HtAt C^oUege of Agctculturc 
 
 Sit (Cornell illlmuerBita 
 
 Mifatu. Sf. 1. 
 
 SIthrarg 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014060143 
 
The Book of 
 BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
The Book of 
 
 Business Etiquette 
 
 Garden City New York 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 
 1922 
 
COPYEIGHT, 1922, BY 
 
 DOUBLEDAT, FAOE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS EESERVED, INCLUDING THAT Or TRANSLATION 
 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 AT 
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 
 First Edition 
 
RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED 
 
 (as befits an author) 
 
 TO 
 THREE BUSINESS MEN 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 It would be a pleasure to call over by name 
 and thank individually the business men and 
 the business organizations that so graciously 
 furnished the material upon which this little 
 book is based. But the author feels that some 
 of them will not agree with all the statements 
 made and the inferences drawn, and for this 
 reason is unable to do better than give this 
 meager return for a service which was by no 
 means meager. 
 
CONTENTS 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTEB PAGE 
 
 I. The American Business Man ... 1 
 
 II. The Valxje of Courtesy .... 17 
 
 III. Putting Courtesy into Business . 40 
 
 IV. Personality 70 
 
 V. Table Manners 94 
 
 VI. Telephones and Front Doors . . 108 
 
 VII. Traveling and Selling . . . . 130 
 
 VIII. The Business of Writing .... 153 
 
 IX. Morals and Manners 183 
 
 PART II 
 
 X. "Big Business " 209 
 
 XI. In a Department Store 242 
 
 XII. A While with a Traveling Man . 250 
 
 XIII. Tables for Two or More . . , . 268 
 
 XIV. Ladies First? 279 
 
PART I 
 
THE BOOK OF 
 BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 I 
 
 THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 
 
 The business man is the national hero of 
 America, as native to the soil and as typical of 
 the country as baseball or Broadway or big ad- 
 vertising. He is an interesting figure, pictur- 
 esque and not unlovable, not so dashing perhaps 
 as a knight in armor or a soldier in uniform, but 
 he is not without the noble (and ignoble) quali- 
 ties which have characterized the tribe of man 
 since the world began. America, in common 
 with other countries, has had distinguished 
 statesmen and soldiers, authors and artists — and 
 they have not all gone to their graves unhon- 
 ored and unsung — but the hero story which be- 
 longs to her and to no one else is the story of the 
 business man. 
 
 Nearly always it has had its beginning in hum- 
 ble surroundings, with a little boy born in a log 
 
2 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 cabin in the woods, in a wretched shanty at the 
 edge of a field, in a crowded tenement section or 
 in the slums of a foreign city, who studied and 
 worked by dayhght and firelight while he made 
 his living blacking boots or selling papers until 
 he found the trail by which he could climb to 
 what we are pleased to call success. Measured 
 by the standards of Greece and Rome or the 
 Middle Ages, when practically the only form of 
 achievement worth mentioning was fighting to 
 kill, his career has not been a romantic one. It 
 has had to do not with dragons and banners and 
 trumpets, but with stockyards and oil fields, with 
 railroads, sewer systems, heat, light, and water 
 plants, telephones, cotton, corn, ten-cent stores 
 and — we might as well make a clean breast of it 
 — chewing gum. 
 
 We have no desire to crown the business man 
 with a halo, though judging from their maga- 
 zines and from the stories which they write of 
 their own lives, they are almost without spot or 
 blemish. Most of them seem not even to have 
 had faults to overcome. They were born per- 
 fect. Now the truth is that the methods of ac- 
 comphshment which the American business man 
 has used have not always been above reproach 
 and still are not. At the same time it would not 
 be hard to prove that he — and here we are speak- 
 
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 3 
 
 ing of the average — ^with all his faults and fail- 
 ings (and they are many), with aU his virtues 
 (and he is not without them) , is superior in char- 
 acter to the business men of other times in other 
 countries. This without boasting. It would be 
 a great pity if he were not. 
 
 Without trying to settle the question as to 
 whether he is good or bad (and he really can be 
 pigeon-holed no better than any one else) we 
 have to accept this : He is the biggest factor in 
 the American commonwealth to-day. It follows 
 then, naturally, that what he thinks and feels 
 will color and probably dominate the ideas and 
 the ideals of the rest of the country. Nimibers 
 of our magazines — and they are as good an in- 
 dex as we have to the f eehng of the general pub- 
 lic — are given over completely to the service or 
 the entertainment of business men (the T. B. 
 M.) and an astonishing amount of space is de- 
 voted to them in most of the others. 
 
 It may be, and as a matter of fact constantly 
 is, debated whether aU this is good for the coun- 
 try or not. We shall not go into that. It has 
 certainly been good for business, and in consider- 
 ing the men who have developed our industries 
 we have to take them, and maybe it is just as 
 weU, as they are and not as we think they ought 
 to be. 
 
4 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 There was a time when the farmer was the 
 principal citizen. And the politician ingrati- 
 ated himself with the people by declaring that 
 he too had split rails and followed the plow, 
 had harvested grain and had suffered from wet 
 spells and dry spells, low prices, dull seasons, 
 hunger and hardship. This is still a pretty sure 
 way to win out, but there are others. If he can 
 refer f eehngly to the days when he worked and 
 sweated in a coal mine, in a printing shop, a cot- 
 ton, wool, or silk mill, steel or motor plant, he 
 can hold his own with the ex-farmer's boy. We 
 have become a nation of business men. Even 
 the "dirt" farmer has become a business man — ^he 
 has learned that he not only has to produce, he 
 must find a market for his product. 
 
 In comparing the business man of the present 
 with the business man of the past we must re- 
 member that he is living in a more difficult world. 
 Life was comparatively simple when men 
 dressed in skins and ate roots and had their 
 homes in scattered caves. They felt no need for 
 a code of conduct because they felt no need for 
 one another. They depended not on humanity 
 but on nature, and perhaps human brotherhood 
 would never have come to have a meaning if 
 nature had not proved treacherous. She gave 
 them berries and bananas, sunshine and soft 
 
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 6 
 
 breezes, but she gave them trouble also in the 
 shape of wild beasts, and savages, terrible 
 droughts, winds, and floods. In order to fight 
 against these enemies, strength was necessary, 
 and when primitive men discovered that two 
 were worth twice as much as one they began to 
 join forces. This was the beginning of civihza- 
 tion and of politeness. It rose out of the oldest 
 instinct in the world — self-preservation. 
 
 When men first organized into groups the 
 luiits were small, a mere handful of people under 
 a chief, but gradually they became larger and 
 larger until the nations of to-day have grown 
 into a sort of world community composed of 
 separate countries, each one supreme in its own 
 domain, but at the same time bound to the others 
 by economic ties stronger than sentimental or 
 political ones could ever be. People are now 
 more dependent on one another than they have 
 ever been before, and the need for confidence is 
 greater. We cannot depend upon one another 
 unless we can trust one another. 
 
 The American community is in many respects 
 the most complex the world has ever seen, and 
 the hardest to manage. In other countries the 
 manners have been the natural result of the 
 national development. The strong who had 
 risen to the top in the struggle for existence 
 
6 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 formed themselves into a group. The weak who 
 stayed at the bottom fell into another, and the 
 bulk of the populace, which, then as now, came 
 somewhere in between, fell into a third or was 
 divided according to standards of its own. Cus- 
 tom solidified the groups into classes which be- 
 came so strengthened by years of usage that even 
 when formal distinctions were broken down the 
 barriers were still too solid for a man who was 
 born into a certain group to chmb very easily 
 into the one above him. Custom also dictated 
 what was expected of the several classes. Each 
 must be gracious to those below and deferential 
 to those above. The king, because he was king, 
 must be regal. The nobility must, noblesse 
 oblige, be magnificent, and as for the rest of the 
 people, it did not matter much so long as they 
 worked hard and stayed quiet. There were up- 
 heavals, of course, and now and then a slave with 
 a braver heart and a stouter spirit than his com- 
 panions incited them to rebellion. His head was 
 chopped off for his pains and he was promptly 
 forgotten. The majority of the people for thou- 
 sands of years honestly believed that this was the 
 only orderly basis upon which society could be 
 organized. 
 
 Nebulous ideas of a brotherhood, in which each 
 man was to have an equal chance with every 
 
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 7 
 
 other, burned brightly for a little while in various 
 parts of the world at different times, and flick- 
 ered out. They broke forth with the fury of an 
 explosion in France dxu"ing the Revolution and 
 in Russia during the Red Terror. They have 
 smoldered quietly in some places and had just 
 begun to break through with a steady, even 
 flame. But America struck the match and gath- 
 ered the wood to start her own fire. She is the 
 first country in the world which was founded es- 
 pecially to promote individual freedom and the 
 brotherhood of mankind. She had, to change 
 the figure slightly, a blue-print to start with and 
 she has been building ever since. 
 
 Her material came from the eastern hemi- 
 sphere. The nations there at the time when the 
 United States was settled were at different 
 stages of their development. Some were vigor- 
 ous with youth, some were in the height of their 
 glory, and some were dying because the descend- 
 ants of the men who had made them great were 
 futile and incapable. These nations were dif- 
 ferent in race and religion, in thought, language, 
 traditions, and temperament. When they were 
 not quarreling with each other, they were busy 
 with domestic squabbles. They had kept this 
 up for centuries and were at it when the settlers 
 landed at Jamestown and later when the May- 
 
8 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 flower came to Plymouth Rock. Yet, with a 
 cheerful disregard of the past and an almost sub- 
 lime hope in the future they expected to live hap- 
 pily ever after they crossed the Atlantic Ocean. 
 Needless to add, they did not. 
 
 Accident of place cannot change a man's 
 color (though it may bleach it a shade lighter or 
 tan it a shade darker) , nor his rehgion nor any of 
 the other racial and inherent qualities which are 
 the result of slow centuries of development. 
 And the same elements which made men fight in 
 the old countries set them against each other in 
 the new. Most of the antagonisms were and 
 are the result of prejudices, foolish narrow prej- 
 udices, which, nevertheless, must be beaten 
 down before we can expect genuine courtesy. 
 
 Further complications arose, and are still aris- 
 ing, from the fact that we did not all get here at 
 the same time. Those who came first have in- 
 evitably and almost unconsciously formulated 
 their own system of manners. Wherever there 
 is community life and a certain amount of leisure 
 there is a standard of cultivated behavior. And 
 America, young as she is, has already accumu- 
 lated traditions of her own. 
 
 It is beyond doubt that the men who came 
 over in the early days were, as a rule, better tim- 
 ber than the ones who come now. They came to 
 
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 9 
 
 live and die, if necessary, for a religious or a po- 
 litical principle, for adventure, or like the debt- 
 ors in Oglethorpe's colony in Georgia, to wipe 
 clean the slate of the past and begin hfe again. 
 To-day they come to make money or because 
 they think they will find life easier here than it 
 was where they were. And one of the chief rea- 
 sons for the discontent and unrest (and, inci- 
 dentally, rudeness) which prevails among them 
 is that they find it hard. We are speaking in 
 general terms. There are glorious exceptions. 
 The sturdy virtues of the pioneers did not in- 
 clude pohteness. They never do. So long as 
 there is an animal fear of existence man cannot 
 think of minor elegances. He cannot live by 
 bread alone, but he cannot live at all without it. 
 Bread must come first. And the Pilgrim Father 
 was too busy learning how to wring a hving from 
 the forbidding rocks of New England with one 
 hand while he fought off the Indians with the 
 other to give much time to tea parties and lunch- 
 eons. Nowhere in America except in the South, 
 where the leisurely life of the plantations gave 
 opportunity for it, was any great attention paid 
 to formal courtesy. But everywhere, as soon as 
 the country had been tamed and prosperity be- 
 gan to peep over the horizon, the pioneers began 
 to grow polite. They had time for it. 
 
10 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 What we must remember — and this is a reason, 
 not an excuse, for bad manners — ^is that these 
 new people coming into the country, the present- 
 day immigrants, are pioneers, and that the life 
 is not an easy one whether it is hved among a 
 wilderness of trees and beasts in a forest or a 
 wilderness of men and buildings in a city. The 
 average American brings a good many charges 
 against the foreigner — some of them justified, 
 for much of the "back-wash" of Europe and 
 Asia has drifted into our harbor — ^but he must 
 remember this: Whatever his opinion of the 
 immigrant may be the fault is ours — ^he came 
 into this country under the sanction of our laws. 
 And he is entitled to fair and courteous treat- 
 ment from every citizen who hves under the folds 
 of the American flag. 
 
 The heterogeneous mixture which makes up 
 our population is a serious obstacle (but not an 
 insuperable one) in the way of courtesy, but 
 there is another even greater. The first is 
 America's problem. The second belongs to the 
 world. 
 
 Material progress has raced so far ahead of 
 mental and spiritual progress that the world it- 
 self is a good many years in advance of the peo- 
 ple who are hving in it. Our statesmen ride to 
 Washington in automobiles and sleeping cars. 
 
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 11 
 
 but they are not vastly preferable to those who 
 went there in stagecoaches and on horseback. 
 In other words, there has been considerably more 
 improvement in the vehicles which fill our high- 
 ways than there has been in the people who ride 
 in them. 
 
 The average man — who is, when all is said and 
 done, the most important person in the state — 
 has stood still while the currents of science and 
 invention have swept past him. He has watched 
 the work of the world pass into the keeping of 
 machines, shining miracles of steel and electric- 
 ity, and has forgot himself in worshipping them. 
 Now he is beginning to realize that it is much 
 easier to make a perfect machine than it is to 
 find a perfect man to put behind it, and that man 
 himself, even at his worst (and that is pretty 
 bad) is worth more than anything else in the 
 scheme of created things. 
 
 This tremendous change in environment re- 
 sulting from the overwhelming domination of 
 machinery has brought about a corresponding 
 change in manners. For manners consist, in the 
 main, of adapting oneself to one's surroundings. 
 And the story of courtesy is the story of evolu- 
 tion. 
 
 It is interesting to run some of our conven- 
 tions back to their origin. Nearly every one of 
 
12 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 them grew out of a practical desire for lessen- 
 ing friction or making life pleasanter. The first 
 gesture of courtesy was, no doubt, some form of 
 greeting by which one man could know another 
 as a friend and not an enemy. They carried 
 weapons then as habitually as they carry watches 
 to-day and used them as frequently, so that when 
 a man approached his neighbor to talk about the 
 prospects of the sugar or berry crop he held out 
 his right hand, which was the weapon hand, as a 
 sign of peace. This eventually became the hand- 
 shake. Raising one's hat is a relic of the days 
 of chivalry when knights wore helmets which 
 they removed when they came into the house, 
 both because they were more comfortable with- 
 out them and because it showed their respect for 
 the ladies, whom it was their duty to serve. And 
 nearly every other ceremony which has lasted 
 was based on common sense. "Etiquette," as 
 Dr. Brown has said, "with all its httlenesses and 
 niceties, is foiuided upon a central idea of right 
 and wrong." 
 
 The word "courtesy" itself did not come into 
 the language until late (etiquette came even 
 later) and then it was used to describe the polite 
 practices at court. It was wholly divorced from 
 any idea of character, and the most fastidious 
 gentlemen were sometimes the most complete 
 
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 13 
 
 scoundrels. Even the authors of books of eti- 
 quette were men of great superficial elegance 
 whose moral standards were scandalously low. 
 One of them, an ItaHan, was banished from court 
 for having published an indecent poem and 
 wrote his treatise on pohte behavior while he 
 was hving in enforced retirement in his villa out- 
 side the city. It was translated for the edifica- 
 tion of the young men of England and France 
 and served as a standard for several generations. 
 Another, an Enghshman, spent the later years of 
 his life writing letters to his illegitimate son, tell- 
 ing him exactly how to conduct himself in the 
 courtly (and more or less corrupt) circles to 
 which his noble rank entitled him. The letters 
 were bound into a fat, dreary volume which still 
 sits on the dust-covered shelves of many a hbrary, 
 and the name of the author has become a syno- 
 nym for exquisite manners. Influential as he 
 was in his own time, however, neither he nor any 
 of the others of the early arbiters of elegance 
 could set himself up as a dictator of what is pohte 
 to American men, of no matter what class, and 
 get by with it. Not very far by, at any rate. 
 
 It is impossible now to separate courtesy and 
 character. Politeness is a fundamental, not a 
 superficial, thing. It is the golden rule trans- 
 lated into terms of conduct. It is not a white- 
 
14 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 wash which, if laid on thick enough, will cover 
 every defect. It is a clear varnish which shows 
 the texture and grain of the wood beneath. In 
 the ideal democracy the ideal citizen is the man 
 who is not only incapable of doing an ungallant 
 or an ungracious thing, but is equally incapable 
 of doing an unmanly one. There is no use la- 
 menting the spacious days of long ago. Wish- 
 ing for them will not bring them back. Our 
 problem is to put the principles of courtesy into 
 practice even in this hurried and hectic Twentieth 
 Century of ours. And since the business man is 
 in numbers, and perhaps in power also, the most 
 consequential person in the country, it is of most 
 importance that he should have a high standard 
 of behavior, a high standard of civility, which 
 includes not only courtesy but everything which 
 has to do with good citizenship. 
 
 We have no desire for candy-box courtesy. It 
 should be made of sterner stuff. Nor do we care 
 for the sort which made the polite Frenchman 
 say, "Excusez-moi" when he stabbed his adver- 
 sary. We can scarcely hope just yet to attain 
 to the magnificent cahn which enabled Marie 
 Antoinette to say, "I'm sorry. I did not do it 
 on purpose," when she stepped on the foot of her 
 executioner as they stood together on the scaf- 
 fold, or Lord Chesterfield, gentleman to the very 
 
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 15 
 
 end, to say, "Give Dayrolles a chair" when his 
 physician came into the room in which he lay dy- 
 ing. But we do want something that will enable 
 us to live together in the world with a minimum 
 degree of friction. 
 
 The best of us get on one another's nerves, 
 even under ordinary conditions, and it takes in- 
 finite pains and self-control to get through a try- 
 ing day in a busy office without striking sparks 
 somewhere. If there is a secret of success, and 
 some of the advertisements seem trying to per- 
 suade us that it is all secret, it is the ability to 
 work efficiently and pleasantly with other peo- 
 ple. The business man never works alone. He 
 is caught in the clutches of civihzation and there 
 is no escape. He is like a man climbing a moun- 
 tain tied to a lot of other men climbing the same 
 mountain. What each one does affects all the 
 others. 
 
 We do not want our people to devote them- 
 selves entirely to- the art of being agreeable. If 
 we could conceive of a world where everybody 
 was perfectly polite and smiling aU the time we 
 should hardly like to live in it. It is human na- 
 ture not to hke perfection, and most of us, if 
 brought face to face with that model of behavior, 
 Mr. Turveydrop, who spent his life serving as a 
 pattern of deportment, would sympathize with 
 
16 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 the delightful old lady who looked at him in the 
 full flower of his glory and cried viciously (but 
 under her breath) "I could bite you!" 
 
 When Pope Benedict XI sent a messenger to 
 Giotto for a sample of his work the great artist 
 drew a perfect circle with one sweep of his arm 
 and gave it to the boy. Before his death Giotto 
 executed many marvelous works of art, not one 
 of them perfect, not even the magnificent bell 
 tower at Florence, but all of them infinitely 
 greater than the circle. It is better, whether 
 one is working with bricks or souls, to build 
 nobly than to build perfectly. 
 
II 
 
 THE VALUE OF COURTESY 
 
 EvEKY progressive business man will agree 
 with the successful Western manufacturer who 
 says that "courtesy can pay larger dividends in 
 proportion to the eflFort expended than any other 
 of the many human characteristics which might 
 be classed as Instruments of Accomphshment." 
 But this was not always true. In the beginning 
 "big business" assumed an arrogant, high- 
 handed attitude toward the public and rode 
 rough-shod over its feelings and rights whenever 
 possible. This was especially the case among 
 the big monopohes and pubhc service corpora- 
 tions, and much of the antagonism against the 
 railroads to-day is the result of the methods they 
 used when they first began to lay tracks and 
 carry passengers. Nor was this sort of thing 
 limited to the large concerns. Small business 
 consisted many times of trickery executed ac- 
 cording to David Harum's motto of "Do unto 
 the other feller as he would like to do unto 
 you, but do him fust." The pubhc is a long- 
 
 17 
 
18 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 suffering body and the business man is a hard- 
 headed one, but after a while the public began to 
 realize that it was not necessary to put up with 
 gross rudeness and the business man began to re- 
 alize that a policy of pleasantness was much bet- 
 ter than the "treat 'em rough" idea upon which 
 he had been acting. He deserves no special credit 
 for it. It was as simple and as obvious a thing 
 as putting up an umbrella when it is raining. 
 
 People knew, long before this enhghtened era 
 of ours, that pohteness had value. In one of the 
 oldest books of good manners in the English 
 language a man with "an eye to the main chance" 
 advised his pupils to cultivate honesty, gentle- 
 ness, propriety, and deportment because they 
 paid. But it has not been until recently that 
 business men as a whole have realized that cour- 
 tesy is a practical asset to them. Business can- 
 not be separated from money and there is no use 
 to try. Men work that they may live. And the 
 reason they have begun to develop and exploit 
 courtesy is that they have discovered that it 
 makes for better work and better hving. Suc- 
 cess, they have learned, in spite of the conspicu- 
 ous wealth of several magnates who got their 
 money by questionable means, depends upon 
 good will and good will depends upon the square 
 deal courteously given. 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 19 
 
 The time is withinthememoryof livingmen.and 
 very young men at that, when the idea of putting 
 courtesy into business dealings sprang up, but it 
 has taken hold remarkably. When the Hudson 
 Tubes were opened not quite a decade and a half 
 ago Mr. McAdoo inaugurated what was at that 
 time an almost revolutionary policy. He took 
 the motto, "The Pubhc be Pleased," instead of 
 the one made famous by Mr. Vanderbilt, and 
 posted it all about, had pamphlets distributed, 
 and made a speech on courtesy in railroad man- 
 agement and elsewhere. Since that time, not 
 altogether because of the precedent which had 
 been estabhshed, but because people were begin- 
 ning to reahze that with this new element creep- 
 ing into business the old regime had to die be- 
 cause it could not compete with it, there have 
 been all sorts of courtesy campaigns among rail- 
 road and bus companies, and even among post 
 office and banking employees, to mention only 
 two of the groups .notorious for haughty and 
 arrogant behavior. The effects of a big tele- 
 phone company have been so strenuous and so 
 well planned and executed that they are reserved 
 for discussion in another chapter. 
 
 Mr. McAdoo teUs a number of charming 
 stories which grew out of the Hudson Tubes ex- 
 periment. One day during a political convention 
 
20 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 when he was standing in the lobby of a hotel in 
 a certain city a jeweler came over to him after 
 a slight moment of hesitation, gave him one of 
 his cards and said, "Mr. McAdoo, I owe you a 
 great debt of gratitude. For that," he added, 
 pointing to "The Public be Pleased" engraved 
 in small letters on the card just above his name. 
 "I was in New York the day the tunnel was 
 opened," he continued, "and I heard your speech, 
 and said to myself that it might be a pretty good 
 idea to try that in the jewelry trade. And would 
 you beheve it, my profits during the first year 
 were more than fifty per cent, bigger than they 
 were the year before?" And we venture to add 
 that the jeweler was more than twice as happy 
 and that it was not altogether because there was 
 more money in his coffers. 
 
 Mr. McAdoo is a man with whom courtesy is 
 not merely a policy: it is a habit as well. He 
 places it next to integrity of character as a quali- 
 fication for a business man, and he carries it into 
 every part of his personal activity, as the states- 
 men and elevator boys, waiters and financiers, 
 politicians and stenographers with whom he has 
 come into contact can testify. "I never have a 
 secretary," he says, "who is not courteous, no 
 matter what his other qualifications may be." 
 During the past few years Mr. McAdoo has been 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 21 
 
 placed in a position to be sought after by all 
 kinds of people, and in nearly every instance he 
 has given an interview to whoever ha's asked for 
 it. "I have always felt," we quote him again, 
 "that a pubhe servant should be as accessible to 
 the public as possible." Courtesy with him, as 
 with any one else who makes it a habit, has a 
 cumulative effect. The effect cannot always be 
 traced as in the case of the jeweler or in the story 
 given below in which money plays a very negh- 
 gible part, but it is always there. 
 
 On one occasion — this was when he was presi- 
 dent of the Hudson Railroad — Mr. McAdoo 
 was on his way up to the Adirondacks when the 
 train broke down. It was ill provided for such 
 a catastrophe, there was no dining car, only a 
 small buffet, and the wait was a long and trying 
 one. When Mr. McAdoo after several hours 
 went back to the buffet to see if he could get a 
 cup of coffee and some rolls he found the con- 
 ductor almost swamped by irate passengers who 
 blamed him, in the way that passengers will, for 
 something that was no more his fault than theirs. 
 The conductor glanced up when Mr. McAdoo 
 came in, expecting him to break into an explo- 
 sion of indignation, but Mr. McAdoo said, 
 "Well, you have troubles enough already with- 
 out my adding to them." 
 
22 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 The conductor stepped out of the group. 
 "What did you want, sir?" he asked. 
 
 "Why, nothing, now," Mr. McAdoo re- 
 sponded. "I did want a cup of coffee, but never 
 mind about it." 
 
 "Come into the smoker here," the conductor 
 said. "Wait a minute." 
 
 The conductor disappeared and came back in 
 a few minutes with coffee, bread, and butter. 
 Mr. McAdoo thanked him warmly, gave him his 
 card and told him that if he ever thought he 
 could do anything for him to let him know. The 
 conductor looked at the card. 
 
 "Are you the president of the Hudson Rail- 
 road?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, maybe there's something you can do 
 for me now. There are two men out here who 
 say they are going to report me for what hap- 
 pened this morning. You know how things have 
 been, and if they do, I wish you would write to 
 headquarters and explain. I'm in hne for pro? 
 motion and you know what a black mark means 
 in a case like that." 
 
 Mr. McAdoo assured him that he would write 
 if it became necessary. The men were bluffing, 
 however, and the complaint was never sent in» 
 Apparently the incident was closed. 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 23 
 
 Several years later Mr. McAdoo's son was 
 coming down from the Adirondacks when he lost 
 his Pulhnan ticket. He did not discover the 
 fact until he got to the station, and then he had 
 no money and no time to get any by wire before 
 the train left. He went to the conductor, ex- 
 plained his dilemma, and told him that if he 
 would allow him to ride down to the city his 
 father, who was to meet him at the Grand Cen- 
 tral station, would pay him for the ticket. The 
 conductor liked the youngster — perhaps because 
 there was something about him that re- 
 minded him of his father, for as chance would 
 have it, the conductor was the same one who 
 had brought Mr. McAdoo the coffee and 
 bread in the smoking car so many months 
 before. 
 
 "Who is your father?" he asked. 
 
 "Mr. McAdoo." 
 
 "President of the Hudson Railroad?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Boy, you can have the train!" 
 
 So far as monetary value of courtesy is con- 
 cerned we might recount hundreds of instances 
 where a single act of politeness brought in thou- 
 sands of doUars. Only the other morning the 
 papers carried the story of a man who thirty 
 years ago went into a tailor's shop with a ragged 
 
24 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 tear in his trousers and begged the tailor to mend 
 it and to trust him for the payment which 
 amounted to fifty cents. The tailor agreed 
 cheerfully enough and the man went his way, 
 entered business and made a fortune. He died 
 recently and left the tailor fifty thousand dol- 
 lars. Not long before that there was a story of 
 an old woman who came to New York to visit 
 her nephew — it was to be a surprise — and lost 
 her bearings so completely when she got into the 
 station that she was about ready to turn around 
 and go back home when a very polite young man 
 noticed her bewilderment. He offered his ser- 
 vices, called a taxi and deposited her in front of 
 her nephew's door in half an hour. She took his 
 name and address and a few days later he re- 
 ceived a check large enough to enable him to 
 enter the Columbia Law School. A banker is 
 fond of telling the story of an old fellow who 
 came into his bank one day in a suit of black so 
 old that it had taken on a sickly greenish tinge. 
 He feU into the hands of a polite clerk who an- 
 swered all his questions — and there were a great 
 many of them — clearly, patiently, and courte- 
 ously. The old man went away but came back 
 in a day or so with $300,000 which he placed on 
 deposit. "I did have some doubts," he said, 
 "but this young man settled them all." Word 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 25 
 
 of it went to people in authority and the clerk 
 was promoted. 
 
 Now it is pleasant to know that these good 
 people were rewarded as they deserved to be. 
 We would be very happy if we could promise a 
 like reward to every one who is similarly kind, 
 but it is no use. The little words of love and the 
 little deeds of kindness go often without recom- 
 pense so far as we can see, except that they hap- 
 pify the world, but that in itself is no small 
 return. 
 
 Courtesy pays in dollars and cents but its 
 value goes far beyond that. It is the chief ele- 
 ment in building good will — we are speaking 
 now of courtesy as an outgrowth of character — 
 and good will is to a firm what honor is to a man. 
 He can lose everything else but so long as he 
 keeps his honor he has something to build with. 
 In the same way a business can lose all its ma- 
 terial assets and can replace them with insurance 
 money or something else, but if it loses its good 
 will it will find in ninety cases out of a hundred 
 that it is gone forever and that the business it- 
 self has become so weakened that there is nothing 
 left but to reorganize it completely and blot out 
 the old institution altogether. 
 
 One must not make the mistake of believing 
 that good will can be built on courtesy alone. 
 
26 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 Courtesy must be backed up by something more 
 solid. An excellent comparison to show the re- 
 lation that good manners bear to uprightness 
 and integrity of character was drawn a number 
 of years ago by a famous Italian prelate. We 
 shall paraphrase the quaint EngUsh of the orig- 
 inal translator. "Just as men do commonly 
 fear beasts that are cruel and wild," he says, 
 "and have no manner of fear of httle ones such 
 as gnats and flies, and yet because of the con- 
 tinual nuisance which they find them, complain 
 more of these than they do of the other : so most 
 men hate the unmannerly and untaught as much 
 as they do the wicked, and more. There is no 
 doubt that he who wishes to live, not in solitary 
 and desert places, like a hermit, but in fellowship 
 with men, and in populous cities, will find it a 
 very necessary thing, to have skill to put himself 
 forth comely and seemly in his fashions, ges- 
 tures, and manners: the lack of which do make 
 other virtues lame." 
 
 Granting dependability of character, courtesy 
 is the next finest business builder an organization 
 can have. One of the largest trust companies 
 in the world was built up on this hypothesis. A 
 good many years ago the man who is responsible 
 for its growth was cashier in a "busted" bank in 
 a small city. The situation was a desperate one. 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 27 
 
 for the bank could not do anything more for its 
 customers than it was already doing. It could 
 not give them more interest on their money and 
 most of its other functions were mechanical. The 
 young cashier began to wonder why people went 
 to one bank in preference to another and in his 
 own mind drew a comparison between the bank- 
 ing and the clothing business. He always went 
 to the haberdasher who treated him best. Other 
 men he knew did the same thing. Would not 
 the same principle work in a bank? Would not 
 people come to the place which gave them the 
 best service? He decided to try it. Not only 
 would they give efficient service, they would give 
 it pleasantly. It was their last card but it was 
 a trump. It won. The bank began to prosper. 
 People who were annoyed by rude, brusque, or 
 indifferent treatment in other banks came to this 
 one. The cashier was raised to a position of im- 
 portance and in an incredibly short time was 
 made president of a trust company in New York. 
 He carried with him exactly the same principle 
 that had worked so well in the little bank 
 and the result in the big one was exactly the 
 same. 
 
 In a leaflet which is in circulation among the 
 employees at this institution there are these para- 
 graphs : 
 
28 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 We ask you to remember: 
 
 That our customers can get along without us. 
 
 (There are in Greater New York nearly one hundred 
 banks and trust companies, every one of them actively 
 seeking business.) 
 
 We cannot get along without our customers. 
 
 A connection which, perhaps, it has taken us several 
 months to establish, can be terminated by one careless or 
 discourteous act. 
 
 Our customers are asked to maintain balances of cer- 
 tain proportions. If they wish to borrow money, they 
 must deposit collateral. They must repay loans when they 
 mature; or arrange for their extension. 
 
 If a bank errs, it must err on the side of safety, for 
 the money it loans is not its own money but the money of 
 its depositors. We (and every other bank and trust com- 
 pany) operate almost entirely on money which our cus- 
 tomers have deposited with us. The least we can do, then, 
 is to serve them courteously. They really are our em- 
 ployers. 
 
 Ours is a semi-public institution. 
 
 Every day, men try to interest us in matters with 
 which we have no concern. It is our duty to tell these 
 men, very courteously, why their proposals do not appeal 
 to us. But they are entitled to a hearing. It may be 
 that they are not in a position to benefit us, and never will 
 be. But almost every man can harm us, if he tries to do 
 so. And a pleasantly expressed declination invariably 
 makes a better impression than a favor grudgingly granted. 
 We ask you, then, to remember that our growth — and your 
 opportunities — depend not only upon the friends we make, 
 but the enemies we do not mahe. 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 29 
 
 Remember names and faces. Do something, say some- 
 thing that will bring home to those who do business with 
 us the fact that the Blank Trust Company is a very human 
 institution — that it wants the good will of every man and 
 woman in the country. 
 
 That is the kind of courtesy which has builded 
 this particular organization. It is a pleasure to 
 visit it to-day because of the spirit of coopera- 
 tion which animates it. They have done away 
 with the elaborate spy systems in use in so many 
 banks, although they keep the management well 
 enough in hand to be able to fasten the blame for 
 mistakes upon the right person. The employees 
 work with one another and with the president, 
 whom they adore. It is, as a matter of fact, 
 largely the influence of the personality of the 
 president filtering down through the ranks which 
 has made possible the phenomenal success which 
 the institution has enjoyed during the past few 
 years, another proof of the fact that every insti- 
 tution — and Emerson was speaking of great in- 
 stitutions when he said it — "is the lengthened 
 shadow of one man." 
 
 Banks have almost a pecuhar problem. Money 
 is a mighty power, and to the average person 
 there is something very awesome about the place 
 where it is kept. Mr. Stephen Leacock is not 
 the only man who ever went into a bank with a 
 
30 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 funny little guilty feeling even when he had 
 money in it. When one is in this frame of mind 
 it takes very little on the part of the clerk to 
 make him believe that he has been treated rudely. 
 Bank clerks are notoriously haughty, but the 
 fault is often as much in the person on the out- 
 side as in the one on the inside of the bars, espe- 
 cially when he has come in to draw out money 
 which he knows he should not, such as his savings 
 bank accovmt, for instance. The other day a 
 young man went into a savings bank to draw 
 out all of his money for a purpose which he knew 
 was extravagant although he had persuaded 
 himself that it was not. Throughout the whole 
 time he was in the bank he was treated with per- 
 fect courtesy, but in spite of it he came out growl- 
 ing about "the dirty look the paying teller gave 
 him!" 
 
 It is not only in the first contact that civility 
 is important. Eternal vigilance is the price of 
 success as well as of liberty. Another incident 
 from the banking business illustrates this. Sev- 
 eral years ago a bank which had been steadily 
 losing customers called in a publicity expert to 
 build up trade for them. The man organized a 
 splendid campaign and things started off with a 
 flourish. People began to come in most grati- 
 fying numbers. But they did not stay. An 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 31 
 
 investigation conducted by the publicity man 
 disclosed the fact that they had been driven away 
 by negligent and discourteous service. He went 
 to the president of the bank and told him that he 
 was wasting money building up advertising so 
 long as his bank maintained its present attitude 
 toward the public. The president was a man 
 of practical sense. There was a general clearing 
 up, those who were past reform were discharged 
 and those who stayed were given careful training 
 in what good breeding meant and there was no 
 more trouble. Advertising will bring in a cus- 
 tomer but it takes courtesy to keep him. 
 
 Business, like nearly everything else, is easier 
 to tear down than to build up, and one of the 
 most devastating instruments of destruction is 
 discourtesy. A contact which has taken years 
 to build can be broken o£P by one snippy letter, 
 one pert answer, or one discourteous response 
 over the telephone. Even collection letters, no 
 matter how long overdue the accounts are, bring 
 in more returns when they are written with tact 
 and diplomacy than when these two qualities are 
 omitted. If you insult a man who owes you 
 money he feels that the only way he can get 
 even is not to pay you, and in most cases, he can 
 justify himself for not doing it. 
 
 Within the organization itself a courteous at- 
 
32 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 titude on the part of the men in positions of 
 authority toward those beneath them is of im- 
 mense importance. Sap rises from the bottom, 
 and a business has arrived at the point of stagna- 
 tion when the men at the top refuse to listen to or 
 help those aroimd them. It is, as a rule, how- 
 ever, not the veteran in commercial affairs but 
 the fledgling who causes most trouble by his bad 
 manners. Young men, especially young men 
 who have been fortunate in securing material ad- 
 vantages, too many times look upon the world 
 as an accident placed here for their personal en- 
 joyment. It never takes long in business to re- 
 lieve their minds of this delusion, but they some- 
 times accomplish a tremendous amount of dam- 
 age before it happens. For a pert, know-it-all 
 manner coupled with the inefficiency which is al- 
 most inseparable from a total lack of experience 
 is not likely to make personal contacts pleasant. 
 Every young man worth his salt believes that he 
 can reform the world, but every old man who has 
 hved in it knows that it cannot be done. Some- 
 where half way between they meet and say, 
 "We'll keep working at it just the same," and 
 then business begins to pick up. But reaching 
 the meeting ground takes tolerance and patience 
 and infinite politeness from both sides. 
 
 "It is the grossest sort of incivihty," the quo- 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 33 
 
 tation is not exact, for we do not remember the 
 source, "to be contemptuous of any kind of 
 knowledge," And herein lies the difficulty be- 
 tween the hard-headed business man of twenty 
 years' experience and the youngster upon whose 
 diploma the ink has not yet dried. "Ignor- 
 ance," declares a man who has spent his hfe in 
 trying to draw capital and labor together and 
 has succeeded in hundreds of factories, "is the 
 cause of aU trouble." And a lack of under- 
 standing, which is a form of ignorance, is the 
 cause of nearly all discourtesy. 
 
 So long as there is discourtesy in the world 
 there must be protection against it, and the best, 
 cheapest, and easiest means of protection is cour- 
 tesy itseK. Boats which are in constant danger 
 of being run into, such as the tug and ferry boats 
 in a busy harbor, are fitted out with buffers or 
 fenders which are as much a part of their equip- 
 ment as the smokestack, and in many cases, as 
 necessary. Ocean hners carry fenders to be 
 thrown over the side when there is need for them, 
 but this naturally is not as often as in more 
 crowded waters. A single boat on a deserted 
 sea with nothing but sea-gulls and flying fish in 
 sight cannot damage any one besides herself. But 
 the moment she enters a harbor she has to take 
 into account every other vessel in it from the 
 
34 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 Aquitania to the flat-bottomed row-boat with 
 only one man in it. It is a remarkable fact that 
 most of the boats that are injured or sunk by 
 collision are damaged by vessels much smaller 
 than themselves. Most of these accidents (this 
 statement is given on the authority of an able 
 seaman) could have been prevented by the use of 
 a fender thrown over the side at the proper mo- 
 ment. Politeness is like this. It is the finest 
 shock-absorber in the world, as essential from an 
 economic point of view as it is pleasant from a 
 social one. In business there is no royal isola- 
 tion. We are all ferry boats. We need our 
 shock absorbers every minute of the day. 
 
