An Open Letter to the Salesmen
of America

HERE is a library in Paris so huge,

Taccording to Ralph Waldo Emerson, that

a man reading steadily for sixty years. would die in the first alcove.

So voluminous has the literature of salesmanship become that if it were all gathered on to the shelves of this French library, it might fill that giant alcove to the ceiling.

And yet, many years before any of those books went to press, a man wrote in five words the entire literature of the subject. He said all about selling that was worth saying then, or saying now, or ever will be worth saying. The man wrote the dictionary. His five words appear alongside the noun "salesman," defining it as follows:

"A man who sells goods." According to this definition, how many salesmen are there in America to-day? One of them writes us:

had contracted to deliver two dozen fresh eggs to a customer at a certain hour on a certain day. When the time came for her to start to town there was one egg short of two dozen. Did she substitute a stale egg or deliver with excuses the twenty-three fresh ones she had, or did she stay at home and let the customer wait a day or two? She did not. Selecting a hen with a record as a layer, she cooped up this hen on the back of the buckboard and started to town. On the road somewhere the hen laid an egg, completing the two dozen. The customer noticed the warm egg. Instantly the story started traveling, and has made the old lady famous for 500 miles in all directions from her farm.

That is what the dictionary maker meant when he wrote: "A man who sells goods."

An acquaintance once approached the first J. P. Morgan and asked for a loan of $10,000. Morgan knew the man was responsible, but for private reasons did not want to make the loan himself. He did, however, say he would secure the money for him.

Putting on his hat and coat, he asked the man to go with him. They started on the corner of Broad and Wall Streets, walked through Wall to Broadway, and back to the corner of Wall. Morgan did not stop anywhere, nor ask anyone to lend his companion $10,000. At the door of his office Morgan shook hands with the man and bade him good day.

"But," objected the applicant, "you didn't get me the $10,000."

"Oh, yes, I did," said Morgan. "Anybody down there," waving toward Wall Street, "will let you have it now."

And that is another kind of salesmanship.

"Salesmen of the type of David Brannan IT,

and George Williamson, who traveled in the territory we knew as boys twenty years ago, haven't been developed in the past few easy years. Those men took their sampie cases in their hands, and went out and sold goods. They were called drummers. No literature of selling grew up around their methods. But David and George knew two things: They knew their own goods and they knew the people and the kind of goods those people wanted in the towns they visited.

"Those two abused drummers, riding in dusty buggies, nevertheless sold their employers' goods and helped to build America.

"The same knowledge and methods will sell goods to-day. But the average so-called salesman you meet is not a salesman at all. He is an order taker. When he finds no orders to take he becomes an undertaker. He doesn't know his goods; he doesn't know his customer's capacity, commercial or financial. If you suggested to him that he is traveling through America leaving behind him. a wake of gloom, depression, and lost confidence, he would faint dead away.

"But he is. The old-fashioned drummerthe pioneer of modern business-is as dead as Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone."

THAT is one side of the picture. But there

is another side, and it shows there is still salesmanship in the land.

From all over New England the editor of a farm paper has been receiving one story about an old woman in New Hampshire. She

[T was Benjamin Disraeli, the Jew who for six years was Prime Minister of England, who said: "It has been my observation that the most successful man in any undertaking is the man who has the most information."

It doesn't require salesmanship to sell sugar when everybody needs it and there isn't enough sugar to go around. But it does require salesmanship to sell sugar when everybody has enough for all the common uses to which sugar is put and when there are hundreds of pounds on dealers' shelves.

Salesmanship at such a time consists in showing the customer a way to use sugar that will be useful or pleasurable to him and that he has not thought of before.

All conversation is salesmanship of a kind. When you talk you have only one purpose— to plant a new idea in some one else's mind. We all enjoy this, because we all think well of our own ideas. That is human. Were it not so, none of us would utter a word except an occasional sulky grunt for "yes" or "no."

There is much of the child in each of us. A little boy will forever point at the moon, exclaiming: "See! See!" As we grow older we retain and develop this desire to astonish and dazzle. We exaggerate in order to increase the other man's surprise, and therefore neighborhood stories grow as the gossips retell them.

So it is with business. Over a luncheon table the head of a big manufacturing company tells an associate that the president of his bank has just told him that the company is approaching the legal limit of its accommodation at the bank and that some adjustments should be made. All the banker meant was

a friendly word of caution to that particular company about its immediate affairs.

