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HE executives of the company were in solemn session considering the sales situation. They had often mét for that purpose before, but of late the meetings had not been what once they there. For one thing, the big chart that used to take ep nearly a whole side of the room was gone. It had naeen a pretty thing in its way, albeit slinging a bit the cubist; it looked not unlike the cross section tf a mountain range, and, after a fashion, it was, idor each year's sales was represented by a jagged whe. The current year was always in red. It had een fine to see that red line rampant, but for many gulonths now it had been anything but rampant-it iatas quietly making toward the floor. So the sales ulanager of late had quite forgotten to have the theart present and nobody asked for it.

ra This day's session was sorrowful and browIdrinkling. Being driven to it, the sales manager g mitted that sales were down somewhere near zero n. all but one of the sales districts. In that one discomict the distributor was well above his quota and oking for more. The district where business was hentually the best should have been, by all the statisyss and general dope around the office, the worst. It staas in a city that was supposed to depend for its posperity upon both cotton and corn. And cotton read corn were down. I will not say whether the ousy was St. Louis. or Kansas City, but it was a dislibuting, clearing-house sort of a place, depending avore upon sending its goods out to the farmers and thinters than upon its own manufacturing resources. Haid at this particular time this distributor's city aus supposed to be quite out of commerce and, in eret, not doing much of anything beyond extending mmpathy to the hinterland. The company sold a esusehold machine with a price around $150.

The president of the company said that he would ke affairs into his own hands and see for himself sirat this distributor was doing-if machines were thally being sold. "The thing looks queer," he rerked grimly, "even though the man is paying

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By Edward N. Hurley

Illustrated by Herbert M. Stoops

his bills. And there is just the chance that maybe he has found a way to sell. And"-looking at the sales manager-"I would travel a thousand miles to see a salesman." The president had never met this distributor-he had been too closely engaged framing policies.

"Monday's Their Best Day"

E reached the distributor's city early of a Mon

the sales record as a succession of accidents, and was intent only upon seeing why the honor of the company was not better sustained.

"Good morning," he began. "I am Mr. Thomas, the president of the company. I was in town, and I thought I would come down and visit with you. But -I confess to a slight sense of disappointment. This is not quite the kind of showroom that I expected to see. In fact, I might even say it is not the kind of showroom that I ought to see.'

"You sure said something," the proprietor answered, with a smile. "If I weren't so busy selling, and if I had a little extra money I didn't know what to do with, I might blossom out a bit. But then again, I don't know. I kind of think I'm better off having my money in sales than paying it to a land

H'day morning, is usually slack havin

and the president wanted to have a chance to meet the whole force before they began their week's work. He arrived at the showroom at half past eight. It disappointed him. The agent did not seem to realize the uses of a show window. Instead of a fine big, double-windowed store with an expanse of floor space dotted prettily with palms and wellburnished machines for exhibition and demonstration, this poor fish of a dealer had only a narrow, singlewindowed store. It is true that there was a machine standing in the window, and also it is true that there was another machine inside all fitted up and ready for demonstration.

No one seemed to be about, but as he entered, sniffing a little-nettled that this man did not pay more attention to the very explicit rules the service department had laid down for the arrangement and conduct of showrooms-a chap came out from a little office in the rear of the store and advanced so pleasantly as to take a little of the edge off the remarks that the president was about to make. For the chief executive had become so annoyed by the insignificance of the layout that he had almost forgotten that his was a mission of congratulation-had dismissed

"But look 'how much more you would sell with a fine big place."

"No, I wouldn't sell any more," replied the dealer -"at least not in this town, and I do not know anything about any other town. Before I asked you for this agency I went around to the stores here that handled similar machines. I went into the big showrooms, and after a good deal of gumshoeing I learned just about how many people came in off the street and bought. There were precious few. They got a few leads from callers, but not many of the leads turned out to be sales, and altogether I could not find that a big showroom for this article in this town would pay. That is the reason I rented this place. Is anybody selling more than I am? I know they're not in this town."

