
This discovery caused a Family Upheaval which for pep, polish and all-round proficiency had all Mexican Mixups looking like a harmless after-school scamper at Hop Scotch.
Every evening at sundown when Father would come home from the din and roar of his quarter-acre Plant, the neighbors would gather at their windows for the latest war news. Sometimes the Carranzaists would be on top; at other times the Villaists and Zapaists would have it.
Daughter protested hotly during these Bloody Encounters that her king was Poor but Honest, but father had him sized up as a Single Cylinder.
One night when the walls were being freshly inlaid with flying furniture and bric-a-brac, Daughter ducked out of the peaceful abode and down to the Railway Station and caught the Milk Train for New York. The following Wednesday at 4 P. M., Kendallville Time, she took Philip Darlington Wakefield for Better or Worse and wired Father for his blessing and $100 to come back home on.
At first Father was all for raising his hand to High Heaven and pronouncing the Irish Cottage Curse with all the spine-chilling heroics about darkening the Threshold, but Mother looked quietly over her goggles and told him to cut the cheap melodramatic stuff and behave like a white man, and tell the Young Folks to buy a couple of postcards of the Woolworth Building and come back home.
Under this stinging philippic Father melted into the big armchair and became human, and a couple of days later the Bride and Groom blew into Squirrel Cove and turned all Main Street into little groups of excited goatees.
Philip Darlington gave Father the first Hoyo he had ever smoked and took the old gazunk completely off his underpinning by showing a knowledge of Industry and Finance that only a Fifteen Dollar New York clerk can possess. On the strength of it he landed a job in Father’s mighty Works and wasn’t there a week before every yunk in the place was plotting for his destruction.
The reason, tersely and succinctly expressed, was that Phil proved to have Ideas and nobody around the Works cared to deliberately expose himself to the danger of infection. But Phil went right ahead and shifted men and things here, there and everywhere, and put in Time Clocks and Cost Systems and all kinds of efficiency effects.
He took the dusty correspondence off the long wire and had it filed in steel filing cabinets, and reduced the length of the Daily Conference from three cigars to one cigar. He relieved the Shipping Clerk of the Sales end of the Business, and established a separate Purchasing Department, thereby lifting this important work from the shoulders of the Night Watchman.
Phil also got out the first and only Catalogue the concern had ever had in all their 4,000 years of aggressive Trade Building, and had the whole force threatening to strike when he announced that he was going out for New Business.
After a twenty-one round Go with Father-in-Law over the revolutionary question of Advertising, Phil got in touch with a Big Agency and listened to them reel off the usual now-you-want-to-start-off-with-a-page-in-the-Saturday-Evening-Post advice, after which he proceeded to map out his own campaign as is Customary with the Laity about to advertise.
Phil also had to back Father-in-Law up against the silo and sew up both his eyes and put a pair of vacuum-cup lips on him before he could get the Old Man to see the necessity of sending a force of bright-eyed Salesmen out on the Road to sell the Stuff. Phil said there was no use manufacturing a good article and then keeping it a secret.
Every day there was something unusual doing around the Works, and of course it was all very thrilling, but when the bills began to roll in, Father-in-Law threw thirty different kinds of foaming spasm, followed by Sinking Spells that threatened to lay him ’neath the Mossy Mound. But Phil was always there with the pulmotor and the Soothing Word to pull him through.
One day when everybody around the Office was getting all ready for the Last Sad Rites on account of all this frenzied expense, business suddenly began to pour in like beer out of a busted vat. Consternation thereupon Reigned Supreme and acted like a drunken sailor.
The little Plant squeaked and groaned and heaved and puffed until it fairly burst its little panties trying to keep up with Orders. All Squirrel Cove, from the Mayor down to the Poundmaster, was given a job at something or other, and Phil was heralded all the way from Angusville to Jowett Junction as the greatest Organizing Genius the County had ever known.
When the Fiscal Year ended and Father-in-Law took a happy peep at the Balance Sheet and saw that he had holed-out more coin than all his Ancestors put together, he called Phil to his parental side and shifted the following Beautiful Tribute from his proud bosom:
“My boy,” he said, “I feel like a tan-eyed gnat for having charted you up as a parasite when I first saw you looming up on the Links. I thought you were marrying my daughter just to romp off with her father’s little Yen Bag. I would have thought the same of any man who didn’t have a few crullers of his own. I didn’t realize that there might be a chance of my getting a dumsight more out of you than you could ever get out of me. Henceforth you are a fifty percent owner of this Dugout, and what’s more, here is a little present for you in recognition of your sterling worth.”
Phil stood the cotton umbrella in a corner and soled off to break the gladsome tidings to his wife and found her tossing tennis balls with some Tea Toad in a green Sport Coat. Later Phil spied the two walking together through the Big Grove and she was listing to starboard.
“H’m,” he h’md, “I’ve got the Old Man, but it’s cost me the gal.”
He turned sadly away, mumbling something about what he thought of a Life that kept a fellow always manoeuvering for position.
Over the hills came the floating fragrance of frying fishballs, while in the tall whiffletree above him a chipmunk chipped softly to its mate.
Lesson for Today: When you set out to cure Industrial Mossbackitis, the dangers are great.
HOT SKETCH NO. 2
The Lurid Lot of the Leaker
A YOUNG man had a job with an old organization.
The job was not that of General Manager.
Nor was it Department Manager.
It was not a managership of any kind, character, quality or description—all claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
It was just a job.