 No boat has a right to run into another, but 
 they do it just the same, and a shock absorber is 
 worth all the curses the captain and the crew can 
 pronounce, however righteous their indignation 
 toward the offending vessel. Sometimes po- 
 liteness is better than justice. 
 
 Most of the causes of irritation during the 
 course of a business day are too petty to bother 
 about. Many of them could be ignored and a 
 good many more could be laughed at. A sense 
 of humor and a sense of proportion would do 
 away with ninety per cent, of aU the wranghng 
 in the world. Some one has said, and not with- 
 out truth, that a highly developed sense of humor 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 35 
 
 would have prevented the World War. Too 
 many people use sledge-hammers when tack 
 hammers would do just as well. They belong in 
 the same company with Wilham Jay whose im- 
 mortal epitaph bears these words : 
 
 Here lies the body of William Jay 
 Who died maintaining his right of way. 
 He was right, dead right, as he sped along. 
 But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong. 
 
 Courtesy is restful. A nervous frenzy of 
 energy throughout the day leaves one at sunset 
 as exhausted as a punctured balloon. The fussy 
 little fellow who fancies himself rushed to death, 
 who has no time to talk with anybody, who can- 
 not be polite to his stenographer and his messen- 
 ger boys because he is in such a terrible hurry, is 
 dissipating his energy into something that does 
 not matter and using up the vitality which should 
 go into his work. He is very like the engine 
 which President Lincoln was so fond of telling 
 about which used so much steam in blowing its 
 whistle that every time it did it it had to stop. 
 
 The Orientals manage things better than we 
 do. "We tried hurrying two thousand years 
 ago," a banker in Constantinople said to a tired 
 American business man, "and found that it did 
 not pay. So we gave it up." There is always 
 
36 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 time to be polite, and though it sounds like a 
 contradiction, there will be more time to spare if 
 one devotes a part of his day to courtesy. 
 
 But there is danger in too much courtesy. 
 Every virtue becomes a vice if it is carried too 
 far, and frank rudeness is better than servility 
 or hypocrisy. Commercial greed, there is no 
 other name for it, leads a firm to adopt some such 
 idiotic motto as "the customer is always right." 
 No organization could ever live up to such a 
 policy, and the principle back of it is undemo- 
 cratic, un-American, unsound and untrue. The 
 customer is not always right and the employer in 
 a big (or little) concern who places girls (de- 
 partment stores are the chief sinners in this) on 
 the front line of approach with any such instruc- 
 tions is a menace to self-respecting business. 
 America does not want a serving class with a 
 "king-can-do-no-wrong" attitude toward the 
 public. Business is service, not serviHty, and 
 courtesy works both ways. There is no more 
 sense in business proclaiming that the customer 
 is always right than there would be in a customer 
 declaring that business is always right, and no 
 more truth. 
 
 No good business man will argue with a cus- 
 tomer, or anybody else, not only because it is bad 
 poUcy to do so, but because his self-respect will 
 
THE VALUE OF COUETESY 37 
 
 not allow it. He will give and require from his 
 employees courteous treatment toward his cus- 
 tomers, and when doubt arises he will give them 
 (the customers) the benefit of it. And he will 
 always remember that he is dealing with an in- 
 telligent human being. The customer has a 
 right to expect a firm to supply him with reliable 
 commodities and to do it pleasantly, but he has 
 no right to expect it to prostrate itself at his feet 
 in order to retain his trade, however large that 
 trade may be. 
 
 Too little has been said about courtesy on the 
 part of the customer and the public — that great 
 headless mass of unrelated particles. Business 
 is service, we say, and the master is the pubhc, 
 the hardest one in the world to serve. Each one 
 of us speaks with more or less pitying contempt 
 of the public, forgetting that we ourselves are 
 the pubhc and that the sum total of the good 
 breeding, inteUigence, and character of the pub- 
 hc can be no greater than that of the individuals 
 who make it up. 
 
 "Sid," of the American Magazine, says that 
 he once asked the manager of a circus which 
 group of his employees he had most trouble 
 keeping. Quite unexpectedly the man replied, 
 "The attendants. They get 'sucker-sore' and 
 after that they are no good." This is how it 
 
38 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 happens. The wild man from Borneo is placed 
 in a cage with a placard attached hearing in big 
 letters the legend "The Wild Man from Bor- 
 neo." An old farmer comes to the circus, looks 
 at the wild man from Borneo in his cage, reads 
 the placard, looks at the attendant, "Is this the 
 wild man from Borneo?" he asks. No human 
 being can stand an unlimited amount of this sort 
 of thing, and the attendant, after he has ex- 
 plained some hundred thousand or so times that 
 this really is the wild man from Borneo begins to 
 lose his zest for it and to answer snappishly and 
 sarcastically. An infinite supply of courtesy 
 would, of course, be a priceless asset to him, but 
 does not this work both ways? What right have 
 people to bother other people with perfectly fool- 
 ish and imbecile questions? Is there any one 
 who cannot sympathize with a "sucker-sore" 
 attendant? And with the people who are sta- 
 tioned about for the purpose of answering ques- 
 tions almost anywhere? There are not many of 
 us who at one time and another have not had the 
 feehng that we were on the wrong train even 
 after we had asked the man who sold us the 
 ticket, the man who punched it at the gate, the 
 guard who was standing near the entrance, and 
 the guard who was standing near the train, the 
 porter, the conductor, and the news-butcher if it 
 
THE VALUE OF COURTESY 39 
 
 was the right one and have had an affirmative an- 
 swer from every one of them. How many times 
 can a man be expected to answer such a ques- 
 tion with a smile? For those who are exposed to 
 "suckers" the best advice is to be as gentle with 
 them as possible, to grit your teeth and hold your 
 temper even when the ninety-thousandth man 
 comes through to ask if this is the right train. 
 For the "suckers" themselves there are only two 
 words of advice. They include all the rest : Stop 
 it. 
 
 It is impossible to tell what the value of cour- 
 tesy is. Perhaps some day the people who have 
 learned to measure our minds will be able to tell 
 us just what a smile is worth. Maybe they can 
 tell us also what Spring is worth, and what hap- 
 piness is worth. Meanwhile we do not know. 
 We only know that they are infinitely precious. 
 
Ill 
 
 PUTTING COURTESY INTO 
 BUSINESS 
 
 We talk a great deal about gentlemen and 
 about democracy and a good many other words 
 which describe noble conceptions without a very 
 clear idea of what they mean. The biggest mis- 
 take we make is in thinking of them as something 
 stationary like a monument carved in granite or 
 a stone set upon a hiU, when the truth is that they 
 are hving ideas subject to the change and growth 
 of all hving things. No man has ever yet be- 
 come a perfect gentleman because as his mind 
 has developed his conception of what a gentle- 
 man is has enlarged, just as no country has ever 
 become a perfect democracy because each new 
 idea of freedom has led to broader ideas of free- 
 dom. It is very much like walking through a 
 tunnel. At first there is only darkness, and then 
 a tiny pin point of light ahead which grows wider 
 and wider as one advances toward it until, fi- 
 nally, he stands out in the open with the world be- 
 
 40 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 41 
 
 fore him. There is no end to hfe, and none to 
 human development, at least none that can be 
 conceived of by the finite mind of man. 
 
 There are hundreds of definitions of a gentle- 
 man, none of them altogether satisfactory. Car- 
 dinal Newman says it is almost enough to say 
 that he is one who never gives pain. "They be 
 the men," runs an old chronicle, "whom their 
 race and bloud, or at the least, their virtues, do 
 make noble and knowne." Barrow declares that 
 they are the men hfted above the vulgar crowd 
 by two qualities: courage and courtesy. The 
 Century Dictionary, which is as good an au- 
 thority as any, says, "A gentleman is a man of 
 good breeding, courtesy, and kindness; hence, a 
 man distinguished for fine sense of honor, strict 
 regard for his obligations, and consideration for 
 the rights and feelings of others." And this is 
 a good enough working standard for anybody. 
 The Dictionary is careful to make — and this is 
 important — a gentleman not one who conforms 
 to an outward and conventional standard, but 
 one who follows an inward and personal ideal. 
 
 Of late days there has been a great deal of 
 attention paid to making gentlemen of business 
 men and putting courtesy into all the ramifica- 
 tions of business. Without doubt the chief rea- 
 son for it is the fact that business men themselves 
 
42 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 have discovered that it pays. One restaurant 
 frankly adopted the motto, "Courtesy Pays," 
 and had it all fixed up with gilt letters and 
 framed and hung it near the front door, and a 
 number of other places have exactly the same 
 pohcy for exactly the same reason though they 
 do not all proclaim the fact so boldly. It is not 
 the loftiest motive in the world but it is an intel- 
 ligent one, and it is better for a man to be poUte 
 because he hopes to win success that way than 
 for him not to be pohte at all. 
 
 Human conduct, even at its best, is not always 
 inspired by the highest possible motives. Not 
 even the rehgions which men have followed have 
 been able to accomplish this. Most of them have 
 held out the hope of heavenly reward in payment 
 for goodness here on earth and countless mil- 
 lions of men (and women, too, for that matter) 
 have kept in the straight and narrow path be- 
 cause they were afraid to step out of it. It may 
 be that they were, intrinsically, no better men 
 than the ones who trod the primrose path to 
 the everlasting bonfire, but they were much 
 easier to five with. And the man who is courte- 
 ous, who is a gentleman, whatever his motives, 
 is a more agreeable citizen than the one who is 
 not. 
 
 Now how — this is our problem — does one go 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 43 
 
 about making a gentleman? Environment plays, 
 comparatively speaking, a very small part. "The 
 appellation of gentleman," this is from a gentle- 
 man of the Seventeenth Century, "is not to be 
 affixed to a man's circumstances, but to his be- 
 havior in them." It is extremely doubtful if 
 courtesy can be taught by rule. It is more a 
 matter of atmosphere, and an instinct "for the 
 better side of things and the cleaner surfaces of 
 life." And yet, heredity, training, and environ- 
 ment all enter into the process. 
 
 It is a pohte and pleasant fiction that cour- 
 tesy is innate and not acquired, and we hear a 
 great deal about the "born lady" and the "born 
 gentleman." They are both myths. Babies 
 are not polite, and the "king upon 'is throne with 
 'is crown upon 'is 'ead" has had, if he is a gentle- 
 man, lifelong training in the art of being one. 
 There is still in existence a very interesting out- 
 line which was given by Queen Victoria and 
 Prince Albert to their oldest son, the Prince of 
 Wales, on his seventeenth birthday. It con- 
 tained a careful siunmary of what was expected 
 of him as a Christian gentleman and included 
 such items as dress, appearance, deportment, re- 
 lations with other people, and abihty to acquit 
 himself well in whatever company he happened 
 to be thrown. 
 
44 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 The King and Queen, although they were prob- 
 ably unaware of the fact, were acting upon the 
 advice of an authority on good manners at court 
 a number of years before their time. "In- 
 deed," says the old manuscript, "from seven to 
 seventeen young gentlemen commonly are care- 
 fully enough brought up : but from seventeen to 
 seven-and-twenty (the most dangerous time of 
 all a man's life, and the most slippery to stay 
 well in) they have commonly the rein of all h- 
 cense in their own hand, and specially such as do 
 live in the court," If we bring the sentence up 
 to date, and it is as true now as it was then, we 
 may substitute "business" for "court." Busi- 
 ness men as well as courtiers find the ages be- 
 tween seventeen and seven-and-twenty "the most 
 slippery to stay well in" for it is during these 
 years that they are establishing themselves in the 
 commercial world. As a general thing, but it is 
 wise to remember that there is no rule to which 
 there are not exceptions, by the time a man is 
 twenty-seven his habits are formed and it is too 
 late to acquire new ones. 
 
 Most children undergo a painstaking and 
 more or less painful course of instruction in good 
 manners and know by the time they are men and 
 women what should be done whether they do it 
 jor not. Our social code is not a complicated 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 45 
 
 one, and there is no excuse except for the young- 
 sters who have just growed up hke Topsy or 
 have been brought up by jerks like Pip. It is, 
 without doubt, easier to be poHte among people 
 who are naturally courteous than among those 
 who snap and snarl at one another, but it is a 
 mistake to place too much emphasis on this part 
 of it. Too many men — business men, at that — 
 have come up out of the mire for us to be able to 
 offer elaborate apologies for those who have 
 stayed in it. The background is of minor im- 
 portance. A cockroach is a cockroach anywhere 
 you put him. 
 
 It is easy to envy the men who have had su- 
 perior advantages, and many a man feels that if 
 he had another's chance he, too, might have be- 
 come a great gentleman. It is an idle specula- 
 tion. His own opportunities are the only ones 
 any man can attend to, and if he is sensible he 
 will take quick advantage of those that come, not 
 in dreams, but in reality, and will remember what 
 a very sagacious English statesman said about 
 matters of even graver import : "It makes no dif- 
 ference where you are going. You've got to 
 start from where you are." 
 
 The lack of early training is a handicap but 
 not a formidable one, especially to a business 
 man. As the Spaniards say, there is little curi- 
 
46 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 osity about the pedigree of a good man. And 
 no man needs to be ashamed of his origin. The 
 president of a firm would naturally be interested 
 in the ancestry of a young man who came to ask 
 him for the hand of his daughter, but if the man 
 has come to sell a bill of goods he does not care a 
 snap. In discussions of the social evil it is often 
 said that every child has a right to be well born, 
 but Robert Louis Stevenson saw more deeply 
 and spoke more truly when he said, "We are all 
 nobly born; fortunate those who know it; blessed 
 those who remember." 
 
 The finest Gentleman the world has ever seen 
 was born some two thousand years ago to the 
 wife of a carpenter in Bethlehem and spent most 
 of His time among fishermen, tax-coUectors, 
 cripples, lepers, and outcasts of various sorts; 
 and yet in the entire record of His short and 
 troubled life there is not one mention of an un- 
 graceful or an ungainly action. He was care- 
 ful to observe even the trivialities of social life. 
 Mary and Martha were quarreling before din- 
 ner. He quieted them with a few gracious 
 words. The people at the marriage feast at 
 Cana were worried because they had only water 
 to drink. He touched it and gave them wine. 
 The multitude who came to hear Him were tired, 
 footsore, and hungry. He asked them to be 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 47 
 
 seated and gave them food. He dined with the 
 Pharisees, He talked with the women of Sama- 
 ria, He comforted Mary Magdalen, and He 
 washed the feet of His disciples. He was beset 
 and harassed by a thousand rude and unman- 
 nerly questions, but not once did He return an 
 impatient answer. Surely these things are god- 
 like and divine whatever one may believe about 
 the relation of Jesus Christ to God, the Father. 
 It has been said that every man should choose 
 a gentleman for his father. He should also 
 choose a gentleman for his employer. Unfor- 
 timately he often has no more option in the one 
 than he has in the other. Very few of us get ex- 
 actly what we want. But however this may be, 
 a gentleman at the head of a concern is a price- 
 less asset. The atmosphere of most business 
 houses is determined by the man at the top. His 
 character filters down through the ranks. If he 
 is a rough-and-tumble sort of person the office is 
 likely to be that kind of place ; if he is quiet and 
 mannerly the chances are that the office will be 
 quiet and mannerly. If he is a gentleman every- 
 body in the place will know it and will feel the 
 effects of it. "I am always glad John was with 
 Mr. Blank his first year in business," said a 
 mother speaking of her son. Mr. Blank was a 
 man who had a hfe-long reputation for being as 
 
48 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 straight as a shingle and as clean as a hound's 
 tooth, every inch a gentleman. 
 
 "How do you account for the fact that you 
 have come to place so much emphasis on cour- 
 tesy?" a business man was asked one day as he 
 sat in his upholstered oflftce with great windows 
 opening out on the New York harbor. He 
 thought for a moment, and his mind went back 
 to the httle Georgia village where he was born 
 and brought up. "My father was a gentleman," 
 he answered. "I remember when I was a boy 
 he used to be careful about such trifles as this. 
 'Now, Jim,' he would say, 'when you stop on the 
 sidewalk don't stop in the middle of it. Stand 
 aside so you won't be in anybody's way.' And 
 even now," the man smiled, "I never stop on 
 the sidewalk without stepping to one side so as to 
 be out of the way." 
 
 The life of a young person is plastic, easy to 
 take impressions, strong to retain them. And 
 the "old man" or the "governor," whether he is 
 father, friend, or employer, or aU three, has in- 
 finitely more influence than either he or the 
 young man reahzes. At the same time it is per- 
 fectly true that young people do not beheve 
 what older ones tell them about life. They have 
 to try it out for themselves. One generation 
 does not begin where the other left off. Each 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 49 
 
 one of us begins at the beginning, and the 
 world, with all that it holds, is as wonderful 
 (though sUghtly different, to be sure) and as 
 new to the child who is born into it to-day as it 
 was to Adam on the first morning after it was 
 created. 
 
 It is almost tragic that so many young men 
 take the tenor of their Uves from that of their em- 
 ployers, especially if the latter have been suc- 
 cessful. This places a terrific responsibility upon 
 the employer which does not, however, shift it 
 from the employee. His part in business or in 
 life — ^and this is true of all of us — is what he 
 makes it, great or small. And the most impor- 
 tant thing is for him to have a personal ideal of 
 what he thinks best and hold to it. He cannot 
 get it from the outside. 
 
 "Courtesy is not one of the company's rules," 
 wrote the manager of a large organization which 
 has been very successful in handling men and 
 making money. "It is a tradition, an instinct. 
 It is an attribute of the general tone, of the dom- 
 inating influence of the management in all its 
 relations. It is a part of the general tone, the 
 honor, the integrity of the company. For three 
 generations it has been looked upon as an in- 
 heritance to be preserved and kept irreproach- 
 able. Employees are drawn into this influence 
 
60 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 by the very simple process of their own develop- 
 ment. Those who find themselves in harmony 
 with the character of the company or who delib- 
 erately put themselves in tune progress. Those 
 who do not, cannot, for long, do congenial or ac- 
 ceptable service." This is the statement from 
 the manager of a firm that is widely known for 
 courteous dealing. Their standard is now estab- 
 lished. It is a part of the atmosphere, and 
 their chief problem is to get men who will fit 
 into it. 
 
 An employer does not judge a man on an ab- 
 stract basis. He takes him because he thinks he 
 will be useful to his business. This is why most 
 places like to get men when they are young. 
 They are easier to train. 
 
 Every one likes good material to work with, 
 and employers are no exception. They take the 
 best they can find, and the higher the standard 
 of the firm the greater the care expended in 
 choosing the employees. "Whenever we find a 
 good man," said the manager of a big trust com- 
 pany, "we take him on. We may not have a 
 place for him at the time but we keep him until 
 we find one." 
 
 Except during times of stress such as that 
 brought about by the war when the soldiers were 
 at the front, no business house hires people in- 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 61 
 
 discriminately. They know, as the Chinese have 
 it, that rotten wood cannot be carved. "It is 
 our opinion," we quote from another manager, 
 "that courtesy cannot be pounded into a person 
 who lacks proper social basis. In other words, 
 there are some people who would be boorish un- 
 der any circumstances. Our first and chief 
 step toward courtesy is to exercise care in 
 selecting our employees. We weigh carefully 
 each applicant for a sales position and try 
 to visualize his probable deportment as our 
 representative, and unless he gives promise of 
 being a fit representative we do not employ 
 him." 
 
 But it is not enough to take a man into a busi- 
 ness organization. Every newcomer must be 
 broken in. Sometimes this is done by means of 
 formal training, sometimes it consists merely of 
 giving him an idea of what is expected of him 
 and letting him work out his own salvation. 
 Granting that he is already familiar with the 
 work in a general way, and that he is intelhgent 
 and resourceful, he ought to be able to adapt 
 himself without a great deal of instruction from 
 above. All of this depends upon the kind of 
 work which is to be done. 
 
 Nearly every employer exercises more caution 
 in selecting the man who is to meet the pubhc 
 
52 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 than any other. It is through him that the all- 
 important first impression is made, and a man 
 who is rude or discourteous, or who, for any rea- 
 son, rubs people the wrong way, simply will 
 not do. He may have many virtues but unless 
 they are apparent they are for the time being of 
 little service. 
 
 Most salesmen have to go to school. Their 
 work consists largely of the study of one of the 
 most difficult subjects in the catalogue: human 
 psychology. They must know why men do what 
 they do and how to make them do what they, the 
 salesmen, want them to do. They must be able 
 to handle the most delicate situations courteously 
 and without friction. It takes the tact of a 
 diplomat, the nerve of a trapeze performer, the 
 physical strength of a prize fighter, the optimism 
 of William J. Bryan or of PoUyanna, and the 
 wisdom of Solomon. Not many men are born 
 with this combination of quahties. 
 
 The best training schools base their teaching 
 on character and common sense. One very re- 
 markable organization, which has at its head an 
 astonishingly buoyant and optimistic — and, it 
 is hardly necessary to add, successful — ^man, 
 teaches that character is nine-tenths of success 
 in salesmanship and technique is only one-tenth. 
 They study technique and character along with it, 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 63 
 
 in a scientific way, like the students in a biolog- 
 ical laboratory who examine specimens. Their 
 prospects are their subjects, and while they do 
 not actually bring them into the consultation 
 room, they hold experience meetings and tell 
 the stories of their successful and unsuccess- 
 ful contacts. The meetings are held at the end 
 of the day, when the men are all tired and 
 many of them are depressed and discouraged. 
 They are opened with songs, "My Old Ken- 
 tucky Home," "Old Black Joe," "Sweet Ade- 
 line," and the other good old familiar favo- 
 rites that make one think of home and mother 
 and school days and happiness. One or two 
 catchy popular songs are introduced, and the 
 men sing or hum or whistle or divide into groups 
 and do all three with all their might. It is ir- 
 resistible. Fifteen or twenty minutes of it can 
 wipe out the sourest memory of the day's busi- 
 ness, and trivial irritations sink to their proper 
 place in the scheme of things. The little speeches 
 follow, and the men clap and cheer for the ones 
 who have done good work and try to make an in- 
 telligent diagnosis of the cases of the ones who 
 have not. When the leader talks he sometimes 
 recounts his early experiences — ^he, like most 
 good salesmanagers, was once on the road him- 
 self — and if he is in an inspirational mood, gives 
 
54 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 a sound talk on the principle back of the golden 
 rule. The spirit of cooperation throughout the in- 
 stitution is amazing and the morale is something 
 any group of workers might well envy them. 
 
 Most business houses recognize their responsi- 
 bihties toward the young people that they hire. 
 Well-organized concerns build up from within. 
 The heads of the departments are for the most 
 part men who have received their training in the 
 institution, and they take as much pains in se- 
 lecting their office boys as they do in selecting 
 any other group, for it is in them that they see 
 the future heads and assistant heads of the de- 
 partments. In hiring office boys "cleanness, 
 good manners, good physique, mental agility, 
 and good habits are primary requisites," accord- 
 ing to Mr. J. Ogden Armour in the American 
 Magazine. 
 
 In one of the oldest banks in New York each 
 boy who enters is given a few days' intensive 
 training by a gentleman chosen for the purpose. 
 The instructor stresses the fundamentals of 
 character and, above all things, common sense. 
 Courtesy is rarely discussed as a separate quality 
 but simple instructions are given about not going 
 in front of a person when there is room to go 
 around him, not pushing into an elevator ahead 
 of every one else, not speaking to a man at a desk 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 66 
 
 until he has signified that he is ready, and about 
 sustaining quiet and orderly behavior every- 
 where. The atmosphere in the bank is the kind 
 that encourages gentlemanly conduct and the 
 new boys either fall in with it or else get out and 
 go somewhere else. 
 
 It takes more patience on the part of the 
 youngsters in the financial district than it does 
 in most other places, for the men there work 
 vmder high tension and are often cross, worried, 
 nervous, and irritable, and as a result are, many 
 times, without intending it, unjust. The disci- 
 pline is severe, and the boy would not be human 
 if he did not resent it. But the youngster who 
 is quick to fly off the handle will find himself 
 sadly handicapped, however brilliant he may be, 
 in the race with boys who can keep their tempers 
 in the face of an injury. 
 
 Three boys out of the hundreds who have 
 passed through the training school in the bank 
 of which we were speaking have been discharged 
 for acts of discourtesy. One flipped a rubber 
 chp across a platform and hit one of the officials 
 in the eye, one refused to stay after hours to fin- 
 ish some work he had neglected during the day, 
 and one was impertinent. All three could have 
 stayed if each had used a httle common sense, 
 and all three could have stayed if each act had 
 
56 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 not been a fair indication of his general attitude 
 toward his work. 
 
 One of the most difficult organizations to man- 
 age and one against which the charge of dis- 
 courtesy is frequently brought is the department 
 store. Yet a distinguished Englishwoman visit- 
 ing here — it takes a woman to judge these things 
 — said, "I had always been told that people in 
 New York were in such a hurry that, although 
 well-meaning enough, they were inclined to ap- 
 pear somewhat rude to strangers. I have found 
 it to be just the reverse. During my first strolls 
 in the streets, in the shops, and elsewhere, I have 
 found everybody most courteous. Your stores, 
 I may say, are the finest I have ever seen, not ex- 
 cepting those of Paris. Their displays are re- 
 markable. Their spaciousness impressed me 
 greatly. Even at a crowded time it was not dif- 
 ficult to move about. In London, where our 
 shops are mostly cramped and old-fashioned, it 
 would be impossible for such large numbers of 
 people to find admittance." 
 
 The tribute is a very nice one. For a long 
 time the department stores have realized the dif- 
 ficulties under which they labor and have been 
 making efforts to overcome them. They have 
 formed associations by which they study each 
 other's methods, and most of them have very 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 67 
 
 highly organized systems of training and man- 
 agement. One big department store carries on 
 courtesy drives. Talks are given, posters are 
 exhibited, and prizes are offered for the most 
 courteous clerks in the store. "We know that 
 it is not fair to give prizes," the personnel man- 
 ager says, "because it is impossible to tell really 
 which clerks are the most courteous, but it stimu- 
 lates interest and effort throughotit the organ- 
 ization and the effects last after the drive is 
 over." 
 
 One big department store which is favorably 
 known among a large cUentele for courteous 
 handling of customers depends upon its atmos- 
 phere to an enormous extent, but it realizes that 
 atmosphere does not come by chance, that it has 
 to be created. They have arranged it so that 
 each clerk has time to serve each customer who 
 enters without the nervous hurry which is the 
 cause of so much rudeness. The salesclerks who 
 come into the institution are given two weeks' 
 training in the mechanical end of their work, the 
 ways of recording sales, methods of approach, 
 and so on, as well as in the spirit of cooperation 
 and service. By the time the clerk is placed be- 
 hind the counter he or she can conduct a sale 
 covu-teously and with despatch, but there is never 
 a time when the head of the department is not 
 
68 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 ready and willing to be consulted about extra- 
 ordinary situations which may arise. 
 
 It is during the rush seasons such as the three 
 or four weeks which precede Christmas that cour- 
 tesy is put to the severest test, and the store de- 
 scribed in the paragraph above bears up under 
 it nobly. It did not wait until Christmas to be- 
 gin teaching courtesy. It had tried to make it 
 a habit, but last year several weeks before the 
 hohdays it issued a bulletin to its employees to 
 remind them of certain things that would make 
 the Christmas shopping less nerve-racking. The 
 first paragraph was headed health. It ran as 
 follows : 
 
 "If you want to be really merry at Christ- 
 mas time, it will be well to bear in mind during 
 this busy month at least these few 'health 
 savers' : 
 
 "Every night try to get eight good hours of 
 sleep. 
 
 "AU day try to keep an even temper and a 
 ready smile. 
 
 "Remember that five minutes lost in the morn- 
 ing means additional pressure all day long. 
 
 "Try to make your extra eflPort a steady one — 
 not allowing yourself to get excited and rushed 
 so that you make careless mistakes. 
 
 "Try to eat regularly three good nourishing 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 69 
 
 meals, relaxing completely while you are at the 
 table and for a little while afterward. 
 
 "Breathe deeply, and as often as you can, good 
 fresh air — ^it cures weariness. 
 
 "And don't forget that a brisk walk, a sensible 
 dinner, an hour's relaxation, and then a hot 
 bath before retiring, make a refreshing end for 
 one business day and a splendid preparation for 
 the next." 
 
 There were six other paragraphs in the bulle- 
 tin. One asked the salesclerks to take the great- 
 est care in complying with a customer's request 
 to send gift purchases without the price tags. 
 Another asked them to pay strictest attention to 
 getting the right addresses, and most of the 
 others were taken up with suggestions for ways 
 to avoid congestion by using a bank of elevators 
 somewhat less conveniently located than the 
 others, by limiting their personal telephone calls 
 to those which were absolutely necessary, and so 
 on. In both tone and content the bulletin was 
 an excellent one. It first considered the em- 
 ployees and then the customers. There was no 
 condescension in the way it was written and there 
 was no "bunk" about what was in it. But the 
 bulletin was only a small part of an effort that 
 never stops. 
 
 The purpose of the store is, to quote from its 
 
60 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 own statement, "to render honest, prompt, cour- 
 teous and complete service to customers" and the 
 qualities by which they measure their employees 
 are as follows: 
 
 Health Accuracy 
 
 Loyalty Thoroughness 
 
 Cooperation 
 
 Initiative ResponsibiUty 
 
 Industry Knowledge 
 
 Courtesy is not included in the list but it is 
 xmnecessary. If these qualities are developed 
 courtesy will come of its own accord. It is 
 worth noting that health comes first in the hst. 
 To a business man, or indeed to any other, it is 
 one of the most precious possessions in the world, 
 and is the best of backgrounds upon which to 
 embroider the flower of courtesy. 
 
 Every employer who has had any experience 
 knows the value of a contented workman, and 
 does what he can to make and keep him so by 
 paying him adequate wages, and providing com- 
 fortable, sanitary, and pleasant working condi- 
 tions. Contentment is, however, more an atti- 
 tude of mind than a result of external circum- 
 stances. Happiness is who, not where, you are. 
 We do not mean by this that a workman should 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 61 
 
 be wholly satisfied and without ambition or that 
 he should face the world with a permanent grin, 
 but that he should to the best of his ability fol- 
 low that wonderful motto of Roosevelt's, "Do 
 what you can where you are with what you have." 
 No man can control circumstances ; not even the 
 braggart Napoleon, who declared that he made 
 circumstances, could control them to the end; 
 and no man can shape them to suit exactly his 
 own purposes, but every man can meet them 
 bravely as a gentleman should. 
 
 Most big business concerns supply rest rooms, 
 eating places, recreation camps, and all manner 
 of comforts for their employees, and most of 
 them maintain welfare departments. No busi- 
 ness house under heaven could take the place of 
 a home, but where the home influence is bad the 
 best counterfoil is a wholesome atmosphere in 
 which to work. Recently an institution adver- 
 tising for help, instead of asking what the appli- 
 cant could do for it, pictured and described what 
 it could do for the applicant. The result was 
 that they got a high-class group of people to 
 make their selection from, and their attitude was 
 one which invited the newcomers to do their best. 
 
 Factory owners are paying a good deal of at- 
 tention to the appearance of their buildings. 
 Many of them have moved out into the country 
 
€2 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 SO as to provide more healthful surroundings for 
 work. Numbers of modern factory buildings 
 are very beautiful to look at, trim white build- 
 ings set in close-out lawns with tennis courts and 
 swimming pools not far away, red brick build- 
 ings covered with ivy, sand-colored ones with 
 roses climbing over them, and others like the one 
 famous for its thousand windows, rather more 
 comfortable than lovely. In our big cities there 
 are office buildings that look like cathedrals, rail- 
 road stations that look hke temples, and traffic 
 bridges that look (from a distance) hke fairy 
 arches leading into the land of dreams. They 
 are not all like this. We wish they were. But 
 it is to the credit of the American business man 
 that he has put at least a part of his life and work 
 into the building of beautiful things. The in- 
 fluence which comes from them is, like nearly all 
 potent influences, an unconscious one, but it 
 makes for happiness and contentment. 
 
 The problem of keeping the employees con- 
 tented is somewhat different in every place. 
 House organs, picnics, dances, recreation parks, 
 sanitariimas in the country and so on can be util- 
 ized by "big business," but the spirit which ani- 
 mates them is the same as that which makes the 
 grocery man at HicksviUe Centre give his deliv- 
 ery boy an afternoon off when the baseball team 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 63 
 
 comes to town. The spirit of courtesy is every- 
 where the same, but it must be kept in mind that 
 the end of business is production, production 
 takes work, and that play is introduced in order 
 that the work may be better. This is true 
 whether we are looking at the matter from the 
 point of view of the employer or of the employee. 
 What is to the interest of one — this is gaining 
 slow but sure recognition — is to the interest of 
 the other. 
 
 Certain kinds of mechanical work are very try- 
 ing because of their monotony. The work must 
 be done, however, and in weU-ordered places it is 
 arranged so that the worker has brief periods of 
 rest at regular intervals or so that he is shifted 
 from one kind of activity to another. It is poor 
 economy to wear out men. In the old days be- 
 fore the power of steam or electricity had been 
 discovered, boats were propelled by slaves who 
 were kept below decks chained to their seats, and 
 watched by an overseer who forced them to con- 
 tinue rowing long after they had reached the 
 point of exhaustion. The galley slave sat al- 
 ways on the same side of the boat and after a few 
 years his body became so twisted and warped 
 that he was no good for anything else, and pretty 
 soon was not even good for that. Then he was 
 thrown into the discard — n\ost of them died be- 
 
64 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 fore they got this far along — and the owner of 
 the boat had to look out for more men. Some- 
 thing like this happens to the soul of a man who 
 is bound to dreary, monotonous work without re- 
 lief or any outlet for growth. It is deadening to 
 him, to his work, and to his employer. The far- 
 sighted employer knows it. The masters of 
 slaves learned it many years ago. The chain 
 which binds the servant to the master binds the 
 master to the servant. And the fastening is as 
 secure at one end as it is at the other. 
 
 Too strict supervision — slave-driving — ^is fatal 
 to courtesy. The places which have intricate spy 
 systems to watch their employees are the ones 
 where there is most rudeness and trickery. The 
 clerk who is hectored, nagged, spied upon, sus- 
 pected and scolded by some hireling brought in 
 for that purpose or by the head of the firm him- 
 self cannot be expected to give "a smile with 
 every purchase and a thank you for every good- 
 bye." The training of employees never stops, 
 but it is something that should be placed very 
 largely in their own hands. After a certain point 
 supervision should be unnecessary. 
 
 Most places hate to discharge a man. Labor 
 turnover is too expensive. Most of them try to 
 place their men in the positions for which they 
 are best suited. It is easier to take a round peg 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 65 
 
 out of a square hole and put it into a round one 
 than it is to send out for another assortment of 
 pegs. Men are transferred from sales depart- 
 ments to accounting departments, are taken off 
 the road and brought into the home office, and are 
 shifted about in various ways until they fit. If 
 a man shows that "he has it in him" he is given 
 every chance to succeed. "There is only one 
 thing we drop a man for right off," says an em- 
 ployment manager in a place which has in its 
 service several thousand people of both sexes, 
 "and that is for saying something out of the way 
 to one of our girls." 
 
 This same manager tells the story of a boy he 
 hired and put into a department which had been 
 so badly managed that there were a nimiber of 
 loose ends to be tied up. The boy threw himself 
 into his work, cleared up things, and found him- 
 self in a "soft snap" without a great deal to do. 
 He happened not to be the kind of person who 
 can be satisfied with a soft snap, and he became 
 so restive and unhappy that he was recom- 
 mended for discharge. This brought him back 
 to the head of the employment bureau. He, in- 
 stead of throwing the young man out, asked that 
 he be given a second trial in a department where 
 the loose ends could not be cleaned up. It 
 was a place where there was always plenty of 
 
66 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 work to do, and the young man has been happy 
 and has been doing satisfactory work ever 
 since. 
 
 The house in which this happened is always 
 generous toward the mistakes of its employees 
 if the mistakes do not occur too persistently and 
 too frequently. In one instance a boy made 
 three successive errors in figures in as many days. 
 He was slated for discharge but sent first before 
 the employment manager. As they talked the 
 latter noticed that the boy leaned forward with 
 a strained expression on his face. Thinking per- 
 haps he was slightly deaf, he lowered his voice, 
 but the boy understood every word he said. Then 
 he noticed that there was a tiny red ridge across 
 his nose as if he were accustomed to wearing 
 glasses, although he did not have them on, and 
 when he asked about it he discovered that the 
 boy had broken his glasses a few days before, 
 and that he had not had them fixed because he 
 did not have money enough. 
 
 "Why didn't you tell us about it?" the em- 
 ployment manager asked. 
 
 "It was not your fault that I broke them," 
 the boy replied. "It was up to me," an inde- 
 pendent answer which in itself indicates how 
 much worth while it was to keep him. 
 
 The manager gave him money enough to have 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 67 
 
 the glasses mended, the next day the boy was 
 back at work, and there was no more trouble. 
 
 An employee in the same organization uninten- 
 tionally did something which hurt the president 
 of the firm a great deal. But when he went to 
 him and apologized (it takes a man to admit 
 that he is wrong and apologize for it) the presi- 
 dent sent him back to his desk, "It's all 
 right, boy," he said, "I know you care. That's 
 enough." 
 
 In a big department store in New England 
 there was a girl a few years back with an alert 
 mind, an assertive personality, and a tremendous 
 fund of energy. She was in the habit of giving 
 constructive suggestions to the heads of the de- 
 partments in which she worked, and because of 
 her youth and manner, they resented it. "I 
 took her into my office," the manager said. 
 "I'm the only one she can be impertinent to there 
 and I don't mind it. It is a bad manifestation 
 of a good quality, and in time the disagreeable 
 part of it will wear off. She will make an excel- 
 lent business woman." 
 
 "If a man finds fault with a boy without ex- 
 plaining the cause to him," we are quoting here 
 from an executive in a highly successful Middle 
 Western firm, "I won't fire the boy, I fire the 
 man. We have not a square inch of space in 
 
68 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 this organization for the man who criticizes a 
 subordinate without telling him how to do bet- 
 ter." Unless the plan of management is big 
 enough to include every one from the oldest saint 
 to the youngest sinner it is no good. Business 
 built on oppression and cut-throat competition, 
 whether the competition is between employer and 
 employee or between rival firms, is war, and war, 
 industrial or political, is still what General Sher- 
 man called it some years ago. 
 
 We hold no brief for paternalism. We have 
 no patience with it. All that we want is a spirit 
 of fairness and cooperation which will give every 
 man a chance to make good on his own account. 
 This spirit inevitably flowers into courtesy. In 
 every place courtesy should be, of course, so 
 thoroughly a part of the surroundings that it is 
 accepted like air or sunshine without comment. 
 But it is not, and never has been except in old 
 civihzations where manners have ripened and 
 mellowed under the beneficent influence of time. 
 Our traditions here — speaking of the country as 
 a whole — are still in the making, but we have at 
 least got far enough along to realize that it is 
 not only worth while to do things that are good, 
 but, as an old author has it, to do them with a 
 good grace. It cannot be accomplished over- 
 night. Courtesy is not like a fungous growth 
 
PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 69 
 
 springing up in a few hours in the decayed parts 
 of a tree ; it is like that within the tree itself which 
 gives lustre to the leaves and a beautiful surface 
 to the whole. It takes time to develop it — ^time 
 and patience — but it is worth waiting for. 
 