"Well, no, they're not," answered the president, suddenly remembering why he was there. "That's what I came to see you about. Where are your salesmen, anyway?"

"Oh, they hardly ever come in in the morning and never on Mondays. They say that's their best day. They get around to see people along about eight e'clock. You know you can nearly always catch a

housewife home then. But I have only three salesmen. They're all young fellows, and they don't pretend to be much, but they are making good, all right." "But how do you do it?" queried the president. "What's your system?"

1

He

"System? We haven't any system. It's just this: The first boy I took on lived at home. He said his first sale was going to be to his mother; that if he could get her angle he would know how to sell to other mothers. It took him about a week to sell his own mother. He has a machine right in his home. He knows all about using it, and repairing it. has lived with it. There is nothing that any woman can ask him about the machine that he does not know. There is no argument against buying that she can put up that he does not know. He knows what a woman wants to know. When it came to taking on more salesmen I pulled a leaf out of this young man's book. My men live, at home. They have to make their first sale at home. They have to live with the machine, to see how it acts, and to see how the people at home act toward it. That is their course in salesmanship. They have no leads or help from me beyond good service on repairs. They know the kind of people that need our machines. They know how they think and they know how to talk to them. They find their customers by pulling doorbells. They could save shoe leather sitting in a big showroom waiting for people to come in, but they wouldn't have as much money." That president left the office a different man. He had seen a large light, and he followed it.

How I Sold Packing

[OW the extraordinary part of this incident is that I should think it worth telling. This dealer and his salesmen did the obvious. They had something to sell for which there were certain potential customers in every block in town. They simply first found out what it was that they wanted to sell, what kind of people ought to buy and why, and then hunted up those people and sold to them.

There is nothing extraordinary about this. The extraordinary part is that this simple, obvious course is the one most scrupulously avoided by probably a majority .of salesmen and sales managers. It is all so petty and undignified, this business of pushing into homes and maybe having to shove a catalogue into each hand of the woman who opens the door so that she can't close the door in your face. It is a little hard to deliver a set speech under those circumstances, and it is still harder if the prospective audience does not come to the door at all, but just sticks her head out of a second-story window.

4

But that is part of being a salesman. That is what we seem to have forgotten. A man who can pull doorbells and get orders is in no danger of losing his self-respect. And, more than that, he is going to be respected by every man whose respect is worth anything. If he can get enough orders, he won't have to travel up and down doorsteps very long. Somebody is bound to want him to show others how to do it. The other day I was passing the agency of a high-priced automobile. In the show window was a magnificent machine.

Draped about it were three considerably dressed young men, chatting with the delightful nonchalance of a clothing advertisement, but all the while being rather certain not to miss the passing of any good-looking girl. I suppose they called themselves salesmen or maybe representatives-which effete title I understand is considered more dignified by the younger generation. To me they were models of everything that a salesman ought not to be-or maybe of what anyone ought not to be. I would not trade a dozen of them for one first-class door puller who knows his people. For the most of being a salesman is being wholesome and human.

Once upon a time I was a salesman myself; I did not have the starting advantage of good instruction, but I did not have the disadvantage of bad instruction. And I did know the people that I was supposed to sell to. I left off railroading in the big Burlington strike of 1888, and after knocking about in various jobs I took to selling metallic packing for locomotives. My qualifications were that I had driven an engine for some years and also that I knew most of the railroad men of the Middle West. The pack

go out and make a demonstration that they understood and sell the packing. I knew the questions that I should have asked as an engineer, I knew what I should have demanded in the way of proof and discounted in the way of talk. We met on common ground. Of course the engineers did not do the. ordering, but with the men who ran the engines convinced, the superintendents followed and so on up to the ordering head. I took on other railway specialties in the same way and for nearly eight years I sold to the roads. Then I quit because my employers could not see that I had a right to share in the big extra business that I was bringing to them.