It was the kind of job that any young man with an eye on ideas and a finger on the future, might have with any old Organization steeped in stability and pickled in policy.
In other less alliterative language, we might smooth down our shirt-front and say that the young man had A Chance.
If we cared to toss off all restraint and emphasize the statement with grape-juice profanity, we might say that the young man had a Very, Very good chance.
But he didn’t know how to take care of his chance.
He took chances with his Chance.
And one day it got away from him.
When the Boss handed him his passports, he asked for an explanation, and the Boss passed him one, medium well done.
It ran as per follows, WITNESSETH:
“Young Man,” heaved the Boss, scratching his right ear pleasingly with his left thumb, “the reason we are decorating you with the Order of the Canned is because we have found that YOU LEAK. And any concern that does not plug the leak the moment they locate it, will soon be sitting around garter-high in the mire of misunderstanding.
“Were it not for the red-nosed fact that here and there in this Organization is a man foolish enough to be loyal to the institution that enables him to close down his troubles when he closes down his desk, the whole Office would by now be torn with internal strife like a rat-tailed Roadster, and we would be headed for the rocks of riot and rebellion.
“Your up-stairs piping is so defective that everything you take in at the ears runs out of your mouth. You hear one man spill some remark about another, and you scamper off with your little red eyes to tell the other.
“Then when the other comes back with a rib-rocker on the first man, you scamper back again and break the news to Number One.
“The other day you eared-in on a conversation I was having with my partner about one of our men, and in exactly eleven minutes by our beloved Office Clock the whole Force had tabulated the tidings.
“Before I had a chance to talk to the man myself, he came at me with the logical deduction that he had a right to be informed at first hands on a matter concerning himself that seemed to be as well known around the Works as the hour for Knocking off Work.
“And WITNESSETH: Sometimes when Party of the First Part has been discussing important matters in conference with himself or others, you have hopped around like a coolie with the dhobe itch, trying to sniff out some clue on which to ground a bit of gab.
“I have never walked through the office that I did not spot you back of a door holding a whisper-fest with somebody, and, if my memory isn’t fooling me, we have never yet talked here in the office about lifting or lopping prices, or changing selling plans, or shuffling Salesmen, or shaking up the territory, that it has not leaked out to the Road Robbins long before we wanted it to.
“We now know for a cinchety that you are the guilty goop because you fell for a plant that we had cleverly framed up with the kindly assistance of myself.
“AND, since we propose to run this roost harmoniously—radiating a wee wisp of sunshine and fellowship wherever we can, and making Business a pleasure instead of a punch-up—there does not seem to be any place around these puritanical precincts for a leaky radiator.
“You are bright and clever, and you don’t injure your spine trying to get out of the path of an idea, and, by all the rules but one, you should shoot right to the top of any business.
“The one rule that you have not yet sponged up is that Success is more than brains and bustle. Success is the art of closing up the Exhaust occasionally.
“I can find no doubt in any hole or corner of my mind that you have many times scratched your busy little head and wondered why you have remained in the same job all these centuries while other men not so clever as your oblique self have sailed right past you into the harbor of Heavy Responsibility With Correspondingly Light Pay. The reason is as stated in yon foregoing.
“Be it known to you further that no Business can succeed without Loyalty and Co-operation. Modern Business demands of every man that he be loyal, or be off.
“Pin-headedness, tale-peddling and office politics are barnacles on the barque of Business, and the Firm that does not scrape them off is doomed to decay.
“Any man with a brow an inch over all, should know that the lot of the Leaker means to be ultimately despised by the very men he has made confidants of.
“Every time you have started one of those he-said-that-you-said-that-I-said stories of yours, you have rawed up all the decent men of this Office.
“Today you stand about as popular around here as a hair in the butter; but you don’t know it, because, like all back-fence babblers, you are foggy up on the perceptive plane, and you think that the man who listens must like yourself be loose.
“Some day you will learn, young man, that a tight tongue makes a sagacious sky-piece—that to speak well is to cheat hell—that the chain of Successful Business is linked with loyalty—and the Leaker lands in Limbo long before the last lap’s run.
“Thanking you for your kind attention, and asking you to now kindly consider yourself sunk without warning, I beg to remain etc, etc.”
Having spake after the manner of the hereinbefore mentioned, Comrade Boss removed his eyes from the transgressor, and wheeled around in his chair.
And, taking his pen between his index finger and the back of his hand, began to sign yesterday’s mail.
So.
HOT SKETCH NO. 3
The Self Abnegationist and his Finish
THERE was a Large Employer with fantail whiskers who got good and sore at his Help.
They didn’t have the interests of the business At Heart, he said. All they cared about was to fist-in their salaries and see that the Office Clock was accurate.
Any time any of them did any dweedling little thing in the shape of exceptional work, they expected credit for it, he murmured.
If the Sales Manager pulled up his sales, he would pull down his vest and bid for congratulations.
If the Credit Man lost only 1/40th of 1 per cent on the year’s accounts, he would dodge around in front of the throne expecting to be caught and laureled.
If a stenographer got her dictation at four o’clock, and then jumped into the saddle and won the race before Big Whistle, she would expect her Dictator to say she was Some little hustlerine.
Even the Office Squirrel looked for commendation every time he discharged the responsibilities of his Office without fumble or fizzle.
What this Employer wanted, he contended, was employees who would work for the good of the Business and not be always thinking about their own good. He said he hadn’t a man around the place who could sink Self with the rock of Gibraltar tied around its neck. The reward for doing a good thing, he preached, was in having done it.