IV 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 All that makes a man who he is and not 
 someone else is called personality. It is the sum 
 total of his quahties, a thing inborn, but includ- 
 ing besides such externals as dress, manner, and 
 appearance. It is either a tremendous asset or 
 a terrific liability, and so important that certain 
 schools which purport to teach success in busi- 
 ness declare that it is everything. Which is just 
 as foolish as saying that it is nothing. 
 
 One of these success-before-you-wake-to-mor- 
 row-morning schools of business instruction dis- 
 misses the fact which has remained true through 
 three thousand years of change, namely, that 
 there is no short cut to success, as a myth, and 
 even goes so far as to say that it is almost impos- 
 sible to achieve success to-day by working for it. 
 E. H. Harriman they give as an example of a 
 man who did no work but won success by smok- 
 ing cigars while other men built railroads for him, 
 quoting a joking remark of his to prove a serious. 
 
 70 
 
PERSONALITY 71 
 
 point, when, as a matter of fact, Mr. Harriman 
 was one of the large number of American busi- 
 ness men who have literally worked themselves to 
 death. Foch said that he won the war by smok- 
 ing his pipe, but does any one believe that the 
 great commander won the war by not working? 
 What he meant was that he won the war by 
 thinking, and the worn face, which seemed al- 
 most twice as old when the conflict was over, 
 showed how hard that work was. 
 
 It is so impossible for a false doctrine to stand 
 on its own feet that the spread-eagle advertise- 
 ment of this school contradicts itself long before 
 it gets to the "Sign here and mail to-day" cou- 
 pon. "The first time you try to swim," shouts 
 the advertisement, "for instance, you sink; and 
 the first time you try to ride a bicycle you fall 
 off. But the abihty to do these things was born 
 in you. And shortly you can both swim and 
 ride. Then you wonder why you could not al- 
 ways do these things. They seem so absurdly 
 simple." It may be that there are people who 
 have learned to swim and to ride a bicycle by sit- 
 ting in a chair and cultivating certain inherent 
 quahties but we have never heard of them. Ev- 
 erybody that we ever knew worked and worked 
 hard swimming and riding before they learned. 
 The only way to learn to do a job is to do it, and 
 
72 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 the only way to succeed is to work. Any school 
 or any person who says that "the most important 
 thing for you to do is not to work, but first to 
 find the short road to success. After that you 
 may safely work all you like — but as a matter of 
 fact, you won't have to work very hard," is a Ear 
 and a menace to the country and to business. 
 
 But the value of personality is not to be under- 
 estimated. "Nature," says Thackeray some- 
 where in "The Virginians," "has written a letter 
 of credit upon some men's faces, which is hon- 
 ored almost wherever presented. Harry War- 
 rington's [Harry Warrington was the hero who 
 brought about this observation] countenance 
 was so stamped in his youth. His eyes were so 
 bright, his cheeks so red and healthy, his look so 
 frank and open, that almost all who beheld him, 
 nay, even those who cheated him, trusted him." 
 It was the "letter of credit" stamped upon the 
 face of Roosevelt, pledge of the character which 
 lay behind it, which made him the idol of the 
 American people. 
 
 Personality is hard to analyze and harder stiU 
 to acquire. The usual advice given to one who 
 is trying to cultivate a pleasing manner and ad- 
 dress is "Be natural," but this cannot be taken 
 too hterally. Most of us find it perfectly natural 
 to be cross and disagreeable under trying cir- 
 
PERSONALITY 73 
 
 cumstances. It would be natural for a man to 
 cry out profane words when a woman grinds 
 down on his corn but it would not be polite. It 
 was natural for Uriah Heep to wriggle Uke an 
 eel, but that did not make it any the less detesta- 
 ble. It was natural, considering the past his- 
 tory of Germany and the system under which he 
 was educated, for the Kaiser to want to be lord 
 of the world, but that did not make it any the less 
 horrible. 
 
 Another bromidic piece of advice is "Be per- 
 fectly frank and sincere." But this, too, has its 
 limits. Some people pride themselves on saying 
 exactly what they think. Usually they are bru- 
 tal, insensitive, wholly incapable of sympathetic 
 understanding of any one else, and cursed, be- 
 sides, with a colossal vanity. A man may de- 
 termine to tell nothing but the truth, but this does 
 not make it necessary for him to teU the whole 
 truth, especially when it will hurt the feelings or 
 the reputation of some one else. No man has a 
 right to impose his opinions and prejudices, his 
 sufferings and agonies, on other people. It is 
 the part of a coward to whine. 
 
 And yet a man must be himself, must be nat- 
 ural and sincere. Roosevelt could no more have 
 adopted the academic manner of Wilson than 
 Wilson could have adopted the boyish manner 
 
74 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 of Roosevelt. Lincoln could no more have 
 adopted the courtly grace of Washington than 
 Washington could have adopted the rugged sim- 
 plicity of Lincoln. Nor would such transforma- 
 tions be desirable even if they were possible. The 
 world would be a very dreary place if we were 
 all cut by the same pattern. 
 
 A number of years ago in an upstate town in 
 New York there was a shoe store which had been 
 built up by the engaging personality of the man 
 who owned it. He had worked his way up from 
 a tiny shoe shop in New Jersey where, as a boy, 
 he made shoes by hand before there were fac- 
 tories for the purpose, and he had always kept in 
 close touch with the business even after he owned 
 a large estabhshment and had a number of men 
 working under him. He stayed in the shop, 
 greeted his customers as they came in, and many 
 times waited on them himself. 
 
 When he retired from active business he sold 
 out to a man exactly his opposite in tempera- 
 ment, as good a man, so far as character went, 
 as himself, but very quiet and taciturn. A wo- 
 man who had always patronized the shop and 
 was a friend of them both came to him soon after 
 the transfer was made and said, "Now, Mr. Til- 
 lis, the reason this place has prospered so is on 
 account of the personality of Mr. Kilbourne. 
 
PEKSONALITY 75 
 
 His shoes are good but people can get good 
 shoes at other places. They come here because 
 of Mr. Kilbourne. They like him, and if you 
 are not careful they will stop coming now that he 
 is gone. You've got to smile and show them 
 you are glad to see them." 
 
 Mr. Tillis felt that the woman was telling the 
 truth. He decided that he would stay in the 
 shop and greet each customer with a gladsome 
 smile and make himself generally pleasant and 
 agreeable. The next day he was fitting a shoe on 
 a woman who was also an old customer and a 
 friend of both men. He was smiling in his best 
 manner and congratulating himself that he was 
 doing very well when the woman abruptly took 
 her foot off the stand. "What are you laughing 
 at?" she demanded. 
 
 Some years later he told Mr. Kilbourne about 
 it. "I decided then that there was no use in me 
 trying to be you. You had been yourself, and I 
 made up my mind that I'd be myself." 
 
 And that is, after all, the only rule that can 
 be given. Be yourself, but be very sure that it 
 is your best self. 
 
 It is personahty which permits one man to do 
 a thing that another would be shot for. What 
 is charming in this man is disgusting in that. 
 What is a smile with one becomes a smirk with 
 
76 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 another. What makes one succeed will cause 
 another to fail. It is personality that opens the 
 doors of opportunity. It cannot, alone, keep 
 them open, but it is worth a good deal to get 
 inside. 
 
 We were interested to observe the methods 
 used by three young men who were looking for 
 jobs, not one of whom would probably have suc- 
 ceeded if he had used the tactics of either of the 
 others. 
 
 The first wanted to talk with the biggest execu- 
 tive in a large organization. He had fought his 
 way through the ranks until he had got as far as 
 the man's secretary. "Mr. So-and-So does not 
 see people who want jobs," said that young lady. 
 
 "I don't want a job," he prevaricated mildly, 
 "I want to talk to him." 
 
 The girl let him in. 
 
 "Mr. So-and-So," he said, "I don't want a 
 job. I want advice." 
 
 His manner was so ingenuous and charming, 
 his earnestness so glowing, that the man at the 
 desk listened while he talked, and then talked a 
 while himself, and ended by giving the young 
 man the position (as well as the advice) that he 
 wanted. But if he had been less attractive per- 
 sonally and the older man had been shrewd 
 enough to see through the ruse (or perhaps he 
 
PERSONALITY 77 
 
 did see through it but made the proper discount 
 for it) or had been opposed to trick methods, the 
 scheme might not have worked so well. 
 
 The most universal weakness of intellect lies 
 in the part of the brain which hstens to flattery. 
 Very few people like comphments laid on with a 
 trowel, but no man can resist the honest admira- 
 tion of another if it seems sincere. And since it 
 is the sort of thing that one hkes almost above all 
 else he often takes the false coin for the true. 
 
 The second young man met the rebuff so fa- 
 miliar to young men looking for their first job, 
 "We want men with experience." 
 
 "That's what everybody says," the boy an- 
 swered, "but what I want to know is how we are 
 going to get that experience if you don't give us 
 a chance." 
 
 The older man sympathized, but had no place 
 for the other and told him so. 
 
 "What would you do if you were I?" the 
 young man asked as he tm-ned to leave. The 
 other grinned. "Why, I'd work for a firm for 
 a week for nothing," he said, "and show them 
 that they could not get along without me." 
 
 The boy stopped. "All right," he said, "let 
 me work for you a week." 
 
 The older man had not expected this but he 
 gave the youngster a chance and he made good. 
 
78 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 The third young man had reached the point of 
 desperation. He had been out of a job several 
 weeks. He had been trying to get one all that 
 time and had not succeeded. He walked into 
 the employment bureau of a certain concern and 
 said, "I want a job. I want a good job. Not 
 some dinky httle place filing letters or picking 
 up chips. If you've got an executive position 
 where there is plenty of work and plenty of re- 
 sponsibility, I want it." They asked him a few 
 questions about what he had been doing and a 
 few more about what he thought he could do, and 
 ended by giving him a desk and an office. 
 
 It would be foolish to advise any one to follow 
 any of these plans. Each man must work out 
 his own method, all the better if it is an original 
 one. Most business men like a simple approach 
 without any flourishes. "It is astonishing," says 
 one man whose income runs to six figures, "how 
 many things one can get just by asking for 
 them." The best reporter in America says that 
 he has always found the direct method of ap- 
 proach better than any other. None is infalli- 
 ble but this has the highest percentage of suc- 
 cess. 
 
 So far as personal appearance is concerned — 
 and this is one of the most important elements 
 in the fashioning of personaUty — the greatest 
 
PERSONALITY 79 
 
 variations are not due to intrinsic differences in 
 character, nor to differences of feature or form, 
 but to the use and disuse of the bathtub. More 
 sharp than the distinction between labor and 
 capital or between socialism and despotism is 
 that between the people who bathe daily and 
 those who go to the tub only on Saturday night 
 or less often. The people with whom personal 
 cleanliness is a habit find dirt, grime, and sweat 
 revolting. To them "the great unwashed" are 
 repulsive. 
 
 "When you teach a man to bathe," says John 
 Leitch in his book on "Industrial Democracy," 
 "you do more than merely teach him to cleanse 
 his body. You introduce him to a new kind of 
 life and create in him a desire for better living." 
 
 The month before he began his wonderful 
 work at Tuskegee, Booker Washington spent 
 visiting the Negro families in the part of Ala- 
 bama where he was to teach. "One of the sad- 
 dest things I saw during the month of travel 
 which I have described," he writes in his autobi- 
 ography, "was a young man, who had attended 
 some high school, sitting down in a one-room 
 cabin, with grease on his clothing, filth all around 
 him, and weeds in the yard and garden, engaged 
 in studying a French grammar." 
 
 Farther on he writes, "It has been interest- 
 
80 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 ing to note the eflPeet that the use of the tooth- 
 brush has had in bringing about a higher degree 
 of civilization among the students. With few 
 exceptions, I have noticed that, if we can get 
 a student to the point where, when the first or 
 second tooth-brush disappears, he of his own mo- 
 tion buys another, I have not been disappointed 
 in the future of that individual. Absolute clean- 
 liness of the body has been insisted upon from 
 the first." 
 
 Cleanliness is an attribute of civilization. We 
 find it amusing to read that three or four hun- 
 dred years ago bathing for pleasure was un- 
 known, that when soap was first invented it was 
 used only for washing clothes, and that even so 
 late as the Seventeenth Century an author com- 
 piling a book of rules for the gentleman of that 
 day advises him to wash his hands every day and 
 his face almost as often! In the monasteries 
 bathing was permitted only to invalids and the 
 very old. Perfume was used copiously, and 
 filth and squalor abounded. This even in royal 
 circles. Among the common people conditions 
 were unspeakable. 
 
 To-day a gentleman bathes and shaves every 
 day. He keeps his hair brushed, his finger nails 
 immaculate (or as clean as the kind of work 
 which he does permits), his hnen is always clean 
 
PERSONALITY 81 
 
 and his shoes are pohshed. He is not over- 
 fastidious about his clothes, but he has respect 
 enough for himself as well as for the people 
 among whom he lives to want to present as agree- 
 able an appearance as possible. "Dress," wrote 
 Lord Chesterfield to his son, "is a very foohsh 
 thing, and yet it is a very foohsh thing for a man 
 not to be well-dressed, according to his rank and 
 way of hfe. . . . The diflference in this case 
 between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop 
 values himself upon his dress; and the man of 
 sense laughs at it, and at the same time knows he 
 must not neglect it." 
 
 It is a cheap device for a man to trick himself 
 out with lodge pins and fraternity sjrmbols, rings, 
 and badges in the hope that they wiU open doors 
 for him. Highly ornamental jewelry of any 
 kind is inappropriate. Not many men can off- 
 set a heavy gold watch chain stretched f uU length 
 across their bosoms, not many can live down a 
 tvu-quoise ring set with pearls, and very few can 
 bear the handicap of a bright gold front tooth. 
 Artists, alone, may gratify their taste for velvet 
 jackets, Tam-o'-Shanters, and Windsor ties, 
 but the privilege is denied business men. Ec- 
 centricity of dress usually indicates eccentricity 
 of temper, and we do not want temperamental 
 business men. It is hard enough to get along 
 
82 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 with authors and artists and musicians. The 
 business man who is wise wears conventional 
 clothes of substantial material in conservative 
 colors. Good sense and good taste demand it. 
 
 The time has passed when uncouthness of 
 dress and manner can be taken as a pledge of 
 honesty and good faith. The President of the 
 United States to-day is a well-dressed, well- 
 groomed man, and no one thinks any the less of 
 him for it. Men no longer regard creased trou- 
 sers, nicely tied cravats, well-chosen collars, 
 and harmonious color combinations as signs of 
 sissiness, snobbishness, or weak-mindedness. 
 
 Formal dinners and other ceremonious func- 
 tions require evening dress. It is the custom, 
 as the Orientals say; and for the sake of other 
 people present if not for his own, a man should 
 undergo the discomfort, if he finds it a discom- 
 fort, and many men do, of conforming to it. 
 Holiday attire gives a happy note of festivity 
 which might otherwise be lacking. It is quite 
 possible to point to a number of men who have 
 succeeded in business who were wholly indif- 
 ferent to matters of dress. But it does not prove 
 anything. Men rise by their strength, not by 
 their weakness. Some men wait until after they 
 have become rich or famous to become negUgent 
 of their personal appearance. But it is well 
 
PERSONALITY 83 
 
 to remember that "if Socrates and Aristippus 
 have done aught against custom or good manner, 
 let not a man think he can do the same : for they 
 obtained this license by their great and excellent 
 good parts." 
 
 A well-dressed man is so comfortably dressed 
 that he is not conscious of his clothes and so in- 
 conspicuously dressed that no one else is con- 
 scious of them. 
 
 In a good many instances it is not his own 
 dress which bothers a business man so much as 
 it is that of some one else — his stenographer, for 
 instance. Men do not have quite so much op- 
 portunity to make themselves ridiculous as wo- 
 men. Their conventions of dress are stricter, 
 and, as a rule, they can express their love of 
 color and ornamentation only in their choice of 
 ties and socks. Girls have practically no re- 
 strictions except what happens to be the style at 
 the moment, and a young girl untrained in se- 
 lecting and combining colors and lines, and mak- 
 ing money for the first time in her life, is more 
 likely than not to make herself look more like a 
 Christmas tree than a lily of the field. 
 
 The big department stores which employ hun- 
 dreds of girls to meet and serve their customers 
 have settled the problem for themselves by re- 
 quiring the girls to wear uniforms. The uni- 
 
84 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 form is very simple; often a certain color during 
 working hours is prescribed, but the girls are 
 permitted to choose their own styles. Other 
 places have women who look after the welfare 
 of the girls and prevent them from laying them- 
 selves open to misunderstanding by the way they 
 dress. Large organizations can afford to have 
 a special person to take care of such matters, but 
 in a small office the problem is different. 
 
 Of course, a man can always dismiss a girl 
 who dresses foohshly or carelessly, but this is 
 sneaking away from a problem instead of fac- 
 ing it. High-class offices have comparatively 
 little trouble this way. In the first place, they 
 do not attract the frivolous, light-headed, or 
 "tough" girls; in the second place, if such girls 
 come, the atmosphere in which they work either 
 makes them conform to the standards of the of- 
 fice or leave and go somewhere else. If a girl in 
 his office dresses in a way that he considers inap- 
 propriate, a man may tactfully suggest that 
 something simpler would be more dignified and 
 more in keeping with business ideals and tradi- 
 tions. But, oh, he must be careful! On no sub- 
 ject is one so sensitive as on his personal appear- 
 ance, and women, perhaps, more so than men. 
 
 There is a hmit to how far an employer should 
 go in dictating the manner of his employees' 
 
PERSONALITY 85 
 
 dress. When the head of a big Western depart- 
 ment store declared that he would discharge aU 
 the girls who bobbed their hair, most of us felt 
 that he had gone a bit too far, even while we saw 
 the logic of his position. While it is the only- 
 sensible way in the world for a woman to wear 
 her hair the majority of people have not yet 
 come to think so. To the average person, espe- 
 cially to Mrs. Grundy, who is really the most 
 valuable customer a department store has, the 
 impression given by bobbed hair is one of fri- 
 vohty or eccentricity. The impression given the 
 customer as she enters a store is a most impor- 
 tant item ; the head of the store knew it, and there- 
 fore he placed the ban on bobbed hair. Which- 
 ever side we take in this particular case this is 
 true: The business woman should give, hke the 
 business man, an impression of dependability, 
 and she cannot do it if her appearance is abnor- 
 mal, or if her mind is divided between how she is 
 looking and what she is doing. 
 
 It is almost funny that we let the faults and 
 mannerisms of other people affect us to such an 
 extent. They are nothing to us, and yet a man 
 can work himself into a perfect frenzy of temper 
 merely by looking at or talking to another who 
 has a fidgety way of moving about, a dainty 
 manner of using his hands, or a general demean- 
 
86 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 or that is delicate and ladylike. Men like what 
 the magazines call "a red-blooded, two-fisted, he- 
 man." But the world is big enough to accom- 
 modate us all whether the blood in our veins is 
 red or blue, and it is perfectly silly for a man to 
 throw himself into a rage over some harmless 
 creature who happens to exasperate him simply 
 because he is alive. 
 
 It is an altogether different matter when it is 
 a question of one man taking hberties with an- 
 other. Most people object to the physical near- 
 ness of others. It is the thing that makes the 
 New York subways during the rush hours such 
 a horror. It is not pleasant to have a person so 
 near that his breath is against your face, and 
 there are not many men who enjoy being slapped 
 on the back, punched in the ribs, or held fast by 
 a buttonhole or a coat lapel. A safe rule is 
 never to touch another person. He may resent 
 it. 
 
 The garrulous or impertinent talker is almost 
 as objectionable as the hail-fellow-well-met, slap- 
 on-the-back fellow. Charles Dickens has a rec- 
 ord of this kind of American in the book which 
 he wrote after his visit in this country: "Every 
 button in his clothes said, 'Eh, what's that? Did 
 you speak? Say that again, will you?' He was 
 always wide awake, always restless; always 
 
PERSONALITY 87 
 
 thirsting for answers; perpetually seeking and 
 never finding. . . . 
 
 "I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and be- 
 fore we were well clear of the wharf, he ques- 
 tioned me concerning it, and its price, and where 
 I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and 
 what it weighed, and what it cost. Then he 
 took notice of my watch, and asked me what that 
 cost, and whether it was a French watch, and 
 where I got it, and how I got it, and whether I 
 bought it or had it given me, and how it went and 
 where the keyhole was, and when I wound it, 
 every night or every morning, and whether I 
 ever forgot to wind it at all, and if I did, what 
 then? Where I had been to last, and where I 
 was going next, and where I was going after 
 that, and had I seen the President, and what did 
 he say, and what did I say, and what did he say 
 when I had said that? Eh? Lor' now! Do 
 teU!" 
 
 This sort of curiosity is harmless enough, but 
 exasperating, and so childish that one hates to re- 
 buke the person who is asking the foolish ques- 
 tions. There is another kind which is perhaps 
 worse — ^the man who asks intrusive questions 
 about how much salary another is getting, how 
 old he is (men are as sensitive on this subject as 
 women) and so on and on. It is perfectly le- 
 
88 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 gitimate to refuse to answer any question to 
 which one does not wish to reply. Every man 
 has a right to mental privacy even when he is de- 
 nied, as he is in so many modern offices, any other 
 kind of privacy. 
 
 A loud or boisterous person is objectionable. 
 Many times this is through carelessness, but 
 sometimes, as when a man recounts the story of 
 his dinner with Mr. Brown, who is a national fig- 
 ure, in a voice so loud that all the people in the 
 car or room or whatever place he happens to be 
 in, can hear him, it is deliberate. The careless 
 person is the one who discusses personahties 
 aloud in elevators, on the train, and in all manner 
 of public places. Exchanging gossip is a pretty 
 low form of indoor sport and exchanging it aloud 
 so that everybody can hear makes it worse than 
 ever. Names should never be mentioned in a 
 conversation in a place where strangers can over- 
 hear, especially if the connection is an unpleas- 
 ant one. Private opinions should never be aired 
 in public places (except from a platform) . 
 
 The highly argumentative or aggressive per- 
 son is another common type of nuisance. He 
 usually raises his voice, thus drowning out the 
 possibility of interruption, and talks with so 
 much noise and so many vigorous gestures that 
 he seems to try to make up for his lack of intel- 
 
PERSONALITY 89 
 
 lect by an excess of tumult. Arguments have 
 never yet convinced anybody of the truth, and it 
 is a very unpleasant method to try. Most argu- 
 ments are about religion or politics and even if 
 they were settled nothing would be accomplished. 
 In the Middle Ages men used to debate about 
 the number of angels that could stand on the 
 point of a pin. Hours and hours were wasted 
 and learned scholars were brought into the dis- 
 cussion, which was carried forward as seriously 
 as if it were a debate between the merits of the 
 Republican and Democratic parties. Suppose 
 they had settled it. Would it have mattered? 
 
 One of the most offensive public plagues is the 
 man who leaves a traU of untidiness behind him. 
 No book of etiquette, not even a book of business 
 etiquette, could counsel eating on the streets in 
 spite of the historic and inspiring example of Mr. 
 Benjamin Franklin walking down the streets of 
 Philadelphia with a loaf of bread under each arm 
 while he munched from a third which he held in 
 his hand. One can forgive a man, however, if 
 he, feeling the need of nourishment, eats a bar of 
 chocolate if he takes great care to put the Avrap- 
 pings somewhere out of the way. No man with 
 any civic pride will scatter peanut huUs, ciga- 
 rette boxes, chocolate wrappings, raisin boxes, 
 and other debris along the streets, in the cars, on 
 
90 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 the stairs, and even on the floors of office build- 
 ings. Garbage cans and waste-baskets were 
 made to take care of these things. 
 
 Tidiness is worth more to a business man than 
 most of them realize. In the first place it gives 
 a favorable impression to a person coming in 
 from the outside, and, in the second place, it 
 helps those on the inside to keep things straight. 
 Folders for correspondence, card indexes, memo- 
 randum files and other similar devices are essen- 
 tial to the orderly transaction of business. 
 
 Keeping ashes and scraps of paper off the 
 floor may seem trifles, but such trifles go far to- 
 ward making the atmosphere, which is another 
 word for personality, of an office. Some men 
 have secretaries who take care of their desks and 
 papers and supervise the janitor who cleans the 
 floors and windows, but those who do not, find 
 that they can manage better when they have a 
 place to put things and put them there. 
 
 Nothing has more to do with making a gentle- 
 man than a courteous and considerate attitude 
 toward women. In business a man should show 
 practically the same deference toward a woman 
 that he does in society. Any man can be polite 
 to a woman he is anxious to please, the girl he 
 loves, for instance, but it takes a gentleman to be 
 poUte to every woman, especially to those who 
 
PERSONALITY 91 
 
 work for him, those over whom he exercises au- 
 thority. 
 
 It is unnecessary for a man to rise every time 
 one of the girls in his office enters his private 
 audience room, but he should always rise to re- 
 ceive a visitor, whether it is a man or woman, and 
 should ask the visitor to be seated before he sits 
 down himself. In witheringly hot weather a 
 man may go without his coat even if his entire 
 office force consists of girls, but he should never 
 receive a guest in his shirt sleeves. He shoidd 
 listen deferentially to what the visitor has to say, 
 but if she becomes too voluble or threatens to 
 stay too long or if there is other business waiting 
 for him, he may (if he can) cut short her conver- 
 sation. When she is ready to go he should rise 
 and conduct her to the door or to the elevator, as 
 the case may be, and ring the bell for her. He 
 cannot, of course, do this if his visitors are fre- 
 quent, if their calls are about matters of trifling 
 importance, or if he is working under high pres- 
 sure. 
 
 We once had an English visitor here in Amer- 
 ica who thought our manners were outrageously 
 bad, but there was one point on which we won a 
 perfect score. "Any lady," he said, "may travel 
 alone, from one end of the United States to the 
 other, and be certain of the most courteous and 
 
92 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 considerate treatment everywhere. Nor did I 
 ever once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my 
 rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the 
 slightest act of rudeness, inciviUty, or even inat-- 
 tention." Conditions have changed since then. 
 Women had not left their homes to go into 
 offices and factories, but unless we can hold to 
 the standard described by the Enghshman, the 
 change has not been for the better, for any of the 
 people concerned. 
 
 Since the Victorian era our ideas of what con- 
 stitutes an act of rudeness have been modified. 
 Then it would have been unthinkable that a wo- 
 man should remain standing in a coach while men 
 were seated. Now it is possible for a man to 
 keep his place while a woman swings from a 
 strap and defend himself on the grounds that he 
 has worked harder diu-ing the day than she (how 
 he knows is more than we can say) , and that he 
 has just as much right (which is certainly true) 
 as any one else. Yet it is a gracious and a chiv- 
 alrous act for a man to offer a woman his place 
 on a car, and it is very gratifying to see that hun- 
 dreds of them, even in the cities, where hf e goes 
 at its swiftest pace and people live always in a 
 hurry, surrender their seats in favor of the wo- 
 men who, hke themselves, are going to work. 
 Old people, afflicted people, men and women who 
 
PERSONALITY 93 
 
 are carrying children in their arms, and other 
 people who obviously need to sit down are nearly 
 always given precedence over the rest of us. 
 This is, of course, as it should be. 
 
 But the heart of what constitutes courtesy has 
 not changed and never will. It is exactly what 
 it was on that day nearly four hundred years ago 
 when Sir Phihp Sidney, mortally wounded on 
 the field of Zutphen, gave his last drop of water 
 to the dying soldier who lay near him and said, 
 "Thy need is greater than mine." 
 
V 
 TABLE MANNERS 
 
 In the old books of etiquette in the chapter 
 on table manners the authors used to state that 
 it was not polite to butter your bread with your 
 thumb, to rub your greasy fingers on the bread 
 you were about to eat, or to rise from the table 
 with a toothpick in your mouth like a bird that 
 is about to build her nest. We have never seen 
 any one butter his bread with his thumb, but 
 
 There are in the United States nearly five mil- 
 lion people who can neither read nor write. We 
 have no statistics but we venture to say there are 
 as many who eat with their knives. There are 
 people among us — and they are not all immi- 
 grants in the slum districts or Negroes in the 
 poorer sections of the South — who do not know 
 what a napkin is, who think the proper way to 
 eat an egg is to hold it in the hand like a piece of 
 candy, and bite it, the egg having previously 
 been fried on both sides until it is as stiff and as 
 hard as a piece of bristol board, who would not 
 
 94 
 
TABLE MANNERS 96 
 
 recognize a salad if they saw one, and who have 
 never heard of after-dinner coflfee. 
 
 Very few of them are people of wealth, but an 
 astonishing number of successful business men 
 were born into such conditions. They had no 
 training in how to handle a knife and fork and 
 they probably never read a book of etiquette, but 
 they had one faculty, which is highly developed 
 in nearly every person who lifts himself above 
 the crowd, and that is observation. 
 
 In addition to this a young man is very fortu- 
 nate, especially if his way of hfe is cast among 
 people whose manners are different from those 
 to which he has been accustomed, if he has a 
 friend whom he can consult, not only about table 
 manners but about matters of graver import as 
 well. And he should not be embarrassed to ask 
 questions. The disgrace, if disgrace it could be 
 called, lies only in ignorance. 
 
 A number of years ago a young man who was 
 the prospective heir to a fortune — this charming 
 story is in Charles Dickens's wonderful novel, 
 "Great Expectations" — ^went up to London for 
 the express purpose of learning to be a gentle- 
 man. It fell about that almost as soon as he ar- 
 rived he was thrown into the company of a de- 
 lightful youth who had already attained the mi- 
 nor graces of polite society. Very much in earn- 
 
96 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 est about what he had set out to do, and blessed 
 besides with a goodish bit of common sense, he 
 explained his situation to Herbert, for that was 
 the other boy's name, mentioned the fact that he 
 had been brought up by a blacksmith in a coun- 
 try place, that he knew practically nothing of the 
 ways of politeness, and that he would take it as 
 a great kindness if Herbert would give him a 
 hint whenever he saw him at a loss or going 
 wrong. 
 
 " 'With pleasure,' said he, 'though I venture 
 to prophesy that you'll want very few hints.' " 
 
 They went in to dinner together, a regular 
 feast of a dinner it seemed to the ex-blacksmith's 
 apprentice, and after a while began to talk about 
 the benefactress who, they believed, had made it 
 possible. 
 
 " 'Let me introduce the topic,' began Her- 
 bert, who had been watching Pip's table manners 
 for some little time, 'by mentioning that in Lon- 
 don it is not the custom to put the knife in the 
 mouth — for fear of accidents — and that while 
 the fork is reserved for that use it is not put fur- 
 ther in than necessary. It is scarcely worth men- 
 tioning, only it's as well to do as other people do. 
 Also, the spoon is not generally used over-hand 
 but under. This has two advantages. You get 
 at your mouth better (which after all is the ob- 
 
TABLE MANNERS 97 
 
 ject), and you save a good deal of the attitude 
 of opening oysters on the part of the right el- 
 bow.' 
 
 "He ofiPered these suggestions (said Pip) in 
 such a lively way, that we both laughed and I 
 scarcely blushed." 
 
 The conversation and the dinner continued 
 and the friendship grew apace. Presently Her- 
 bert broke off to observe that "society as a body 
 does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious 
 in emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom up- 
 wards with the rim on one's nose." 
 
 "I had been doing this," Pip confessed, "in an 
 excess of attention to his recital. I thanked him, 
 and apologized. He said, 'Not at all,' and re- 
 svmied." 
 
 This was written many years ago but neither 
 in life nor in literature is there a more beautiful 
 example of perfect courtesy than that given by 
 Herbert Pocket when he took the blacksmith's 
 boy in hand and began his education in the art of 
 being a gentleman. Not only was he at perfect 
 ease himself but — and this is the important point 
 — ^he put the blacksmith's boy at ease. 
 
 It is worth remarking, by way of parenthesis, 
 that Herbert's father was a gentleman. "It is 
 a principle of his," declared the boy, "that no 
 man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever 
 
98 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 was, since the world began, a true gentleman in 
 manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain 
 of the wood ; and that the more varnish you put 
 on, the more the grain will express itself." 
 
 The American table service is not compli- 
 cated. Any intelligent person who knows the 
 points covered by Herbert Pocket, who knows 
 that one should not cut up all of his meat at the 
 same time but mouthful by mouthful as he needs 
 it, that it is not customary to butter a whole slice 
 of bread at once nor to plaster cheese over the en- 
 tire upper surface of a cracker, can by a dint of 
 watching how other people do it find his way 
 without embarrassment through even the most 
 elaborate array of table implements. The easi- 
 est way to acquire good table manners (or good 
 manners of any other kind, as far as that goes) 
 is to form the habit of observing how the people 
 who manage these things most gracefully go 
 about it. It is best to begin early. To use one 
 of David Harum's expressive maxims, "Ev'ry 
 hoss c'n do a thing better 'n' spryer if he's ben 
 broke to it as a colt." 
 
 Eating should be, and, as a matter of fact, is, 
 when one follows his usual custom, an uncon- 
 scious process like the mechanical part of read- 
 ing or writing. It is only when he is trying to be 
 a bit more formal or fastidious than is habitual 
 
TABLE MANNERS 99 
 
 with him that a man gets tangled, so to speak, in 
 the tines of his fork. 
 
 Cooking is one of the fine arts. Poets, paint- 
 ers, sculptors, musicians, and millionaires have al- 
 ways paid tribute to it as such — and so is dining. 
 Like a great many other arts it was first devel- 
 oped among royal circles, and there was a time 
 when the king resented the idea of a commoner 
 being able to dine with grace and elegance. Since 
 then it has become democratized, and now there 
 are no restrictions except those which a man 
 places about himself. And there is no earthly 
 (or heavenly) reason why a man should not eat 
 in the way which society has established as cor- 
 rect, and a good many reasons why he should. 
 
 Physicians — and this is the strongest argu- 
 ment we know — ^might advance their plea on the 
 grounds of good health. In this case we find, 
 as we do in a number of others, that what good 
 manners declares should be done is heartily en- 
 dorsed at the same time by good sense. It is 
 only among people of blunted sensibilities that 
 nice table manners count for nothing; for 
 
 There's no reproach among swine, d'you see. 
 For being a bit of a swine. 
 
 Among business men it is often perplexing to 
 know whom and when to invite. Generally 
 
100 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 speaking, the older man or the man with the su- 
 perior position takes the initiative, but there are 
 an infinite number of exceptions. Generally 
 speaking, also, the man who is resident in a place 
 entertains the one who is visiting, but there are 
 infinite exceptions to this as weU, especially in 
 the case of traveling salesman. AU courtesy is 
 mutual, and it is almost obligatory upon the 
 salesman who has been entertained to return the 
 courtesy in kind. Such invitations should be 
 tendered after a transaction is completed rather 
 than before. The burden of table coiu*tesy falls 
 upon the man who is selhng rather than the one 
 who is buying, probably because he is the one 
 to whom the obvious profit accrues. 
 
 Social affairs among the wives of business 
 men which grow out of the business relations of 
 their husbands follow the same rules as almost 
 any other social affairs. Nearly always it is the 
 wife of the man with the higher position who is- 
 sues the first invitation, and it is permissible for 
 her to invite a woman whom she does not know 
 personally if she is the wife of a business friend 
 of her husband. 
 
 The biggest hindrance to the establishment of 
 good manners among business men is the ever- 
 lasting hurry in which they (and all the rest of 
 us) live. There must first of all be leisure, not 
 
TABLE MANNERS 101 
 
 perhaps to the extent advocated by a delightful 
 literary gentleman of having three hours for 
 lunch every day, but time enough to sit down and 
 relax. Thousands of business men dash out to 
 lunch — bad manners are at their worst in the 
 middle of the day — as if they were stopping off 
 at a railroad junction with twenty minutes to 
 catch a train and had used ten of them checking 
 baggage. And they do not always do it because 
 they are in a hurry. They have so thoroughly 
 developed the habit of living in a frenzied rush 
 that even when they have time to spare they can- 
 not slow down. 
 
 Pleasant surroundings are desirable. It is 
 much easier to dine in a quiet spacious room 
 where the linen is white and the china is thin, the 
 silver is genuine silver, and the service is irre- 
 proachable, than in a crowded restaurant where 
 thick dishes rattle down on white-tiled tables 
 from the steaming arms of the flurried waitress, 
 where there is no linen, but only flimsy paper 
 napkins (which either go fluttering to the floor 
 or else form themselves into damp wads on the 
 table) , where the patrons eat ravenously and un- 
 tidily, and where the atmosphere is dense with 
 the fumes of soup and cigarettes. But luxury in 
 eating is expensive and most of us must, perforce, 
 go to the white-tiled places. And the art of din- 
 
102 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 ing is not a question of what one has to eat — it 
 may be beans or truffles — or where one eats it — 
 from a tin bucket or a mahogany table — it all 
 depends upon how; and the man who can eat in 
 a "hash-house," an "arm-chair joint," a "bean- 
 erie," a cafeteria, a three-minute doughnut 
 stand or any of the other quick-lunch places in as 
 mannerly a way as if he were dining in a hotel 
 de luxe has, we think, a pretty fair claim to the 
 title of gentleman. 
 
 The responsibility for a dinner lies with the 
 host. If his guest has had the same social train- 
 ing that he has or is accustomed to better things 
 he will have comparatively httle trouble. All he 
 can do is to give him the best within his means 
 without apology. We like to present ourselves 
 in the best possible hght (it is only human) and 
 for this reason often carry our friends to places 
 we cannot aflPord. This imposes upon them the 
 necessity of returning the dinner in kind, and 
 the vicious circle swings around, each person in 
 it grinding his teeth with rage but not able to 
 find his way out. Entertaining is all right so 
 long as it is a useful adjunct to business, but 
 when it becomes a burden in itself it is time to 
 call a halt. 
 
 Smoking during and immediately after a meal 
 is very pleasing to the man who likes tobacco, but 
 
TABLE MANNERS 103 
 
 if he has a guest (man or woman) who objects to 
 the smell of it he must wait until later. On the 
 other hand if his guest likes to smoke and he does 
 not he should insist upon his doing so. It is 
 a trifling thing but politeness consists largely 
 of yielding gracefully in trifles. 
 
 Old-fashioned gentlemen held it discourteous 
 to mention money at table, but in this degener- 
 ate age no subject is taboo except those that 
 would be taboo in any decent society. Obvi- 
 ously when men meet to talk over business they 
 cannot leave money out of the discussion. In a 
 number of firms the executives have lunch to- 
 gether, meeting in a group for perhaps the only 
 time during the day. It helps immeasurably to 
 coordinate effort, but it sometimes fails to make 
 the lunch hour the restful break in the middle of 
 the day which it should be. It is generally much 
 more fun and of much more benefit to swap fish 
 stories and hunting yarns than to go over the de- 
 tails of the work in the pubhcity department or 
 to formulate the plans for handling the Smith 
 and Smith proposition. Momentous questions 
 should be thrust aside until later, and the talk 
 should be — ^well, talkj not arguing, quarreling, 
 or scandal-mongering. The subject does not 
 greatly matter except that it should be some- 
 thing in which aU of the people at the table are 
 
104 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 interested. Whistler was once asked what he 
 would do if he were out at dinner and the conver- 
 sation turned to the Mexican War, and some one 
 asked him the date of a certain battle. "Do?" 
 he replied. "Why, I would refuse to associate 
 with people who could talk of such things at 
 dinner !" 
 