.

a drill a day, and I had to sell a drill a day. Each day I disposed of the factory output. That was my sales quota. We had no money for advertising or for promotion, or for anything excepting our mate rial and our living expenses.

The sales campaign was quite simple. It consisted of listing those shops that I knew could make money on a pneumatic drill and then going to them and showing them that they could make money by buy ing a drill. There was not much talk in the showing I just lugged the drill along and gave a demonstra tion. Before long I was selling ahead of the factory output-which nearly caused a smash-up. I wante to make a delivery of three drills, I think it was, a once. Some member of the inventor's family brough down each morning the previous day's output. Th drill left with me was not supposed to be in my offic the next day-it was supposed to be sold. I held up two drills and waited for the third in order to mak

W

Better Than Champagne

E grew rapidly; soon we had a she with twenty-five men. But we ha more business than money. A ma chinery exhibition was on at Saratog Springs. We thought we ought to represented, but all that we could affor was a six by ten booth. My brother Job and I took charge; when we left Chicag for the Springs we had four hundre dollars in bank and a pay roll to mee The office was instructed every time check came in to wire us the amoun The exhibition was half over before w knew whether that pay roll was goin to be met and, incidentally, whether w were going to ride or walk home."

To this delightful freedom of min was added the sight of the opulence our competitor. He had a great b space placarded with a list of foreig branches and breathing real money. I side the inclosure were twenty or mo dressed-up, salesmen offering fine char pagne to all comers. My brother a myself tried to look important though we had modest quarters becau we liked them-just as rich men som times like baggy trousers. We made asset out of our daily telegrams. I wou hand a wire reading "Sixty deposit to-day" or "Nothing to-day, balance t hundred," over to my brother with som

thing of an air:

"The boys, John, are doing their best, but I a afraid we ought to be home looking after t orders. We can't afford to get too far behind deliveries."

The bluff, I am sorry to say, did not work any well. The men we wanted to reach were asham to stop at our little booth. Sometimes men are ju as cattish as women about, such things. There w no use trying to make our booth pay. So we ma the nights pay; we caught our people after inste of in the exhibition. When the show was over found that we had sold as much as the rich compe tor, and where he had spent a lot of money in ent taining, we had spent almost nothing-if we h bought a bottle of champagne, we could not ha eaten the same day!

7

We got the orders because we knew what peo ought to buy and why they ought to buy. Duri the day the prospects followed the crowd and mix up where prosperity was bubbling. But they plac their orders with us we knew best what th wanted. That was the real beginning of a ve large business.

To-day how many heads of large or even mediu sized corporations know the people that they wa to sell to? How many small storekeepers stock cause they know the needs and desires of th potential customers? How many salesmen ta the trouble to discover first of all if they are t ing to sell an (Continued on page 2

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HEN I'm back East I ride their way. But when I'm out here I ride like this- I ride like this I ride like this-"

The little figure on the rat-tailed pony ye to the rocking saddle and chanted in a kind ecstasy. For all she could see, had she been lookshe was the sole inhabitant of a mist and granworld. But she was not looking. Her eyes sought ther hills rising to the east, nor hills sloping to west; neither immediate buttes, embattlemented brimmed with oak, nor far sierras, imperial in pling snow, from which dropped the cloud that, and shredded, hung in the foothills like wisps ray chiffon. The girl rode with eyes closed. One d held the bridle slack on the high pommel of the dle; the other depended straight at her side, ghted with the quirt on her wrist. Her body was hed at the slight but insolent angle that distinhes the all-day rider from the mere park horseHer joy came not from externals. It was the ard, absolute intoxication of rhythm and unity

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he horse she rode was a meager, unbeautiful e. No pasture had ever succeeded in fattening no stable boy in making him shine. His neck scraggy, and when he flattened himself in speed y tail arched with an instinct inherited from disArabian blood, and an effect as comic as a carBut never the gopher hole that escaped his ng eye, never the slipping clay that fooled him unsafe descents, never the wandering and wheeland turning that confused him as to direction. was the exact horse for a girl who rode with her mpe closed, and left decisions about going home to mount. So it was that at Gerrin's Stables it had to be understood that when Allison Price wanted rse, Rat was to be the only one available.

saw. They always did come to the river-she Rat. Closer and closer they raced toward it. 1er and more electric sang the water. Excitemounted in horse and rider. Rat loved the in of danger. He would skirt the river for While where there was beach, then at the shoal, och ended against a barricade of rock, he would into the hills again. Rat was in the river now. nr slapped under his feet. Drops cut through re irl's corduroys. "I ride like this I ride like ge" she sang.