Now it so happened that Our Hero was a Town Pillar, and although he did not at any time lean toward the philanthrop stuff hard enough to push it over, still he felt that he’d like to do a few Good Things for the Community before he hopped the Styx.
In his mental unfoldment he had forged clear past the point where One feels that One has done One’s full duty when One takes care of One’s own wife and One’s children.
He felt that every man owed a responsibility to the Community in which he lived, moved and had his Three Squares.
So he decided to erect a public drinking fountain with a lion spitting fresh water from between its teeth.
He went and got some good news prints of himself, then called in the reporters and announced his decision. The announcement was followed by a shower of publicity in the local Press that would have cost Father John a hundred dollars.
One newspaper that gave him only a Stick and didn’t print his picture, was forthwith put upon the Drab List and the Standing Ad of his Business was withdrawn for life.
When the fountain was all set up, Our Hero declined to pay the bill until the name of the donor was carved in large letters in some conspicuous place, according to the Conditions of Agreement. So the Town Council met and decided to carve it on the southern view of the lion.
The minister of the Church which comrade Hero attended heard of his munificent gift to the Town. His Reverence got in some fast legwork and ran down the modest philanthropist just as the aforesaid latter was ducking into his office.
The following Sunday morning when the congregation assembled for a quiet snooze, the Minister got up in the turret and announced the recent donation of a beautiful stained-glass window.
In due time the window was puttied in, showing a patriarch with a staff and a cloven hat. But when Old Sol turned on his spotlight, did it reveal the graceful and modest inscription, “Donated by A Friend?” It did—NOT. It revealed the full and complete name of the generous benefactor in letters about the size of a small barn. The price he paid for the complete job was left off, however.
Sometime afterwards the Town got the community development bug. Our Hero stood up on a vinegar barrel at a mass meeting and told the assembled whiskers that there was no reason on the face of God’s Green Earth why they shouldn’t be as big as New York, and that if every man would Put his Shoulder to the Wheel they could make Chicago look like a way-station.
When the cheers died down, Our Hero was made Chairman of the Might and Main Committee. He took off his Prince Al and got on the job.
For six months he worked like a Zulu wharf-boy, and through his Untiring Efforts the town copped several new industries, and was lifted from the 34th to the 24th city of the State in point of population and municipal purity.
New York did not exactly get jealous and call for a re-canvass of the Census, but there was no question about the enhanced Well Being of the community as a result of Our Hero’s unselfish public spirit.
When the next mayoralty election came around, one of the lesser members of the Might and Main Committee, who had attended but one meeting and slept throughout, put himself up as a Candidate and offered the Committee’s record of achievement as the reason why all Patriotic Citizens should toss their votes in his tub.
Doc Hero tried to cut in and tell the excited Populace who it was that did the Real Work of the Might and Main Committee but he could not break through the line. The candidate was elected by an “overwhelming majority,” to coin a phrase.
Whereupon Uncle Hero sat him down and quilled a Public Letter to Ye Editor in which he Regretted Deeply that his work was not Appreciated and that he got no Credit for all he had done for the Town.
Lesson for Today: When a man gets beyond the desire for personal praise he has got beyond the grave.
HOT SKETCH NO. 4
The Bird Who Berated Business Assn’s
ON A hell-hot Saturday afternoon in August a certain American manufacturer sat in his executive oven mopping like a German chef.
The Cashier came in and spread before him the weekly Worry Sheet, and then chugged off for the week-end in his little threshing machine.
All the other Help had of course already gone, for it was about ten minutes before closing time.
The only man left around the Works was the afore-specified manufacturer. He couldn’t get off because he was the Boss.
Suddenly, without warning, prologue, or advance copy for the Press, he launched a vicious right-arm jab at two million flies that were mobilizing on his occiput, and then lammed out the following trenchant blank verse:
“Blankety blank my hide if I ain’t getting hankety-pankety sick of this blank country and its laws. Here I am, week in and week out, sweating like a Somali dock-hand to make both ends meet, and instead of being charted up as a useful, constructive factor in the country’s development, I’m hooted from the house-tops, shot at from ambush, chased up trees, and hounded like a pole-cat.
“The goods I make are clean, legitimate, honorable goods, and a public necessity. By their manufacture and sale, thousands of people have it soft on both the productive and distributive ends of the line. If it were not for this business, this two-spot town would be fanning for air inside twenty-four hours, and hundreds of happy homes would be hurdling to Hades.
“Not a week goes by that I’m not digging up for some Church, School, Library, Fair, Famine, Hospital or some form of wallet-puller. I pay more town, county, state and federal taxes than the whole loafing lot of Timber Tops at Washington put together.
“And yet every move I make, or don’t make, I’m yanked up before some inch-browed Investigating Committee to explain why I didn’t do what I did, or did do what I didn’t.
“First they fan me for maintaining prices and then for cutting prices. They lower freight rates so I can compete in a certain market, and then just when I’ve gone to the expense of advertising and traveling it, the State and Interstate Commissions get into a dog-fight and they shoot the freight rates up again.
“They charge me an Income Tax on what I make, and an Income Tax on what I lose. They compel me to fill out long, winding webbed-up Forms that they don’t understand themselves, and that would be sufficient to dam any Office Boy in the land for business incompetence.
“Out of the taxes that I and my impotent kind are soaked with, they send a lot of clerks over the globe to write high-school tracts on the Old Stuff about our Great Trade Chances Abroad, and then spring a Seaman’s Law joker that tosses American Shipping into the Discard and puts our goods at the mercy of ships of Nations that are out to stick tacks in the tire of American Trade.