 Polite society has always placed a high value 
 on table manners, but it is only recently that they 
 have come to play so large a part in business. 
 Some one has said that you cannot mix business 
 and friendship. It would be nearer the truth 
 to say that you cannot separate them. More 
 and more it is becoming the habit to transact af- 
 fairs over the table, and a very pleasant thing it 
 is, too. Aside from the coziness and warmth 
 which comes from breaking bread together one is 
 free from the interruptions and noise of the of- 
 fice, and many a commercial acquaintance has 
 ripened into a friend and many a business con- 
 nection has been cemented into something 
 stronger through the genial influence of some- 
 thing good to eat and drink. It is, of course, a 
 mistake to depend too much upon one's social 
 gifts. They are very pleasant and helpful but 
 the work of the world is done in offices, not on 
 goK links or in dining rooms. We have little 
 patience with the man who sets his nose to the 
 
TABLE MANNERS lOS 
 
 grindstone and does not take it away until death 
 comes in between, but we have just as httle with 
 the man who has never touched the grindstone. 
 
 Stories go the rounds of executives who choose 
 their subordinates by asking them out to lunch 
 and watching the way they eat. One man al- 
 ways calls for celery and judges his applicant by 
 what he does with it. If he eats only the tender 
 parts the executive decides that he is extrava- 
 gant, at least with other people's money, but if 
 he eats the whole stalk, green leaves and all, he 
 feels sure that he has before him a man of econ- 
 omy, common sense, and good judgment! The 
 story does not say what happens when the young 
 man refuses celery altogether. Another uses 
 cherry pie as his standard and judges the young 
 man by what he does with the pits. There are 
 three ways to dispose of them. They may be 
 lowered from the mouth with the spoon, they 
 may be allowed to drop unaided, or they may be 
 swallowed. The last course is not recommended. 
 The first is the only one that will land a job. 
 But tests hke this work both ways and one is 
 rather inclined to congratulate the young men 
 who were turned down than those who were ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 All this aside, an employer does want to know 
 something about the table manners of an em- 
 
106 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 ployee who is to meet and dine with his custom- 
 ers. An excellent salesman may be able to con- 
 vince a man of good breeding and wide social 
 training if he tucks his napkin into his bosom, 
 drinks his soup with a noise, and eats his 
 meat with his knife, but the chances are against 
 it. 
 
 A man who is interested heart and soul in one 
 thing will think in terms of it, will have it con- 
 stantly in his mind and on the tip of his tongue. 
 But the man of one subject, whatever that sub- 
 ject may be, is a bore. It is right that a man 
 should live in his work, but he must also live out- 
 side of it. One of the most tragic chapters in 
 the history of American life is the one which 
 tells of the millions and millions of men who be- 
 came so immersed in business afpairs that they 
 lost sight of everything else. The four walls 
 of the narrow house which in the end closes 
 around us all could not more completely have 
 cut them off from the hght of day. It is a long 
 procession and it has not ended — that line of 
 men passing single file hke convicts down the 
 long gray vaults of business, business, business, 
 with never a thought for the stars or the moon 
 or books or trees or flowers or music or life or 
 love — ^nothing but what casts a shadow over 
 that dismal corridor. 
 
TABLE MANNERS 107 
 
 These are dead men with no thought 
 Of things that are not sold or bought. 
 
 * * * 
 
 In their bodies there is breath. 
 But their souls are steeped in death. 
 
 It is not a cheerful picture to contemplate 
 (and it seems a good long way away from table 
 manners), but the men who form it are more to 
 be pitied than blamed. They are blind. 
 
VI 
 TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 
 
 "If the outside of a place is not all right," 
 says a man who spends the greater part of his 
 time visiting business houses and talking with 
 business men, "the chances are that it is not 
 worth while to go inside." 
 
 There are three ways of getting inside: by 
 letter (which has a chapter to itself), by the 
 front door, and by telephone. And there are 
 more complaints against the telephone way than 
 either or both the others, which is perfectly 
 natural, since it is the most difficult to manage. 
 In the first place, it requires good behavior from 
 three people at the same time, and that is a 
 good deal to expect. Secondly, they cannot see 
 one another — ^they are like blind people talk- 
 ing together — and no one of them can do his 
 part unless the other two do theirs. In the 
 third place, the instrument is a lifeless thing, 
 and when something goes wrong with it it rouses 
 the helpless fury inspired by all inanimate ob- 
 
 108 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 109 
 
 jects which interfere with our comfort — hke 
 intermittent alarm clocks, collar buttons that 
 roll under the furniture, and flivvers that go 
 dead without reason in the middle of country 
 roads. In each case whatever one does has no 
 effect. The alarm clock continues to ring (un- 
 less one gets out of bed to shut it off, which is 
 worse than letting it ring), the coUar button re- 
 mains hid in the darkest part of the room, the 
 flivver remains stuck in the muddiest part of the 
 road, and the telephone is worst of all, for the 
 source of the trouble is usually several miles 
 away and there is no means of getting at it. 
 
 The telephone is a nuisance — no one denies 
 it — but it is a necessity also — no one denies that, 
 either — and one of the greatest conveniences! 
 in an age of great conveniences. Some of the 
 disagreeable features connected with it cannot 
 be done away with but must be accepted with as 
 much tranquihty as we can master, like the terri- 
 fic noise which an aeroplane makes or the trail of 
 smoke and cinders which a railway train leaves 
 behind. The one who is caUing, for instance, 
 cannot know that he is the tenth or eleventh 
 person who has called the man at the other end 
 of the wire in rapid succession, that his desk 
 is piled high with correspondence which must 
 be looked over, signed, and sent out before noon. 
 
no THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 that the advertising department is waiting for 
 him to O. K. their plans for a campaign which 
 should have been launched the week before, that 
 an important visitor is sitting in the hbrary grow- 
 ing more impatient every minute, and that his 
 temper has been filed down to the quick by an 
 assortment of petty worries. ( Of course, no of- 
 fice should be run like this, but it sometimes hap- 
 pens in the best of them. ) 
 
 Some one has said that we are all like islands 
 shouting at each other across a sea of misunder- 
 standing, and this was long before telephones 
 were thought of. It is hard enough to make 
 other people understand what we mean, even 
 with the help of facial expression and gestures, 
 and over the wire the difficulty is increased a 
 hundred fold. For telephoning rests upon a 
 delicate adjustment between human beings by 
 means of a mechanical apparatus, and it takes 
 clear thinking, patience, and courtesy to bring 
 it about. 
 
 The telephone company began its career some 
 few years ago unhampered by the traditions to 
 which the earlier corporations were slave, the 
 old "public be damned" idea. Their arbitrary 
 methods had brought them to grief, and the new 
 concern, with a commendable regard for the les- 
 sons taught by the experience of others, inaugu- 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 111 
 
 rated a policy of usefulness, service, and courtesy. 
 The inside history of the telephone is one of 
 constant watchfulness, careful management, and 
 continuous improvement; and every improve- 
 ment has meant better service to the public. 
 (We are not trying to advertise the telephone 
 company. We realize that it has been guilty, 
 Hke every other business, of manifold sins. ) 
 
 Even the fact that there is a telephone girl in- 
 stead of a telephone boy is due to the alertness 
 and good business sense of the company. To 
 put a boy before a switchboard and expect him 
 not to pull it apart to see how it was made; or 
 to place him in a position to entertain himself 
 by connecting the wrong parties and listening 
 to the impoUte names they called each other 
 and expect him not to do it, would be expecting 
 the laws of nature to reverse themselves. The 
 telephone company tried it — for a while. They 
 discovered, besides, that a boy will not "take" 
 what a girl will. It makes no difference what 
 goes wrong with a connection, the subscriber 
 blames the operator when many times the oper- 
 ator, especially the one he is talking to, has had 
 nothing to do with it. The girls have learned 
 to hold their tempers (not always, but most of 
 the time), but when boys had charge of the 
 switchboards and the man at the end of the wire 
 
112 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 yelled, "You cut me off!" and the youngster 
 had not, he denied it hotly: "You're a liar! I 
 didn't!" The subscriber would not stand for 
 this, angry words flew back and forth, and more 
 than once the indignant young operator located 
 the subscriber (not a very difficult thing for him 
 to do) and went around to settle things in per- 
 son. Words were not always the only weapons 
 used. 
 
 If this had continued the telephone would 
 never have become a public utility. People would 
 have looked upon it as an ingenious device but 
 not of universal practical value. As it is, good 
 salesmanship and efficient service first elevated 
 a plaything to a luxury and then reduced the 
 luxury to a necessity. And it was possible not 
 only because the mechanism itself is a miraculous 
 thing but because it has had back of it an intel- 
 ligent human organization working together 
 as a unit. 
 
 We say this deliberately, knowing that the 
 reader will think of the times when the trouble 
 he has had in getting the number he wanted has 
 made him think there was not a thimbleful of 
 intelhgence among all of the people associated 
 with the entire telephone company. But con- 
 sidering the body of employees as a whole the 
 standard of courteous and competent service is 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 113 
 
 extraordinarily high. The pubhc is impatient 
 and prone to remember bad connections instead 
 of good ones. It is ignorant also and has very 
 small conception of what a girl at central is 
 doing. And it is quick to blame her for faults 
 of its own. 
 
 One of the worst features of telephone ser- 
 vice is the fact that when one is angry or exas- 
 perated he seldom quarrels with the right person. 
 Some time ago a man was waked in the middle of 
 the night by the ringing of the telephone bell. 
 He got out of bed to answer it and discovered 
 that the man was trying to get another number. 
 He went back to bed and to sleep. The tele- 
 phone bell rang again, and again he got out of 
 bed to answer it. It was the same man trying 
 to get the same number. He went to bed and 
 back to sleep. The telephone bell rang the third 
 time, he got out of bed again and answered it 
 again and found that it was still the same man 
 trying to get the same number! "I wasn't very 
 polite the third time," he confessed when he told 
 about it. But the poor fellow at the other end 
 of the wire probably had just as touching a story 
 to tell, for unless it had been very important for 
 him to get the number he would hardly have 
 been so persistent. The girl at the switchboard 
 may have had a story of her own, but what it 
 
114 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 was is one of those things which, as Lord Dun- 
 dreary used to say, nobody can find out. 
 
 The girls who enter the service of the New 
 York Telephone Company (and the same thing 
 is true in the other branches of the telephone ser- 
 vice, especially in big cities where there are large 
 groups to work with) are carefully selected by 
 an employment bureau and sent to a school 
 where they are thoroughly grounded in the me- 
 chanical part of their work and the ideals for 
 which the company stands. They are not placed 
 on a regular switchboard until they have proved 
 themselves efficient on the dummy switchboard, 
 and then it is with instructions to be courteous 
 though the heavens fall (though they do not ex- 
 press it exactly that way) . "It is the best place 
 in the world to learn self-control," one of the 
 operators declares, and any one who has ever 
 watched them at work will add, "Concentration, 
 also." One of the most remarkable sights in 
 New York is a central exchange where a hun- 
 dred or more girls are working at lightning 
 speed, undisturbed by the low murmur around 
 them, intent only on the switchboard in front of 
 them, making something like five hundred con- 
 nections a minute. 
 
 They are a wonderfully level-headed group, 
 these telephone girls, wonderfully unlike their 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 115 
 
 clinging-vine Victorian grandmothers. They 
 do not know how to cling. If a man telephones 
 that he has been shot, the girl who receives the 
 call does not faint. She sends him a doctor in- 
 stead and takes the next call almost without the 
 loss of a second. If a woman wants a police- 
 man to get some burglars out of the house, she 
 sends her one; if some one telephones that a 
 house is burning, she calls out the fire depart- 
 ment — and goes straight on with her work. 
 Now and then something spectacular happens 
 to bring the splendid courage of the girls at the 
 switchboards to the attention of the public, such 
 as the magnificent service they gave from the ex- 
 change located a few feet from Wall Street on 
 the day of the explosion, but ordinarily it passes, 
 hke most of the other good things in life, without 
 comment. 
 
 The New York Telephone Company tries 
 to keep its girls healthy and happy. At reg- 
 ular intervals they are given rest periods. At- 
 tractive rooms are prepared for them, tastefully 
 furnished, weU-lighted, and filled with comfort- 
 able chairs, good books, and magazines. Sub- 
 stantial meals are supplied in the middle of the 
 day at a nominal charge. Special entertain- 
 ments are planned from time to time, and best 
 of all, the play time is kept absolutely distinct 
 
116 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 from the work time, a condition which makes 
 for happiness as well as usefulness. 
 
 The girls are not perfect, they are not infal- 
 lible. And they are only a third part of a tele- 
 phone call. They work under difficulties at a 
 task which is not an easy one, and their effi- 
 ciency does not rest with them alone but with the 
 people whom they serve as well. 
 
 A telephone call begins with the subscriber. 
 Very few people understand the intricate sys- 
 tem of cable and dynamos, vacuum tubes, coil 
 racks, storage batteries, transmitters and gener- 
 ators which enable them to talk from a distance, 
 and a good many could not understand them 
 even if they were explained. Fortunately it 
 is not necessary that they should. The sub- 
 scriber's part is very simple. 
 
 He should first make sure that he is calling 
 the right number. In New York City alone, 
 forty-eight thousand wrong numbers are asked 
 for every day by subscribers who have not con- 
 sulted the telephone directory first, or who have 
 unconsciously transposed the digits in a nimiber. 
 For example, a number such as 6454 can easily 
 be changed to 6544. The telephone directory is a 
 safe guide, much more so than an old letter or biU 
 head or an uncertain memory. Information may 
 be called if the number is not in the directory, but 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 117 
 
 one should be definite even with her. She can- 
 not supply the nvimber of Mr. What-you-may- 
 call-it or of Mr. Thing-um-a-bob or of Mr. Smith 
 who lives down near the railroad station, and she 
 cannot give the telephone number of a house 
 which has no telephone in it. She has no right 
 to answer irrelevant questions; is, in fact, pro- 
 hibited from doing so. Her business is to fur- 
 nish numbers and she cannot do it efficiently if 
 she is expected also to explain why a cat has 
 whiskers, how to preserve string beans by drying 
 them, what time it is, what time the train leaves 
 for Wakefield, or what kind of connection can be 
 made at Jones's Junction. 
 
 In calling a number the name of the exchange 
 should be given first. The number itself should 
 be called with a shght pause between the hun- 
 dreds and the tens, thus, "Watkins — pause — 
 five, nine — ^pause — ^hundred" for "Watkins 
 5900" or "Murray Hill — pause — four, two — 
 pause — six, three" for "Murray Hill 4263." 
 The reason for this is that the switchboard be- 
 fore which the operator sits is honeycombed 
 with tiny holes arranged in sections of one hun- 
 dred each. Each section is numbered and 
 each of the holes within it is the termination 
 of a subscriber's line. In locating "Watkins 
 5900" the girl first finds the section labelled "59" 
 
118 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 and then the "00" hole in that section, and if 
 the "59" is given first she has found it by the 
 time the subscriber has finished calling the num- 
 ber. 
 
 The number should be pronounced slowly and 
 distinctly. 
 
 When the operator repeats it the subscriber 
 should acknowledge it, and if she repeats it incor- 
 rectly, should stop her and give her the number 
 again. And he should always remember, how- 
 ever difiicult it may be to make her understand, 
 that he is talking to a girl, a human being, and 
 that the chances are ten to one that the poor 
 connection is not her fault. 
 
 To recall the operator in case the wrong per- 
 son is connected it is only necessary to move the 
 receiver hook slowly up and down. She may 
 not be able to attend to the recall at once but 
 jiggling the hook angrily up and down will not 
 get her any sooner. In fact, the more furious 
 the subscriber becomes the less the girl knows 
 about it, for the tiny signal light fails to register 
 except when the hook is moved slowly; or if the 
 switchboard is one where the operator is sig- 
 nalled by a little disk which falls over a blank 
 space the disk fails to move down but remains 
 quivering almost imperceptibly in its usual po- 
 sition. 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 119 
 
 After he has placed a call a man should wait 
 at the telephone or near it until the connection 
 is made. Too many men have a way of giving 
 their secretaries a number to send through and 
 then wandering off somewhere out of sight so 
 that when the person is finally connected he has 
 to wait several minutes while the secretary lo- 
 cates the man who started the call. It is the 
 acme of discourtesy to keep any one waiting in 
 this manner. It implies that your time is much 
 more valuable than his, which may be true, but 
 it is hardly gracious to shout it in so brazen a 
 fashion. 
 
 It has been estimated that in New York City 
 alone, more than a full business year is lost over 
 the telephone every day between sunrise and 
 sunset. There are 3,800,000 completed connec- 
 tions made every day. Out of each hundred, six 
 show a delay of a minute or more before the per- 
 son called answers. In each day this amounts to 
 a delay of 228,000 connections. Two hundred 
 and twenty-eight thousand minutes (and some- 
 times the delay amounts to much more than a 
 minute) is the equivalent of 475 days of eight 
 hours each, or as the gentleman who compiled 
 these interesting statistics has it, a business year 
 and a third with all the Sundays and holidays in- 
 tact. In the course of a year it amounts to more 
 
120 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 than all the business days that have elapsed 
 since Columbus discovered America ! 
 
 It may be argued that we would be better off 
 if we lost more than a year every day and did all 
 our work at more leisurely pace. This may be, 
 but the time to rest is not when the telephone bell 
 is ringing. 
 
 The telephone on a business man's desk should 
 always be facing him and it should not be tricked 
 out with any of the patent devices except those 
 sanctioned by the company. Most of them les- 
 sen instead of increase efficiency. A woman 
 in her home where calls are infrequent may hide 
 her telephone behind a lacquered screen or cover 
 it with pink taffeta ruffles, but in a business of- 
 fice it is best to make no attempts to beautify it. 
 It is when it is unadorned that the ugly little 
 instrument gives its best service. 
 
 There should always be a pad and pencil at 
 hand so that the message (if there is one) can 
 be taken down without delay. The person at 
 the other end probably has not time (and cer- 
 tainly has not inclination) to wait until you have 
 fumbled through the papers on your desk and 
 the rubbish in the drawers to locate something 
 to write on and something to write with. 
 
 "Hello" is a useless and obsolescent form of 
 response in business offices. The name of the 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 121 
 
 firm, of the department, or of the man himself, or 
 of all three, according to circumstances, should be 
 given. When there is a private operator to take 
 care of the calls she answers with the name of 
 the firm. Blank and Blank. If the person at 
 the other end of the wire says, "I want the Ad- 
 vertising department," she connects them and 
 the man there answers with "Advertising de- 
 partment." The other then may ask for the man- 
 ager, in which case the manager answers with his 
 name. It is easy to grow impatient under all 
 these relays, but a complicated connection in- 
 volving half a dozen people before the right one 
 is reached can be accomplished in less than a 
 minute if each person sends it straight through 
 without stopping to exchange a number of "Hel- 
 loes" like a group of Swiss yodelers, or to ask 
 a lot of unnecessary questions. 
 
 It is not necessary to scream over the tele- 
 phone. The mouth should be held close to the 
 transmitter and the words should be spoken 
 carefully. In an open office where there are 
 no partitions between the desks one should take 
 especial pains to keep his voice modulated. One 
 person angrily spluttering over the telephone 
 can paralyze the work of all the people within 
 a radius of fifty feet. If it were a necessary evil 
 we could make ourselves grow accustomed to 
 
122 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 it. But it is not. And there is already enough 
 unavoidable wear and tear during the course of 
 a business day without adding this. 
 
 "Hello, what do you want?" is no way to 
 answer a call. No decent person would speak 
 even to a beggar at his door in this way and the 
 visitor over the telephone, whoever he is, is en- 
 titled to a cordial greeting. The voice with the 
 smile wins. 
 
 An amusing story is told of a man in Wash- 
 ington who was waked one evening about eleven 
 o'clock by the telephone bell. At first he swore 
 that he would not answer it but his wife insisted 
 that it might be something very important, and 
 finally, outraged and angry, he blundered 
 through the dark across the room and into the 
 hall, jerked down the receiver and yelled, 
 "Hello I" His wife, who was listening tensely 
 for whatever ill news might be forthcoming, was 
 perfectly amazed to hear him saying in the next 
 breath, in the most dulcet tones he had ever used, 
 "Oh, how do you do, I'm so glad you called. 
 Oh, delightful. Charmed. I'm sure she will 
 be, too. Thank you. Yes, indeed. So good 
 of you. Good-bye" It was the wife of the 
 President of the United States asking him and 
 his wife to dinner at the White House. 
 
 If the person calling is given the wrong de- 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 123 
 
 partment he should be courteously transferred to 
 the right one. Courteously, and not with a 
 brusque, "You've got the wrong party" or "I'm 
 not the man you want" but with "Just a minute, 
 please, and I'll give you Mr. Miller." 
 
 The time when people are rudest over the tele- 
 phone is when some one breaks in on the wire. 
 It might be just as well to remember that people 
 do not interrupt intentionally, and the intruder is 
 probably as disconcerted as the man he has in- 
 terrupted. If he had inadvertently opened the 
 wrong door in a business office the man inside 
 would not have yelled, "Get out of here," but 
 over the telephone he will shriek, "Get off the 
 wire" in a tone he would hardly use to drive the 
 cow out of a cabbage patch. 
 
 In an effort to secure better manners among 
 their subscribers the telephone company has 
 asked them to try to visuahze the person at the 
 other end of the wire and to imagine that they 
 are talking face to face. Many times a man 
 will say things over the telephone — rude, pro- 
 fane, angry, insulting things, which he would not 
 dream of saying if he were actually before the 
 man he is talking to. And to make it worse he 
 is often so angry that he does not give the other 
 a chance to explain his side of it, at least not un- 
 til he has said all that he has to say, and even then 
 
124 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 he not infrequently slams the receiver down on 
 the hook as soon as he has finished ! 
 
 Listening on a wire passes over from the field 
 of courtesy into that of ethics. On party lines 
 in the country it is not considered a heinous of- 
 fense to eavesdrop over the telephone, but the 
 conversation there is for the most part harmless 
 neighborhood gossip and it does not matter 
 greatly who hears it. In business it is dififerent. 
 But it is practically impossible for any one ex- 
 cept the operator to overhear a conversation ex- 
 cept by accident, and it is a misdemeanor pun- 
 ishable by law for her to give a message to 
 any one other than the person for whom it was 
 intended. 
 
 In every office there should be a large enough 
 mechanical equipment manned by an efficient 
 staff to take care of the telephone traffic without 
 delay. "The hne is busy" given in answer to a 
 call three or four times will send the person who 
 is caUing to some other place to have his wants 
 looked after. 
 
 Few places appreciate the tremendous volmne 
 of business that comes in by way of telephone or 
 the possibilities which it offers to increase busi- 
 ness opportunities. They are as short-sighted 
 as the department store which, a good many years 
 ago, when telephones were new, had them in- 
 
TELEPHONES AND FEONT DOORS 126 
 
 stalled but took them out after a few weeks be- 
 cause the clerks were kept so busy taking orders 
 over them that they did not have time to attend 
 to the customers who came into the store ! 
 
 Another important vantage point which, like 
 the telephone, suffers from neglect is the recep- 
 tion desk. MiUions of dollars' worth of busi- 
 ness is lost every year and perfect sandstorms 
 and cyclones of animosity are generated because 
 business men have not yet learned the great 
 value of having the right kind of person to re- 
 ceive visitors. To the strangers who come — and 
 among the idlers and swindlers and beggars who 
 assail every successful business house are poten- 
 tial good friends and customers — this person 
 represents the firm, — is, for the time being, the 
 firm itself. 
 
 It is very childish for a man to turn away from 
 a reception desk because he does not like the man- 
 ner of the person behind it, but business men, sen- 
 sible ones at that, do it every day. Pleasant con- 
 nections of years' standing are sometimes broken 
 off and valuable business propositions are carried 
 to rival concerns because of indifferent or insolent 
 treatment at the front door. Only a short time 
 ago an advertising agency lost a contract for 
 which it had been working two years on account 
 of the way the girl at the door received the man 
 
126 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 who came to place it. He dropped in without 
 previous appointment and was met by a blonde 
 young lady with highly tinted cheeks who tilted 
 herself forward on the heels of her French pumps 
 and pertly inquired what he wanted. He told 
 her. "Mr. Hunt isn't in." "When will he be 
 back?" "I don't know," and she swung around 
 on the impossible heels. The man deliberated 
 a moment and then swung around on his heels 
 (which were very flat and sensible) and carried 
 the contract to another agency. Instances of 
 this kind might be multiplied. Some business 
 men would have persisted until they got what 
 they wanted from the young lady. Others would 
 have angrily reported her to the head of her of- 
 fice, but the majority would have acted as this 
 man did. 
 
 Most men (and women), whether they are in 
 business or not, do not underestimate their own 
 importance and they like to feel that the rest of 
 the world does not either. They do not like to 
 be kept waiting; they hke to be received with 
 a nice deference, not haughtily; they do not like 
 to be sent to the wrong department; and they 
 love (and so do we all) talking to important peo- 
 ple. Realizing this, banks and trust companies 
 and other big organizations have had to appoint 
 nearly as many vice-presidents as there were 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 127 
 
 second-lieutenants during the war to take care 
 of their self-important visitors. Even those 
 whose time is not worth ten cents (a number of 
 them are women) like to be treated as if it were 
 worth a great deal. It is, for the most part, an 
 innocent desire which does no one any special 
 harm, and any business that sets out to serve 
 the public (and there is no other kind) has to 
 take into account all the caprices of human van- 
 ity. We cannot get away from it. Benjamin 
 Franklin placed humility among the virtues he 
 wished to cultivate, but after a time declared it 
 impossible. "For," he said, "if I overcame pride 
 I would be proud of my humiUty." 
 
 Courtesy is the first requirement of the busi- 
 ness host or hostess and after that, intelligence. 
 Some business houses make the mistake of put- 
 ting back of the reception desk a girl who has 
 proved herself too dull-witted to serve anywhere 
 else. The smiling idiot with which this country 
 (and others) so abounds may be harmless and 
 even useful if she is kept busy behind the lines, 
 but, placed out where she is a buffer between the 
 house and the outside world, she is a positive af- 
 fliction. She may be pleasant enough, but the 
 caller who comes for information and can get 
 nothing but a smile will go away feeling about as 
 cheerful as if he had stuck his hand into a jar of 
 
128 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 honey when he was a mile or so away from soap, 
 water, and towel. 
 
 A litter of office boys sprawling untidily over 
 the desks and chairs in the reception room is as 
 bad, and a snappy young lady of the "Now see 
 here, kid" variety is worse. 
 
 The position is not an easy one, especially in 
 places where there is a constant influx of miscel- 
 laneous callers, and it is hardly fair to ask a 
 young girl to fiU it. In England they use elderly 
 men and in a number of ofiices over here, too. 
 Their age and manner automatically protect 
 them (and incidentally their firms) from many 
 undesirables that a boy or girl in the same posi- 
 tion would have considerable difficulty in hand- 
 ling. And they lend the place an air of dignity 
 and reserve quite impossible with a youngster. 
 
 In some offices, especially in those where large 
 amounts of money are stored or handled, there 
 are door men in uniform and often plain clothes 
 huskies near the entrances to protect the people 
 (and the money) on the inside from cranks and 
 crooks and criminals. In others, a physician's 
 office, for instance, or any small office where the 
 people who are likely to come are of the gentler 
 sort, a young girl with a pleasing manner wiU do 
 just as well as and perhaps better than any one 
 else. In big companies where there are many de- 
 
TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 129 
 
 partments, it is customary to maintain a regular 
 bureau of information to which the caller who is 
 not sure whom or what he wants is first directed, 
 but the majority of businesses have only one per- 
 son who is delegated to receive the people who 
 come and either direct them to the person they 
 want to see or turn them aside. 
 
 Most of them must be turned aside. If the 
 stage managers in New York interviewed all the 
 girls who want to see them, they would have no 
 time left for anything else, and the same thing is 
 true of nearly every man who is prominent in 
 business or in some other way. (Charlie Chap- 
 lin received 73,000 letters during the first three 
 days he was in England. Suppose he had per- 
 sonally read each of them!) Hundreds of peo- 
 ple must be turned away, but every person who 
 approaches a firm either to get something from 
 it or to give something to it has a right to atten- 
 tion. Men are in business to work, not to enter- 
 tain, and they must protect themselves. But the 
 people who are turned away must be turned 
 away courteously, and the business house which 
 has found some one who can do it has cause to 
 rise and give thanks. 
 
VII 
 TRAVELING AND SELLING 
 
 The etiquette of traveling includes very few 
 points not covered by the general laws of good 
 behavior. Keeping one's place in line before the 
 ticket window, having money ready and moving 
 aside as quickly as possible instead of lingering 
 to converse with the ticket-seller about train 
 schedules and divers other interesting subjects 
 are primary rules. It is permissible to make 
 sure that the train is the right one before getting 
 on it, but it is unnecessary to do it more than half 
 a dozen times. When the sign over the gate 
 says "Train for Bellevue" it probably is the 
 train for Bellevue, and when the guard at the 
 gate repeats that it is the train for Bellevue the 
 chances are that he is telhng the truth. 
 
 An experienced traveler usually carries very 
 little baggage. A lot of suitcases and grips are 
 bothersome, not only to the one who has charge 
 of them, but also to those who are cramped into 
 small quarters because of them. A traveler 
 may make himself as comfortable as he hkes s(i 
 
 130 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 131 
 
 long as it is not at the expense of the other pas- 
 sengers. If they object to an open window the 
 window must stay down. Lounging over a seat 
 is bad form, especially if there is some one else in 
 it. So is prowling from one end of the car to 
 the other. Besides, it makes some people ner- 
 vous. Snoring is impolite and so is talking in 
 one's sleep, but they are beyond remedy. Talk- 
 ing with the person in the berth above or below is 
 not, however, and is much more disturbing than 
 the noise of the train. Forgetting the number 
 of one's berth and blundering into the wrong 
 place is a serious breach of good manners in a 
 sleeping car, and it is extremely severe on timid 
 persons who have gone to bed with visions before 
 their minds of the man who was murdered in 
 lower ten and the woman who brought her hus- 
 band's corpse from Florida in the same berth 
 with her. 
 
 Among men, "picking up" acquaintances on a 
 train or boat is allowable if it comes about in a 
 natural way, but there are men who object to it. 
 Many business men do not discontinue their 
 work because they are traveling. Portable 
 typewriters, secretaries, the telegraph and other 
 means of swift communication have made it pos- 
 sible for them to accomplish almost as much as 
 if they were in the oflSce back home. Such men 
 
132 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 do not like to be interrupted, and if a garrulous 
 or an intrusive person approaches it is within the 
 bounds of courtesy to turn him aside. Gener- 
 ally, however, there is a comradery of the road, 
 a sort of good fellowship among voyagers which 
 lets down ordinary bars, and the men who like 
 to rest as they travel find it highly diverting and 
 interesting to talk with other men from various 
 parts of the country. This holds true in hotels,- 
 especially in the commercial hotels, where trav- 
 ehng men foregather to meet their customers 
 and transact their business, and in hotels in small 
 places where the possibihties for amusement are 
 limited and the people have to depend on one 
 another for entertainment. But there are limits. 
 No man should ever thrust himself upon another 
 and it is almost an iron clad rule that he should 
 never "pick up" women acquaintances when 
 traveUng. It is permissible to talk with them, 
 but not to annoy them with personal attentions 
 nor to place them under obligation by paying 
 their bills. If a man and a woman who are travel- 
 ing on the same train fall into conversation and 
 go into the dining car together, each one should 
 pay his or her own check, or if he insists upon 
 paying at the table she should insist upon set- 
 tling afterwards. In hotels also this is essen- 
 tially true. 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 133 
 
 Hotels are judged more by the people who 
 come to them than by anything else. The guests 
 indicate the quality of the service, and for this 
 reason, most hotels prefer that they be gentle- 
 men. There is an atmosphere about a first-class 
 hotel that frightens away second-rate people. 
 Most places have standards and many a man has 
 been turned away even when there was an empty 
 room because the management did not like his 
 looks. 
 
 Tipping is one of the most vexatious petty 
 problems with which a traveler is confronted. 
 It is an undemocratic custom which every sensi- 
 ble man deplores but sees no way around. 
 Waiters, porters, and other functionaries who 
 are in positions to receive tips draw very small 
 salaries, if any. They depend upon the gener- 
 osity of the public they serve. The system may 
 be all wrong (we believe it is) but it means 
 bread and butter to those who live by it, and it is 
 only just, as matters are now arranged, for the 
 traveler to pay. It is foolish to tip extrava- 
 gantly or to tip every pirate who performs even 
 the most trifling service, but a smaU fee, espe- 
 cially if the service has been good, is a courtesy 
 not to be forgotten. 
 
 Tipping originally grew out of kindness. The 
 knight who had received special attention at the 
 
134 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 hands of his squire expressed his gratitude by a 
 special reward. The word "gratuity" itself in- 
 dicates that the little gift was once simply a 
 spontaneous act of thoughtfulness. It has de- 
 generated into a perfunctory habit, but it should 
 not be so. Excellent service deserves a recom- 
 pense just as shp-shod service does not. And 
 no one has a right to spoil a waiter (or any one 
 else) by tipping him for inefficient work. In 
 hotels and restaurants the standard fee is ten 
 per cent, of the bill. 
 
 Regular travelling of any kind even imder 
 favorable circumstances is a great wear and tear 
 on the disposition. Commuters who go in and 
 out of town every day are a notoriously hag- 
 ridden lot, and the men who go on the road are 
 not much better. But there is one enormous dif- 
 ference. It is the privilege of the commuter to 
 growl as much as he likes about the discomforts 
 of the road and the stupidity of the men who 
 make up the time tables, but travelUng men — ^we 
 are speaking of salesmen especially — can never 
 indulge in the luxury of a grouch. One of the 
 biggest parts of his job is to keep cheerful all 
 the time and that in itself is no small task. (Try 
 it and see.) A farmer can wear a frown as 
 heavy as a summer thunder cloud and the pota- 
 toes will grow just the same; a mechanic can 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 135 
 
 swear at the automobile he is putting into shape 
 (a very impolite thing to do even when there is 
 no one but the machine to hear) , and the bolts 
 and screws will hold just as fast; a lawyer can 
 knit his brows over his brief case and come to his 
 solution just as quickly as if he sat grinning at 
 it, but the salesman must smile, smile, smile. The 
 season may be dvdl, the crops may be bad, there 
 may be strikes, lockouts, depressions and defla- 
 tions, unemployment — ^it makes no difference — 
 he must keep cheerful. It is the covirtesy of 
 salesmanship, and it is this quality more than any 
 other that makes selling a young man's job — 
 we do not mean in years, but in spirit — an old 
 one could not stand it. 
 
 In the good old days when the country was 
 young and everybody, from all accounts we can 
 gather, was happy, salesmen in the present sense 
 of the term were almost vmknown. There were 
 peddlers, characters as picturesque as gipsies, who 
 travelled about the country preying chiefly on 
 the farmers. Often they spent the night — ^hotel 
 accommodations were few and houses were far 
 apart — and entertained the family with lively 
 tales of life on the road. Next morning they 
 gave the children trifling presents, swindled the 
 farmer out of several dollars and made them- 
 selves generally agreeable. The farmer took it 
 
136 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 all in good part and looked forward with pleas- 
 ure to the next visit. The peddlers came in pairs 
 then, like snakes, but they were for the most part 
 welcome and there was genuine regret when they 
 became things of the past like top-buggies and 
 Prince Albert coats. 
 
 After the peddler came the drummer, a rough, 
 noisy chap, as his name indicates, harmless 
 enough, but economically not much more signifi- 
 cant than the peddler. He stayed in the business 
 district where he was tolerated with good-natured 
 indulgence. He was less objectionable than the 
 man who followed him, the agent. He was (and 
 is) a house-to-house and office-to-ofSce canvasser 
 and a general nuisance. He sold everything 
 from books to life insurance, from patent potato 
 peelers to opera glasses. He still survives, but 
 not in large numbers, for his work, like that of 
 the peddler and the drummer, has been swal- 
 lowed up by the salesman. 
 
 The rewards which modern salesmanship holds 
 out to those who succeed at it are so large that 
 the field has attracted all kinds of men, highly 
 efficient ones who love the game for its own sake, 
 grossly incompetent ones who, having failed at 
 something else, have decided to try this, and ad- 
 venturers who beheve they see in it a chance to 
 get rich quick. The teachers of salesmanship 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 137 
 
 tell us that we are all selling something, even 
 when there is no visible product. The worker, 
 according to them, is selling his services just as 
 the salesman is selling goods. It may be true, 
 but we all could not (and it is a blessing) go out 
 and sell things in the ordinary sense in which we 
 use the word. Some of us have to be producers. 
 But the salesman's work is important. We do 
 not discredit it. 
 
 Salesmanship is built on faith. A man must 
 believe in his product and then must make other 
 people believe in it as firmly as he does. So de- 
 voted are some salesmen to their work that it is 
 difficult to tell whether they consider their call- 
 ing a trade, a profession, a science, or a rehgion. 
 Sometimes it is all four. Sometimes it goes be- 
 yond them and becomes a kind of mesmerism in 
 which the salesman uses a sort of hypnotic pro- 
 cess (which is simply the result of being over- 
 anxious to sell) to persuade the prospect that he 
 cannot wait another day before buying the par- 
 ticular article that the salesman is distributing. 
 The article may be stocks and bonds, wash cloths, 
 soap, or hair nets. It makes no difference, but 
 he must be filled with enthusiasm and must be 
 able to pass it along. And this very virtue which 
 is the foundation of successful salesmanship is 
 likely to lead the salesman into gross rudeness. 
 
138 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 For the man who is seUing is so eager and so 
 earnest that he forgets that the man who is buy- 
 ing may have his own ideas on the subject. 
 
 The first step in salesmanship is to acquire a 
 thorough knowledge of the product. The next 
 is to gain access to the man who is to buy it. This 
 is not always easy. Business men have been 
 annoyed so much by agents that they have had to 
 erect barriers, in many instances almost im- 
 penetrable ones. It is especially difficult in big 
 cities where the pressure is heavy, but most worth 
 whUe business men have learned the value of 
 contact with the world outside and are willing to 
 give almost any man an interview if he can show 
 a valid reason why he should have it. Whether 
 he gets a second interview or not depends upon 
 how he handled the first one. 
 
 There are may ways of getting into an office. 
 A salesman usually stands a much better chance 
 if he writes ahead for an appointment. It is 
 much more courteous to ask a man when he 
 wants to see you than to drop in on him casually 
 and trust to luck that the time is not inoppor- 
 tune. Some salesmen are afraid to write be- 
 cause they think the knowledge of what they 
 have to sell will prejudice the prospect against 
 it. At the same time they feel that if they can 
 only get a chance to talk to him a few minutes 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 139 
 
 they can over-ride the prejudice. A salesman 
 may come into an office without letting the man 
 know what his purpose is (though it is best to 
 begin with cards on the table) but he will not 
 come in (unless he is a crook) under false pre- 
 tenses. 
 
 The friends of a salesman can sometimes be 
 very useful to him in presenting him to valuable 
 prospects, and when they feel that the meeting 
 wiU result in mutual benefit they are glad to do 
 it. Sometimes the friend will give a letter or 
 a card of introduction. Sometimes he will tele- 
 phone or speak for an appointment. It is best 
 when these come unsolicited, though it is permis- 
 sible to ask for them. No man should depend 
 upon the help of his friends. A salesman should 
 be able to stand on his own feet, and if he and his 
 product together do not form a strong enough 
 combination to break down all obstructions there 
 is something wrong with one or the other of 
 them. 
 