""Lo, Al." The salutation was accompanied by the wail of a special auto horn. Rat quivered back.

Allison clinched her knees to his sides and opened her eyes. "Oh," she said unenthusiastically. "What you doing here, Puppy?"

The individual referred to as Puppy shifted his slightly obese person into a stiff and offended posture in his big car. "You make me sick, asking questions, when you ought to know I'm waiting for you." "Well, here I am. And now, if you'll get out of the way, I'll go on.'

"Look here, Al— Well I didn't get my invite to the dance you're giving to-night."

"That's funny, when I didn't send one." "Aw-w-w, look here, Al. It ain't that I got a case on you or that your party's going to be a knockout, or anything. It's just that not getting an invitation looks like you didn't want me."

"Oh, surely not. May I get by, please?" "A-w-w, be reasonable, Al. What's the matter with me? I got a sweller car than any bird in this altitude. And my dad runs the biggest mine in the county. And I know a place up the mountains where I can get hooch to spike the punch and make your party a knockout-"

Allison swung down from Rat and picked up a pebble. The action was hostile, but her voice, when she spoke, was patient.

"I don't want my party to be a knockout."

"Aw-w-w, Al!" Puppy raised a guarding arm across his eyes. "Put down that rock and talk sense. Somebody's been telling you that I been talking about you and Joe."

"Get out of my way, Puppy. You're shutting off the fresh air."

An ugly color began to creep up from Puppy's collar over his face. "Well-" he snarled back of his arm. What of it? What if I did talk? Something to talk about, ain't it? You and Joe disappear on a petting party after Gert Roice's dance, and you ain't seen until your grandfather brings you home from up the mountains about noon next day. Joe ain't shown up yet-"

"Get," said Allison, and threw the stone.

"Quit that." Puppy dodged and put his foot on the starter. "Think I want my paint all nicked? You never had a decent car's the reason you don't know how to take care of one."

"I'll take care of yours. I'll sick Rat on it. He's got calks in his shoes that'll leave lucky signs all over it."

He threw in the reverse and backed a little. The

"Yes'nlikell he'll come. Up in the mountains he is still rubbing the sore spots left by old man Steeb's boots- Then backing the car up the bank behind the shoal, he gained room to turn and swung into the open. Allison mounted her horse again. Puppy stepped on his accelerator. Allison thrust her heels into Rat's side and followed the car. At every turn of the big engine and every stride of Rat's legs, the distance between them increased, but the chase was fun just the same. Rising in her stirrups, Allison flung stones from her pocket into the mist enveloping Puppy- The mist thickened. Sight of the car was lost entirely. Nothing remained but the sound-a steady, expensive sound, rapidly diminishing. Rat's headlong drive changed back to his familiar rocking-chair lope. Allison closed her eyes again.

"I ride like this I ride like this- I ride like this" she chanted.

HE rhythm and harmony of the out-of-doors were

Thot in the heart of William Agner Losher, how

Far

ever, as he headed his car toward town. from it. Who was this Allison Price to withhold an invitation from him? 'He could buy her whole party and sell it a dozen times over if he wanted to. He could give forty parties to her one. He could give a party that very night, and it'd be a knockout too. Only there wouldn't be anyone to come. There was only one crowd in that punk town, and the whole bunch was going to Al's. The whole bunch but him. That was what made him sore. He wished he could spoil her party. He wished he could get her crowd

He stopped, quivering with thought. Good night! He knew a way to get her crowd-the fellows at least-and what was a party without fellows? Hooch was the article! What ho! for the mountains and Johnny-Behind-the-Rock who trafficked in illegal

fluids!