But over the grapevine telegraph that exists in every business that word travels on from tongue to tongue, growing as it goes, until it reaches the man on the road. And then it sounds like this: "Keep this to yourself, of course, but the whole industry is in bad shape. The president of the Manhattan Trust has just told our president that he expects to see one failure after another in our line before the first of March."

And so on. And the salesman, out alone where every sort of doubt and anxiety can perch on his pillow, goes into some country store and-unless he does less talking and more thinking than most of us-he confides the whole mass of misinformation to the proprietor of the store.

"Makes things pretty hard for you, I suppose," says the proprietor.

"Well, I'm never licked," answers the salesman. By this time several men in the store have edged forward, each with his ears pinned back. And when the conversation ends, one merchant and a group of his customers are left to carry the story along, each with his own improvements.

"I met a man from the East to-day," says one of them to his wife, "and from all he tells me you don't want to do any buying just yet. Let the money lie in the bank." And the wife carries the word along to her neighbors, and in a little while all activity in that town dries up.

The salesman who leaves behind him only anxiety starts going an endless chain of depression that will in the long run reach around and do its best to wreck, not only himself and his employer, but all other salesmen and their employers as well. The man who leaves any town with these seeds planted behind him is sitting on something more than the plush seat in his parlor car. He is sitting on his own volcano.

T

is wise for you, as a salesman, not to talk about how bad business is, or will be, but to apply your own knowledge of business conditions to the goods you sell, offering your customer only those things you believe he can retail at a profit.

If you know that your customer is buying a certain line of your goods at such a price that he will merely warehouse them on his shelves, because his customers will lack the money to pay for them, then it will be wise to forego the fatter commission of the moment and advise your customer to buy something else that you know he can sell.

Your prosperity depends on his prosperity. And his prosperity depends on his selling the merchandise you sell to him at a fair profit, so enabling him to meet his obligations at his bank, so enabling the bank to meet its obligations to larger banks, so enabling those banks to finance your company, so enabling your company to keep producing the goods you sell for a living.

You may have to take what seems to be a short step backward-but it will mean a long step forward soon.

You are selling not only the goods you offer. You are selling the most delicate and important of all merchandise-business conditions. And unless you sell business conditions wisely, you depreciate the value of all your other goods, and you rob yourself.

Let Them Go on the Floor

JN England the administrative heads of government appear before Parliament to obtain support for policies and explain purposes.

More than anything else, this practice serves to bind together the executive and legislative branches.

We have no such practice. As a result any antagonism between Congress and the executive department results in a far-away, isolated sulking and stalemate.

If our Cabinet members could appear on the floor of Congress, or be summoned by request, good executive policies would be demonstrated to the country and bad ones exposed. Congress would be forced by public opinion away from mean or petty political obstruction, or would receive commendation for its opposition to the proposals of administrative officials who had been disposed to run away with expenditure upon folly.

It would help both the new President and the new Congress. Why not bring about the practice now?

The Slow Advance

AT Christmas time, in New York City, one woman brought public accusation against another. This was in the year 1920, and the accusation was that the neighbor was a witch. According to the newspapers, the woman who

brought the charge said to the reporters: "Yes, she is a witch, she is a witch, I tell you! She nursed my child. My child is sick, very sick, and that woman is responsible for it. She cursed my little girl as she nursed her, and since then my little girl has lost the use of both her legs. But I hope my little girl will get well. I hope she will get well. I want God to take my part against that witch."

A reporter who investigated the matter tells us that the whole neighborhood of women became divided into two hostile camps, and that one of these camps believed very firmly in the truth of the witchcraft charge.

This is only one more sign that progress of the minds and morals of human beings moves much slower than progress measured by material achievements. Factories and their products, invention and their marvels, deceive us immensely about the advance of mankind. The advance of mankind is not

but by the things we cannot touch-the intangible factors in civilization like better sense, higher purposes, clearer vision, finer thinking, calmer minds. But, in spite of the infinite evidence of this day that mankind still lapses readily into blithering and into savagery, we nevertheless gain something in the progress of our times-a slow advance, almost imperceptible, but a sure advance, knowing no short cuts and no nostrums and no talismans, but only founded upon the better human individual.

street car asked the conductor if the car went past the Union Station. "Did you see the sign?" asked the conductor. "Yes, I did."