 The best card of admission at the door of a 
 business ofiice is a pleasing personal appearance 
 coupled with a calm and assured manner. This 
 is a universal standard of measuring a man's 
 character and calibre. Until we have heard him 
 speak we judge him by the way he looks. It is 
 a dangerous practice, as the proverb warns us, 
 
140 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 but the percentage of hits is high enough to make 
 us continue to use it. 
 
 A favorite device with a certain cheap type of 
 salesman is to give his name to the girl at the en- 
 trance desk and ask her to tell Mr. Brown that 
 Mr. Green has sent Mr. Smith to call. The Mr. 
 Green is entirely fictitious, but since Mr. Brown 
 has several business acquaintances of that name, 
 he interrupts his work and comes out to see Mr. 
 Smith and discovers that he is a life insiirance 
 agent who thinks that if he can once get inside 
 he can "put it across." Most business men have 
 no use for such practices and rarely allow the 
 salesmen who employ them to stay in their offices 
 any longer than it takes to get them out. Be- 
 sides, the salesman places himself under a handi- 
 cap to begin with. He will find it pretty hard 
 to convince the man in the ofiice that he is not 
 dishonest about his goods just as he is about him- 
 self. He is the greatest enemy of his profession. 
 And he makes the work of every one else en- 
 gaged in it infinitely harder. It is something 
 every business and profession has to fight against 
 — the dishonest grafter who is using it as a means 
 of swindling society. 
 
 Most salesmen give their names at the en- 
 trance desk instead of presenting their cards. 
 Psychologists and experience have taught them 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 141 
 
 that the card is distracting and that even if the 
 interview is granted it is harder to get the atten- 
 tion of the other man if he has a card to twiddle 
 between his fingers. It is more conventional to 
 send in a card (a good card is a letter of intro- 
 duction in itself) but if the salesman finds it a 
 handicap, however slight, he should by all means 
 dispense with it. If the card is cheap or flashy 
 or offensive in any way it arouses prejudice 
 against the man who bears it before he has had a 
 chance to present his case in person. The busi- 
 ness card may be the same as the personal card, 
 simply a bit of pasteboard bearing the name and 
 perhaps the address, or it may be larger than the 
 ordinary personal card and bear the name of the 
 firm for which the salesman is working, and in 
 addition, if it is a very simple design, the trade- 
 mark of the firm. 
 
 Whether to rise when a caller enters and shake 
 hands is a question to be settled by each person 
 according to the way he likes best. It is cer- 
 tainly more gracious to rise and ask him to be 
 seated before resuming one's own place. But 
 promiscuous handshaking is an American habit 
 which Europeans as a rule frown upon and in 
 which a number of Americans do not indulge, 
 for they like the grasp of their hand to mean 
 something more than a careless greeting and 
 
142 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 reserve it for their friends. In any case, the 
 caller should not be the first to extend his 
 hand. 
 
 If a man is accustomed to see a great number 
 of people he will find it too much of a strain on 
 his vitahty to shake hands with them all. Roose- 
 velt used to surprise strangers with the laxness 
 of his grasp, but the Colonel had learned to con- 
 serve his strength in small things so that he 
 might give it to great ones. The President of 
 the United States has more than once in the 
 course of the history of our country come to the 
 end of the day with his hands bleeding from the 
 number of times people have pressed it during 
 the day. Now the President ought to be will- 
 ing to give his life for his country, but he ought 
 not to be required to give it in this way. It 
 probably meant a great deal to each one of the 
 people in the throng to be able to say, "I once 
 shook hands with the President," but how much 
 more it would have meant if each one of them 
 could have said, "One day I helped my Presi- 
 dent," even if the help was so small an act of 
 thoughtfulness as forbearing to shake his hand. 
 
 But to get back to salesmen: Some of them 
 have a way, especially the over-zealous ones, of 
 getting as close to the prospect as is physically 
 possible. They place their papers or their brief 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 14,3 
 
 cases on the desk before which the prospect is 
 sitting, hitch their chairs up as close as they can, 
 and talk with their breath in his face. No one 
 hkes this and it is only a rude and thoughtless 
 salesman who is guilty of it. One man who had 
 been vexed by it over and over again had the 
 visitor's chair nailed to the floor in his ofiice 
 some little distance from his own. And he 
 never had a caller who didn't try to move it 
 nearer to him ! 
 
 For years it has been the habit for business 
 men to receive their callers at their desks, but 
 lately there has been a turning away from this. 
 The desk is usually littered with papers and let- 
 ters which the caller can hardly help reading, and 
 there are constant interruptions from the tele- 
 phone and the other members of the office. For 
 these reasons a number of business men are going 
 out to see their callers instead of bringing them 
 in to see them, a practice which is much more cor- 
 dial than the other if one can afford the time for 
 it. One big business house abolished its large 
 reception room and built in a number of smaller 
 ones instead. In this way each visitor has pri- 
 vacy and there is a feeling of hospitality and 
 coziness about the little room which the bigger 
 one failed to give. Each room was fitted up 
 with comfortable chairs, books, and magazines so 
 
144 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 that if the caller had to wait he would have the 
 means of entertaining himself. 
 
 Once a man agrees to see a salesman or other 
 visitor he should give, in so far as it is possible, 
 his full attention to him. It is better to refuse an 
 audience altogether than to give it grudgingly. 
 A prominent man cannot possibly see all of the 
 people, salesmen and whatnot, who want to talk 
 with him or he would have no time left to keep 
 himself prominent. A busy man has to protect 
 himself against the cranks and idlers who try to 
 gain access to him, and most men have to have 
 devices by which they can rid themselves of ob- 
 jectionable or tiresome callers. One man who 
 has a constant stream of visitors has only one 
 chair in his office, and he sits in it. Another 
 never allows a visitor to enter his office, but goes 
 to the outer reception room and stands while he 
 talks. One man stands up as a signal that the 
 interview is at an end. Another begins to fum- 
 ble with the papers on his desk, and the salesman 
 does not live who is not familiar with the man 
 who must hurry out to lunch or who has only five 
 minutes to catch a train. One man has his secre- 
 tary or his office boy interrupt him after a visitor 
 has been in as much as ten minutes, to tell him 
 that Mr. So-and-So is waiting outside. Another 
 rises to his feet and walks slowly toward the 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 145 
 
 door, the salesman following, until he has maneu- 
 vered him out. If the salesman is a man of sense 
 none of these devices will be necessary. He knows 
 that a courteous and prompt departure helps his 
 cause much more than an annoying persistence, 
 and the man who stays after his prospect's mind 
 has lost every interest except to get him out of 
 the way is lacking in one of the fundamentals of 
 social good manners as well as business good 
 manners. Rarely, perhaps never, does he suc- 
 ceed. For the successful salesman is the one 
 who can put himself into his prospect's place and 
 let him know that he has made a study of his 
 needs and is there to help him. 
 
 Carefully prepared approaches and memo- 
 rized speeches are worth much to the beginner, 
 but an agility in adapting himself is much 
 more important. Ludendorff failed to get to 
 Paris because his original plan was upset and he 
 could not think quickly enough to rally the Ger- 
 man army and attack from a different angle. 
 Most salesmen have to talk to men who are con- 
 tinually interrupted to attend to something else. 
 And most business men know what they want, or 
 think they do, and when they ask a direct ques- 
 tion they want a direct answer. Many a young 
 salesman has ruined himself so far as his career 
 was concerned because he went out with instruc- 
 
146 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 tions to keep the interview in his hands and every 
 time the man he was "selling" asked a question 
 he passed airily over it and kept stubbornly on 
 the road he had mapped out for himself. The 
 salesman cannot think in theoretical terms; he 
 must think concretely and from the point of view 
 of the man he is trying to convince. As one very 
 excellent salesman has put it, he must get the 
 prospect's own story and tell it to him in differ- 
 ent words, and if he can actually show him a way 
 to decrease expenses or to increase output he 
 will win not only his attention, but his heart as 
 well. 
 
 The salesman must be absorbed in his com- 
 modity, but not to the exclusion of the man he is 
 trying to "sell." A beginner of this type went 
 into a man's office some time ago and rattled off 
 a speech he had memorized about some charts. 
 The man listened until he came to the end — ^the 
 boy was talking so rapidly and excitedly that it 
 would have been hard to interrupt him except by 
 shouting at him — and then quietly told him that 
 he had not been able to understand a word of 
 what he had said. "You have not been talking 
 to me," he explained. "You have been talking 
 at me." 
 
 Another salesman of the same general kind 
 went into the office of a busy lawyer one morn- 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 147 
 
 ing recently in a building which happened to be 
 owned by the lawyer. 
 
 "I am going to give you some books," he an- 
 nounced. 
 
 The lawyer asked him what they were, but the 
 salesman refused to be diverted before he had 
 led up to the dramatic moment in his carefully 
 planned speech at which he thought it best to 
 mention the name of the books. He went through 
 the whole of his canvass and then thrust a paper 
 under the lawyer's face with "Sign here" above 
 the dotted line. 
 
 "I thought you were going to give them to 
 me," the lawyer said. 
 
 The salesman began to explain that of course 
 he could not give him the books outright and so 
 on and on and on — everybody has heard this part 
 of his speech. The lawyer laughed and the sales- 
 man lost his temper. Very angry, he started out 
 of the room. Near the door which opened into 
 the hall was another door which opened into a 
 closet that contained a shelf which was a little 
 more than five feet high. The salesman opened 
 this door by mistake and struck his head smartly 
 against the shelf. This made him angrier than 
 ever. He jerked the other door open and 
 slammed it behind him with a crash that nearly 
 broke the glass out. This was more than the 
 
148 THE 'BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 lawyer could stand. He sprang up and started 
 in pursuit of the salesman, who by this time was 
 on his way into another office in the same build- 
 ing. The lawyer asked him where he was going. 
 The salesman told him. 
 
 "Not in my building," the lawyer said. "I 
 can't have the men who have offices here dis- 
 turbed by people who act like this. Now go on," 
 he added kindly but firmly, "and let's forget that 
 you ever came here." 
 
 And the salesman went. 
 
 Salesmanship is service, and the man who per- 
 suades another to buy something he knows he 
 does not want, does not need, and cannot use, is 
 a scoundrel. "Good salesmanship," and this is 
 the only sort that any self-respecting man will 
 engage in, "is selling goods that won't come 
 back to customers that will." It is cumulative 
 in its effect, and the man who sells another some- 
 thing that really fills a want wins his eternal 
 gratitude and friendship. He tells his friends 
 about it, they come to the same salesman and the 
 product begins almost to sell itself. But it takes 
 patience and courtesy to bring it up to this point. 
 
 Some salesmen kill a territory on their first 
 trip. Bad manners can do it very easily. Some- 
 times they make themselves so objectionable that 
 the customer will buy to get rid of them, espe- 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 149 
 
 cially if the purchase does not involve more than 
 a dollar or two. Sometimes they carry the cus- 
 tomer along so smoothly with plausible argu- 
 ments that they persuade him to buy something 
 that he knows he does not want. It is aU right 
 so long as the salesman is present, but discontent 
 follows in his trail. Sometimes — stocks and 
 bonds salesmen are guilty here — they wheedle 
 the customer into buying more than he can af- 
 ford, beginning on the premise that since their 
 stocks are good (and the men who sell fraudu- 
 lent ones use the same methods) a man should if 
 he has a hundred dollars buy a hundred dollars' 
 worth, if he has a million he should buy a million 
 dollars' worth, if he has a home he must mort- 
 gage it, if he has an automobile he must sell it. 
 'No good salesman works like this. People are 
 very gullible and it takes little argument to per- 
 suade them to invest nearly all they have in some- 
 thing that will make them rich in a hurry, but the 
 fact that they are foolish is not quite sufficient 
 justification for fooling them. Even if the 
 stocks and bonds are aU the salesman believes 
 and represents them to be, no man has a right to 
 risk his home or his happiness for them. A 
 worth while salesman leaves his customer satis- 
 fied and comes back a year later and finds him 
 still satisfied. And this sort of customer is the 
 
160 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 best advertisement and the best friend any busi- 
 ness can have. 
 
 Bad salesmen create violent prejudices against 
 the firms they represent. For the average cus- 
 tomer, like the average man, judges the whole of 
 a thing by the part that he sees. To most of 
 us the word Chinaman calls up the picture of 
 the laundryman around the corner in spite of 
 the fact that there are some three hundred mil- 
 lion Chinamen in the world engaged in other oc- 
 cupations. Salesmen who are consimied with 
 their own importance do their firms more harm 
 than good. They usually are men in positions 
 too big for them (they may not be very big at 
 that) and are for the most part of not much more 
 real consequence than the gnat which sat on the 
 tip of the bull's horn and cried, "See what a dust 
 I raise!" Glum and sullen salesmen — ^there are 
 not many of them — are of little genuine value to 
 their firms. It is not true that when you weep 
 you weep alone. Gloomy moods are as conta- 
 gious as pleasant ones, and a happy man radiates 
 happiness. 
 
 It is not easy to look pleasant when one's 
 nerves are bruised from miscellaneous contacts 
 with all sorts of people, but it is an actual fact 
 that assxmiing the gestures of a mood will often 
 induce the mood itself. The man who forces 
 
TRAVELING AND SELLING 161 
 
 himself to look cheerful (we are not talking 
 about the one who takes on an idiotic grin) may- 
 find himself after a while beginning to feel 
 cheerful. After he has greeted the elevator boy 
 with a smile (it maybe a very crooked one) and the 
 hotel clerk and the waitress and the bootblack 
 and the paper boy he is hkely to find that the smile 
 has straightened out into a genuine one. It does 
 not always work — it is like counting to a hundred 
 when one is angry — but it is worth trying. 
 
 Salesmen find their greatest difficulties among 
 people of httle education. It is the people Math 
 fewest ideas that chng to them most tenaciously. 
 Scholars and scientists and business men who 
 have learned to employ scientific methods are 
 constantly watching for something new. They 
 welcome new discoveries and new ideas, but the 
 man in the backwoods of ignorance has a fence 
 arovmd the hmits of his mind and it is hard for 
 anything to get inside it. He is open to con- 
 viction, but hke the Scotsman, he would like to 
 see the person who could "convict" him. It is 
 hard work to get a new idea into the mind of a 
 man who is encased in a shell of ignorance or 
 prejudice, but the salesman is worse than bad- 
 mannered who lets another man, whoever he is, 
 know that he thinks his religion is no good, that 
 his political party is rotten, that his country is 
 
152 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 not worth a cancelled postage stamp, and that 
 the people of his race are "frogs," "square- 
 heads," "dagos," "wops," or "kikes." 
 
 Salesmen who are themselves courteous usu- 
 ally meet with courtesy. The people who move 
 graciously through hfe find comparatively little 
 rudeness in the world. And a good salesman is 
 courteous to all men alike. With him overalls 
 command as much respect as broadcloth. It 
 pays — not only in money, but in other things that 
 are worth more. 
 
 A salesman should be especially careful of his 
 attitude toward the representatives of rival 
 houses and their products. His eagerness to 
 advance his own cause should never lead him into 
 belittling them. He need not go out of his way 
 to praise them nor should he speak of them in- 
 sincerely in glowing terms; but an honest word 
 of commendation shows that he is not afraid of 
 his rivals in spite of the fact that they too have 
 excellent goods, and when it is impossible to 
 speak well of them it is best to stay silent. 
 
 It is not hard to see why business men spend so 
 much time and effort in selecting their salesmen. 
 They know that one who is ill-mannered or offen- 
 sive in any way indicates either a lack of breeding 
 or a lack of judgment on the part of the parent 
 concern. And one is about as bad as the other. 
 
VIII 
 THE BUSIISTESS OF WRITING 
 
 Half the business letters which are written 
 should never be written at all, and of the other 
 half so many are incomplete or incoherent that a 
 transaction which could be finished and filed away 
 in two letters frequently requires six or eight. 
 
 A good letter is the result of clear thinking 
 and careful planning. In the case of the sales- 
 letter it sometimes takes several weeks to write 
 one, but for ordinary correspondence a few min- 
 utes is usually all that is necessary. The length 
 of time does not matter — it is the sort of letter 
 which is produced at the end of it. 
 
 Books of commercial correspondence give a 
 number of rules and standards by which a letter 
 can be measured. But all rules of thumb are 
 dangerous, and there are only two items which 
 are essential. The others are valuable only as 
 they contribute to them. The letter must suc- 
 ceed in getting its idea across and it must build 
 up good will for its firm. And the best one is 
 the one which accomplishes this most courteously 
 
 153 
 
154 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 and most completely in the briefest space of 
 time (and paper). 
 
 There should be a reason back of every letter 
 if it is only to say "Thank you" to a customer. 
 Too much of our national energy goes up in 
 waste effort, in aimless advertising, worthless 
 salesmanship, ineffective letter Avriting, and in a 
 thousand and one other ways. A lot of it is 
 hammered out on the typewriters transcribing 
 perfectly useless letters to paper which might 
 really be worth something if it were given over to 
 a different purpose, 
 
 A good letter never attracts the mind of the 
 reader to itself as a thing apart from its contents. 
 Last year a publishing house sent out a hundred 
 test letters advertising one of their books. Three 
 answers came back, none of them ordering the 
 book, but all three praising the letter. One was 
 from a teacher of commercial English who de- 
 clared that he was going to use it as a model in 
 his classes, and the other two congratulated the 
 firm on having so excellent a correspondent. 
 The physical make-up of the letter was attrac- 
 tive, it was written by a college graduate and 
 couched in clear, correct, and colorful Enghsh. 
 And yet it was no good. No letter and no adver- 
 tisement is any good which calls attention to it- 
 self instead of the message it is trying to deliver. 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 166 
 
 There is not much room for individuality in 
 the make-up of a letter. Custom has standard- 
 ized it, and starthng variations from the conven- 
 tional format indicates freakishness rather than 
 originahty. They are hke that astonishing gen- 
 tleman who walks up Fifth Avenue on the coldest 
 mornings in the year, bareheaded, coatless, sock- 
 less, clad in white flannels and tennis slippers. 
 He attracts attention, but he makes us shiver. 
 
 Plain white paper of good quality is always in 
 good taste. Certain dull-tinted papers are not 
 bad, but gaudy colors, flashy designs, and ornate 
 letter heads are taboo in all high types of busi- 
 ness. Simple headings giving exphcit and use- 
 ful information are best. The name and ad- 
 dress of the firm (and "New York" or "Chi- 
 cago" is not sufficient in spite of the fact that a 
 good many places go into no more detail than 
 this) , the cable address if it has one, the telephone 
 number and the trademark if it is an inconspicu- 
 ous one (there is a difference between conspicu- 
 ous and distinctive) are aU that any business 
 house needs. 
 
 Hotels are often pictured on their own sta- 
 tionery in a way that is anything but modest, but 
 there is a very good reason for it. The first 
 thing most people want to know about a hotel is 
 what sort of looking place it is. All right, here 
 
156 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 you are. Some factories, especially those that 
 are proud of their appearance, carry their own 
 picture on their stationery. There is nothing to 
 say against it, but one of the most beautiful fac- 
 tories in America has on its letter head only the 
 name of the firm, the address, and a small trade- 
 marXjngraved in black. Sometimes a picture, 
 in a sales letter, for instance, supplements the 
 written matter in a most effective way. And 
 whenever any kind of device is really helpful it 
 should by all means be used, subject only to the 
 limits of good taste. 
 
 It is more practical in business to use standard 
 size envelopes. If window envelopes are used 
 the window should be clear, the paper white or 
 nearly so, and the typewritten address a good 
 honest black. The enclosure should fit snugly 
 and should be placed so that the address is in 
 plain view without having to be jiggled around 
 in the envelope first. A letter passes through 
 the hands of several postal clerks before it 
 reaches the person to whom it is addressed, and 
 if each one of them has to stop to play with it 
 awhile an appreciable amount of time is lost, not 
 to mention the strain it puts on their respective 
 tempers. The paper of which an envelope is 
 made should always be opaque enough to conceal 
 the contents of the letter. 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 157 
 
 Practically all business letters are type- 
 written. Occasionally a "Help Wanted" adver- 
 tisement requests that the answer be in the appli- 
 cant's own handwriting, but even this is rare. 
 In most places the typing is taken care of by 
 girls who have been trained for the purpose, but 
 most young girls just entering business are 
 highly irresponsible, and it is necessary for the 
 men and women who dictate the letters to know 
 what constitutes a pleasing make-up so that they 
 can point out the flaws and give suggestions for 
 doing away with them. 
 
 The letter should be arranged symmetrically on 
 the page with ample margins all around. Noth- 
 ing but experience in copying her own notes will 
 teach a stenographer to estimate them correctly 
 so that she will not have to rewrite badly placed 
 letters. It is a little point, but an important 
 one. 
 
 Each subject considered in a letter should be 
 treated in a separate paragraph, and each para- 
 graph should be set off from the others by a 
 wider space than that between the lines, double 
 space between the paragraphs when there is 
 single space between the lines, triple space be- 
 tween the paragraphs when there is a double 
 space between the lines, and so on. 
 
 A business letter should handle only one sub- 
 
168 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 ject. Two letters should be dispatched if two 
 subjects are to be covered. This enables the 
 house receiving the letter to file it so that it can 
 be found when it is needed. 
 
 When a letter is addressed to an individual it 
 is better to begin "Dear Mr. Brown" or "My 
 dear Mr. Brown" than "Dear Sir" or "My dear 
 Sir." "Gentlemen" or "Ladies" is sometime 
 used in salutation when a letter is addressed to a 
 group. "Dear Friend" is permissible in general 
 letters sent out to persons of both sexes. Hon- 
 orary titles should be used in the address when 
 they take the place of "Mr.," such titles as Rev- 
 erend, Doctor, Honorable (abbreviated to Rev., 
 Dr., Hon.,) and the like. Titles should not be 
 dropped except in the case of personal letters. 
 
 Special care should be taken with the outside 
 address. State abbreviations should be used 
 sparingly when there is a chance of confusion as 
 in the case of Ga., Va., La., and Pa. "City" is 
 not sufficient and should never be used. Nor 
 should the name of the state ever be omitted 
 even when the letter is addressed to some other 
 point in the same state, as from New York to 
 Brooklyn. And postage should be complete. 
 A letter on which there is two cents due has 
 placed itself under a pretty severe handicap be- 
 fore it is opened. 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 159 
 
 It is astonishing how many letters go out every 
 day unsigned, lacking enclosures, carrying the 
 wrong addresses, bearing insufficient postage, 
 and showing other evidences of carelessness and 
 thoughtlessness. In a town in New England 
 last year one of the specialty shops received at 
 Christmas time twenty different lots of money — 
 money orders, stamps, and cash — by mail, not 
 one of which bore the slightest clue to the iden- 
 tity of the sender. Countless times during the 
 year this happens in every mail order house. 
 
 The initials of the dictator and of the stenog- 
 rapher in the lower left-hand corner of a letter 
 serve not only to identify the carbon, but often 
 to place the letter itself if it has gone out with- 
 out signature. The signature should be legible, 
 or if the one who writes it enjoys making flour- 
 ishes he may do so if he will have the name neatly 
 typed either just below the name or just above 
 it. It should be written in ink (black or blue 
 ink), not in pencil or colored crayon, and it 
 should be blotted before the page is folded. The 
 dictator himself should sign the letter whenever 
 possible. "Dictated but not read" bears the 
 mark of discourtesy and sometimes brings back 
 a letter with "Received but not read" written 
 across it. When it is necessary to leave the of- 
 fice before signing his letters, a business man 
 
160 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 should deputize his stenographer to do it, in 
 which case she writes his name in full Avith her 
 initials just below it. A better plan is to have 
 another person take care of the entire letter, be- 
 ginning it something like, "Since Mr. Blake is 
 away from the office to-day he has asked me to 
 let you know " 
 
 The complimentary close to a business letter 
 should be "Yours truly," "Yours sincerely" or 
 something of the kind, and not "Yours cor- 
 dially," "Yours faithfully" or "Yours grate- 
 fully" unless the circumstances warrant it. 
 
 In writing a letter as a part of a large organ- 
 ization one should use "We" instead of "I." A 
 firm acts collectively, no one except the presi- 
 dent has a right to the pronoun of the first per- 
 son, and he (if he is wise) seldom avails himself 
 of it. If the matter is so near personal as to 
 make "We" somewhat ridiculous "I" should, of 
 course, be used instead. But one should be con- 
 sistent. If "I" is used at the beginning it should 
 be continued throughout. 
 
 Similarly a letter should be addressed to a firm 
 rather than to a person, for if the person happens 
 to be absent some one else can then take charge of 
 it. But the address should also include the name 
 of the addressee (whenever possible) or "Adver- 
 tising Manager," "Personnel Manager" or 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 161 
 
 whatever the designation of his position may be. 
 The name may be placed in the lower left-hand 
 corner of the letter "Attention Mr. Green" or 
 "Attention Advertising Manager," and it may 
 also be placed just above the salutation inside the 
 letter. Sometimes the subject of the letter is in- 
 dicated in the same way, Be Montana shipment. 
 Be Smythe manuscript, etc. These hnes may be 
 typed in red or in capital letters so as to catch the 
 attention of the reader at once. If a letter is 
 more than two pages long this hne is often added 
 to the succeeding pages, a very convenient de- 
 vice, for letters are sometimes misplaced in the 
 files and this helps to locate them. 
 
 A business letter should never be longer than 
 necessary. If three lines are enough it is ab- 
 surd to use more, especially if the letter is going 
 to a firm which handles a big correspondence. 
 Some one has said with more truth than exag- 
 geration that no man south of Fourteenth Street 
 in New York reads a letter more than three 
 lines long. But there is danger that the too 
 brief letter will sound brusque. Mail order 
 houses which serve the small towns and the rural 
 districts say that, all other things being equal, it 
 is the long sales letter which brings in the best 
 results. Farmers have more leisure and they 
 are quite wilhng to read long letters if (and 
 
162 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 this if is worth taking note of) they are inter- 
 esting. 
 
 All unnecessary words and aU stilted phrases 
 should be stripped from a letter. "Replying to 
 your esteemed favor," "Yours of the 11th inst. 
 to hand, contents noted," "Yours of the 24th 
 ult. received. In reply would say," "Awaiting 
 a favorable reply," "We beg to remain" are dead 
 weights. "Prox" might be added to the list, 
 and "In reply to same." "Per diem" and other 
 Latin expressions should likewise be thrown into 
 the discard. "As per our agreement of the 17th" 
 should give place to "According to our agree- 
 ment of the 17th," and, wherever possible, sim- 
 plified expression should be employed. Legal 
 phraseology should be restricted to the profes- 
 sion to which it belongs. Wills, deeds, and 
 other documents likely to be haled into court 
 need "whereas's" and "wherefores" and "said's" 
 and "same's" without end, but ordinary busi- 
 ness letters do not. It is perfectly possible to 
 express oneself clearly in the language of con- 
 versation (which is also the language of busi- 
 ness) without burying the meaning in tiresome 
 verbiage. And yet reputable business houses 
 every day send out letters which are almost ridic- 
 ulous because of the stiff and pompous way they 
 are written. 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 163 
 
 The following letter was sent recently by one 
 of the oldest furniture houses in America : 
 
 Dear Madam: 
 
 Herewith please find receipt for full payment of your 
 bill. Please accept our thanks for same. 
 
 Relative to the commission due Mrs. Robinson would 
 say that if she will call at our office at her convenience we 
 shall be glad to pay same to her. 
 
 Thanking you for past favors, we beg to remain. 
 Yours very truly. 
 
 Contrast that with this: 
 
 Dear Mrs. Brown: 
 
 We are returning herewith your receipted bill. Thank 
 you very much. 
 
 If you will have Mrs. Robinson call at our office at her 
 convenience we shall take pleasure in paying her the 
 commission due her. 
 
 Yours very truly. 
 
 Here is another letter so typical of the kind 
 that carelessness produces: 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 I have your letter of the 27th inst. and I have forwarded 
 it to Mr. Stubbs and will see him in a few days and talk 
 the matter over. 
 
 I remain 
 
 Yours sincerely. 
 
164 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 Would it not have been just as easy to write : 
 
 Dear Mr. Thompson: 
 
 Thank you for your letter of the 27th. I have for- 
 warded it to Mr. Stubbs and will see him in a few days 
 to talk tjhe matter over. 
 
 Your sincerely. 
 
 In the preparation of this volume a letter of 
 inquiry was sent out to a number of representa- 
 tive business houses all over the country. It 
 was a pleasure to read the excellent replies that 
 came in response to it. One letter reached its 
 destination in the midst of a strike, but the pub- 
 licity manager of the firm sent a cordial answer, 
 which began: 
 
 Your very courteous letter to Mr. Jennings came at a 
 time when his mind is pretty well occupied with thoughts 
 concerning the employment situation in our various plants. 
 
 We shall endeavor, therefore, to give you such informa- 
 tion as comes to mind with regard to matters undertaken by 
 the company which have contributed to the standard of 
 courtesy which exists in the departments here. 
 
 We select another at random: 
 
 It pleases us very much to know that our company has 
 been described to you as one which practises courtesy in 
 business. We should like nothing better than to have all 
 our employees live up to the reputation credited to them by 
 Mr. Haight. 
 
 As for our methods of obtaining it 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 165 
 
 Contrast these two excellent beginnings with 
 (and this one is authentic, too) : 
 
 In reply to yours of the 6tli inst. relative to what part 
 courtesy plays in business and oflSce management would 
 say that it is very important. 
 
 Routine letters must be standardized — a house 
 must conserve its own time as well as that of its 
 customers — but a routine letter must never be 
 used unless it adequately covers the situation. 
 There is no excuse for a poor routine letter, for 
 there is plenty of time to think it out, and there 
 is no excuse for sending a routine letter when it 
 does not thoroughly answer the correspondent's 
 question. The man who is answering a letter 
 must put himself in the place of the one who 
 wrote it. 
 
 This is a fair sample of what happens when a 
 letter is written by a person who either has no 
 imagination at all, or does not use what he has. 
 
 A woman who had just moved to New York 
 lost the key to her apartment and wrote to her 
 landlord for another. This answer came: 
 
 Replying to your letter, will say am sorry but it is not 
 the custom of the landlord to furnish more than one key 
 for an apartment. Should the tenant lose or misplace the 
 key it is up to them to replace same. 
 
166 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 The woman felt a justifiable sense of irrita- 
 tion. She was new to the city and thought she 
 was taking the most direct method of replacing 
 "same." Perhaps she should have known bet- 
 ter, but she did not. Buying a key is not so sim- 
 ple as buying a box of matches and to a new- 
 comer it is a matter of some little difficulty. She 
 was at least entitled to a bit more information 
 and to more courteous treatment than is shown 
 in the letter signed by his landlordly hand. She 
 went to see him and found him most suave and 
 polite (which was his habit face to face with a 
 woman). He explained the heavy expense of 
 furnishing careless tenants with new keys (which 
 she understood perfectly to begin with) and was 
 most apologetic when he discovered that she had 
 intended all the time to pay for it. It would 
 have been just as easy for him in the beginning 
 to write : 
 
 I am sorry that I cannot send you a key, but we have 
 had so many similar requests that we have had to discon- 
 tinue complying with them. 
 
 You will find an excellent locksmith at 45 West llS 
 St. His telephone number is Main 3480. 
 
 Or: 
 
 I am sending you the key herewith. There is a nominal' 
 charge for it which will be added to your bill at the end 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 167 
 
 of the month. I hope it will reach you safely. It is a 
 nuisance to be without one. 
 
 Imagination is indispensable to good letter 
 writing, but it is going rather far when one sends 
 thanks in advance for a favor which he expects 
 to be conferred. Even those who take pleasure 
 in granting favors like to feel that they do so of 
 their own free will. It takes away the pleasure 
 of doing it when some one asks a favor and then 
 assumes the thing done. Royalty alone are so 
 highly privileged as to have simply to voice their 
 wishes to have them complied with, and royalty 
 has gone out of fashion. 
 
 At one point in their journey all the travel- 
 lers in "Pilgrim's Progress" exchanged burdens, 
 but they did not go far before each one begged to 
 have back his original load. That is what would 
 happen if the man who dictates a letter were to ex- 
 change places with his stenographer. Each would 
 then appreciate the position of the other, and if 
 they were once in a while to make the transfer in 
 their minds (imagination in business again) they 
 would come nearer the sympathetic imderstand- 
 ing that is the basis of good teamwork. 
 
 The responsibility for a letter is divided be- 
 tween them, and it is important that the circum- 
 stances under which it is written should be favor- 
 
168 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 able. The girl should be placed in a comfort- 
 able position so that she can hear without 
 difficulty. The dictator should not smoke whether 
 she objects to it or not. He should have in mind 
 what he wants to say before he begins speak- 
 ing, and then he should pronounce his words 
 evenly and distinctly. He should not bang on 
 the desk with his fist, flourish his arms in the air, 
 talk in rhetorical rushes with long pauses be- 
 tween the phrases, or raise his voice to a thunder- 
 ous pitch and then let it sink to a cooing murmur. 
 These things have not the slightest effect on the 
 typewritten page, and they make it very hard 
 for the girl to take correct notes. No one should 
 write a letter while he is angry, or if he writes it 
 (and it is sometimes a relief to write a scorching 
 letter) he should not mail it. 
 
 It is said that Roosevelt used to write very 
 angry letters to people who deserved them, draw- 
 ing liberally upon his very expressive supply of 
 abusive words for the occasion. Each time his 
 secretary quietly stopped the letter. Each time 
 the Colonel came in the day after and asked if 
 the letter had been sent. Each time the secre- 
 tary said, "No, that one did not get off." And 
 each time the Colonel exclaimed, "Good! We 
 won't send it!" It came to be a regular part of 
 the day's routine. 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 169 
 
 Inexperienced dictators will find it good prac- 
 tice to have their stenographers read back their 
 letters so they can recast awkward sentences and 
 make other improvements. It can usually be 
 discontinued after a while, for dictating, like 
 nearly everything else, becomes easier with 
 habit. 
 
 A considerate man will show special forbear- 
 ance in breaking in a new girl. Different voices 
 are hard to grow accustomed to, and a girl who is 
 perfectly capable of taking dictation from one 
 man will find it very difficult to follow another 
 until she has grown used to the sound of his voice. 
 It is like learning a foreign language. The pu- 
 pil imderstands his teacher, but he does not un- 
 derstand any one else until he has got "the hang 
 of it." 
 
 The training of a good stenographer does not 
 end when she leaves school. She should be able 
 not only to take down and transcribe notes 
 neatly and correctly. She should be able to 
 spell and punctuate correctly and to make the 
 minor changes in phrasing and diction that so 
 often can make a good letter of a poor one. The 
 most fatal disease that can overtake a stenogra- 
 pher (or any one else) is the habit of slavishly 
 following a routine. 
 
 "Many yoimg fellows," this is from Henry 
 
170 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 Ford, "especially those employed in offices, fall 
 into a routine way of doing their work that even- 
 tually makes it become like a treadmill. They 
 do not get a broad view of the entire business. 
 Sometimes that is the fault of the employer, but 
 that does not excuse the young man. Those who 
 command attention are the ones who are actually 
 pushing the boss. ... It pays to be ahead 
 of your immediate job, and to do more than that 
 for which you are paid. A mere clock watcher 
 never gets anywhere. Forget the clock and 
 become absorbed in your job. Learn to love 
 it." 
 
 The position of secretary is a responsible one. 
 Frequently she knows almost as much about his 
 business as her employer himself (and sometimes 
 even more). He depends upon her quite as 
 much as she depends upon him, though in a some- 
 what different way. It takes personal effort to- 
 gether with native ability to raise any one to a 
 position of importance, but personal effort often 
 needs supplementing, and many business houses 
 have taken special measures to help their em- 
 ployees to become good correspondents. 
 
 In some places there are supervisors who give 
 talks and discuss the actual letters, good ones 
 and bad, which have been written. They go 
 over the carbons and hold conferences with the 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 171 
 
 correspondents who need help. In other places 
 courtesy campaigns for a higher standard of cor- 
 respondence are held, while in others the matter 
 is placed in the hands of the heads of the various 
 departments, acting on the assumption that these 
 heads are men of experience and ability or they 
 would never have attained the position they 
 hold. 
 
 The president of a bank which has branches in 
 London and Paris and other big foreign cities 
 used every now and then to stop the boy who was 
 carrying a basket of carbons to the file clerk and 
 look them over. If he found a letter he did not 
 like, or one that he did like a great deal, he sent 
 for the person who wrote it and talked with him. 
 It was not necessary for him to go over the let- 
 ters often. The fact that the people in the office 
 knew that it was hkely to happen kept them on 
 the alert and nearly every letter that left the or- 
 ganization was better because the person who 
 wrote it knew that the man at the head was in- 
 terested in it and that there was a strong chance 
 that he might see it. 
 
 What is effective in one place may not be so in 
 another. Each house must work out its own sys- 
 tem. But one thing must be understood in the 
 beginning, and that is that the spirit of courtesy 
 must first abide in the home office before the 
 
172 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 people who work there can hope to send it out 
 through the mail. 
 
 Roughly speaking there are eight types of 
 business letters which nearly every business man 
 at one time or another has to write or to con- 
 sider. 
 
 The first is the letter of application. The ap- 
 plicant should state simply his quaUfications for 
 the place he wants. He should not make an 
 appeal to sympathy (sob stuff) nor should 
 he beg or cringe. He should not demand a 
 certain salary, though he may state what salary 
 he would hke, and he should not say "Salary no 
 object." It would probably not be true. There 
 are comparatively few people with whom money 
 is no object. If it is the first time the applicant 
 has ever tried for a position he should say so ; if 
 not, he shoxild give his reason for leaving his last 
 place. It should not be a long letter. A direct 
 statement of the essential facts (age, education, 
 experiences, etc.) is all that is necessary. 
 
 Many times the letter of application is accom- 
 panied by, or calls for, a letter of recommenda- 
 tion. 
 
 'No man should allow himself to recommend 
 another for qualities which he knows he does not 
 possess. If he is asked for a recommendation 
 he should speak as favorably of the person under 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 173 
 
 consideration as he honestly can, and if his opin- 
 ion of him is disapproving he should give it with 
 reservations. 
 
 At one time during the cleaning up of Panama 
 there was considerable talk about displacing 
 General Gorgas and a committee waited on 
 Roosevelt to suggest another man for the job. 
 He listened and then asked them to get a letter 
 about him from Dr. William H. Welsh of Johns 
 Hopkins. Dr. Welsh wrote a letter praising 
 the man very highly, but ended by saying that 
 while it was true that he would be a good man for 
 the place, he did not think he would be as good 
 as the one they already had — General Gorgas. 
 The Colonel acted upon the letter confident 
 (because he had great faith in Dr. Welsh) that 
 he was taking the wise course, which subsequent 
 events proved it to be. "Would to heaven," he 
 said, "that every one would write such honest 
 letters of recommendation!" 
 
 The general letter of recommendation begin- 
 ning "To whom it may concern" is rarely given 
 now. It has little weight. Usually a man waits 
 until he has apphed for a position and then gives 
 the name of his reference, the person to whom he 
 is applying writes to the one to whom he has 
 been referred, and the entire correspondence is 
 carried on between these two. In this way the 
 
174. THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 letter of reconunendation can be sincere, some- 
 thing almost impossible in the open letter. It is 
 needless to add that all such correspondence 
 should be confidential. 
 