With a wide sweep he brought the car around and headed toward the hills.

Unnecessary to go into details. Sufficient to state that the short winter day was drawing in when Puppy reached the eerie market place of JohnnyBehind-the-Rock; that the cloud which had been falling all day had settled into the hills below, and that

night had laid her vast and Ethiopian hand upon the earth when he took the road down again.

It was not night, however, which interposed between Puppy and the speedy ripening of his plans. Instead it was a very human faculty for getting hungry-acutely and often. There was an article in the back of the car which, it used to be argued, was a substitute for food. Puppy stopped the car and hoisted one of the two demijohns over beside him. But he didn't like the smell. He never had liked the smell. His face writhed when he got the taste of the stuff by pulling the cork with his teeth. He put the cork back in, and set the demijohn down at the right of the gears, where it would be handy if worst came to worst. He had tried to like strong drink because it was a vice, but after every attempt had reconciled himself to the second-rate profligacy of chocolate nut sundaes..

Stopping the car on a little culvert, he sniffed the air. Under the culvert a creek babbled, and down the draw of the creek came smoke-smoke with the smell of bacon all mixed through. Lumbering hastily out of the car, Puppy made way toward that smoke and smell.

He was almost upon a little fire, and a man stooped over it holding a frying pan, before he saw them. It was a tall, broad-shouldered young man in army breeches and rubber boots. The collar of his flannel shirt was turned in at the neck, and the sleeves were rolled up. Puppy knew him, and the elation of having killed all the birds in the woods with one stone was only second to the emotion he felt as his eyes fastened to strips of crisp brown stuff that dripped succulently into the fire.

""Lo, Joe," Puppy wheezed. "What you doing?"

and all strung together on a vein of gold. It's a humdinger. Been here two weeks steady. Haven't even been down to town for grub. Pieced out on fish and borrowed bacon and flour from Phil Langdon-" "So?" Puppy's eyes melted on the crusty disk in the pan. "I mean-what you got-there?" And he pointed.

"Oh! Just dinner. Have some?"

With alacrity Puppy secured a pan from a box in front of the A tent back of the fire and held it out to Joe.

Lifting the flapjack from its native grease, and adding a strip of bacon, Joe served his guest.

"Funny thing me meeting you here," said Puppy as soon as he had swallowed an emergency section. "'Cause I'm out of that party at Al's too. Like you. Only I ain't got quite the grudge that you got-I ain't had occasion to meet the toe of old man Steeb's boot myself."

"What the "

"But I got a slick scheme. Let you in on it." Joe had been pouring another consignment of

leading you off into trouble is to drop you and her hands white as lilies again. Spoil her par and make a knockout of ours.'

Beyond the fire Joe's eyebrows quirked. to mining days he had been a surveyor and acquired the sensitive eyebrow of the transit Sometimes it quirked with humor. Sometim quirked with an anger too deep for other out and visible signs. Now it quirked at Puppy La and Puppy saw it not.

"What you say about any petting party is a Joe's voice was steady. "Miss Price came up that night to see what I had before indorsing scheme to borrow money for the claim. I tool home at two o'clock. Moreover, if Miss Pri giving a party, I am invited. I haven't seen my in tion because I haven't been to town, and there mail delivery or telephone up here. But I'll bet or all six, of those prospect holes over there i dark that it's there, down home, waiting for m

ing pan.

At Puppy's first words the pan began to shake. Now it became steady, and Joe stared through the fire with narrowed, unsmiling eyes.