“For twenty years sane men have been struggling to pull the Tariff out of the toils of Party Pilferers and give Industry a chance to tell where it’s at, and yet to this muggy day it is made the mule on which Boneheads in black fedoras ride in and out of Congress.
“I maintain that the backbone, brains and belly of this Nation is BUSINESS, and yet when it comes to enacting legislation, Business hasn’t the voice of a pink-eyed chigger. It is forced to operate under laws made by men that couldn’t hold a bill clerk’s job in a Brooklyn kiosk, and I for one am getting good and dam sick of the whole frowsy, fiddling farce.”
With this perorational explosion, Comrade Manufacturer slapped down the corrugated cover of his Roll Top, jammed his hat on a bent ear, and soled off home to take it out on The Folks.
Monday morning came around, according to cosmic custom. The much admired face of the office clock smiled out the hour of ten, and the last story of the week-end’s mush had been passed along Bookkeeper’s Row.
A neatly harnessed young man with a well-groomed superstructure appeared at the General Office Door.
“What is the nature of your business?” inquired the Office Rat in a ripsaw crescendo.
“Tell him I am a Field Secretary of the National Business Men’s Phalanx, lately organized to express the collective business sentiment of the Nation to the law-builders at Washington,” replied the Field Secretary. “And tell him,” he added, handing out his official pasteboard, “that I am here to explain to him why he should become a member.”
The boy bowlegged off to an adjoining office and returned with the pleasing tidings that the Boss was Too Busy.
“Go back and tell him that it is to his interest that I be allowed to come alongside now,” said Field Secretary.
The boy reluctantly went away again, and in a moment later came back and told the F. S. to take a seat. Whereupon the F. S. took it, and then for one long, lonely newspaper-reading, thumb-twirling, watch-glancing hour he held it down without a whimper.
Finally he called the boy again and told him that he’d like to see the Boss during the present era if possible. The boy waddled off once more to the secret chamber of the Great and Grouchy One. When he returned he brought back this cheery message:
“Tell the gentleman I don’t believe I care to go into the matter. I am Very Busy today, and besides, I am not in favor of these Associations that cost a lot of money and produce no results.”
“Very well,” replied the Field Secretary sweetly, “I’ll consider myself null and void.”
“But just kindly inform your intelligent Boss for me,” he continued, “that the reason these Associations cost a lot of money is because of the time they lose in hanging around waiting to get possum heads like himself to see their own Game. And the reason they ‘produce no results’ is because stupid men can’t see that they’ve got to get together to produce results.”
“And tell him further,” went on Field Sec., edging toward the door and raising his voice just high enough so that it could be heard about seven miles, “that while I shall expect to lose my good hundred-dollar job for it, I can not restrain myself the pleasure of telling him and his visionless ilk that they deserve just exactly the kind of legislation they are getting, and that as far as I myself am concerned, they can all go and take a great big jump into the seventeenth sub-basement of hell. Good-NIGHT!”
And with this impressive Valedictory the Field Secretary departed, slamming the door so hard that it jarred the ledger out of balance and woke up every clerk in the place.
Lesson for Today: There are none so blind as the trusting husband and the bright-eyed business man.
HOT SKETCH NO. 5
The Advertising Genius of Squirrelville
THERE was a Hotel Clerk in a one-ply town who yearned to become an Ad Man.
He could have yearned to become President of the United States if he had wanted to, but there wasn’t so much money in the president business.
His name was Fred, but they called him Chesterton for short.
During his incarceration as Glad Hander at the McGlook House, Chesterton had lived to see one of the Town Terriers go down to New York and hoof up great clods of turf in the arena of Successful Advertising.
This fired his Ambition, and when later he learned that the reporter on the Squirrelville Banner had just landed a good job as Advertising Manager for a nearby manufactory which had begun to stretch, he just up and heard the voice of Destiny calling him through a railway megaphone.
Thus it was, one Gladsome spring morning, that Chesterton backed away from the little pine hotel-desk for good, and plunged eye-deep into the intricacies of the Advertising Art.
Chesterton’s first clever move was to procure copies of The Banner and analyze all the local Advertisements, but after close scrutiny he concluded that they all leaned heavily to The Rotten.
Which they did.
Which they did beyond the slightest shadow of a little round doubt.
The Liveryman’s Advertisement, for instance, didn’t “Tell The Story,” reflected Chesterton who had already begun to show an easy familiarity with Publicity Terms. And he observed also that the reminder which stood all the year around in the daily 3 in. dbl. col. Display of the Elite Stationary & Supply Store to the effect that Prospective Patrons should do their Christmas shoplifting early, did not appear to be timely copy for July.
Let not the thought here sneak into your mind, Gentile Reader, that our embryonic George Creel confined his observations solely to advertisements committed by local craftsmen. On the contrary he went to the Eureka News Shop and procured copies of all the national magazines and periodicals that carried advertising to enliven the reading matter, and every Ad in them came under the sweep of his cold unemotional eye.
“One common fault I find in all of them,” mused Chesterton. “They all lack The Punch.”
Which criticism should be sufficient to prove to The Reader that Chestie old toppo was now a full-feathered Ad Writer. In the bright lexicon of Publicity there is no word that mouthes so smoothly. When in doubt, talk about The Punch!
To make a long story about seven pages shorter, we will now brush the dandruff off our coat-collar and say that Chesterton accidentally ran across the Three Ball Column of one of the magazines where the Frayed Boys of the Advertising World are accustomed to hanging up their best belongings.