 The letter of introduction is, in a measure, a 
 letter of recommendation. The one who writes 
 it stands sponsor for the one who bears it. It 
 should make no extravagant claims for the one 
 who is introduced. He should simply be given 
 a chance to make good on his own responsibility. 
 But it should give the reason for the presenta- 
 tion and suggest a way of following it up that 
 will result in mutual pleasure or benefit. It 
 should be in an unsealed envelope and the en- 
 velope should bear, in addition to the address, the 
 words, "Introducing Mr. Blank" on the lower 
 left-hand corner. This does away with an em- 
 barrassing moment when the letter is presented 
 in person and enables the host to greet his guest 
 by name and ask him to be seated while he reads 
 it. 
 
 Letters of introduction should not be given 
 promiscuously. Some men permit themselves 
 to be persuaded into giving letters of introduc- 
 tion to people who are absolute nuisances (it is 
 hard to refuse any one who asks for this sort of 
 letter, but often kindest for all concerned) and 
 then they send in secret another letter explaining 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 17? 
 
 how the first one came about. This really throws 
 the burden on the person who least of all ought 
 to bear it, the innocent man whom the first one 
 wanted to meet. No letter of presentation is 
 justified unless there is good reason behind it, 
 such, as for instance, in the following: 
 
 This is Mr. Franklin B. Nesbitt. He has been in Texas 
 for several months studying economic conditions, and I 
 believe can give you some valuable information which has 
 resulted from his research there. He is a man upon 
 whom you can rely. I have known him for years, and I 
 am sure that whatever he tells you will be trustworthy. 
 
 It is a common practice for a business man to 
 give his personal card with "Introducing Mr. 
 Mills" or "Introducing Mr. Mills of Howard 
 and Powell Motor Co." written across it to a 
 man whom he wishes to introduce to another. 
 This enables him to get an interview. What he 
 does with it rests entirely with him. 
 
 Sales letters are a highly specialized group 
 given over, for the most part, to experts. Their 
 most common fault is overstatement or patroniz- 
 ing. The advertisements inserted in trade pa- 
 pers and the letters sent out to the "trade" are 
 often so condescendingly written that they in- 
 furiate the men to whom they are addressed. It 
 is safer to assmne that the man you are writing 
 
176 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 to is an intelligent human being. It is better to 
 overestimate his mentality than to underesti- 
 mate it, and it is better to "talk" to him in the 
 letter than to "write" to him. 
 
 Sales letters are, as a rule, general, not personal, 
 and yet the best ones have the personal touch. 
 The letter is a silent salesman whose function is 
 to anticipate the needs of its customers and of- 
 fer to supply them. In this as in any other kind 
 of salesmanship it is the spirit which counts for 
 most, and the spirit of genuine helpfulness (mu- 
 tual helpfulness) gives pulling power to almost 
 any letter. The one which presents a special 
 offer on special terms specially arranged for the 
 benefit of the customer wins out almost every 
 time, provided, of course, that the offer is worth 
 presenting. There is no use in declaring that 
 all of the benefit is to the subscriber. It would 
 be very foolish if it were actually true. Once a 
 man went into a haberdashery to buy a coat. 
 The shop owner unctuously declared that he was 
 not making a cent of profit, was selling it for less 
 than it cost him, and so on and on. The man 
 walked out. "I'll go somewhere where they have 
 sense enough to make a profit," he said. 
 
 A sales letter should never be sent out to a 
 large group of people without first having been 
 tried out on a smaller one. In this way the let- 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 177 
 
 ter can be tested and improvements made before 
 the whole campaign is launched. The results 
 in the small group are a pretty fair indication of 
 what they wiU be in the large one, and a tremen- 
 dous amount of time and money can be saved by 
 studying the letter carefully to see where it has 
 failed before sending it out to make an even big- 
 ger failure. 
 
 On the face of things it seems that an order 
 letter would be an easy one to write, but the mail 
 order houses have another story to tell. Order 
 blanks should be used wherever possible. They 
 have been carefully made and have blank spaces 
 for the fiUing in of answers to the questions 
 that are asked. In an order letter one should 
 state exactly what he wants, how he wants it 
 sent, and how he intends to pay for it. If the 
 order consists of several items, each one should 
 be listed separately. If they are ordered from 
 a catalogue they should be identified with the 
 catalogue description by mention of their names, 
 their numbers and prices. One should state 
 whether he is sending check, money, stamps, or 
 money order, but he should not say "Enclosed 
 please find." 
 
 The commonest form of letter of acknowledg- 
 ment is sent in answer to an order letter. If 
 there is to be the least delay in filling the order 
 
178 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 the letter acknowledging it should say so and 
 should give the reason for it, but even when the 
 order is filled promptly (if it is a large or a com- 
 paratively large one) the letter of acknowledg- 
 ment should be sent. Then if anything goes 
 wrong it is easier to trace than when the cus- 
 tomer has no record except the copy of his 
 order letter. The letter of acknowledgment 
 should simply thank the customer and assure him 
 of prompt and efficient service. 
 
 Complaints should be acknowledged immedi- 
 ately. If there is to be a delay while an investi- 
 gation is made, the letter of acknowledgment 
 should simply state the fact and beg indulgence 
 until it is finished. Complaints should always 
 receive careful and courteous attention. Most of 
 them are justified, and even those that are not 
 had something to begin on. 
 
 The letter of complaint should never be writ- 
 ten hastily or angrily. It should go directly to 
 the root of the trouble and should state as nearly 
 as possible when and where and how it came 
 about. One should be especially careful about 
 placing the blame or charging to an individual 
 what was really the fault of an unfortunate train 
 of circumstances. The tone should never be 
 sharp, no matter how just the complaint. 
 "Please" goes further than "Now, see here." 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WEITING 179 
 
 Collection letters are hardest to write. They 
 should appeal to a man's sense of honor first of 
 aU. It is a cheap (and ineffective) method to 
 beg him to pay because you need the money, and 
 rarely brings any reaction except rousing in his 
 mind a contempt for you. The first letter in a 
 series (and the series often includes as many as 
 six or eight) should be simply a reminder. Dras- 
 tic measures should not be taken until they are 
 necessary, and at no time should the letters be- 
 come abrupt or insulting. In the first place, it 
 is ungentlemanly to write such letters, in the sec- 
 ond it antagonizes the debtor, and if he gets 
 angry enough he feels that it is hardly an obliga- 
 tion to pay the money; that it will "serve 'em 
 right" if he does not do it. 
 
 Advertising is a sort of letter writing. Each 
 advertisement is a letter set before the public or 
 some part of the public in the hope that it will 
 be answered by the right person. It enters into 
 an over-crowded field and if it is to attract atten- 
 tion it must be vivid, unusual, and convincing. 
 Increasingly — and there is cause to be thankful 
 for this — exaggerated statements are being 
 forced to disappear. In the first place the bally- 
 hoo advertisers have shouted the public deaf. 
 They no longer beUeve. In the second place ad- 
 vertisers themselves have waked to the menace of 
 
180 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 the iiTesponsible and dishonest people who are 
 advertising and are taking legal measures to 
 safeguard the honor of the profession. 
 
 One of the most successful advertisers of mod- 
 ern times was a man who carried the idea of serv- 
 ice into everything he did. For a while he had 
 charge of soliciting advertising for automobile 
 trucks for a certain magazine. Instead of going 
 at it blindly he made a careful study of the map 
 of the United States and marked off the areas 
 where automobile trucks were used, where they 
 could be used, and where they should be used, 
 and sent it to the manufacturers along with a 
 statement of the circulation of the magazine and 
 the advantages of reaching the pubhc through 
 it. The result was that the magazine got more 
 advertising from the manufacturers than it could 
 possibly handle. It is very gratifying to know 
 that this man succeeded extraordinarily as an ad- 
 vertiser, for not once during his long career did 
 he ever try to "put one over" on the public or on 
 anybody else. 
 
 No advertisement should be impertinent or 
 importunate. Dvu^ing the war there was a splen- 
 did poster bearing a picture of Uncle Sam look- 
 ing straight into your eyes and pointing his fin- 
 ger straight into your face as he said, "Young 
 man, your country needs you!" The poster was 
 
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 181 
 
 excellent from every point of view, but since the 
 war, real estate companies, barber shops, restau- 
 rants and whatnot have used posters bearing the 
 pictures of men pointing their fingers straight at 
 you saying, "There is a home at Blankville for 
 you," "Watch out to use Baker's Best," and 
 "You're next!" After all. Uncle Sam is the 
 only person who has a right to point his finger at 
 you in any such manner and say, "I need you," 
 And besides, there is the moral side of it. Imi- 
 tation is the sincerest flattery, but the dividing 
 hne between it and dishonesty is not always clear. 
 And the law cannot every time prosecute the 
 offender, for there is a kind of cleverness that 
 enables a man to pilfer the ideas of another and 
 recast them just sufficiently to "get by." It 
 would be very stupid for a man not to profit by 
 the experience of other men, but there is a vast 
 difference betwen intelligent adaptation of ideas 
 and steahng them. This is more a question of 
 morals than of manners, for the crime — and it 
 is a crime — ^is usually deliberate, while most 
 breaches of manners are unintentional and due 
 to either carelessness or ignorance. 
 
 House memoranda are letters among the 
 various people who are working there. They 
 should be brief, above all things, and clear, but 
 never at the sacrifice of courtesy. Titles should 
 
182 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 not be dropped and nicknames should not be 
 used although initials may be. Memoranda 
 should never be personal unless they are sent con- 
 fidentially. An open memorandum should never 
 contain anything that cannot be read by every 
 one without reflecting unfavorably upon any one. 
 And it is wise to keep in mind — no matter what 
 you are writing — that the written record is per- 
 manent. 
 
IX 
 
 MORALS AND MANNERS 
 
 It has become a habit of late years for people 
 to argue at great length about right and wrong, 
 and what with complexes and psycho-analysis 
 and what with this and that, they have almost 
 come to the conclusion that there is no right and 
 wrong. Man, so they have decided, is a frail and 
 tender being completely at the mercy of the 
 traits he has inherited from his ancestors and 
 those he has acquired from his neighbors. What 
 he does is simply the result of the combination of 
 circumstances that have made him what he is. 
 There is some truth in it, of course, but what 
 there is is no bigger than a mustard seed, and all 
 the volimies that have been written about it, all 
 the sermons that have been preached upon it, and 
 all the miles of space that have been devoted to 
 it in the newspapers and magazines have not 
 served to increase it. Most of us never give any 
 one else credit for our achievements and there is 
 no more reason for giving them blame for our 
 failures. A gentleman is "lord of his own 
 
 183 
 
184 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 actions." He balances his own account, and 
 whether there is a debit or a credit is a matter 
 squarely up to him. 
 
 The pivot upon which all right-thinking con- 
 duct involving relations with other people turns 
 is the Golden Rule, "Whatsoever ye would that 
 men should do to you, do ye even so to them." 
 It is to the moral what the sun is to the physical 
 world, and just as we have never made full use 
 of the heat and light which we derive from the 
 sun but could not live without that which we do 
 use, so we have never realized more than a small 
 part of the possibilities of the Golden Rule, but at 
 the same time could not get along together in the 
 world without the meagre part of it that we do 
 make use of. The principle is older than the 
 Christian Era, older than the sequoias of Cali- 
 fornia, older than the Pyramids, older than Chi- 
 nese civilization. It is the most precious abstract 
 truth that man has yet discovered. It contains 
 the germ of all that has been said and written 
 about human brotherhood and all that has been 
 done toward making it an accomplished fact. 
 And if to-morrow it were to vanish from the 
 earth we should miss it almost, if not quite, as 
 much as we should the sun if it were to go hurt- 
 hng off into space so far away that we could nei- 
 ther see nor feel it. In the one case there would 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 185 
 
 be no life at all on earth, in the other there would 
 be none worth living. 
 
 The Golden Rule amounts to no more than 
 putting yourself into another person's place. It is 
 not always easy to do. Half of the people in the 
 United States have very little idea of what the 
 lives of the other half are hke and have no spe- 
 cial interest in knowing. 
 
 "What," we asked the manager of a bookshop 
 which caters to a large high-grade cUentele, "do 
 you find your greatest trouble?" 
 
 "Lack of imagination on the part of our cus- 
 tomers," he answered promptly, "a total ina- 
 bihty to put themselves into our place, to realize 
 that we have our lives to live just as they have 
 theirs. If we haven't a book in stock they want 
 to know why. If we don't drop everything to 
 attend to them they want to know why. If any- 
 thing goes wrong they want to know why, but 
 they won't listen to explanations and won't ac- 
 cept them when they do. They simply can't see 
 our side of it. And they make such unreason- 
 able demands. Why, last year during the Christ- 
 mas rush when the shop was fairly jammed to 
 the door and we were all in a perfect frenzy try- 
 ing to wait on them all, a man called up to know 
 if his wife was here !" 
 
 It is not always easy to see life, or even a small 
 
186 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 section of life, from another person's point of 
 view. A man very often thinks housework prac- 
 tically no work at all (the drudgery of it he has 
 never realized because he has never had to do it) 
 and a woman very often underestimates the wear 
 and tear and strain of working in an office and 
 getting a living out of it in competition with hun- 
 dreds of other men. Marie Antoinette had no 
 conception of what it meant when the French 
 people cried for bread. It seemed impossible to 
 her that a person could actually be hungry. 
 "Why, give them cake!" she exclaimed. It 
 may be pretty hard for a man who is making 
 $10,000 a year to sympathize with the stenogra- 
 pher he hires for $600 or $700 a year, or for her 
 to see his side of things. But it is not impos- 
 sible. 
 
 Very few of us could honestly go as far as the 
 novelist who recently advocated the motto: "My 
 neighbor is perfect" or the governor who set 
 aside a day for the people in his state to put it 
 into practice. We happen to know that our 
 neighbors are, like ourselves, astonishing com- 
 pounds of vice and virtue in whom any number 
 of improvements might be made. It is not ne- 
 cessary to think them perfect, only to remember 
 that each one of us, each one of them, is entitled 
 to life, hberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 187 
 
 other words, that every man has a right to a 
 square deal. 
 
 In the ancient world there were four cardinal 
 virtues: justice, prudence, temperance, and dis- 
 cretion. In the modern world of business there 
 are only two. Others may follow, but these two 
 must come first. Justice, we mean, and kind- 
 ness. No man was ever really a gentleman who 
 was not just and kind, and we think it would be 
 almost impossible for one who is, whatever his 
 minor shortcomings may be, not to be a gentle- 
 man. Just to his employees (or to his em- 
 ployer) , to his customers, to his friends, to 
 himself, and this justice always tempered with 
 kindness, the one quahty giving the firmness ne- 
 cessary in dealing with people, the other the 
 gentleness which is no less necessary. 
 
 In the first place, and this is one of the corner 
 stones of justice, industrial hfe must be made 
 safe for the worker. And it is a job in which he 
 has as large a part as the man who hires him. 
 Under present conditions one workman out of 
 every eight is injured during the year and the 
 accident is as often his fault as it is that of his 
 employer. In some instances ej0&cient safety 
 devices are not provided, in others they are not 
 made use of. 
 
 Special kinds of work, such as that in which the 
 
188 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 laborer is exposed to poisonous fumes, to sand 
 blasts, dangerous chemicals or mineral dusts, 
 need special protective devices and men with 
 sense enough to use them. The employer can- 
 not do his share unless the worker does his, and 
 the worker is too quick to take a chance. The 
 apprentice is usually cautious enough, but the 
 old hand grows unwary. Ninety-nine times he 
 thrusts his arm in among belts whirling at light- 
 ning speed and escapes, but the hundredth time 
 the arm is caught and mangled. And there is 
 nothing to blame but his own carelessness. 
 
 WHO AM I? 
 
 I am more powerful than the combined armies 
 of the world. 
 
 I have destroyed more men than all the wars 
 of the nations. 
 
 I am more deadly than bullets, and I have 
 wrecked more homes than the mightiest of siege 
 guns. 
 
 I steal, in the United States, alone, over 
 $300,000,000 each year. 
 
 I spare no one, and I find my victims among 
 the rich and poor ahke, the young and old, the 
 strong and weak. Widows and orphans know me. 
 
 I loom up to such proportions that I cast my 
 shadow over every field of labor, from the turn- 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 189 
 
 ing of the grindstone to the moving of every rail- 
 road train. 
 
 I massacre thousands upon thousands of wage 
 earners a year. 
 
 I lurk in unseen places and do most of my 
 work silently. You are warned against me but 
 you heed not. 
 
 I am relentless. 
 
 I am everywhere — ^in the house, on the streets, 
 in the factory, at the railroad crossings, and on 
 the sea. 
 
 I bring sickness, degradation and death, and 
 yet few seek to avoid me. 
 
 I destroy, crush or maim; I give nothing but 
 take all. 
 
 I am your worst enemy. 
 
 I AM CARELESSNESS 
 
 Any kind of carelessness which results in in- 
 jury (or is likely to result in it) , whether the in- 
 jury is mental or physical, is criminal. No 
 plea can justify building a theatre which cannot 
 stand a snowstorm, a school which cannot give 
 a maximum of safety to the children who are in 
 it, a factory which does not provide comfortable 
 working conditions for the people employed 
 there, or allowing any unsafe building or part of 
 a building to stand. 
 
190 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 There is a factory (this story is true) which 
 places the lives of the majority of its employees 
 in jeopardy twice a day. There are two sets of 
 elevators, one at the front of the building for 
 the executives and their secretaries and visitors, 
 one at the rear for the rank and file of the em- 
 ployees. Since there are several hundred of the 
 latter the advantages of the division are too obvi- 
 ous to need discussion. We have no quarrel 
 with it. But the apparatus upon which the ele- 
 vators in the rear run is so old and so rotten and 
 so rusty that there is constant danger of its 
 breaking down. Three times already there have 
 been serious accidents. The men who are hired 
 to operate the cars rarely stay more than a week 
 or so. Protests have been sent in but nothing 
 has been done. The management knows what the 
 conditions are but they have never stopped to 
 realize the horror of it. It is not that they 
 value a few dollars more than they do human life, 
 but that they simply do not stop to think or to 
 imagine what it would be like to have to ride in 
 the ramshackle elevator themselves. In the of- 
 fices of this factory there is an atmosphere of 
 courtesy and good breeding far beyond the ordi- 
 nary—in justice to the people there it must be 
 said that they do not know the conditions in the 
 rear, but the management does. And the man- 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 191 
 
 agement is polite in most of its dealings, both 
 with its employees and outside, but pohsh laid 
 over a cancerous growth like this is not courtesy. 
 
 There are three essentials for good work : good 
 lighting (it must be remembered that a light 
 that is too glaring is as bad as one that is too 
 dim), fresh air (air that is hot and damp or dry 
 and dusty is not fresh), and cleanliness (clean 
 workrooms — and workers — clean drinking water 
 with individual drinking cups, and in places 
 where the work is unusually dirty, plenty of 
 clean water for bathing purposes. ) 
 
 In the matter of salaries — economically one of 
 the most important questions in the world — ^the 
 employer should pay, not as little, but as much 
 as he can afford. No man has a right to hire a 
 girl (or a boy either) at less than a living wage 
 and expect her to live on it. The pitiless pub- 
 licity which Avas given the evil of hiring girls at 
 starvation wages some years ago (in particular 
 through the short stories of O. Henry, "the little 
 shop-girl's knight" which, according to Colonel 
 Roosevelt, suggested all the reforms which he 
 undertook in behalf of the working girls of New 
 York) did much in the way of reform, but there 
 is much yet to be done. 
 
 Money has been called the root of all evil. It 
 is not money, but greed. Greed and thought- 
 
192 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 lessness. Sir James Barrie says stupidity and 
 jealousy, but both these might be included under 
 thoughtlessness. Men who are generous almost 
 to a fault when a case of individual need is 
 brought before them will hire girls at less than 
 any one could exist on in decency. When they 
 meet these same girls in the hall or when they 
 come directly into contact with them in their 
 work they may be polite enough, but their pohte- 
 ness is not worth a tinker's curse. Justice must 
 come first. Only if the employer pays a fair 
 day's wage can he expect a fair day's work. 
 "Even then," he protests, "I can't get it." And 
 this is, unfortunately, in large measure true. As 
 Kipling said some few years ago, and it still 
 holds. 
 
 From forge and farm and mine and bench 
 
 Deck, altar, outpost lone — 
 Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench,, 
 
 Rail, senate, sheepfold, throne — 
 Creation's cry goes up on high 
 
 From age to cheated age: 
 "Send us the men who do the work 
 
 For which they draw the wage." 
 
 "I can't even get them here on time," the em- 
 ployer's wail continues. The employee may 
 respond that the employer is not there, but this 
 has nothing to do with it. Most people are paid 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 193 
 
 to get to their work at a certain hour. They 
 have a daily appointment with their business at 
 a specified time. It is wise and honorable to 
 keep it. Tardiness is a habit, and, like most 
 others, considerably harder to break than to 
 form, but punctuality also is a habit, not quite 
 so easy to estabhsh as tardiness because it is 
 based on strength while the other is based on 
 weakness. Most of us hate to get up in the 
 morning, but it is good discipline for the soul, 
 and we have the words of poets as weU as of 
 business men that 
 
 Early to bed and early to rise 
 
 Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. 
 
 Time is one of the most valuable of commodi- 
 ties. More people are discharged for coming in 
 late than for any other reason, not excepting (we 
 beheve this no exaggeration) "lay-offs" during 
 dull seasons. SUpping out before the regular 
 time and soldiering on the job fall into the same 
 classification with tardiness. Such practices the 
 employee too often looks upon as a smart way of 
 getting around authority, bhthely ignoring the 
 fact which has so many times been called to our 
 attention: that what a man does to a job is not 
 half so important as what the job does to him. 
 
194 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 The material loss which comes from it is the least 
 of its harms. 
 
 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, 
 but he is duller yet if he tries to mix them. In- 
 tense concentration during working hours fol- 
 lowed by complete rest is the only way to make a 
 contented workman, and it is the happy work- 
 man (just as it is the happy warrior) , in spite of 
 all that is said about divine discontent, who 
 counts for most both to himself and to his com- 
 munity. There is a gladness about earnest 
 eager work which is hard to find in anything 
 else. "I know what pleasure is," declared Robert 
 Louis Stevenson, "because I have done good 
 work." 
 
 Gossiping, idhng, smoking, writing personal 
 letters during working hours (these usually on 
 the firm's stationery), and a thousand and one 
 other petty acts of dishonesty are ruinous, not so 
 much to the house which tolerates them (because 
 it cannot help itself) as to the person who com- 
 mits them. Telephones are the cause of a good 
 deal of disturbance during business hours in 
 places where employees spend an appreciable 
 amount of time on personal calls. In some or- 
 ganizations they are prohibited altogether; but 
 in most they are allowed if not carried to excess. 
 It is not business people who need education in 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 195 
 
 this so much as their friends who have never been 
 in business and seem unable to reahze that per- 
 sonal calls are not only annoying, but time- 
 killing and distracting. 
 
 Part of the unrest and unhappiness among 
 employees is due to the fact that vast numbers of 
 them are working not at what they want to do 
 but at what they have to do, marking time until 
 they can get something better. It is very com- 
 mendable for a man to be constantly watching 
 out to improve himself, but it does not in the 
 meanwhile excuse him from doing his best at the 
 job for which he is drawing pay. It is dishon- 
 est. It is unsportsmanlike. It is unmanly. 
 
 The question of salary is, from whatever 
 angle it is approached, a delicate one. "My ex- 
 perience is," observed David Harum, "that most 
 men's hearts is located ruther closter to their 
 britchis pockets than they are to their vest pock- 
 ets." It is a tender subject, and one that causes 
 more trouble than almost any other in the world. 
 Employees who are trusted with the payroll 
 should not divulge figures and employees who 
 are on the payroll should not discuss and com- 
 pare salaries. Jones cannot understand why 
 Brown gets more than he does when he knows 
 that Brown's work is not so good. Brown cannot 
 see why Smith gets as much as he does when he 
 
196 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 is out two or three days in the week, and Smith 
 cannot see why he has not heen made an execu- 
 tive after all the years he has worked in the place. 
 There are many sides to the matter of salary ad- 
 justment and they all have to be taken into con- 
 sideration. And the petty jealousies that 
 employees arouse by matching salaries against 
 one another only serve to make a complex prob- 
 lem more difficult. 
 
 There is only one base upon which a man 
 should rest his plea for an increase in salary, and 
 that is good work. The fact that he has a family 
 dependent upon him, that he is ill or hard up may 
 be ample reason for giving him financial help or 
 offering him a loan, but it is no reason why his 
 salary should be increased unless his work de- 
 serves it. Paternalism is more unfair than most 
 systems of reward, and the man who comes whim- 
 pering with a tale of hard luck is usually (but 
 not always) not worth coddhng. Years of ex- 
 perience, even though they stretch out to three 
 score and ten, are not in themselves sufficient 
 argument for promotion. Sometimes the mere 
 fact that a man has been content to stay in one 
 place year after year shows that he has too little 
 initiative to rise in that particular kind of work 
 and is too timid to try something else. 
 
 Another big cause of trouble among men 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 197 
 
 working in the same organization is rigid class 
 distinction. When a man hires others to work 
 for him he invites discontent ; when he hires them 
 to work with him there may be dissatisfaction, 
 but the chances of it are lessened. A business 
 well knit together is like any other group, an 
 army or a football team, bound into a unit to 
 achieve a result. At its best each person in it 
 feels a responsibility toward each one of the 
 others ; each realizes that who a man is is not half 
 so important as what he does, and that 
 
 . the game is more than the player of the game 
 And the ship is more than the crew, 
 
 or, as another poet with a Kiplingesque turn of 
 
 TninH nnrJ nlirflsp Vin« it 
 
 7 J^ 
 
 mind and phrase has it. 
 
 It is not the guns or armament 
 
 Or the money they can pay. 
 It's the close cooperation 
 
 That makes them win the day. 
 It is not the individual 
 
 Or the army as a whole. 
 But the everlastin' team work 
 
 Of every blooming soul. 
 
 Each man is directly responsible to his im- 
 mediate superior. He should never, unless the 
 circumstances are unusual, go over his head and 
 he should never do so without letting him know. 
 
198 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 It should be impossible, and is, in a well-organ- 
 ized house, for men coming from the outside to 
 appeal over a member of a firm. Responsible 
 men should be placed in the contact positions and 
 their responsibility should be respected. Sales- 
 men are warned not to bother with the little 
 fellow but to go straight to the head of a firm. 
 Like most general advice, it is dangerous to put 
 into universal practice. The heads of most 
 firms have men to take care of visitors, and in 
 a good many instances, the salesman helps his 
 cause by going to the proper subordinate in the 
 first place. It is all very well to go to the head 
 of a firm but to do it at the expense of the dignity 
 of one of the smaller executives is doubtful bus- 
 iness policy and doubtful ethics. 
 
 "Passing the buck" is a gentle vice practised 
 in certain loosely hung together concerns. It 
 is a strong temptation to shift the accountability 
 for a mistake to the shoulders of the person on 
 the step below, but it is to be remembered that 
 temptations, like obstacles, are things to "be over- 
 come. "The "buck," as has been pointed out, 
 always passes down and not up, a fact which 
 makes a detestable practice all the more odious. 
 One of the first laws of knighthood was to defend 
 the weak and to protect the poor and helpless; 
 it still holds, though knighthood has passed out 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 199 
 
 of existence; and the creature (he is not even 
 good red herring) who blames some one else for a 
 fault of his, or allows him to take the blame, is 
 beneath contempt. 
 
 When a mistake has been made and the re- 
 sponsibihty fixed on the right person the penalty- 
 may be inflicted. If it is a scolding or a "bawl- 
 ing out" it should be done quietly. Good man- 
 agers do not shout their reprimands. They do 
 not need to. The reproof for a fault is a matter 
 between the offender and the "boss." No one 
 else has any concern with it, and there is no 
 reason why the instinct for gossip or the appetite 
 for malicious reports on the part of the other 
 employees should be satisfied. The world would 
 be happier and business would be infinitely more 
 harmonious if each person in it could realize that 
 his chief aim in hfe should be to mind his own 
 business or, at least, to let other people's alone. 
 
 Private secretaries and other people in more 
 or less confidential positions are many times 
 tempted to give away secret information, not so 
 much for the benefit of the person to whom it is 
 given as to show how much they themselves are 
 trusted. Nearly every one who holds a responsi- 
 ble business position receives items of informa- 
 tion which are best not repeated, and if common 
 sense does not teach him what should be kept 
 
200 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 private and what should be told, nothing will. 
 It should not be necessary for the superior to 
 preface each of his remarks with, "Now, this 
 must go no further." 
 
 Matters concerning salaries should always be 
 confidential, and so should personal items such 
 as health reports, character references, and so 
 on, credit reports, blacklists, and other informa- 
 tion of a similar nature. It is compiled for a 
 definite purpose and for the use of a limited 
 group of people. It is unethical to use it in 
 any other way. 
 
 The reason for dismissing a person from a 
 business organization should be kept private, 
 especially if it is something that reflects unfa- 
 vorably on his character. But the reason should 
 always be given to the employee himself. He 
 may not listen, and most of the men who have 
 had experience in hiring and firing say that he 
 wiU not, but that is his own responsibility. The 
 employer has no right to let him go without let- 
 ting him know why. And the employee should 
 listen — it may not be his fault but he should 
 check up honestly with himself and find out. 
 The same thing that lost him this place may 
 lose him another, and a good many times all that 
 he can get out of being discharged is a purifica- 
 tion of soul. It is a pity if he misses that. 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 201 
 
 Discharging a person is a serious matter, se- 
 rious from both sides, and it is not a thing to be 
 done lightly. Most houses try to obviate it in so 
 far as possible by hiring only the kind of people 
 they want to keep, "Our efforts toward effi- 
 ciency" (we quote from one manager who is typi- 
 cal of thousands) "begin at the front door. We 
 try to eliminate the unfit there. We do not em- 
 ploy any one who happens to come along. We try 
 by means of an interview and references and psy- 
 chological tests to get the very highest type of 
 employee." No human test is perfect, however, 
 and there are times, even in the best regulated 
 houses, when it becomes necessary to dismiss 
 persons who have shown themselves unfit. 
 
 It is not always a disgrace to be discharged 
 and it is not always a step downward. It may 
 be because of business depression or it may be 
 because the man is a square peg in a round hole. 
 Sometimes it is the only experience that will re- 
 duce a man's, especially a young man's, idea of 
 his own importance to something like normal 
 proportions, the only one that will clear his mind 
 of the delusion that he is himself the only person 
 who is keeping off the rocks the business for 
 which he is working, in which case it is one of the 
 best things that could have happened to him. 
 
 A roll call of famous or successful men who 
 
202 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 were fired would take up several reams of paper, 
 and it is a pretty rash personnel manager (not 
 to say brutal and unfair) who wiU throw a man 
 out like a rotten potato and declare that he is 
 absolutely no good. Besides, he does not know. 
 All that he can be sure of is that the man was 
 not qualified for the job he was holding. And 
 he should think twice before giving a man a 
 bad name even if he feels certain that he deserves 
 it. At the same time he must protect himself 
 and other business men from incompetent, weak, 
 or vicious employees. If after his dismissal a 
 man sends back to his former employer for a 
 recommendation, the recommendation should be 
 as favorable as possible without sacrificing the 
 truth. 
 
 When a man breaks his connection with a 
 business house, whether he does so voluntarily 
 or involuntarily, his departure should be pleas- 
 ant, or at the least dignified. It is childish to 
 take advantage of the fact that you are going 
 away to teU all of the people you have grudges 
 against how you feel about them, and it is worse 
 than a mere breach of good manners to abuse 
 the house that has asked you to leave. If it 
 has done some one else an injustice, talk about 
 that all you please, but on your own accoimt be 
 silent. Even if the fault has been altogether 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 203 
 
 with the house it does not help to call it names. 
 Self-respect should come to the rescue here. This 
 is the time when it is right to be too proud to 
 fight. 
 
 For a long time it has been held bad ethics for 
 the members of one trade or profession to speak 
 disparagingly of their competitors, and we have 
 grown accustomed to say that you can judge a 
 man by the way he speaks of his rivals. This 
 has limits, however, and in some instances a mis- 
 taken idea of loyalty to one's calling has led to 
 the glossing over of certain evils which could 
 have been cured much earlier if they had been 
 made public. It is all very well to be generous 
 and courteous toward one's competitors but the 
 finest courtesy in any business consists of doing 
 whatever tends to elevate the standard of that 
 business. 
 
 Every man likes his business to be well thought 
 of, and most businesses have organized for 
 the promotion of a high standard of ethics 
 as well as for the development of more efficient 
 methods. Notable among these, to mention one 
 of the most recent ones, is the Advertisers' Asso- 
 ciation. There was a time when the whole pro- 
 fession was menaced by the swindlers who were 
 exploiting fraudulent schemes by means of 
 advertising in magazines and newspapers, but 
 
204 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 to-day no reputable periodical will accept an 
 advertisement without investigating its source 
 and most of them will back up the guarantee of 
 the advertiser that his goods are what he repre- 
 sents them to be with a guarantee of their own. 
 No publication which intends to keep alive can 
 afford a reputation of dishonesty, and the efforts 
 of the publishers toward cleaning up have been 
 seconded by the association to such an extent that 
 any person or corporation that issues a deceptive 
 advertisement, whether or not there was intent 
 to deceive, will be prosecuted and punished. 
 
 There was a time when a man could do almost 
 anything within the law in a commercial transac- 
 tion and excuse himself by saying "business is 
 business." Happily this is no longer true. 
 Business men have not grown perfect but they 
 have raised their standards of business moraUty 
 as high as their standards of personal morality. 
 They have learned that business and life are one, 
 that our lives cannot — ^and this has a number of 
 disadvantages — be separated into compartments 
 like so many tightly corked bottles on a shelf. 
 We have only one vessel and whatever goes into 
 it colors what is abeady there. And it is signi- 
 ficant to remember that muddy water poured 
 into clean water will make it muddy, but that 
 clean water poured into muddy water will not 
 
MORALS AND MANNERS 205 
 
 make it clean. It takes very little ink in a pail 
 of milk to color the whole of it, but it takes an 
 enormous amount of milk to have any effect on 
 a bottle of ink. 
 
 Business men have also learned that the only 
 way to build a business that will last is to lay its 
 foundation on the Golden Rule, and many a man 
 who might otherwise sidetrack the principles of 
 integrity holds by them for this reason. "Hon- 
 esty," declared one of the most insufferable prigs 
 America ever produced, "is the best policy," He 
 was right. Prigs usually are. It is only be- 
 cause they are so sure of it themselves that they 
 irritate us. 
 
 It is a fact, in spite of the difficulty Diogenes 
 had when he took up his lantern and set out to 
 find an honest man, that most people like to pay 
 their way as they go, and the business men who 
 recognize this are the ones who come out on top. 
 They do not say that the customer is always right 
 nor that he is perfect, but they assume that he is 
 honest and trust him until he has proved himself 
 otherwise. The biggest mail order house in 
 America never questions a check. As soon as 
 an order is received they fiU it and attend to the 
 check afterward. Their percentage of loss is 
 extraordinarily small. Distrust begets distrust, 
 and the perversity of human nature is such that 
 
206 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 even an honest man will be tempted to cheat if 
 he knows another suspects him of it. The con- 
 verse is equally true. There are, of course, ex- 
 ceptions. But the only rule in the world to 
 which there are no exceptions is that there is no 
 rule that holds good under all conditions. 
 
PART II 
 
X 
 
 "BIG BUSINESS" 
 
 In the preceding pages we have looked over 
 the field of etiquette in business in a general 
 way, and have come to the only conclusion pos- 
 sible, namely, that the basis of courtesy in busi- 
 ness is common sense, and that whatever rules 
 may be given must not be followed slavishly, but 
 must simply be used as guide posts. In the 
 pages which follow we shall go into detail and 
 watch courtesy at work among certain groups 
 and individuals. 
 
 Let us take, for example, a big concern which 
 employs a thousand or more people. We shall 
 begin with the president. 
 
 President of a Big Organization. Here is a 
 man who bears a heavy responsibility. He has 
 not only his own welfare to look after but that of 
 the men and women who work witli (we like this 
 word better than for) him. His first duty is to 
 them. How can he best perform it? 
 
 It is a matter of fact that few men rise to such 
 positions who are not innately courteous. It is 
 
 209 
 
210 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 one of the qualities which enable them to rise. 
 For this reason we shall take it for granted that 
 the president needs no instructions. Already he 
 has learned the great value of courtesy. But 
 this does not protect him always from discour- 
 tesy in other people. 
 
 Every man who holds a high position in a big 
 organization is besieged with visitors, but no one 
 so much as the president. He is a target for 
 cranks and idlers and freaks as well as for earn- 
 est business men who want to help him or to get 
 help from him. Thousands during the course of 
 a year come to call on. him. If he saw them aU 
 he would have to turn over the presidency to 
 some one else and devote himself to entertaining 
 visitors. Many of those who come ask for him 
 when he is not at all the man they want to see, 
 but they have been taught in the schools of sales- 
 manship or they have read in a magazine that it 
 never pays to bother- with the little fellow, but 
 that they should go straight to the top. 
 
 Every minute of the time of the president 
 of a big company is valuable (all time is valu- 
 able, as far as that goes), and it must be pro- 
 tected from the people who have no right to in- 
 fringe upon it. 
 
 You would think that the vice-presidents and 
 the managers and the various executives would 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 211 
 
 be his best protection. They are not. It is the 
 person who is placed at the front door to receive 
 visitors. We shall consider him next. 
 
 The Man at the Door. As a matter of fact, 
 this person is usually a girl, many times a very 
 young and irresponsible one, because great num- 
 bers of business men have not yet realized the im- 
 portance of the position. A well-poised girl or 
 a woman who has had wide experience in hand- 
 ling people can fill the place quite as efficiently 
 as a man, and a great deal more so if the man has 
 not been chosen because he has the quick sympa- 
 thy and ready tact so necessary in taking care of 
 the needs of a miscellaneous assortment of call- 
 ers. 
 
 In the house we are observing the person at 
 the door is a young man who began as a messen- 
 ger boy, and who, because he did what he was 
 asked to do cheerfully instead of sullenly, with a 
 "Certainly, sir," and a smile instead of a "That's 
 Bob's business" and a frown, was made manager 
 of the messengers, and then first assistant of the 
 man at the door, and later, when that man was 
 given another position, was promoted to his 
 place. The job commands a good salary and 
 offers chances of promotion. The young man 
 likes it. 
 
 A visitor comes, a young salesman, let us say, 
 
212 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 who has had little experience. This is only the 
 second or third time he has tried to storm the 
 doors of big business. He asks at once for the 
 president. He does not give his card because 
 the schooL where he learned his trade cautioned 
 him against doing so. (He is perfectly correct, 
 and he would have been equally correct if he had 
 given it. The more formal style is to send in 
 the card.) The man at the door sees at once 
 what kind of man he has to deal with. 
 
 "The president is busy," he answers — a safe re- 
 mark always, because if he is not he should be; 
 "maybe I can do something for you." 
 
 The salesman explains that he has an attach- 
 ment to increase efficiency of typewriters. He 
 would like to show the president how it works. 
 
 "Oh, you don't want Mr. President," the host 
 answers. "You want Mr. Jones. He attends 
 to all such things for us. Will you be seated 
 here in the reception room," motioning toward 
 the door which is at one side of his desk, while I 
 find out if he is busy?" 
 
 This concern is very conservative about buying 
 new attachments and new machinery of any kind, 
 but it is ever on the alert to discover means of in- 
 creasing its output and saving its manpower. 
 Almost any new idea is worth a demonstration. 
 