"Well, what did it say?"

"It said: 'Methuselah Was a Careful Man and He Lived 969 Years'; but I can't see how that helps me."

The young woman was telling the truth. That's what the sign said, for it was Safety First week in the capital, and they were doing things like that to make people careful.

T

HEATREGOERS who have lived through two or more generations invariably complain that the stage isn't what it used to be. Mostly they mourn for a school of drama in which emotion flowered more luxuriantly than in the usual run of plays to-day about life

in country stores and city flats. The one thought in which these playgoers of another day take comfort is that even if we had such drama now there would be no one who could act it. But "Deburau" is such a play, and Lionel Atwill must be some such one as those who figure in the speeches of our older friends when they say: "Ah, but then you never saw-" Sacha Guitry, who wrote "Deburau," is alive; yes, indeed, even more than that, for he lives in Paris, and Lionel Atwill is a young actor whose greatest previous success in New York was achieved in the realistic drama of Ibsen. Now, it is possible for us to turn upon the elders and to say to them: "It is not for want of ability that this age of ours doesn't do your old-style plays. We could if we would. Go and see 'Deburau' and Lionel Atwill."

Of course, even in this verse play of the tragic life of a French actor of the early nineteenth century there are modern touches. For all the fact that Atwill is able to rise now and again to a carefully contrived situation and to develop it into a magnificent moment of ringing voice and sweeping gesture, he is also able to do the much greater and more exciting thing of making Deburau seem at times a man and not a great character in a play. He is able to make Deburau, actor, dead man, Frenchman, seem the common fellow of us all. And, still more wonderful, 'Lionel Atwill succeeds in doing this even in scenes during which the author is pitching rimed couplets around his neck as if he were no man at all, but nothing more than one of the posts in a game of quoits. I find it difficult to believe that anybody's heart is breaking when he expresses his emotion in carefully carpentered rime:

"Trained in art from my cradle," did you
say?

Well, I hadn't a cradle. But, anyway,
If you bid me recall those things, here
goes-

Though I've tried hard enough to forget
them, God knows.

By Heywood Broun

When people on the stage begin to speak in this fashion the persuasive air of reality is seldom present. It is with Atwill. He is careful not to accentuate the beat. Sometimes I am almost persuaded during his performance that it isn't poetry at all. When I watch him, verse is forgotten, but I have only to close my eyes to hear the deep and steady rumble of the beat which thumps beneath the play. Atwill is a man standing on top of a volcano. So great is his unconcern that you may accept it as extinct, but sooner or later you will know better, for by and by, with a terrifying roar, off goes the head of the mountain in an eruption of rime.

Atwill is not the only modern note in an oldfashioned play by a young man of to-day. Our forefathers may be speaking the truth when they tell us that in their day all the actors were nine or ten feet tall and spoke in voices slightly suggestive of Caruso at his best, but our forefathers never saw such a production as David Belasco has given to "Deburau." No one knew in those days of the wonders which could be achieved with light. Nobody, then, could have shown us in the twinkling of an eye the front of Deburau's tiny theatre, then the interior of the theatre itself, and finally, with only a passing moment of darkness, carry the stage of the theatre within a theatre forward and set it down in front of the audience, greatly grown by its journey.

In Sacha Guitry's play about Jean-Baptiste

Gaspard Deburau we see this famous clown and pantomimist, who brought all Paris to his tiny theatre some hundred years ago, in the midst of a performance. We hear the applause of his audience and then after a bit we see the man himself rid of his Pierrot garb and his white grease paint. He is introduced to us as an exceedingly modest young genius who deplores the fact that he has become hated by his fellow players because of the applause heaped upon him by the critics. Nor is he any better pleased when fair ladies wait to see him after a performance to press their attentions upon him. For them he has invented a formula of repulse. After a moment or so he produces a miniature from his pocket and remarks: "Pretty, isn't it?" When the fair lady agrees he adds: "It's a picture of my wife. I should so like to have you meet her."