The first one that caught his eye was this:
“PULLEM PETE—The powerful penster who pulls peppy potent phrases for particular patrons—try him—6c for a sample slasher, or 50 individual humdinging follow-ups for 40c.”
Following this sizzling specimen of alliterative skill, Chesterton ran across this one:
“AD MAN ARONSON penned one pep and paprika sales letter that pulled $80,000,000 worth of business. He can do the same for you. Specimen letter, 11 cents and postage. Lock box 4-11-44, Spinach Corners, Conn.”
By this time Chesterton was all het up for he saw where all these Sales Letter Builders were making their big mistake and he felt the feathers of his guardian angel’s wing tickling his spine all the way up.
Intuitively he knew that his footsteps had been guided at last to the big bronze door of Opportunity, and that all he had to do was to knock on her and she would be opened up Unto him. He was politician-sure that he had the password. And the password was PRICE!
And so Chestie sat him down at his little school-desk in the attic, which he had fixed up neatly as his office with a newsprint of St. Elmo as his patron saint, and after three non-union days’ labor he carved out this modest little synopsis of his advertisorial equipment:
I AM CHESTERTON OF SQUIRRELVILLE—I write serial follow-ups that tear the teeth out of indifference, pull the wool off the sky-piece of scepticism, rouse interest to a frenzy and send the prospect screaming down the aisle to pay tithe to the titillating tin box. A sample letter will cost you $100.00. Three letters for $200.00. Cash with order regardless of rating. Business already booked makes delivery of copy impossible to guarantee under seven months after order is placed.
Looking the copy over once more, Chesterton decided that there was only one thing the matter with it. The price was too much to the Clothing Sale. So he raised it another $100.00 and then fired the copy off to a couple of good advertising media.
Then he lit up a piece of tampa twine and walked out in the backyard and put chicken-wire around all the trees so the goats would not bark them when the stampede commenced.
One week later the Postman was rolling up Chesterton’s mail in barrels. One year later, all Squirrelville was working in various departments of the Chesterton Advertising Agency.
Lesson for Today: If you’re going to “do,” then do; otherwise, don’t.
HOT SKETCH NO. 6
The Salesman Who Became Buyer
BILL was a Salesman with a series of chins, who chewed the ends of his cigars and was by nature Very Sociable.
The bell sprints would all stampede for his Leathers when he arrived at a/an hotel, and the Clerk always had some little confidential pleasantry to whisper into his large jovial ear when handing him his Room Key.
Bill abhorred all forms of convention, had no use for vests, and never called any man “Mr.” past the introduction, no matter how high the social or financial pinnacle from which the party breathed his ozone. In the course of a twenty-minute conversation a Mr. John Wanamaker would become plain “Wanamaker,” then “John” and finally “Jack,” whether Jack liked it or not.
Truthfully speaking, it cannot be said that Bill’s particular brew of bon-hominy made as big a hit with the average Buyer as it did, for example, with the drayman who juggled the trunks up to the Hotel. As a matter of bald clean-shaven fact, most of the Larger Buyers in Bill’s territory threw up a redoubt of icy Reserve every time he wheezed in to see them; and, to anyone of Bill’s Genial and Sunny Nature, such an aggressive exhibition of unsociabiliousness is sure to prove a thorn in the flank.
Thus it was that Bill in time made no dark secret of his Real Opinion of any man who thought he had to starch all up like a Bank President just because a pull with the Powers had made him a Buyer instead of a Bill Clerk.
He didn’t see, he contended, why a Salesman representing a Concern that covered forty acres Under Roof and made all their own castings, was not just as good as the man he was trying to sell.
So far as Bill was concerned, he was getting foddered up to the gills, he said, trying to be friendly with certain deaf and dumb Yappoos that sit twirling paper-knives and eyeing a Salesman with the critical eye of an alienist just because he is doing his damdest to cheer them up and make them act Natural.
The wise Buyer, argued Bill, is the man who treats Salesmen like pals, because he can get more out of them that way; and moreover, Salesmen are always in position to do the Buyer a Good Turn in the Trade, as well as up at the Factory when the Complaints come in.
Now it was the custom of Bill’s firm to use some of their Salesmen in the home office when the men came in off the road between seasons. It was a good custom because it not only enabled the Salesmen to earn a portion of their salaries during the dull months, but also got them into the habit of breakfasting before Noon.
Bill became particularly adept at this Indoor Exercise especially in the Purchasing Department where he helped at odd jobs, besides helping himself to cigars that were daily presented to the Purchasing Agent in the sacred cause of bribery.
It was soon discovered that Bill had a keen and steady eye when it came to judging materials and prices, and the Purchasing Agent got sort of in the habit of mistrusting his own flickering wick and turning over a good deal of his work to Bill, especially when he was Very Busy, such as selecting from a mail-order catalogue some kind of a suitable cap to wear on his forthcoming fishing trip.
One day, as Luck would have it, Comrade Purchasing Agent suddenly up and kicked off his mortal cocoon, leaving behind him a wife and a gallon of gasoline for his motorcycle. Bill was chosen to fill the vacant chair, and putting it Very Mildly yet informingly, the news did not exactly crush him to death. On the contrary, he went out in the Coat Room and shook hands with himself until he had two lead arms and one limp theologian’s grip left in his Gripper.