 If the man at the desk has an inteUigent mes- 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 213 
 
 senger boy — ^and he should have — ^he sends him 
 in to Mr. Jones. The boy finds Mr. Jones busy. 
 He will be free in about fifteen minutes and then 
 will be glad to see the salesman. The man re- 
 ports to the visitor and asks if he cares to wait. 
 He does. The host ofifers him a magazine and 
 asks him to make himself comfortable while he 
 goes back to his desk to attend to the next visitor. 
 
 This one also wants to see the president. 
 
 "The president is in conference just now," 
 the young man replies. "Perhaps there is some- 
 thing I can do for you in the meanwhile if you 
 will tell me what you want." 
 
 "It's none of your business," he answers 
 rudely. "I want the president." 
 
 The chances are against a man of this sort. 
 He may be a person the president wants to see, 
 but the odds are ten to one that he is not. 
 
 "I'm sorry but you cannot possibly see him 
 now. He is busy." 
 
 "When will he be free?" 
 
 "It is hard to tell. These conferences some- 
 times last an hour or two, and I am sure he will 
 not see you even then unless you tell him why 
 you want to see him. He is a very busy man." 
 
 The visitor sputters around a few minutes and 
 it develops that he is selling insurance. The 
 young man knows that the president will not see 
 
214 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 him under any circumstances. He is already 
 heavily insured, as every wise man should be, 
 and he cannot be bothered with agents who are 
 trying to sell him larger policies. 
 
 "I'm sorry," the young man repeats, "but I 
 am sure there is no use in letting him waste your 
 time. He is already carrying a heavy policy 
 and he positively refuses to talk insurance with 
 anyone, no matter who it is." 
 
 This should be enough for the salesman. What 
 the young man says is true. It would be a waste 
 of his time as well as the president's. He does 
 not care half so much for the salesman's time — 
 there is no reason why he should — but notice how 
 tactfully he tells him that the head of the organi- 
 zation has no time to spend with hrtn. 
 
 There is a certain rough type of salesman (we 
 use the word salesman here in the broadest sense, 
 as the salesmen themselves use it, to cover all the 
 people who are trying to convince some one else 
 that what they have is worth while whether it is 
 an idea or a washing machine or a packet of 
 drawings) — there is a certain rough type of 
 salesman who tries to bluster his way through. 
 He never lasts long as a salesman, though un- 
 fortunately he survives a good many years in 
 various kinds of business. Even he must not be 
 turned away rudely. 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 216 
 
 "I'm sorry," the young man says to a person 
 of this sort, "but the president has given posi- 
 tive orders that he must not be disturbed this 
 morning. He is engaged in a very important 
 transaction." 
 
 The next man who approaches the door has an 
 authentic claim on the president. It would be 
 as great a calamity to turn him away as it would 
 be to let some of the others in. He presents his 
 card and says that he has an appointment. A 
 truly courteous man, whenever possible, ar- 
 ranges an appointment beforehand. The young 
 man takes the card, waves toward the reception 
 room, and asks him to be seated while he finds out 
 if the president is busy. He telephones to the 
 secretary of the president, tells him who is call- 
 ing, and asks if the president is ready to see him. 
 If the answer is affirmative he asks if he will see 
 him in his office or out in the reception room. 
 It is much easier to get rid of a visitor from the 
 entrance hall or reception room than from an in- 
 side office. If he says that he will see him in 
 the reception room the girl reports to the visitor 
 that he will come in a few minutes, offers him a 
 magazine, and asks him to make himself at home. 
 If the president says that he will see the visitor 
 in his office the young man sends one of the mes- 
 senger boys to usher him through the building. 
 
216 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 Now it may be that this man had no appoint- 
 ment with the president, but that he has used it 
 as a pretext to break through. In this case, the 
 secretary answers, after consulting his schedule, 
 that the president has never heard of such a per- 
 son and has no such appointment. A man of 
 this sort is not worth a minute's consideration. 
 He has shown himself dishonest at the outset 
 with a petty contemptible dishonesty, and the 
 temptation is to pitch him out on his head. But 
 the young man says quietly: 
 
 "His secretary says that the president has no 
 appointment with you. I am afraid you have 
 come to the wrong place. It must be some 
 other Mr. Beacon." 
 
 There is a note of finaUty in his voice which 
 convinces the visitor that there is no use in going 
 further. 
 
 The next visitor is a woman who has come to 
 have lunch with a friend of hers who works in 
 the accounting department. 
 
 "It is fifteen minutes before time for lunch," 
 the young man answers. "I can call her now, 
 of course, but if you would rather not disturb 
 her, I'll tell her that you will wait for her in the 
 reception room until she comes for you." 
 
 The woman thanks him and agrees that it will 
 be much better not to disturb her. The young 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 217 
 
 man offers her a chair and a magazine and in- 
 vites her to make herself comfortable. 
 
 It grows monotonous in the telling for him to 
 ask each of the visitors exactly the same ques- 
 tions (never exactly the same, of course) in the 
 same cordial tone of voice and to tell them to 
 make themselves comfortable in exactly the same 
 way, but the means of attaining success in such 
 a place hes in the fact that he greets each visitor 
 as if he were the only one he had to attend to, 
 and that he is, for the time being, at least, com- 
 pletely at the visitor's service. It is not so much 
 what the young man says as the way he says it. 
 "Good morning" can be spoken in such a way 
 that it is an insult. 
 
 The Girl at the Telephone. It is nerve- 
 racking to stand at the door to receive callers, 
 but it is much more so to sit at the switchboard 
 and receive messages. The only point of con- 
 tact is through the voice, but it is remarkable 
 how much of one's personahty the voice ex- 
 presses. If you are tired your voice shows it; 
 if you are cross your voice tells it; if you are 
 worried, your voice betrays it. It is possible for 
 one (everyone) to cultivate a pleasing voice. 
 The telephone companies have learned this, and 
 there is no part of her equipment upon which 
 they spend more time and effort than on the 
 
218 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 voice of the telephone girl. It is interesting to 
 know that their very excellent motto, "The voice 
 with the smile wins" did not spring into being 
 without thought. On the early bulletins this 
 clumsy phrase was printed: "A smiling voice 
 facihtates service." 
 
 The girl at the telephone, even though she re- 
 ceives a thousand calls a day, must answer each 
 one pleasantly and patiently. Some people call 
 without a very clear idea of what they want, and 
 the fact that business houses have so many differ- 
 ent names for exactly the same job often makes 
 it difficult for them to locate the person they are 
 asking for, even when they are fairly sure who it 
 is they want. 
 
 "May I speak to your personnel manager?" 
 comes the query over the wire to a girl who has 
 never heard of a personnel manager. 
 
 "I'm sorry, I did not quite hear you." 
 
 The person at the other end repeats the word 
 and the girl is sure she had it right the first time. 
 
 "We have no personnel manager here. Maybe 
 there is some one else who would do. If you wiU 
 tell me what you want " 
 
 "I want a job." 
 
 "Just a minute, please, I'll connect you with 
 our employment manager." 
 
 Advertising engineers, executive secretaries, 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 219 
 
 and many others are old jobs masquerading 
 under new names. 
 
 More business men complain of the girl at the 
 telephone than of any other person in business. 
 She must, under the handicap of distance, ac- 
 complish exactly what the man at the door does, 
 and must do it as efficiently and as courteously. 
 
 No matter how angry the one who is calling 
 becomes, no matter how profane he may be, no 
 matter what he says, she must not answer back, 
 and she must not slam the receiver down while 
 he is talking. Perfect poise, an even temper, 
 patience, and a pleasant voice under control — 
 if she has these, and a vast number of the tele- 
 phone girls have, she need not worry about the 
 rules of coiu-tesy. They will take care of them- 
 selves. 
 
 The numbers that a girl in a business office 
 has to call frequently she should have on a pad 
 or card near the switchboard so that she wiU 
 not have to look them up. Many business men 
 ask the girl at the board to give them Blank and 
 Blank or Smith and Smith instead of giving her 
 the numbers of the two concerns. She then has 
 to look them up, quite a difficult task when one 
 has the headpiece on and calls coming in and 
 going out every minute. To stop to look up one 
 number often delays several, and it is a duty 
 
220 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 which should never devolve upon the girl whose 
 business it is to send the calls through. The 
 man who is calling, or his secretary, if he has one, 
 or a person near the switchboard stationed there 
 for the purpose should look up the numbers and 
 give them to the operator. 
 
 An efficient girl at the telephone sends num- 
 bers through as quickly as is humanly possible, 
 but even then she is often scolded by nervous and 
 harassed men who expect more than can really 
 be done. 
 
 Mr. Hunter has called Main 6785. It is busy. 
 He waits. Hours pass. At least it seems so to 
 him, and he grows impatient. 
 
 "What's the matter with that number. Miss 
 Fisher?" 
 
 "I'm still trying, Mr. Hunter. I'll call you 
 when they answer." 
 
 The line continues busy. Mr. Hunter looks 
 over the papers on his desk. His nervousness 
 increases. He takes down the receiver again 
 and asks what the trouble is. He does not get 
 the number any more quickly this way, but it 
 would be hard to convince him that he does not. 
 The girl says quietly again that she is still try- 
 ing. He clings to the receiver and in a few 
 minutes she answers triumphantly, "Here they 
 are," and the connection is made. 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 221 
 
 The telephone girl in a big concern (or a little 
 one) is constantly annoyed with people who have 
 the wrong number. When it happens ten or 
 twelve times in the course of a day — fortunately 
 it is not usually so often — it is hard for her to 
 keep a grip on her temper and answer pleas- 
 antly, "This is not the number you want," but 
 the snappish answer always makes a bad situa- 
 tion worse, and the loss of temper which causes 
 it drains the energy of the person who makes it. 
 It is not merely the voice with the smile that 
 wins; it is the disposition and temperament to 
 which such a voice is the index. 
 
 The Secretary. The next in the line of de- 
 fense is the president's secretary. To him (and 
 we use the mascuhne pronoun although this po- 
 sition, like a good many others, is often held by 
 women even in the biggest organizations, where 
 the responsibiUty attached to it is by no means 
 small) — to him the president turns over the de- 
 tails of his day's work. He arranges the presi- 
 dent's schedule and reminds him of the things 
 he has forgotten and the things he is Ukely to 
 forget. He receives all of his visitors by tele- 
 phone first and many times disposes of their 
 wants without having to connect them with the 
 president at all. He receives many of the call- 
 ers who are admitted by the man at the door and 
 
222 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 in the same way often takes care of them with- 
 out disturbing the president. He knows more 
 about the petty routine of the job than the presi- 
 dent himself. He is accurate. He is respon- 
 sible. He is patient. He is courteous. 
 
 In order that he may be all these things it is 
 necessary for the president to keep him well in- 
 formed as to what he is doing and where he is 
 going and what he is planning so that he can 
 give intelligent answers to the people who come, 
 so that he can keep things running smoothly 
 when the president is away, so that he can 
 answer without delay when the president asks 
 whether he has a luncheon engagement on 
 Thursday, and what he did with the memoran- 
 dum from the circulation manager, and who is 
 handling the shipping sheets. 
 
 Men who have their minds on larger matters 
 cannot keep all the details of their jobs in mind, 
 but it is signii5cant to know that most successful 
 business men know with more than a fair degree 
 of accuracy what these details amount to. Some 
 secretaries feel very superior to the men who em- 
 ploy them because they can remember the date 
 on which the representatives of the Gettem Com- 
 pany called and the employers cannot. The 
 author knows a chauffeur who drives for a 
 famous New York surgeon who thinks himseK a 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 223 
 
 much better man than the surgeon because he 
 can remember the numbers of the houses where 
 his patients and his friends live and the surgeon 
 cannot. The author also knows a messenger 
 boy who thinks himself a much bigger man than 
 one of the most successful brokers in Wall Street 
 because the broker sometimes gives him the same 
 message twice within fifteen minutes, the second 
 time after it has already been delivered. 
 
 The secretary comes to the ojffice every morn- 
 ing neatly clad and on time. The hour at which 
 his employer comes in has nothing to do with 
 him. There is a definite time at which he is ex- 
 pected to be at his desk. He is there. 
 
 He opens the letters on his desk — and those 
 addressed to the president come first to him — 
 and sorts them, throwing aside the worthless 
 advertising matter, saving that which may be of 
 some interest, marking the letters that are to 
 be referred to various other members of the 
 house, and placing them in the memorandum bas- 
 ket, piling into one heap those that he cannot an- 
 swer without first consulting the president, and 
 into another those which must be answered by the 
 president personally. Intimately personal let- 
 ters often come mixed in with the rest of the 
 mail. No man wants a secretary whom he can- 
 not trust even with letters of this sort, but almost 
 
224 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 I 
 
 any secretary worth having will feel a certain 
 
 amount of delicacy in opening them unless he is 
 
 requested to do so. When these letters are from 
 
 people who write often the secretary grows to 
 
 recognize the handwriting from the outside of 
 
 the envelope, and therefore does not need to open 
 
 them. In other cases it is sometimes possible to 
 
 distinguish a personal from a business letter. 
 
 These should be handled according to the wishes 
 
 of the man to whom they are directed. Many 
 
 business men turn practically everything — even 
 
 the settlement of their family affairs — over to 
 
 their secretaries. It is a personal matter, and 
 
 the secretary's part in it is to carry out the wishes 
 
 of his employer. 
 
 By the time the mail is sorted the president 
 has come in. 
 
 He rings for his secretary, telephones for him, 
 sends a messenger for him, or else goes to his 
 desk himself and asks him to come in and take 
 dictation. There is no special courtesy or dis- 
 courtesy in any of these methods. It depends 
 on how far apart the desks are, how busy he is, 
 and a number of other things. He does not yell 
 for his secretary to come in. He manages to 
 get him there quietly. It is not necessary for 
 him to rise when the secretary enters (even if the 
 secretary is a woman) though he may do so (and 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 226 
 
 it is a very gracious thing, especially if the secre- 
 tary is a woman) but he should greet him (or 
 her) with a pleasant "Good-morning." 
 
 The secretary takes his place in the comforta- 
 ble chair that has been provided for him, with 
 notebook and pencil in hand and at least one 
 pencil in reserve. He waits for the president to 
 begin, and listens closely so that he may trans- 
 cribe as rapidly as he speaks. If he fails to 
 understand he waits until they come to the end 
 of a sentence before asking his employer to re- 
 peat. It is much better to do so then than to de- 
 pend on puzzling it out later or coming back and 
 asking him after he has forgotten what was said. 
 
 Telephone interruptions and others may come 
 during the dictation but the secretary waits until 
 he is dismissed or until the pile of letters has dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 When the president has finished it is the secre- 
 tary's time to begin talking. He consults him 
 about the various letters upon which he needs his 
 advice and makes notations in shorthand on 
 them. He reports on the various calls that have 
 come in and the house memoranda. A good 
 secretary reads and digests these before turning 
 them over to his employer, and in most cases 
 gives the gist of the memorandum instead of the 
 memorandum itself. It saves time. 
 
226 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 The president's secretary usually has a secre- 
 tary of his own, a woman, let us say, or a girl 
 whose preliminary training has been good and 
 whose record for the year and a half she has been 
 with the company has been excellent. 
 
 She comes to her desk on time every morning 
 as fresh as a daisy and as inconspicuous. The 
 relation that she bears to the president's secre- 
 tary is much the same as the relation that he 
 bears to the president. She gets the letters 
 that are addressed to him and sorts them in the 
 same way that he does those of the president. 
 On days when he is absent she takes care of all 
 of his work, in so far as she is able, as well as her 
 own. 
 
 Her employer is considerate of her always. 
 He does not make a practice of taking ten or fif- 
 teen minutes of her lunch hour or five or ten 
 minutes overtime at the close of the day, but 
 when there is a good reason why he should ask 
 her to remain he does so, asking courteously if 
 she would mind staying. If she is genuinely 
 interested in her work — and this young lady is — 
 she wUl stay, but if she has an even better reason 
 why she should go she explains briefly that it is 
 impossible to stay. He never imposes heavier 
 burdens upon her than she can bear, but he does 
 Bot hesitate to ask her to do whatever needs to be 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 227 
 
 done, and he does it with a "Please" and a "Thank 
 you," and not with a "See, here" and a "Say, 
 listen to me, now." She is a very pretty and 
 attractive girl, but the man she is working for is 
 a gentleman. To him she is his secretary, and 
 if he were ever in danger of forgetting it she 
 would be quick to remind him. She does not go 
 around with a chip on her shoulder all the time, 
 and she talks freely with the various men around 
 the office just as she does with the women and 
 girls, but it is in an impersonal way. She never 
 permits intimate attentions from her immediate 
 employer or any one else. 
 
 Executives. "Executive" is a large, loose 
 word which rolls smoothly off the tongue of far 
 too many business men to-day. Office boys be- 
 gin to think in terms of it before they are out of 
 knee trousers. "I could hold down the job," 
 said a youngster who had hurt his hand and 
 whose business was to carry a bag of mail from 
 a suburban factory into New York, "if I could 
 get some one to carry the bag." "I can do the 
 work," say smart young men in the "infant 
 twenties" (and many others — there is no age 
 limit), "but I must have a man to look after the 
 details." 
 
 The way to an executive position is through 
 details. Work, plain hard work, is the founda- 
 
228 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 tion of every enduring job, and the executive 
 who thinks he can do without it has a sharp reck- 
 oning day ahead. In most places the executives 
 have worked their way up slowly, and at no time 
 along the way have they had that large contempt 
 for small jobs which characterizes so many young 
 men in business. They have been perfectly will- 
 ing to do whatever came to hand. 
 ' But after all this is said, the fact remains that 
 an executive is successful not so much because of 
 his own abihty as because of his power to recog- 
 nize ability in other men. He is — and this is 
 true of every executive from the president down 
 — ^the servant of his people in much the same way 
 that the President of the United States is the 
 servant of the American people. This means 
 that he must be readily accessible to them, and 
 must listen as courteously to them as if they were 
 important visitors from across the sea or some- 
 where else. 
 
 Many executives — and this was true especially 
 during the war — ^have surrounded themselves 
 with a tangle of red tape which has to be un- 
 wound every time an employee (or any one else) 
 wants to get near enough to ask a question. This 
 is absurd. Sensible men destroy elaborate plans of 
 management and find they get along better with- 
 out them. The Baldwin Locomotive Works, 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 229 
 
 which has a hundred years of solid reputation be- 
 hind it, has no management plans. "There is 
 about the place an atmosphere of work, and work 
 without frills or feathers," and this is essentially 
 true of every business that is built to last. Look 
 at the organizations which, because of war condi- 
 tions, rose into a prosperity they had never en- 
 joyed before. Most of them have collapsed, and 
 the little men who rose with them (so many of 
 them and so much too small for their jobs) have 
 collapsed with them. 
 
 In the big reliable concerns, and the small 
 ones, too, the high executives are easily ap- 
 proached, especially by the members of the 
 organization. In many of the open offices — and 
 open offices have done much to create a feeling 
 of comradeship among workers — the desk of the 
 general manager is out on the floor with the 
 desks of the rank and file of the employees with 
 nothing to distinguish it from theirs except the 
 fact that there is a bigger man behind it. A real 
 man does not need a lot of elaborate decorations. 
 They annoy him. 
 
 There are two sides to this, however. Visitors 
 from the outside are not the only ones who are 
 likely to waste the time of other people, and a 
 busy man has to protect himself from indoor 
 nuisances as well as those that drift in from the 
 
230 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 outside. Some do it by means of secretaries, but 
 a good executive needs no barrier at all between 
 himself and his own men. They learn soon 
 enough — we are speaking now of a good execu- 
 tive, remember — that there is no use in going to 
 him unless there is some definite reason why they 
 should, and that the more briefly and directly 
 they present their problem the more hkely they 
 are to have it settled. 
 
 When an executive receives a caller (or when 
 any man in a business house receives a caller) he 
 should receive him and not merely tolerate him. 
 A young advertising man who began several 
 years ago had two very interesting experiences 
 with two gruff executives in two different com- 
 panies. Both consented to see him, both kept on 
 writing at their desks after he entered and gave 
 him scant attention throughout the interview. 
 Apparently they were both successful business 
 men. Certainly they both held positions that 
 would indicate it. Yet both of them a few years 
 later came to the young advertising man at dif- 
 ferent times looking for jobs. Needless to say 
 neither found a place with him, not because he 
 held a grudge against them, but simply because 
 he knew what kind of men they were and that 
 they could not help in the kind of business he was 
 trying to buUd. 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 231 
 
 From the beginning of the interview the host 
 should do all he can to make his visitor com- 
 fortable. You see a lot in certain magazines 
 about setting the visitor at a disadvantage by 
 giving him an awkward chair, making him face 
 the light and grilhng him with questions. It is 
 pure nonsense. 
 
 It is very gracious for a man to rise to greet a 
 caller and extend his hand, especially if the caller 
 is young and ill at ease. It is imperative if it 
 is an old man or a woman. He should ask the 
 visitor to be seated before he sits down him- 
 self. 
 
 "Well, young man, what can I do for you?" 
 is hardly a polite way of opening an interview. 
 The host should wait with a cordially receptive 
 air until his guest begins, unless he is in a great 
 hurry. Then he frankly tells the caller so and 
 asks him to make his business brief. 
 
 Interruptions come even in the midst of con- 
 versations with important visitors, but no visitor 
 is so important as to permit neglect of one's 
 employees. These should be met courteously and 
 dispatched quickly. The host must always ask 
 the pardon of the guest before turning to the 
 telephone or to a messenger, and if the guest is 
 an employee the rule is the same. 
 
 At the conclusion of the interview the host 
 
232 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 rises and shakes hands with the departing visitor 
 but does not necessarily go with him (or her) to 
 the door or the elevator, as the ease may be. 
 This is an additional courtesy in which a busy 
 man cannot always indulge. The essential part 
 of every interview is that the visitor shall state 
 what he wants, that the host shall give the best 
 answer in his power, and then the sooner the 
 visitor departs the better for all concerned. 
 
 The Rank and File. This is the largest group 
 in every business. It is the one that fluctuates 
 most. It is the one from which the discards are 
 made. It is the one from which ofiicers are 
 chosen. It is the one in which the real growth of 
 a business takes place. And by the same token 
 it is the one, generally speaking, where there is 
 most discourtesy. Promotion depends upon the 
 possession of this quality much more than people 
 realize. Many a man with actual ability to hold 
 a high position is not given an opportunity to do 
 so because the men who employ him realize that 
 he would antagonize those who worked under 
 him. 
 
 There are among the body of employees in 
 every concern (even the very best) discontented 
 members. In most cases, indeed, in nearly all 
 cases except where there is a chronic grudge 
 against life which is not affected by external cir- 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 233 
 
 cumstances, these are weeded out, and those with 
 habitual grudges are weeded out along with the 
 others or else are kept in minor places. Perhaps 
 it would be more nearly correct to say they keep 
 themselves there. Sometimes a subordinate 
 feels that he is unfairly treated by his immediate 
 superior. He wishes to go to the man above 
 him in authority. Is it right for him to do so? 
 
 It is an unwritten law that each worker shall 
 be loyal to the head of his department. Sup- 
 pose the head does not deserve it? 
 
 There are three courses open to the worker. 
 He can leave the job and find another in a dif- 
 ferent organization. He can go to the head of 
 the department and state the case to him. If 
 this should fail he may appeal to the man above 
 him, but he should never go over the head of his 
 own immediate superior without first telling him 
 that he intends to do it. 
 
 This is an important rule. It holds whether 
 one has a grievance to present or a suggestion. 
 Constructive plans should first be talked over 
 with one's immediate superior, and with his ap- 
 proval carried to the next man, or he may carry 
 them himself. If this superior is the sort of man 
 with whom you are constantly at loggerheads, 
 you had much better get out and get a place 
 somewhere else. And if you find that continu- 
 
234. THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 ally you are in hot water with the men who have 
 authority over you, you may be very sure that 
 the fault is not altogether theirs. 
 
 Subordinates usually have an idea that the 
 heads of their departments leave all of the work 
 to them. Well, as a matter of fact, they do leave 
 a large part of it. If they did not they would 
 have no excuse for having subordinates. The 
 reward of good work is more work. This is less 
 of a hardship than it sounds. Sir James Barrie 
 once quoted Dr. Johnson's statement that doubt- 
 less the Lord could have made a better fruit than 
 the strawberry, but that he doubtless never did, 
 and added to it that He doubtless could have 
 created something that was more fun than hard 
 work, but that He doubtless never did. 
 
 The subway guards in New York City say 
 that the rush which comes just before five o'clock 
 (the closing time of most of the business houses) 
 is as great as the one which comes just after. 
 They call the persons in the former rush the 
 clock watchers. They have left work about fif- 
 teen minutes early, and to-morrow morning — 
 business experience has taught this — they will 
 come in fifteen minutes late. For the most part 
 these are the discontented workers who spend 
 "60 per cent, of their time in doing their job, and 
 40 per cent, in doing the boss." 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 235 
 
 It has always been considered a breach of good 
 manners to pull out one's watch and look at it in 
 company. It is true in the office as well as in 
 the drawing room. The clock watchers are im- 
 polite. It has also been considered a breach of 
 good manners to hold a guest against his will 
 against the conventional hour for his departure. 
 The employers who habitually keep their em- 
 ployees after closing hours are equally impolite. 
 It is a question of honor, too. Time is money, 
 and the time grafters, whether employers or em- 
 ployees, are dishonest. 
 
 When one employee goes over to the desk of 
 another it is not necessary for the second to rise. 
 The first should wait until the one at the desk 
 looks up before speaking unless he is so absorbed 
 in his work that he does not glance up after a 
 minute or two. Then he should interrupt with 
 "I beg your pardon." It makes no difference 
 if one of the employees is a woman and the other 
 is a man. Work at an office can be seriously im- 
 peded if every time one person goes to the desk 
 of another the other rises. So many times the 
 whole conversation covers less time than it takes 
 to get out of one's chair and sit back down again. 
 In some places subordinates are required to 
 stand when a superior speaks to them, but as a 
 general thing it is not necessary. In such houses 
 
236 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 it is correct to play the game according to the 
 general standard and to act according to the 
 rules set down by the men who are in charge of 
 affairs. 
 
 There is no person so wretched or so poor or 
 so miserable but that he can find other people 
 who are more wretched, poorer, or more miser- 
 able. At the same time there is no person so 
 superior, so wealthy, or gifted but that he can 
 find other people who are more superior, more 
 wealthy, and more gifted. It is a part of good 
 manners to recognize superiority when one finds 
 it. Youngsters entering business can sit at the 
 feet of the older men in the same business and 
 learn a great deal. Knowledge did not enter the 
 world with the present generation any more 
 than it will depart from it when the present gen- 
 eration dies. It is just as well for young people 
 to realize this. Age has much to teach them. 
 Experience has much to teach them, and so have 
 men and women of extraordinary abiUty. "I 
 have never met a man," says a teacher of busi- 
 ness men, "from whom I could not learn some- 
 thing." All of us are born with the capacity to 
 learn. It is those who develop it who amount to 
 something. 
 
 Petty quarrels should be disregarded and 
 grudges should be forgotten. This piece of ad- 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 237 
 
 vice is needed more by women in business than 
 by men. Men have learned — it has taken them 
 several thousand years — to fight and shake 
 hands. They have a happy way of forgetting 
 their squabbles — this is a general truth — after 
 a httle while, and two men who were yesterday 
 abusing one another with hot and angry words 
 are to-day walking together down the hall smil- 
 ing and talking as gently as you please. 
 
 The Office Boy. If the office boy in a big 
 business house where much of the work is done 
 at a white-hot tension — the ofiice boy in a busy 
 Wall Street ofiice during the peak of the day's 
 rush, for example — could write his intimate im- 
 pressions they would make good reading. 
 
 The temper of the great American business 
 man is an xmcertain quantity. Famous for good 
 humor and generosity as a general thing, he is, 
 for all that, at his worst moments the terror of 
 the office boy's fife. Nervous, worried, tired, 
 and exasperated, he is likely to "take it out" on 
 the office boy if there is no one else at hand. 
 There is no defense for such conduct — even the 
 man who is guilty would not, the next day in his 
 calmer moments, defend it. Meantime, what 
 shall the office boy do? 
 
 A hot, tired man with papers fluttering over 
 his desk, his telephone ringing, and three men 
 
238 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 waiting in line to talk to him about serious prob- 
 lems connected with the business, yeUs, "What 
 do you want?" when the office boy comes to 
 answer the beU. 
 
 "You rang for me," the boy answers. 
 
 "I rang half an hour ago," the man snaps. 
 
 In reaUty he rang two minutes before. Shall 
 the office boy remind him of this? 
 
 Not if he values his job! 
 
 Of course it is unjust, but one of the first laws 
 of disciphne is to learn to be composed in the 
 face of injustice, and the first law of courtesy 
 for the office boy (and other employees would do 
 just as well to follow) is : Don't be too harsh with 
 the boss! 
 
 It is said that the grizzly bear, who is a very 
 strict mother, often spanks her cubs when she 
 herself has done something foolish. Juha Ellen 
 Rogers tells a story of an explorer who came 
 suddenly upon a bear with two cubs. He was so 
 frightened that he stood still for a minute or two 
 before he could decide which way to run. Mean- 
 time the bear, fully as frightened as he, turned 
 and fled, spanking the two cubs at every jump 
 in spite of the fact that each was already going 
 as fast as its legs could carry it. "It was so un- 
 expected," continues Miss Rogers, "and so funny 
 to see those little bears look around reproach- 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 239 
 
 fully at their angry parent every time they felt 
 the weight of her paw, helping them to hurry, 
 that the man sat down and laughed until he 
 cried." 
 
 It was not funny to the cubs. 
 
 Cases in which the office boy is maltreated are 
 exceptional, though cases in which he is mis- 
 understood are not. Most office boys have not 
 one boss but many. There should always be one 
 person from whom they receive their general 
 orders and to whom they go with their troubles. 
 (A yoimgster should have very few troubles to 
 report. It is usually the worthless ones who 
 report. ) 
 
 In most places the several office boys are sta- 
 tioned at a certain point, a desk or a table, with 
 one of their number more or less in charge. 
 The rule is that one person be always at the 
 desk. 
 
 All right. Six office boys. Five out on er- 
 rands. One at the desk. The bell rings. The 
 boy keeps his place. The bell rings again. The 
 boy keeps his place. The bell rings a third 
 time, long and insistently, but the youngster, 
 with a steadfastness worthy of the boy who stood 
 on the burning deck, still keeps his place. 
 
 A second later an angry official bounces out 
 and wants to know what on earth is the matter 
 
240 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 and declares that he will report the desk to the 
 manager. Meanwhile one of the missing five 
 has returned, and the youngster who had held 
 the place so long under fire takes the message 
 from the man and delivers it. 
 
 If the boy should see an opening — and most 
 business men except those funny little executives 
 puffed up with their own importance are ready 
 enough to listen — ^he may explain how it hap- 
 pened, but if he has to enter a shouting contest 
 it is best to stay silent. 
 
 The law of business courtesy — no matter how 
 far away from this a discussion goes it always 
 swings back — is the Golden Rule. The subor- 
 dinate who feels himself neglected by the men in 
 positions above him might check himself by hon- 
 estly asking himself how he appears to those 
 beneath him. It is interesting to know that the 
 one who complains most is usually the one who is 
 haughtiest when he enters into conversation with 
 the employees, who, he thinks, are not quite worth 
 his notice. He feels blighted because the presi- 
 dent does not stop to say "Good-morning" in 
 the hall, but it is beneath his dignity to say 
 "Good-morning" to the girl who collects his mail 
 or "Good-night" to the janitor who comes to 
 dust his desk when the day's work is over. The 
 means of attaining, courtesy — and if you have 
 
"BIG BUSINESS" 241 
 
 it yourself you will find it in other people — 
 is by watching your own actions. Teach no 
 one but yourself. Worry about no one's be- 
 havior but yovu" own. That is job enough for 
 any one. 
 
XI 
 IN A DEPARTMENT STORE 
 
 Let us now see courtesy at work in a big de- 
 partment store. 
 
 Mr. Hopkins has taken a morning off to do a 
 little shopping before he goes away on his sum- 
 mer vacation. He wants to buy two shirts, a 
 trunk, a toy for his baby, and a present for his 
 wife. He is not sure what he wants for the wife 
 and baby. 
 
 Mr. Hopkins does not like to shop. He re- 
 members his last expedition. A haberdashery 
 had sent him a cordial letter asking him to open 
 an account. He did so, but one morning later 
 when he went in to buy a waistcoat the rude and 
 inefficient service he met disgusted him so that 
 he has not been back since. He knew exactly 
 what he wanted and asked for it. "Oh, no," 
 answered the smart young clerk. "You don't 
 want that. People have not been wearing waist- 
 coats like that for years. This is what you 
 want," and he exhibited a different style alto- 
 gether. It happened that Mr. Hopkins knew 
 
 242 
 
IN A DEPARTMENT STORE 243 
 
 better than the clerk what he wanted, and the 
 fact that people had not been wearing waistcoats 
 like it made no difference to him. As a matter 
 of fact, the only reason the clerk made the re- 
 mark was that he did not have them in stock, and 
 thought perhaps he could sell by substituting. 
 
 There are other haberdasheries where the ser- 
 vice is distinctly good, but Mr. Hopkins decides 
 to go to a department store instead. Haber- 
 dasheries, however excellent, do not carry toys 
 for one's baby nor presents for one's wife, 
 
 Helpem's store has been warmly recom- 
 mended. He wiU go there. It is his first visit. 
 
 When he enters the door he is bewildered by 
 an array of women's scarfs and gloves and per- 
 fume bottles, handkerchiefs and parasols, hand- 
 bags, petticoats, knick-knacks, and whatnot. He 
 almost loses courage and begins backing toward 
 the door when he catches sight of a man in uni- 
 form standing near the entrance. He sees that 
 this man is directing the tides of shoppers that 
 are surging in, and approaches him. 
 
 "Where can I find the trunks?" 
 
 "Third floor. Elevator in the rear," the man 
 answers briefly (but not gruffly). People who 
 have to answer thousands of questions must be 
 brief. 
 
 As he passes down the aisle Mr, Hopkins, who 
 
244 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 is very observant, notices that all of the girls — 
 most of the clerks are girls — are dressed in a 
 pleasant gray. This gives an agreeable uniform 
 tone to a large establishment which would break 
 up into jarring patches of color if each clerk 
 were allowed to wear whatever color happened to 
 strike her fancy. Good idea, Mr. Hopkins 
 thinks, very necessary where there are many, 
 many clerks. 
 
 He does not have much trouble getting the 
 trunk. He knows pretty well what he wants, 
 and the obliging salesman convinces him that 
 the trunk wUl probably last forever by assuring 
 him that an elephant could dance a jig on it and 
 never make a dent. He asks Mr. Hopkins if he 
 wants his name on it. Mr. Hopkins had not 
 thought of it, but he does. No, upon second 
 thought, he will have only his initials stenciled 
 on in dull red, W- H. H. The trunk will be 
 delivered in the afternoon and he goes away well 
 satisfied. 
 
 The shirts are somewhat more difficult. He is 
 attached to a certain kind of collar and he hkes 
 madras shirts with little black stripes or figures 
 in them. The man shows him white ones and 
 wide striped ones and colored ones with the right 
 collar, and he almost decides that the place does 
 not keep madras shirts with little black figures 
 
IN A DEPARTMENT STORE 245 
 
 in them, when he suddenly realizes that he was so 
 intent on getting the collar that he forgot to say 
 anything about the material or color. He begins 
 again, tells the clerk exactly what he wants, and 
 in a few minutes the proper shirts are before him 
 and he is happy. While the clerk is folding them, 
 he asks about ties. It is a good thing. Mr. 
 Hopkins remembers that he has forgotten ties. 
 They have great bargains in ties. He drifts 
 over to the counter and presently has three lovely 
 ones. One is red, and Mr. Hopkins resolves to be 
 more careful than he was with the last red one. 
 His wife burned it. He must keep this hidden. 
 
 The ties remind him that he needs a bathrobe. 
 An agreeable clerk sells him a dull figured bath- 
 robe, comfortable and light for summer and 
 guaranteed to wash, and tells him that a pa jama 
 sale is in progress about four counters away. 
 
 When he has bought six pairs of pajamas he 
 begins to think of the baby's present. Toys are 
 on the top floor. The girl there — a wise depart- 
 ment store always chooses carefully for this 
 place — is very helpful. She asks about the 
 baby, how old he is, what toys he has, what toys 
 he has asked for, and so on. Mr. Hopkins tells 
 her, and after showing him several ingenious me- 
 chanical contrivances, she suggests a train with a 
 real track to run on. Mr. Hopkins is delighted. 
 
246 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 The girl asks if the youngster likes to read. He 
 does not, hut he likes to be read to, "Why don't 
 you take him a book?" and in a few minutes he 
 has the "Just-So Stories" tucked under his arm. 
 As he leaves the girl smiles, "Come back to see 
 us," she says. 
 
 All the clerks have said this. The clerk 
 who sold the shirts said, while they stood waiting 
 for the change, that he could depend on them. 
 They would not shrink and the colors would not 
 run. "We are here in the city," he continued 
 (the store was in New York), "but we have our 
 regular customers just as if we were in a small 
 town. We don't try to make just one sale and 
 get by with it. We want you to come back." 
 
 The girl at the toy counter tells Mr. Hopkins 
 that there is a woman downstairs who wiU 
 help him select something for his wife. He goes 
 back to the man in uniform to locate her and 
 finds her in a secluded booth on the first floor. 
 She asks several questions about whether he 
 would hke china or silver, furniture or linen, but 
 Mr. Hopkins wants to give his wife something 
 personal — something she can use or wear. He 
 has been married several years but not long 
 enough to know that this is a dangerous thing to 
 do, but the woman is wise. She suggests a sUk 
 parasol, a kimono, or a dozen handkerchiefs. 
 
IN A DEPARTMENT STORE 247 
 
 Such a service as this is not possible except in 
 very large shops, but in most places clerks are 
 quick to respond with suggestions for gifts. 
 There is a pleasvu-e about buying them and sell- 
 ing them that does not go with ordinary transac- 
 tions. 
 
 When he buys a parasol the clerk suggests 
 that they have a very large assortment of hand- 
 bags, but Mr. Hopkins's day's work is done, and 
 the clerk does not insist. None of the clerks in 
 a good department store is insistent. They offer 
 suggestions and stand ready to serve, but they 
 do not try to impose their ideas or their goods 
 upon the customers. Mr. Hopkins leaves well 
 satisfied with himself and his purchases. He 
 will come back. 
 
 The trunk is delivered in the afternoon, not by 
 the regular wagon, but by an express company. 
 It is a busy season. Mr. Hopkins is still fur- 
 ther delighted. These people keep their prom- 
 ises. And as he tips the man who brought it up 
 — ^he had to chmb three flights of stairs — the man 
 gives him a card. "Here's one of the boss's 
 cards," he says, "in case you want any hauling 
 done." Without doubt the man has been in- 
 structed by the boss to distribute his cards, but he 
 does it with such a grace that it seems to be on his 
 own initiative. 
 
248 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 It rarely happens that a business man or wo- 
 man can shop in the leisurely manner described 
 above. Most of their shopping has to be done 
 during the half hour after lunch or during a 
 frantic few minutes snatched at the beginning or 
 the end of the day's work. One morning Mr. 
 Hopkins had to leave home without a collar be- 
 cause he forgot to send the dirty ones to the laun- 
 dry (his wife was away that week) and dashed 
 into a little shop to get one on the way to the 
 office. He would have felt like murdering a 
 clerk who wanted to show him something nice in 
 the way of gloves or mufflers, and he would have 
 had a hard time to restrain himself from violence 
 if the clerk had started in on a eulogy of a new 
 shipment of Enghsh tweeds. 
 