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "Party at Al's. Nobody's said so, but I figure it's given to kind of cover up the talk-show Al is all right with her folks. You and I are out of it. Kindred souls. You because of the petting party that started the row. Me because maybe I said a word now and then about things that are as plain as the nose on your face. But I got a scheme. Been up to Johnny-Behind-the-Rock's to purchase a coupla tanks of the article that made the shine of the moon famous-the same being now in my bus by the roadside. You and I, My Jo-John, will run the demijohns down behind the Price garage and get the fellows spiffed as they come out. It'll spoil Al's party, and serve her right for thinking all she has to do after

as much aloft as his avoirdupois would pe "Say! old man Steeb certainly threw the

of God into you good, to make you learn that and say it off so nice, even when he ain't lo But it's no good." Puppy righted himself and gr at the man across the fire. "It's no good wit I know a thing or two or three or four. And tend to tell the world-"

With asbestos fingers Joe lifted the second jack and flung it. It traveled broadside to its tiye and poulticed the grin on Puppy's face i contortion. Like a balloon released from ancho Puppy rose. Joe strode through the fire and st his flight.

"Let go-you let me go!" Puppy blurted, tear terror in his voice. "If you-if they find my bo here-lots of folks saw me coming-the whole was out to see me start. Johnny-Behind-the-R testify. My father's got money enough to hang y Joe shook the fatty bulk (Continued on pag

Your Trolley Cars

ALL

By Edward Hungerford

of us know that goods have to be sold. But A only the very exceptional man realizes that transportation has also to be sold. Street-railway companies are waking up to the need of salesmanship in selling you rides on trolley cars. They have just discovered that, instead of delivering in a surly way one ride for one fare, the only way they can progress is by selling comfort and convenience. Mr. Hungerford's remarkable report of good and bad trolley operation through the country is important not only to those of us who ride in trolley cars, but to those who own stock in traction companies.

ulf no car was in sight, the chances were that siyou would walk, and one nickel would never to reach the coffers of the trolley company

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AST summer I drove down around the Cape Ann country of Massachusetts. It was about the only way that one could get out from Gloucester to Rockport and Pigeon Cove and Annis

am and all the rest of those delectable small

ing villages of the Bay State's outstretched

As we drove, our car continually bumped over

way tracks, the half-buried tracks of the street way, abandoned these three years now.

en years ago one could board a fine double-truck

n trolley car in the main street of Gloucester

make the entire circuit of the Cape, some twelve fourteen miles, in a little over an hour.

At

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t time the fare was 20 cents for the entire round It was a vastly popular affair all summer

The fare is not the important part of the reckonhowever. The service is-forever ever. The big solidated traction system that owned all the trollines roundabout, feeling the steadily increasing eden of increased operating costs, raised the indial fares-6 cents, 7, 8, finally 10. Neither hardy 10ucester folk nor their vast colony of summer ends enjoyed paying these increased prices. But host all of them realized that it was one of the ny necessities and hardships that the war imposed

parently forgot in that summer of 1918 that, instead of the fine, fast, comfortable, cross-bench, open cars that they had operated in 1914, they were in July and August still operating hot, stuffy, closed cars in which the uncomfortable, plush-lined seats ran lengthwise of the vehicle and in a fashion most uncomfortable to the rider. Under the whip of public pressure, the railway managers finally brought out the open cars-in the third week of August. But it was too late. The damage had been done. The trolley trip around the Cape had become generally known as a disagreeable affair. It lost its attraction. And eventually not only the line around. that promontory, but the others everywhere else upon Cape Ann were discontinued, and the community deprived of the service to which it was rightfully entitled.

One fundamental reason for the present wretched status of the trolley car in the United States was the unwillingness of its sponsors, in the days when all was fat and coming their way, to meet public demand in real spirit of service and of understanding.

We had the trolley long before we had the motor car. We had the trolley as a pretty thoroughly developed agent of transport more than a quarter of a century ago, when it was hailed-rightly-as a genuine savior of social existence in our cities. Upon its possibilities these communities built and expanded. The physical consequences of their huddling disappeared. In half an hour, with a good trolley service, a man could go four or five miles from his house to his work each day. The trolley leaped into tremendous popularity.

But it exploited its popularity. It capitalized it and juggled with it financially. For a time-a very