Bill’s first week as Buyer saw him billy-sundaying every salesmanic trail-hitter that struck the Works. But somehow the Open Arm stuff seemed to convey to visiting Salesmen the impression that Bill as Buyer for the Works intended to lay in a million dollars’ worth of their Stuff. When he told them that he wasn’t in the market, they couldn’t seem to assimilate the tidings and just continued to hang on until the whistle blew and the regular daily imitation of the Rush from Pompeii commenced.
Bill’s second week as Buyer saw him giving Explicit Instructions to the Office Spaniel to bring to him the card of every visiting Salesman before letting the gunk in. In this way quite a few zeppelins were put out of commission before they reached the First Line Trench, and Bill got several minutes each day in which to Attend to Business.
But Bill’s heart was still too full of the mush-and-milk of Human Kindness to long hold down the lid on his Buoyant and Bubbling nature, and so he continued to spend most of his conscious hours watching the skilful Air Navigators loop-the-loop from dizzy heights. Besides, there was in Bill himself a lingering love for the sport which he found it hard to curb, and which caused him to forget his position as Buyer every once in a while and ascend as high as any of The Boys—though always to regret it when he came to earth again.
Bill’s third week as Buyer found him with his Office moved back a mile and a half from the front door and all approaches barb-wired and mined. Out in the Reception Office hung a sign, “Salesmen seen Thursdays ONLY, between 10:30 and 11:30,” and while the lettering was not large enough to be seen across the river, it was plainly visible to everything this side.
Such Salesmen as were fortunate enough to receive an invitation to visit Bill’s imperial headquarters were escorted by two gendarmes with secret Road Maps that enabled them to find the way; and these Luckies were then permitted to stand unheeded in the doorway from 20 to 30 minutes twirling their little dollar derbys and snapping the rubber-band on their leather covered catalogues until such time as the Honorable Bill had finished dictating his daily batch of Third Reader essays.
The idea in keeping these few privileged Samsons of The Sale hovering around the entrance to the refrigerator was to give them time to apply the Air Compressor after observing certain ominous signs which Bill had hung around the walls and which read: “Be brief,” “Tell it, and Tell it Quick,” “Come to the point. If there isn’t any STAY OUT!”
If the visitors were not thoroughly cowed by these sinister signals, they could proceed further and read an additional warning painted on the back of the Visitor’s Chair which read: “This is no Park Bench.” The letters were about the size of the name on the side of a Neutral Merchantman.
Whenever Bill said to a waiting Salesman, “Come in,” you could see his breath like on a crisp winter morn. After that, he wouldn’t say another word until the Salesman had finished a five-minute Oration. Then Bill would say, “Not interested. Good day.”
Under this policy of Frightfulness, Bill naturally became the target for a shower of shrapnel every time The Boys got together in the Smoker. What one would forget to call Bill, another would think of, thus thoroughly canvassing the Field of Invective at every session.
One fine day an Old Customer to whom Bill had once sold goods when he himself was a livery-bumping County Hopper, blew into the Office as the Representative of an Advertising Novelty House. It seems that Business had gone bunc with the Old Customer and he had been obliged to knit up with a Road Job to keep the wolf off the door-mat. He was sure he could land his old friend Bill as a new customer for his almanacs or some other neat and fetching advertising novelty, and thus make a Killing with his Firm. He sent word back to the barracks where Bill was entrenched saying that he was waiting in the offing and wanted to see him. Bill frowned when he saw the card but told the sentry to show him in anyway.
A few moments later the poor misguided Yob, who had read his Human Nature all awry, appeared at the door of the Cold Storage Plant, and, catching sight of Bill who sat stalling as usual and didn’t see the Approach, rushed into the room with an extended bronze paw the size of a Smithfield ham and yelled: “Hello Bill old socks!”
The shock was too much. To have been “Billed” by this brazen intruder would have been bad enough, but to be “Socked” at the same time was the belt-below-the-belt that laid Bill low. With one hand clapped to his heart and the other to his head, he staggered to his feet and then fell heavily to the ice-bound floor—a victim of heart failure superinduced by acute inflammation of the Ego.
Lesson for Today: To get a calm view of the bull, you’ve got to be on the opposite side of the fence.
HOT SKETCH NO. 7
The Pampered Dealer
A CERTAIN condescending old zambuck thought he was doing his Town a large comprehensive favor by being in the hardware business.
Whenever a Customer entered his store, carrying the door-webs through on his hat, the grouchy one would look over his glasses to see who it was, and then go on reading his newspaper until he got good and ready, thereby justly rebuking the intruder.
Salesmen who called to sell him their flawless Goods used to grow old and hoary sitting around the dumpo waiting for him to say officially that he didn’t care to look at the stuff.
Then they would salaam low and in a galley-grind’s voice thank him for the interview, and back out of the place on their shirt-fronts, and go sell a lot of Small Bills at high prices over the County at the expense of Dear House, and then come back and beg the Civic Benefactor to accept the bouquet at 50 percent profit to himself by placing an order covering only the bare quantity they had sold for him.
With a show of reluctance and drab boredom seldom seen outside the Banking Business, the old Nawab would finally put his influential signature to the Order, but only on condition that the manufacturers consented to run an Advertisement at their own cost in the local paper featuring his progressive and popular Establishment. Of course if they cared at the same time to slide in a few 5-point words about their own goods, why he would have no special objection.