But one night Deburau meets a lady much fairer than any of the others, and this time he forgets to show her the miniature. In the second act we find that he is madly in love with her, while she, although she is touched by his devotion, has outgrown her fancy for the actor. It is Deburau who christens

her "the lady with the camellias," for she is Marie Duplessis, better known to us as Camille. Returning home for the first time in a week, Deburau finds his wife has left him and, gathering up his bird, his dog, and his little son, he goes to the house of Marie, hoping there to find welcome and consolation. Instead he finds another lover, Armand Duval, who is to make Marie one of the great heroines of emotional drama.

Seven years pass before the next act begins, and now we find Deburau old, broken, and disheartened. He has left the theatre and he lives tended only by his son, who has grown to be a lively youngster of seventeen. Somewhat to his chagrin, he finds that the boy is eager to become an actor, and this emotion changes to anger when he learns that his son has studied all his rôles and hopes to make a début in Paris simply as Deburau. He is not to be brushed aside in such cavalier fashion. There is only one Deburau, he declares, and there will be only one until he dies.

To the garret, then, comes Marie Duplessis, truant through all the seven years, but the joy of Deburau is short-lived. He finds that she has not come back because she loves him, but because she is sorry for him. She has come with her doctor. Still, after Marie has gone and Deburau has been left alone with the physician, he finds unexpected consolation for his weary spirit. The physician finds no physical ailment. The trouble, he declares, is a nervous one. For that he can do little. Some magic other than medicine is needed. He suggests books, painting, nature, but to each Deburau shakes a weary head. They don't interest him. The theatre, the doctor continues, is perhaps the best hospital of all. There are one or two actors, he tells Deburau, who are greater than any doctors in their power to bring merriment and new life to tired men.

"Who?" asks the sick man, and the doctor tells him of Deburau and his great art. Yes, by all means Deburau is the man he should see.

No sooner has the doctor left than Deburau calls for his hat and his stick. He will no longer sit idle while inferior men play his parts. He is going back to the theatre. There we find him in the last act in the middle of a performance in one of his most famous rôles, but his old grace and agility are gone. When the audience should weep it laughs and there are tears instead of smiles for his decrepit attempts at comedy. Finally, he is hissed and booed and, after he has made a dumb speech of farewell, the curtain is rung down. The manager is in a panic. Somebody else must be put forward. It is quite evident that Deburau is done. In the crisis the old actor begs a favor. His son, he tells the manager, knows all his rôles. Why not let the audience have a new Deburau, a young Deburau? Then, as the company gathers about to listen, the old man makes up the boy for his part, and as he does so he tells him in a few simple words the secrets and the fundamentals of the art of acting. Presently the drum of the barker is heard outside the theatre and the audience hears him announce that Deburau the great will give way to a greater Deburau, a Deburau more agile, more comic, more tragic. Then the terrified boy is pushed out upon the stage and the play begins. By an ingenious device of David Belasco all our attention is focused upon the old man, who is listening and watching the performance of his successor, which we see only dimly through gauze curtains, but we hear the laughter and the shouts and the cheers. The new Deburau is a success, a triumph. The noise comes more faintly to our ears and we see only the old Deburau standing listening as from the house which has just hissed him there comes a wild acclaiming shout for his successor of "Deburau! Deburau!"

The old man does not know whether he should laugh or cry, and so he cries.

"Sh-sh-sh," warned Miss Perfumia. "My name ain' Sally no mo'."

"How come?"

"I is changed it to Miss Petunia."
"Miss Perfumia?"

"Sh-sh! Heah comes one of my gen'men frien's." Spider Cooter had dismounted from his motorcycle. His face lighted as he saw Miss Perfumia. "Mistuh Spider," said she, presenting the scrawny and angular girl, "lemme mek you 'quainted wid my sistuh."

Spider's surprised glance passed from the magnitude of Miss Perfumia and rested coldly on the longitudinal sister. "Sistuh!" he gasped. "Er-er, Miss Perfumia, you-you cheated her!"

"Po' li'l me," laughed Miss Perfumia, "somebody's always blamin' me fo' sum'p'n."

"No'm, I wasn' to say blamin' you," protested Spider. "I wuz tryin' to cormplument you."

Miss Perfumia set his heart aflutter with a luscious smile. "Oh, you Southren gen'men, always sayin' sweet things what doan none o' you means."