If it so happened occasionally that he so far lost his balance as to buy one dollar and sixty cents’ worth more stuff than had already been sold for him by the visiting Salesman, he would sit himself down on his comfortable chair-pad of old newspapers and write off a starchy hand-tooled letter to the House—on stationery that had been printed for him free of charge by some Easy Eugene of the manufacturing world—and insist emphatically upon having a Special Man from the factory payroll to help him dispose of the surplus as well as wait upon customers, assist in taking Inventory, and be generally useful about the premises.
It is not recorded that any of the manufacturers who were privileged to sell their goods to this highly respected and pampered posh went so far as to pay his store rent for him or defray the expenses of his family wash.
But through their tripe-eyed vision of Sales Promotion they ultimately succeeded in swelling his super-structure to the point where he was able to snuggle down into the comforting hallucination that he could throw any one of them into the bogs of bankruptcy at any time by simply holding back his thirty-cent orders.
Now it came to pass that a certain young Lochinvar of high voltage had been tiptoeing about for a favorable Town in which to weigh-in a blooded Hardware Store, and he happened to hear of this martyr to the noble cause of service.
In fact every Salesman that Young Loch met told him the same story about the old crabbino, but some of them heralded the tidings with less profanity than did others.
Young Loch did not have to get a powerful field-glass to see the Opportunity that lay before him and stretched out its arms. He could see it with his eyes tied behind his back.
So forthwith he sallied to the Particular Town to which we have up and alluded, and in due season he opened him up an establishment that had old Puffed Bean’s place looking like a Hongkong junk hole. The swellest cry in Hardware Shelving was installed, and you could close your big searching eyes and walk all over the place without tangling up with nail kegs, rope, barbed wire and other embellishments peculiar to the small-town hardware dispensary.
When the erstwhile Dictator first got news of the coming invasion, the crust began to crack slightly around the edges of his aloofness. He commenced saying Good Morning to his Customers and introduced other revolutionary changes in the business.
Also he began a quiet but systematic campaign of subterranean rapping against Young Loch, having scratched up the buried fact that Loch’s grandfather had once swiveled the books when he was County Treasurer.
But Loch was so busy connecting up with desirable Agencies that he paid about as much attention to the Opposition as if it had been located in Portuguese West Africa.
One by one those manufacturers who had been supplying their exceptional wares in driblets to old Punko, decided to give Young Loch exclusive control for the following sound and sufficient reasons, to-wit and as follows: first, because he was willing to place a decent-sized order on Regular Terms with no overhanging strain in way of Special Conditions; and second, because of the reason just stated.
Loch also ran 6-inch dbl. cols. at regular rates in the influential Local Sheet advertising the Lines he carried and received many free cols. in the restricted Reading Pages where he was heralded as a young man of Exceptional Promise, and his project as a Valuable Addition to the Large And Growing Commerce of Our Town.
Young Loch did not ask the manufacturers to contribute anything toward this smashing publicity campaign, except Electros of their thrice-inspected Goods, which they promptly forgot to send, according to custom.
When old Maharaja Magoop saw his Customers dropping off like crumbs when the table-cloth is snapped, he began to get very irritabilious and petulant, and told the Town Folks in a wavering falsetto what he thought of the civic spirit of a community that would desert a Lifelong Taxpayer for some young Upstart who had never helped the Town in any way.
Several people, who could not conveniently pay their accounts at the time because they had told the Ice Man to bring ice every day, were inclined to agree with him right up to the doggone roof; but even these few anti-penults were obliged to patronize Young Loch’s place to a certain extent because The Latter now had the exclusive agency for certain leading Implement Lines formerly held down by The Former, and which required Repair Parts that must fit perfectly, but usually didn’t.
At last it was brought home to the once Mighty Monarch that any Dealer who controlled a well-advertised and popular Line of Goods enjoyed a Valuable Asset and was supposed to move a muscle once in a while in the direction of selling the stuff, and not expect the manufacturer of it to do all the chores.
Into his concrete cone was also drilled the tardy knowledge that a Customer is entitled to some slight measure of Service, and in the sanctified name of Profit should not be regarded in the light of a blaspheming intruder if he fails to wiggle in on an abject stomach and apologize for leaving some of his money in the joint.
In short, old Rigid Neck came to see ultimately that he was in the Discard good and fine. With ever-increasing grouchiness he gradually jelled down in the old sagged Cane Seat where the merry little spiders could spin their silvery webs in peace above his cosmos.
The last heard of him, he had rented out his Store window to an itinerant printer who installed therein a nice little Foot Press and was doing very neat calling-cards for 50c per 100.
As for Young Loch he kept up the Good Work full many a year and came to be most highly respected by his Fellow Citizens, including the President of the Enterprise Real Estate & Investment Company whose budding daughter Loch plucked off the rosebush of Love before his red-eared rivals got within a mile of the garden.
Loch was also beloved by Salesmen everywhere, for he never asked them for an Inside Five, a breakage allowance, or donation of Goods for a Church Fair Raffle.
And he always got through with The Boys in time for them to get away on the Four Forty-Five and see a good Show in the Big Town that night.
The Lesson for Today: He who serves most is the King Pin.
HOT SKETCH NO. 8
The Efficiency Expert
THERE was a Piece of Cheese.
He wore a stand-up collar, broken-lot size, and had a/an Adam’s Apple that used to romp up and down the highway every time he swallowed.
Also he was the busiest bee in the swarm.
After supper each night he had to rush down to the Depot to see that the Railway Boys escorted the 7:12 in and out of the Town all right, and then he’d rush back to the Cigar Store to hear the phonograph play, and lay down a few sound rules on International Relations until the President of the First National Bank came in to buy his after-dinner cigar and it was time to lock up.
After that, he would tear madly over to the Kelly House and there drop a few pearls of wisdom before the Night Clerk while that dignitary was out at the curb cleaning the big tin cuspidors that had served in their day to emphasize many a heated argument between rival groups of local parliamentarians.
Ed Galloway was the name of our genius-in-the-cocoon and wherever Ed was to be found, you knew that something of importance was pending. He seemed to have a gift for being on the spot. If you saw him streaking up Mill Street, you might wonder where he was going, and he might wonder where he was going, but before he got a block away, a barn or something would be sure to catch fire just as he was passing it, or a horse get his hoof caught in the trace, or somebody would be driving a stake just a wee bit off center, and straightaway Ed Galloway would find an avenue for his services or advice. He was present everywhere but Church.
Of course there were certain narrow, quibbling spirits, just as there are in every hamletto, who objected to Ed always chiseling in on everything, but there were not lacking those who, like Jeff Webster, Sole Owner and Proprietor of Webster’s Bus Line, believed that Ed Galloway had pretty near the right hashish on things, nine times out of ten.
Away off somewhere in Thibet or in Sumatra there may have been some petty local question that Ed was not wisdomed-up on, but everything that took on the character of a national or international issue, he could discuss from basement to belfry. He was as much at home in the busy arena of Politics and Business as he was in the wide realm of Science and Philosophy.
There was one thing that Ed had in common with all great political leaders, whether they were fully aware of it or not. It was a positive, ultimatum-like tone in which he rendered his decisions in all cases, regardless of their importance to you, to him and/or to the world at large.
If, for instance, Ed happened to pass a cup of water from the Court House pump to the stranger within the gates, he would say: “That water, Sir, is the purest, freshest water in this here whole State.” He’d say it with a sweep of the arm that seemed to include not only the State but the whole Universe, neither of which territories had he ever canvassed.
And invariably the stranger, after drinking the ordinary every-day water from the ordinary every-day Court House pump, would smack his lips and agree with Ed and have another go at it.
Now everybody in every town of every State of every Nation says the same thing about the water of his particular pump, and there is nothing of news-value either in this observation on our part, or in the statement re pure water on the part of said kanoops the world over.
But whenever Ed Galloway up and said that water was pure, or the Tariff was doomed, or that Stocks would go to a New Low, or that we were going to have rain, you had a sense that here was a man who undoubtedly had a corner on all outstanding knowledge of the subject.
Ed’s words always carried a certain vanadium finality that clinched the case and demoralized rebuttal, but there was always left in the heart of the Vanquished a sort of half-formed desire to call Ed a liar on general principles, although with no hopes of course of proving it; for Ed was always there with The Figures, which he dug up out of the vasty deep of his Imagination to support his side of the case, while his opponent usually was equipped with nothing but a village vocab of short jerky monosyllables and a chew of tobacco.
One day Ed met the owner of the Plow Factory in the barber’s chair getting his chinchillas chipped and told him right off the keyboard that his plant was doing but 8-3/4 percent of the total plow business of the county.
The old wowser gasped like a gaffed sturgeon at this impertinent news and attempted to swing back more or less crushingly, but the lather got in his mixer, and so all he could do was to lie there and let Ed go ahead and throw the short-horn.
Ed proceeded to tell him exactly how many farms there were in the County, State and Nation, the acreage under cultivation, the average number of plows per farm, and so on.
And then Ed wheeled suddenly about, and pointing his finger accusingly at his be-lathered and outstretched victim, exclaimed: “How many of these four thousand three hundred and thirty-two plows did YOU sell in Crooked Creek County last year!”
The old man did not say so, but he as much as admitted that he was a dub at the facts of his own business, and later on when he was putting on his overcoat, and Jake the star wielder of the rasp was helping to pull his undercoat down where it didn’t belong, he turned around pseudo-casually to Ed and told him to drop around to the factory some afternoon and have a chat.
Now it so happened that the Young Man who had charge of the Sales and Advertising end of the Plow Factory was a very faithful and steady Young Man. His conduct was at all times “exemplary,” to coin a word.
Every morning as the Court House clock struck eight, he could be seen dismounting from his tin bicycle at exactly the same spot in front of the office door. He had never been late but one morning in his episcopalean life, and that was after a thick night at the Welfare Social when he went in too strong for the strawberry-whisp.
He was one of those Young Men you can always Rely Upon. You know the kind—always the same. He did the same thing this year that he did last year: (a) and at the same time: (b) and in the same place: (c) and in the same way.
The same Copy that stood in the Ads last year, stood in the Ads this year—and occasionally got tired and sat down in the valuable space.
All his letters to The Trade opened and closed the same way like a door—“Replying to yours” and “Hoping to have.”
He also wrote Weekly Letters to the Men on the Road and talked in the earnest, measured phrases of a requiem, about Punch and Pep and Live Wire. There was almost enough live wire in these salesmanic scintillations to singe the hair off an apple. After you got past the waxed opener beginning with the inevitable “Well Boys,” the stuff went like a warm home-brew.
There was another thing about this Young Man worthy of eulogy. He was one of those Model Employees who always pitch the ball so the Boss can hit it. Whenever the Old Man would ask him a question he would burst a blood-vessel straining to answer it so that it would stack four-square with what the O. M. thought about the matter.
To sum up, this young Sales and Advertising Manager of the hitherto tabulated Plow Factory, was, confidentially speaking, habitually scared to a pea-green that he would offend the Boss and lose his good hundred-dollar job.