Spider sputtered with protests, in which Miss Perfumia somehow lost interest, for at that moment Mannie Blair advanced, bowing. Mannie seated himself, and another drink was brought. The poor Spider was discarded as a faded garden flower and the radiant Mannie pinned on and worn like a gaudy exotic. Miss Perfumia and Mannie were absorbed in each other. They conversed in low tones, with heads close together. They gave no heed to the ill-at-ease sister or the distressed Spider. Sensing his gloom, the sister attempted consolation: "Doan mine Sal -er-Miss Perfumia. Hit's des hu' way."

"Yassum," mourned Spider. "I ain' blamin' Miss Perfumia none. Hit's Mannie what's all de time buttin' in, an' if 'tain't him, hit's Hosea."

TH

HIS was true. Mannie and Hosea, hitherto professed bachelors and bosom friends, had openly entered the lists against each other for the favor of Miss Perfumia. When a lady, especially so large a lady as Miss Perfumia, comes between old friends, the cleavage is necessarily great. When the friends are as prominent as two outstanding peaks on the sky line, their rising cannot but agitate the surrounding landscape. All Deep Ellum waited with baited breath. Such rivalry and hatred were bound to be entertaining, perhaps tragic.

Miss Perfumia and Mannie appeared to have settled the matter between them, and Mannie hurried away. Hosea had just breezed in, and Mannie met him at the door. He frowned as he passed, and Hosea grinned. In disgust Mannie brushed him aside and departed. Hosea made his way to Miss Perfumia's table, where Spider, ad interim, basked in the fickle lady's smiles. History repeated itself. Hosea found a chair, a drink was brought, and Spider once more was thrust into outer darkness. Miss Perfumia and Hosea

now had matters of great moment that required discussion. Low-toned conversation resulted. A quarter of an hour later they reached an agreement and the end of the refreshments, and rose to depart, leaving to Spider the privilege of payment.

RESTES was leaving the shop when Mannie appeared. His manner was agitated, and Orestes sensed the play of deep emotions. "Hi, Mannie, what's de good wo'd?" he asked amiably. "Dey ain' none," said Mannie, lugubriously. "I's fixin' to git ma'ayed." "To Miss Perfumia?" "De same."

"Wal, dat's right nice." Orestes felt that it was incumbent upon him to congratulate the bridegroom. "I sweah, Mannie, I don' reckum you could find 'nother such large lady, nowhar."

Mannie seized. him by the arm. "Listen, Rest Ease," he hissed. "You got to help me out-you an' de truck! Dey ain' but one objection to Miss Perfumia," he went on. "She's mo-rantic!"

Orestes scratched his head in mental obfuscation. "Meanin' which?"

"She wants to 'lope," confided Mannie in tense tones.

"Nobody. But looks lak her mine runs dataway. She say I mus' steal hu' out'n de thi'd-flo' winder, an' bring hu' down a fo'ty-foot ladder an' ca'ay hu' off in a cah. An' I wants you to help me."

Orestes evinced little enthusiasm at the romantic program.

"From de white folks' house? Umphm-m! I don' wants to steal nuttin' from no white folks' house."

"Hit doan matteh fo' stealin' a culled lady," reassured Mannie.

"Yas, hit do, too, 'specially iffen she weigh fo' hunne'd pounds! Sposen' we wuz to drop dat baby, Mannie?"

"Miss Perfumia don' weigh but two hunne'd an' eighty-eight," corrected Mannie with dignity. "She tolt me so hu'se'f."

"Whoopee! Us'll hab to git a block an' tickle. Couldn' you git de bride to meet us at de back do', Mannie?"

Mannie shook his head mournfully. "No, she's got hu' mine sot on bein' stole. An' you know how 'tis when ladies gits dey mine sot. Hit's lak concrete."

"Umphm-m. Dat's co," agreed Orestes. "How far you got to ca'ay Miss Perfumia when you got hu' stole?"

"Oh, few miles. Mebbe 'roun' White Rock Lake an' back."

Orestes's eyes popped. "White Rock?"

"Yas. Hittin' it up, lickety-split, all de time lak somebody wuz afteh us." "Who?"

"Nobody."

"Whaffo', den?" "Mo-rantics. I tolt you, Rest Ease. It's hu' way."

"Mighty fool way, I say," burst from Orestes. "Den what?"

"Back to de cote house an' de preacher," concluded Mannie. "Will you help me, Rest Ease?"

Orestes's brow was drawn into a frown. He was considering deeply. Finally he agreed. "Yas, Mannie, I reckum you kin count on me. I wouldn' do it fo' nobody 'sep'n you, less'n hit wuz Hosea, an' he ain' ax me."

"He better not!" snarled Mannie. "Much "bliged, Rest Ease. I wuz gwine steal Miss Perfumia in Mistuh Hunteh's cah, but I ain' shofferin' dar no mo'." "How come?"

"Infatuation.

Fondness. Attach

ment," explained Mr. Holmes.

"Oh, yassir," grinned Orestes. "You means love."

"No, I don't either. Not like a man feels for his wife. You don't love the truck like you do Nannette. I guess I mean foolish fondness."

"Yassir, now I understan's 'bout dat 'fat-uation. Kin I tooken de truck?" "You'll probably take it, anyway." Orestes turned away. He was immensely pleased with himself, as was always the case when he succeeded in adding to his employer's enjoyment. But his complacency was rudely shaken by Nannette, who fell upon him from the shadows.

"What's dis 'bout you bein' fat-uated an' takin' de truck out fo' exumcise?" "Nuttin'," said Orestes lamely. He had not counted upon taking Nannette into his confidence.

Nannette's suspicions grew. "Nuttin'?" she repeated severely. "Den hit's boun' to be sum'p'n."

"When?" "Yistiddy."

Orestes determined to make one last effort to dissuade his friend from his patent folly. "Look heah, Mannie, you ain' got no business gittin' ma'ayed atall. You ner neither Hosea either. Ain't nary one o' you kin hol' a job longer'n de fu'st pay day. How you gwine s'po't a wife, I like to know? You an' hu' bofe'll go hongry."

Mannie rolled his prominent eyes and responded seriously: "Rest Ease, is you tooken a good look at Miss Perfumia? Dat's de bes'-fed woman in dis town. She's a wu'kker, she is. Dat woman ain' gwine let no husban' go hongry."

Sev

O it was arranged. Orestes, however, thought it the part of wisdom to secure the consent of his employer to the use of the truck. The truck had been the agent of so much trouble to him lately that he had vowed not to use it again without definite permission. But this good intention was turned to his embarrassment by Nannette's overhearing the conversation.

"Mist' Bill, would you keer iffen me an' de ole truck wuz to tooken a li'l ride to-night?"

"What kind of a ride, Orestes?" asked Mr. Holmes.

"Des' a li'l ridin' round." Orestes refrained from particulars. White folks simply could not understand negro doings, and, besides, they always laughed. Mr. Holmes frowned uncomprehendingly. "Riding around? What for?"

"Fo' li'l exumcise," evaded Orestes. "Riding around for exercise? You and the truck?" repeated Mr. Holmes ironically. "You work with it all day and then you want to play with it all night. Never have I seen such infatuation!"

"Suh?" Orestes looked puzzled.

"Hit ain' 'zackly to say gallivampin'. Hit's mo' lak fat-lady vampin'." Orestes had determined to make a clean breast of matters.

"Who is de gal?" came from Nannette in tense tones.

"Hit's dat Miss Perfumia," answered Orestes miserably.

"Oh, goodness!" gasped Nannette in jealous dismay.

Orestes sensed his blunder. "Nanniegu'l, honey, hit ain' me! I's des helpin' Mannie to gallivamp. You see, Mannie's got to steal dat Miss Perfumia, an'--I's de bes' man!"

Nannette recovered. Orestes went on, revealing the plan of Miss Perfumia's midnight abduction. At its conclusion Nannette announced her intention of joining the party. Orestes was ready with an objection. "But, honey, you cain'. Hit ain' proppeh."

"Proppeh nuttin'. Hit's 'de proppehest way. You's boun' to have a chaperon. I's got to take care ob you from dat Miss Perfumia. You know how 'tis wid women."

adventurous

deeds were incubating. Miss Perfumia, whether due to her insatiable appetite for romance or a prudence that counseled the casting of an anchor to windward, had made duplicate plans for her elopement. Hers was no singletrack mind. She inspired Hosea to deeds of valor and chivalry rivaling those of Mannie. Hosea was to procure the services of Parson Padelford and journey with the august Presiding Elder, in the latter's splendid new automobile, to the trysting place on the lake, where, if all went well, man and maid would be united by the light of the stars and music of the lapping