 An intelhgent clerk can usually teU when his 
 customer is in a tearing hurry. It is an unpro- 
 pitious time to make suggestions. The clerk 
 must see things from the customer's point of 
 view. It is permissible to suggest something 
 else in place of the thing he has asked for but it 
 is not good manners to make fun of it or to insist 
 upon a substitute. Recently a woman wanted 
 to buy a rug for her automobile. She knew just 
 what she wanted, but the bright yoimg clerk in- 
 sisted that she wanted something else. She fi- 
 nally bought the rug, but it was in spite of the 
 
IN A DEPARTMENT STORE 249 
 
 clerk rather than because of him. Too many 
 salesmen kiU their sales by thinking and talking 
 only of their product. The customer is not half 
 so interested in that as he is in himself. Good 
 salesmanship relates the product to the customer, 
 and does it in such a way that the customer is 
 hardly aware of how it is done. 
 
XII 
 
 A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING 
 
 MAN 
 
 In a Big City. We wiU suppose that our trav- 
 eling man has his headquarters in some big city — 
 New York, Chicago, San Francisco, it does not 
 matter — and that he has several calls to make be- 
 fore he goes out on the road. 
 
 There are two kinds of salesmen, those who 
 make only one sale to a customer and those who 
 sell something that has to be renewed periodi- 
 cally. The first sell pianos, real estate, encyclo- 
 pedias, and so on; the second sell raw materials 
 and supphes. The salesman whom we are to 
 follow is in the second group. 
 
 He has — and so have most men who do this 
 kind of selling — a regular routine that he fol- 
 lows, adding new names to the list and delet- 
 ing old ones as seems expedient. At this par- 
 ticular time he has several old customers to visit 
 and one or two new prospects to investigate be- 
 fore he leaves town. 
 
 It is unnecessary for him to make arrange- 
 
 250 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 261 
 
 ments beforehand to gain access to the old cus- 
 tomers. They know him and they are always 
 glad to see him. But if there is a chance that the 
 customer may be out of town, or if it is during a 
 busy season, he telephones ahead to make sure. 
 He prefers indefinite to definite appointments, 
 especially if he has to see two or three people dur- 
 ing the course of a morning or an afternoon ; that 
 is, he would rather have an appointment to come 
 some time between ten and eleven or between 
 three and four than to have one for exactly half 
 past ten or a quarter of three. It is impossible 
 to tell how long interviews wiU last. Sometimes 
 when the salesman counts on staying an hour he 
 is through in five minutes and sometimes when 
 he thinks he can arrange things in fifteen minutes 
 he finds himself strung up for half a day. 
 
 The new prospects — there are three on this 
 particular morning — ^he handles in different 
 ways. To one he has a note of introduction from 
 a mutual friend. To another he has written a 
 letter stating why he wishes to caU and asking 
 when it will be convenient for him to do so. The 
 third, whom he knows by reputation as a "hard 
 customer" (in the slang sense of the word) who 
 will have nothing to do with salesmen of any sort, 
 he decides to approach directly, trusting to his 
 own presence to get past the girl at the front door 
 
252 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 and whomsoever else stands between him and the 
 man he wants to see. He does not write, because 
 he knows that the man would tear up the letter 
 and he does not telephone, because he knows that 
 the man would not promise to see him and that if 
 he were to call after such a telephone conversa- 
 tion his chances for success would be lessened. 
 
 Our salesman is careful with his appearance. 
 He bathes and shaves every morning and takes 
 special care that his linen is clean and that his 
 shoes are poUshed. He does not ornament him- 
 self with a lot of jewelry, and the material of 
 which his suit is made is plain. He presents, if 
 you should see him on the street, the appearance 
 of a clean, sohd, healthy, progressive American 
 citizen. He is poised but he is not aggressive. 
 He is persistent but he is not obstinate. 
 
 The best public speakers, it is said, never get 
 over a sinking f eehng of fear during the few min- 
 utes just before time for them to speak. It van- 
 ishes as soon as they get to their feet or a very 
 few minutes afterward, and, strange as it may 
 seem, it is this very fear that gives them their 
 power on the platform. The fact that they have 
 the dreadful feeling nerves them to strenuous 
 effort, and it is this effort that makes the ora- 
 tor. In the same way the best salesmen are 
 those who never get over the fear that perhaps 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 253 
 
 they have not thought out the best way to handle 
 the situation ahead of them. They forget the 
 fear as they begin to talk to the prospect, but the 
 fact that it is subconsciously present makes 
 the diflPerence between the real salesman and 
 the "dub." 
 
 Did you ever get to the door of a house you 
 were about to enter and then turn and walk 
 around the block before you rang the bell? Did 
 you ever walk around the block six or eight 
 times? So have we. Especially on those Wednes- 
 day and Sunday evenings when we used to 
 go caUing. There are not many salesmen who 
 have not had this experience and who have not, 
 upon hearing that a prospect they dreaded was 
 out, turned away from the door with a prayer of 
 deep thanksgiving. All of which is by way of 
 saying that selling is not an easy job. 
 
 The salesman whose career we are following 
 for a short time always has that little feeling of 
 nervousness before an interview. It is deeper 
 than ever when he approaches the "hard cus- 
 tomer," and it is not lessened in the least degree 
 when he finds a painted and marceled flapper at 
 the door who looks at him without a word. (In- 
 cidentally, she likes his looks.) 
 
 He takes out his card and asks her to give it to 
 Mr. Green and say that he is caUing. 
 
254 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 "He won't see you," the girl says. 
 
 "Will you tell him, please, that I am here, all 
 the same? Wait a minute." 
 
 He takes the card and scribbles on it, "I want 
 only five minutes of your time," and hands it to 
 the girl again. 
 
 She carries it away and presently returns say- 
 ing that Mr. Green is busy and cannot see 
 him. 
 
 "I knew he wouldn't," she adds. 
 
 "He must be very busy," the salesman says. 
 "When shall I be most likely to find him free?" 
 
 "He's no busier now than usual," the girl re- 
 sponds. "He's smoking a cigar and looking out 
 the window." 
 
 "Will you tell him, please, that I am coming 
 back to-morrow at the same time?" 
 
 The girl sees that he is very much in earnest. 
 She respects him for his quiet persisttence and 
 because he has not tried to "kid" her. She would 
 most likely have joined in heartily if he had, but 
 he would never have got past her. 
 
 She goes back into the office and returns with 
 word that the salesman may come in if he wiU 
 not take more than five minutes. He thanks the 
 girl and goes into the office where the "hard cus- 
 tomer" is seated. He does not rise, he does not 
 say "Good morning," and he does not take the 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 255 
 
 cigar out of his mouth, but this does not discon- 
 cert the salesman. He wastes no time in pre- 
 liminaries, but after a brief greeting, plunges at 
 once into his proposition, stating the essential 
 points clearly and in terms of this man's busi- 
 ness. He knows what the customer needs pretty 
 accurately for he has taken the trouble to find 
 out. He is not broadcasting. He is using line 
 radio, and everything he says is directed against 
 a single mark. The prospect is interested. He 
 puts the cigar aside. The salesman concludes. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he says, "but my five minutes are 
 up. Will you let me come back some day when 
 you are not so busy and tell you more about it?" 
 
 "Sit where you are," the other says, and begins 
 firing questions. 
 
 Half an hour later the salesman pockets the 
 order he wanted and makes ready to depart, feel- 
 ing that he has found another friend. The "hard 
 customer" is ashamed of his gruff reception and 
 apologizes for it. "I've been so bothered with 
 agents and drummers and traveling men that 
 I've promised myself never to see another one as 
 long as I hve," he says. 
 
 "I can well understand that," the salesman an- 
 swers. "It is one of the hardest things we are 
 up against, the fact that there are so many four- 
 flushers out trying to sell things." 
 
256 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 He goes next to see the man with whom he has 
 made an appointment by mail and finds that he 
 has been called out of town on business. He 
 talks with his secretary, who expresses a polite re- 
 gret that they were unable to locate him in time 
 to tell him that his visit would be of no use. He 
 asks if there is some one else who can take charge 
 of the matter, but the girl replies that aU such 
 things have to come before Mr. Thompson. He 
 will not be back until next week, and by that time 
 the salesman will be out on the road. 
 
 "I'll have another representative of our house, 
 Mr. Hamilton, call," he says. "He wiU write 
 to find out when it will be convenient for him to 
 come." 
 
 The third man on his list is the one to whom 
 he has the letter of introduction. This is one of 
 his best prospects. That is why he took such 
 pains to arm himself with the letter. He has no 
 trouble getting inside. The man is very busy 
 but he thrusts it completely aside for the moment. 
 He does not have to say "Be brief." Our sales- 
 man has been in the game long enough to know 
 that he must not be anything else. 
 
 "Frankly," he says at the end of the talk, "I 
 am not interested. I have no doubt that what 
 you say is true. In fact, I have heard of your 
 firm before and know that its reputation is good. 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 257 
 
 But I buy my material, and have for years, from 
 Hicks and Hicks." 
 
 "It is a good reliable concern," the salesman 
 responds, "and there is no reason why you should 
 desert them. They depend upon you as much 
 as you do upon them. But if they happen to be 
 short of something you want in a hurry, please 
 remember that our product is as good as theirs. 
 You can depend upon it with as much certainty." 
 
 "Thank you, I wiU," the prospect answers 
 and the interview is over. 
 
 Did the salesman act wisely? Would he have 
 gained anything by proving that his house was 
 superior to Hicks and Hicks? Not if the cus- 
 tomer was worth having. This salesman never 
 forgets that his part of the job is to build up 
 business for his own firm, and not to tear down 
 business for other firms. As it stands, he has in 
 this case estabhshed a feeUng of good wiU for 
 the house he represents, and has placed it in 
 such a light that if the rival concern should be 
 afflicted with a strike or a fire or any of a hun- 
 dred or two disasters which might lessen or sus- 
 pend its output, the customer will probably turn 
 to the salesman's house. And if Hicks and 
 Hicks should sell out or go into bankruptcy the 
 salesman will have won for his own house a 
 steady customer of great value. 
 
258 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 In the Sleeping Car. The wise traveling man 
 — ^and our salesman is wise — always engages 
 sleeping accommodations on the train in ad'- 
 vance. This time he has the lower berth in 
 No. 9. 
 
 When he comes in to take his seat he finds that 
 a woman has the upper berth in the same com- 
 partment. He is reading a newspaper and she 
 is reading a magazine. He says nothing until 
 toward evening, and then he offers to exchange 
 places with her. She thanks him cordially, ex- 
 plains that she was late in securing a berth and 
 that this was all she could get. She is very 
 grateful and the transfer is made. 
 
 He goes into the smoking car and meets there 
 several men who are talking together. He joins 
 them and the conversation runs along pleasantly 
 enough until one of the number begins to retail 
 dirty stories. Some of the others try to switch 
 him off to another subject but he is wound up 
 and nothing short of a sledge hammer will stop 
 him until he has run down. Our salesman has 
 a healthy loathing for this sort of thing. He 
 has a good fund of stories himself — ^most travel- 
 ing men have — and in the course of his joumey- 
 ings he has heard many of the kind that the 
 foul-minded man in the smoking car is retaihng 
 with such delight. He never retells stories of 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 259 
 
 that nature, and he never, when he can avoid it, 
 listens to them. He knows that he cannot stop 
 the man, but after a little while he gets up quietly 
 and leaves. Another man follows him and the 
 two stand on the rear platform of the train until 
 time to go to bed. 
 
 Men who are traveling together often con- 
 verse without knowing one another's names, and 
 it is correct that they should. Only a prig re- 
 fuses to speak to a man on a train or a boat be- 
 cause he does not know his name. Opening 
 conversation with a stranger is not always easy, 
 and should be avoided unless it comes about in 
 a natural way. The stranger may not want to 
 converse. It is correct for a man who wishes 
 to talk to another first to introduce himself. 
 "My name is Hammond," he says, and the mart 
 to whom he says it responds by holding out his 
 hand (this is the more gracious way, but he may 
 omit this part of it, if he hkes) and pronouncing 
 his own name. The same rule holds when the 
 travelers are women. 
 
 Our salesman goes to bed early. 
 
 Two men have the compartment across from 
 his. They seem very much interested in each 
 other, for they continue to talk after they have 
 gone to bed. In order to make themselves heard 
 they have almost to scream, and the raucous 
 
260 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 sound of their voices is much more disturbing 
 than the sound of the wheels grinding against 
 the rails. It is hard to sleep on a train even 
 under favorable circumstances. Our salesman 
 has a strenuous day ahead of him — most of his 
 days are strenuous — and the noise is keeping 
 him awake. 
 
 He could throw on his bathrobe, climb down 
 and remonstrate with the two men across the 
 way. It would be correct for him to do so, but 
 it would hardly be expedient. People who are 
 thoughtless enough to be noisy late at night are 
 often rude enough to be very unpleasant when 
 any one interferes. The salesman has no 
 real authority over them, but the porter on duty 
 at night is supposed to see that a certain amount 
 of peace and quiet is maintained. The sales- 
 man rings the bell, and when the porter appears, 
 asks him if he would mind begging the two men 
 across the aisle to lower their voices. The porter 
 has had years of experience. He has developed 
 a soft, pleasant way of asking people to be quiet, 
 and in a few minutes the car is still except for 
 the inevitable sound of the train and the snor- 
 ing of an old lady near the end of the car. This 
 last cannot be helped. It must be endured, and 
 our salesman composes himseK into a deep 
 slumber. 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 261 
 
 Dressing and undressing in a sleeping car are 
 among the most dijQBcult operations to perform 
 gracefully. There are no rules. Most men pre- 
 fer staying in their berths to making the attempt 
 in the crowded dressing rooms. Some divide 
 the process between the two, but no gentleman 
 ever goes streaking down the aisle half -dressed. 
 He is either fuUy clothed or else he is wrapped in 
 a bathrobe or a dressing gown. 
 
 When oiu" salesman comes in to breakfast the 
 next morning there is only one vacant place, a 
 seat opposite a young woman at a table for 
 two. He crosses over and sits down, first ask- 
 ing if he may do so. In well-managed dining 
 cars and restaurants, the seating is taken care 
 of by the head waiter. He never places a per- 
 son at a table with some one else without asking 
 permission of the one who is already seated. It 
 is never permissible for a stranger to go to a 
 table that is already taken if there is a vacant 
 one available. The young lady bows and smiles. 
 She has already sent in her order. They talk 
 during the meal quite as if they had been intro- 
 duced and had met by appointment instead of 
 by accident. She does not introduce herself, nor 
 does he introduce himself. When she has fin- 
 ished she asks the waiter for her bill. She pays 
 it herself — our salesman has too much dehcacy 
 
262 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 to offer to do so — and tips the water. Then 
 with a nod and a smile she is gone. 
 
 This salesman is a chivalrous traveler. When- 
 ever there is an opportunity to render a service to 
 a woman (or to any one else) he takes pleasure in 
 doing it. He does not place women under 
 financial obligation to him, however, and he is 
 careful not to annoy them with attentions. He 
 has many times found a taxi for a woman travel- 
 ing alone or with children when they have had 
 the same destination; he has helped women 
 decipher time tables; he has carried bundles 
 and suitcases and baskets and boxes for old 
 ladies who have not yet learned in all their long, 
 long hves that the way to travel is with as little, 
 instead of with as much, baggage as possible; and 
 he has helped young mothers establish themselves 
 comfortably in place with their children. But 
 he has never — and he has been traveling a good 
 many years now — thrust himself upon a woman 
 and he has never embarrassed one by his atten- 
 tions- 
 He does not "treat" the men whom he meets 
 by accident during his travels. They often go 
 in to meals together but each one settles his own 
 biU, and when they come to the end of the 
 journey they are without obhgations toward one 
 another. It is much pleasanter so. 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 263 
 
 The salesman does not, as a rule, tip the porter 
 until he leaves the train, and the amount that 
 he gives then is according to what the porter has 
 done for him. If he has been in the car a good 
 many hours and if he has had to ask the porter 
 for many things, such as bringing ice water at 
 night, silencing objectionable travelers, bring- 
 ing pillows and tables during the day, not to 
 mention polishing his shoes and brushing his 
 coat every morning, he is much more generous 
 than if he had been on the car only a few hours 
 and had not asked for any special service. Un- 
 less the trip is long he never gives more than a 
 dollar. Twenty-five cents is the minimum. 
 
 By Automobile. From an economic point of 
 view this problem has come to be almost as large 
 as the railroad problem, and the part the auto- 
 mobile, including trucks and taxis, plays in 
 business is growing larger and larger every year. 
 
 Motorists have a code of their own. They — 
 when they do as they should — drive to the right 
 in the United States, to the left in certain other 
 countries. They take up no more of the road 
 than is necessary, and they observe local traffic 
 regulations scrupulously, not only because they 
 wiU be fined if they do not but because it is im- 
 polite in Rome to do other than the Romans do. 
 They hold out their hands to indicate that they 
 
264 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 are about to turn, they slow down at crossings, 
 and they sound their horns as a warning signal 
 but never for any other reason. 
 
 It is often necessary for a man who is trying to 
 sell a piece of property to take out to look at it 
 the man who thinks he will buy it. Needless to 
 say, it is the former who pays for the trip. Other 
 business trips are arranged by groups, the bene- 
 fit or pleasiu-e which is to result to be shared 
 among them. Under such conditions it is wise 
 (and polite) for them; to divide expenses. These 
 matters should be arranged ahead of time. If 
 one is to furnish the machine, and one the gas- 
 oline, and another is to pay for the lunch, it 
 should be understood at the outset. 
 
 In a Small Town. The salesman is now com- 
 pletely out of the metropolitan district. He is 
 in a small town like hundreds of others over the 
 United States. ' The hotel is very good in itself, 
 but compared with the one in the city, which he 
 has just left, it is inconvenient. He has better; 
 judgment than to remind the people of this. 
 Instead, when he is talking to them — ^and he 
 likes to talk with the people in the towns he is 
 serving — ^he talks about what they have rather; 
 than what they have not and about what they 
 can do in the future rather than what they have 
 failed to do in the past. It is in this way that 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 265 
 
 he discovers how he can best be useful to them. 
 
 He Hkes to work at the quick pace set by the 
 big cities but he knows it will not do here. He 
 goes around to see Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter is 
 glad to see him, but he has had a bad year. The 
 crops have not been good, the banks have not 
 been generous, his wife has been sick, and one of 
 his children has broken a leg. The salesman 
 listens sympathetically to this tale of woe, leads 
 the conversation away from the bad year behind 
 to the good year ahead, and in a little while they 
 are eagerly discussing plans for business in the 
 next month or so. The salesman shows how he 
 can help, and convinces Mr. Carter that the best 
 time to begin is right now and gets an order for 
 supphes from him. It has taken the better part 
 of the morning, and Mr. Carter asks him to go 
 home with him to limch. The salesman would 
 prefer going back to the hotel, but he knows that 
 it will give Mr. Carter great pleasure to have 
 him — ^his invitation is unmistakably hearty — so 
 he accepts. 
 
 Before he came the salesman had discovered, 
 through consulting the directories and by talk- 
 ing with friends of his who knew the town, who 
 were worth going to see and who were not. Mr. 
 Carter he had learned was immensely worth while 
 and that is why he was willing to spend so much 
 
266 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 time with him. No salesman can afford to stop 
 and talk with everybody who can give him the 
 inside story of why business is no good. This 
 salesman always finds out as much as possible 
 about a man before he goes to see him. He never 
 leaps bhndly ahead when there is any way to 
 get a gleam of light first. 
 
 Once in South Carolina he was anxious to 
 get a large order from a wealthy old man who, 
 he felt sure, would be a regular customer if he 
 could once be persuaded to buy. The old man 
 paid no attention to what he was saying until 
 he mentioned the picture of a hunting dog that 
 hung above the desk. The old man's eyes kin- 
 dled. This was his hobby and he forgot all about 
 business while he talked about hunting, and, 
 ended by asking the salesman to go home with 
 him and spend the night. The salesman ac- 
 cepted gladly, and the next morning they went 
 rabbit hunting instead of going back to the 
 ofiice. The salesman was out of practice in 
 handling a gun but it was great fun, and the up- 
 shot of it all was that he "landed" the order he 
 wanted. 
 
 This method is pleasant but wasteful. The 
 salesman never uses it except as a last resource. 
 
 Much of the success of this salesman (and of 
 the others who are successful) lies in the fact 
 
A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 267 
 
 that he can put himself so completely into the 
 place of the man he is trying to sell. He talks 
 in terms of that man's work, and he tries to sell 
 only where he believes the sale will result in 
 mutual satisfaction. He never says anjrthing 
 about serving humanity, but his hfe is shaped 
 around this idea, which is, when all is said and 
 done, the biggest idea that any of us can lay 
 ourselves out to follow. 
 
 He is working for a firm that he knows is 
 honest — no self-respecting man wiU work for 
 any other kind — and he wants its financial rating 
 to stand sohd. He does not sell to every man 
 who wants to buy. He investigates his credit 
 first, and if there is to be a delay while the in- 
 vestigation is under way he frankly tells the man 
 so, and assures him that it is for his protection 
 as well as for that of the house that is selling the 
 goods. "It is a form we go through with every 
 new customer," he says. "If we did not we'd 
 find ourselves swamped with men who would not 
 pay. And that would work hardship on those 
 who do." Every business man knows that this 
 is the only way in which rehable business can be 
 carried on. And it is reliable business that we 
 are interested in. 
 
XIII 
 TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE 
 
 A YOUNG banker from Smithville is in New 
 York. It is his first trip. 
 
 You would like him if you could see him. Tall, 
 sun-burned, clean-cut, well-dressed, thoroughly 
 alive and interested in everything. He is a bit 
 confused by the city but he is determined to learn 
 everything that it has to teach him. He does 
 not hesitate to ask questions but he hkes to find 
 out without, whenever possible. 
 
 He goes into the dining room of the great 
 hotel where he is staying, and for the first time 
 in his life is confronted with an array of silver on 
 both sides of his plate. At home he always has 
 a knife, fork, and spoon laid together at the 
 right of his plate, by which you can see that he 
 has not lived among people who place much 
 emphasis on haAong food daintily or correctly 
 served. He is not exactly prepared for this. 
 When he left Smithville he was thinking more 
 of his business connections than of what he was 
 going to eat, and how. He is embarrassed be- 
 
 868 
 
TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE 269 
 
 cause, like every sanely balanced person, he likes 
 to do things as they should be done, and not just 
 blunder through them. There is no one he can 
 ask except the waiter, and the waiter seems such 
 a superior person that he is afraid to ask 
 him (though it would have been perfectly cor- 
 rect for him to do so). He gets through the 
 meal the best way he can and finds that when the 
 ice cream is brought the only thing he has left 
 to eat it with is a slender fork with a long han- 
 dle and three very tiny prongs. He knows that 
 he has tripped up somewhere along the hne, 
 but he asks the waiter to bring him a spoon 
 (he should have asked for a fork) and goes 
 ahead. 
 
 The next day he is invited out to dinner with 
 a man who has all of his hfe been accustomed 
 to first-class hotels and restaurants and the din- 
 ing tables of wealthy and cultured people. He 
 is somewhat older than our young banker and 
 he has had a great deal of experience in enter- 
 taining men who have come into the city from 
 smaU towns. He is thoughtful, sympathetic, 
 an excellent host. He leads the way into the 
 dining room (though they stand together in such 
 a way that it seems that neither is leading) and 
 chooses a table. This nearly always means ac- 
 cepting the one the head waiter indicates. 
 
270 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 though it is quite correct for the host to sug- 
 gest the table he would like to have. 
 
 "Does this suit you?" he asks the young banker 
 before they sit down. 
 
 It suits him exactly. He says as much. 
 
 "Now, what wiU you have to eat?" 
 
 The waiter has given him a menu card, con- 
 taining, so it seems to the young man, a million 
 things that he might have. A dinner served 
 in courses was something beyond his knowledge 
 until the night before, and the dinner then was 
 table dfhote instead of a la carte. He flounders 
 through the card and is about ready to thrust it 
 aside and say, "Just bring me some ham and 
 eggs" when his host sees his predicament. 
 
 "Blue Points are usually good at this time of 
 the year," he says. "Shall we try them?" 
 
 The young man has not the remotest idea what 
 Blue Points are but he thinks it will be very de- 
 lightful to try them. 
 
 "What kind of soup do you like?" the host 
 continues when the waiter has departed. "I see 
 they have vegetable soup and consomme." 
 
 The young man clutches at the famihar straw. 
 He will have vegetable soup. 
 
 Throughout the meal the host makes comments 
 and suggestions and guides his guest through to 
 the end, and does it so graciously that the young 
 
TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE 271 
 
 man from Smithville is not aware that he is do- 
 ing it, and feels that it is all due to his own quick 
 observation that he is getting along so well. No 
 business man is a perfect host until he can ac- 
 comphsh this. 
 
 Our young man knows already that one should 
 sit up at a table and not lean forward or lounge 
 back, that he should not take large mouthfuls 
 and that he should not snap at his food, that he 
 should eat without noise and with great cleanU- 
 ness. He knows that his napkin should be un- 
 folded (it should be imfolded once and hot 
 spread out) and laid across his lap, not tucked 
 into his coUar or the top of his vest. He knows 
 that he should not eat with his knife. 
 
 He has never seen a finger bowl before but 
 he has heard of them, so that when one is placed 
 before him he knows that he should dip the ends 
 of his fingers into it and dry them on his napkin. 
 He has also heard that toothpicks are never 
 used hj gentlemen, at least in public, and he is 
 not surprised when he does not see them. 
 
 He has read somewhere that when a knife or 
 a fork is dropped to the floor he should not pick 
 it up himself but should aUow the waiter to do 
 so, and that the waiter should be allowed to clear 
 away the damage when something is upset on 
 the table. He knows that long apologies are 
 
272 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 out of order anywhere, and he is not hkely to 
 say anything more than "Excuse me" or "I beg 
 your pardon" if he should by a clumsy movement 
 break a glass or overturn a plate of soup. 
 
 But he does not know about the various knives 
 and forks or about how courses are arranged, and 
 he does not know about tips. 
 
 It is correct for him to explain to his host, just 
 as Pip did when he was dining for the first time 
 with Herbert Pocket, that he is unused to such 
 things and beg him to give him a few hints as 
 they go along. But it is less embarrassing to 
 consult a book of etiquette about fundamentals 
 and to pick up the other knowledge by close ob- 
 servation. 
 
 He discovers — our young friend uses both 
 methods — that knives are laid at the right of the 
 plate in the order in which they are to be used, be- 
 ginning at the outside, and that the spoons are 
 laid just beyond the knives in the same order. The 
 butter knife (which rarely appears at dinner 
 time) is usually laid across the little bread plate 
 at the left of the dinner plate. Forks are placed 
 at the left of the plate in the order in which they 
 are to be used, except the oyster fork, which is 
 laid across the knives or else is brought in with 
 the oysters. The steel knife is for cutting meats. 
 The flat fork with the short prongs is for salads. 
 
TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE 273 
 
 Salads are always eaten with a fork. It is some- 
 times not very easy to do, but it is the only cor- 
 rect way. 
 
 This is the general standard, but there are de- 
 viations from it. Nothing but experience in 
 dining — and a great deal of it — will teach one 
 to know always what fork or what knife or what 
 spoon to use when the table service is highly 
 elaborate. The best policy for a stranger under 
 such conditions is that of watchful and unob- 
 trusive waiting. 
 
 The dinners that business men choose for 
 themselves are rarely divided into numerous 
 courses. Often they have only two: meat and 
 vegetables, and desert. The regular order for 
 a six-course dinner is : first, an appetizer such as 
 oyster cocktail, grapefruit, strawberries,or some- 
 thing of the sort, followed by soup, fish, meat and 
 vegetables, salad, dessert, cheese and crackers. 
 One or more of the courses is often omitted. 
 
 The rule for tipping is universally the same: 
 Ten per cent, of the bill. 
 
 Suppose the cases had been reversed and the 
 man from the city had been in Smithville to take 
 dinner with the young banker. 
 
 He is not accustomed to seeing all of the food 
 put on the table at one time, nor to having to use 
 
274 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 the same fork throughout the meal. But he is 
 a gentleman. He adapts himself to their stand- 
 ard so readily that not one of the people at the 
 table could teU but that he had always lived that 
 way. 
 
 The young banker is a gentleman, too. When 
 his friends from the city come to visit him he 
 gives them the best he has and does not apologize 
 for it. He does not begin by saying, "I know 
 you are used to having better things than this 
 but I suppose you can stand it for one meal." 
 He simply ushers his guest into the dining room 
 as cordially and with as httle affectation as if he 
 were the paying teller of the Smithville bank. 
 No one need ever apologize when he has done or 
 given his best. 
 
 It is interesting to know that the standard of 
 our young banker is growing higher and higher 
 all the time. He likes to know how the people 
 who have had time to make an art of dining do it 
 and to adapt his ways to theirs whenever he can. 
 
 It is a grave mistake for a business man to 
 feel that he must entertain another to the stand- 
 ard to which the second is accustomed. A poor 
 man who finds himself under the necessity of 
 entertaining a rich one should not feel that he 
 must do it on a grand scale if he has been so en- 
 
TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE 275 
 
 tertained by a rich one. Aside from the moral 
 question involved the great game of bluff is too 
 silly and vulgar a one for grown men to play. 
 
 But business men play it and their wives join 
 in. Suppose Mrs. Davis, whose husband is an 
 assistant of Mr. Burke, wishes to invite Mrs. 
 Burke to her home to dinner. She and Mr. 
 Davis have been formally entertained in the 
 other home, and the dinner they had there 
 was superintended by a butler and carefully 
 manipulated by two maids. Now Mrs. Davis 
 has no maid, her china is very simple, and the 
 food that she and her husband have, even when 
 they entertain their friends, is plain and whole- 
 some. Should she, for the great occasion, hire 
 more beautiful china and engage servants? 
 Should she draw on the savings bank for more 
 delicate viands? 
 
 To begin with, Mr. Burke knows exactly what 
 salary Mr. Davis gets. He knows whether it 
 will warrant such expenditure. WiU it make 
 him feel hke placing more responsibility on his 
 assistant's shoulders to see him living beyond 
 his means? Is it not, after all, much better for 
 people to meet face to face instead of hiding 
 themselves behind masks? The masks are not 
 pretty, and in most cases deceive only the per- 
 sons who wear them. 
 
276 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 Men who are friends in business often like 
 their wives to be friends as well. It is many 
 times possible to bring about a meeting at the 
 home of a common friend, but when this is not 
 convenient, one of the women may invite the 
 other. If the invitation is to dinner, it is not 
 correct for Mr. Gardner to invite Mrs. Shandon 
 even if he knows her and his wife does not. The 
 invitation should go from Mrs. Gardner and 
 should be addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Shandon. 
 If the invitation is for tea, Mrs. Gardner simply 
 invites Mrs. Shandon, and the nature of the in- 
 vitation depends upon whether the affair is 
 formal or informal. 
 
 As to which of two women should proffer the 
 first invitation there might be some discussion. 
 Usually it is the wife of the man whose position is 
 superior, if they both work for the same con- 
 cern. It frequently happens that a man whose 
 position in business is high is married to a 
 woman whose social standing is not of corre- 
 sponding importance. Perhaps such a man has 
 a subordinate whose wife is a social leader. In 
 this case which of the women should extend the 
 first invitation? 
 
 Most women of eminent social rank realize 
 and appreciate the fact thoroughly. The social 
 leader knows that the other woman might be 
 
TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE 277 
 
 embarrassed and hesitant about inviting her to 
 her home. If she does apprehend this it is only 
 gracious for her to extend the first invitation 
 herself. 
 
 In small towns the rule is for the old residents 
 to caU upon the new, and the wife of a business 
 man who has recently established himself in a 
 community must wait until the women who hve 
 there have called upon her before she begins to 
 entertain them. 
 
 In large cities where it is impossible to know 
 everyone this rule is practically disregarded, and 
 business men invite one another and ask their 
 wives to do the same according to the way con- 
 venience and chance make most natural. Wo- 
 men whose husbands are longest in the employ of 
 a firm, or whose husbands hold high positions, as 
 a rule call first on the wives of newcomers or 
 subordinates. 
 
 It all comes to the same thing whether it is in 
 a city or a small town or the country. Those 
 who are already estabhshed in the neighborhood 
 or the business extend the right hand of welcome 
 and good fellowship to those who are not. 
 
 In order to bring their employees together 
 socially most big houses now give various enter- 
 tainments such as picnics, parties, dances, and 
 banquets. They are in no way different from 
 
278 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 other entertainments of the same kind so far as 
 the etiquette of behavior is concerned. Formal 
 dances and banquets in the evening require even- 
 ing dress just the same, except with that very 
 enormous group (to which most of us belong) 
 who do not own evening dress. This does not 
 mean that evening parties must be foregone by 
 this group or that they should hire gala attire 
 for the occasion, but simply that the men wear 
 their business suits and the girls their "Sunday" 
 dresses. It is just as correct, it is just as much 
 fun, and it is infinitely wiser than giving a 
 dollar down and a dollar a week for a decollete 
 gown or a swallow-tail outfit. 
 
XIV 
 LADIES FIRST? 
 
 Most girls who are in business are there to 
 earn a living. 
 
 It is true that an increasing number of wealthy 
 girls who are under no necessity to work but who 
 want a definite place in the economic life of the 
 world are entering business every year, but the 
 great army of workers is made up of those who 
 enter business because they are driven into it 
 (driven, many of them, while they are yet very 
 young), because it is the only way in which they 
 can have their own money, or because it is the 
 only way in which they can raise their standard 
 of living. 
 
 The majority of business girls come from the 
 homes of parents in moderate circumstances. 
 They have had advantages — a high-school or a 
 college diploma, a certificate from a business 
 school, travel, specialized training — and all these 
 they have added to their business capital. In 
 many instances the opportunities they have had 
 have not been brilhant, but every opportunity, 
 
 279 
 
280 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 however small, carries with it the responsibility 
 to make the best of it. Upon these girls, since 
 they outnumber the others and because they have 
 had advantages (a high-school education is an 
 enormous advantage if you are looking at it from 
 the point of view of a person who wanted one but 
 was not able to get it) , rests the responsibility of 
 setting the pace for others. And the standard 
 of behavior for the business girl, whether she be 
 rich or poor or in between, is the same. 
 
 The wealthy girls who enter business deUber- 
 ately are usually followed by the same sensible 
 impulse that started them on their careers, and, 
 as a rule, they conduct themselves with dignity 
 and modesty. The wealthy girls who, through a 
 turn of fortune have been forced into work and 
 have gone unwillingly, are another matter. "The 
 rudest girls we have," is the testimony of most 
 people who have to deal with them. Conven- 
 tional social charm and poise they may have but 
 they are without that finer sense of courtesy 
 which makes them accept whatever fate gives 
 them and make the best of it. The fading 
 splendor of the days of plenty envelops them 
 like a cloud — ^remember that we are speaking of 
 the vmwilKng ones — they lose themselves in self- 
 pity, and the great fun that comes from good 
 work they miss entirely. 
 
LADIES FIRST? 281 
 
 Many of the poor girls in business have never 
 known anything but poverty, and their hves have 
 been cast among people who have never known 
 anything else. They have had no home training 
 in the art of behavior (for the people at home 
 did not know how to give it to them) . No one 
 has ever told them how to dress or act but there 
 have never been lacking those to condemn them 
 when they dressed foolishly or acted indiscreetly. 
 "The silly little things," they say [(and oh, how 
 superior they are when they say it) . Employers 
 agree, for, after all, it is true, and the silly httle 
 things hold their jobs until they are married, 
 until they are fired, or (and this happens fre- 
 quently) until they wake up, and then they are 
 promoted to something better. We cannot ex- 
 pect girls hke these, who have grown up without 
 contact with the gentler side of life, to begin with 
 a high standard of behavior, but we can '(and 
 do) expect them, once they have been brought 
 into touch with better things, to raise their stand- 
 ard. It is no disgrace for a girl to begin in 
 ignorance and squalor; the disgrace lies in stay- 
 ing there. 
 
 First of all, the dress of the business girl. 
 Most of the ill-breeding in the world is due to 
 ignorance. Ignorance of the laws of beauty 
 and taste causes one to make a display of finery. 
 
282 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 and over-dressing is a mark of vulgarity whether 
 one can afford it or not. 
 
 The girl does not live — ^we beUeve this is right 
 ' — who does not love pretty clothes. But the 
 average girl does not have money to spend lav- 
 ishly for them. Her salary, as a rule, is not 
 princely, and there are often financial as well as 
 moral obligations to the people at home. She 
 cannot have Sunday clothes and everyday 
 clothes. She must combine the two with the 
 emphasis on the latter. 
 
 A few years ago it was almost impossible to 
 accomphsh this, but manufacturers have recog- 
 nized her needs and are now making clothes es- 
 pecially for her — ^plain dresses in bright colors 
 and dark dresses with a happy bit of trimming 
 here and there, neat enough to pass the censor- 
 ship of the strictest employer, pretty enough to 
 please the most exacting young girl. 
 
 A woman is no longer thought eccentric if 
 she wears low heels. The modern flapper is too 
 sensible for such nonsense as French heels for 
 standing all day behind the counter. Manufac- 
 turers have discovered this also, and are making 
 shoes with low heels and broad toes quite as 
 pleasing as the French monstrosities and infin- 
 itely more comfortable. 
 
 A business girl — or any girl, for that matter — 
 
LADIES FIRST? 283 
 
 should take pains with her hands and her hair. 
 Coiffures that might be appropriate in a ball 
 room are out of place in an office, and heavily- 
 jeweled hands, whether the jewels are real or 
 imitation, are grotesquely unsuited to office work. 
 (So are dirty ones.) 
 
 Hair that is glossy and tidy, hands that are 
 clean and capable, dress that is trim and incon- 
 spicuous — add to these intelligence, willingness, 
 good health, and good manners and there is not 
 much left to be desired. 
 
 Certain positions expose girls to the tempta- 
 tion of dress more than others. She, for in- 
 stance, who all day handles lovely garments or 
 she who all day poses before long mirrors in ex- 
 quisite gowns that other women are to wear — 
 can one expect these girls to go merrily home at 
 night to a hall bedroom with a one-burner gas 
 jet and a mournful array of old furniture? They 
 have a problem that the girl in a glue factory 
 or a fish cannery does not have to meet — at least 
 not in so concrete a form. At the same time they 
 have an opportunity that these other girls do 
 not have, and it rests with them whether the 
 opportunity or the temptation gets the upper 
 hand. 
 
 Positions in which girls are thrown into close 
 contact with men expose them to temptation of 
 
284 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 another sort. It is in its most acute form when 
 it brings a poor girl into more or less intimate 
 association with a rich man. Once, a very long 
 time ago, a king married a beggar maid and 
 they lived happily ever after. People have not 
 stopped writing and talking about it yet, 
 although it is many centuries since it hap- 
 pened. It is true that once in a very great while 
 a girl marries her father's chauffeur or her broth- 
 er's valet and finds later that she has acted 
 wisely; but these are rare exceptions to the gen- 
 eral rule, for the result usually is unhappiness. 
 Such marriages are always the occasion for big 
 headhnes in the paper, usually a double set of 
 them, for, in most instances, the divorce follows 
 within a year or so. 
 
 It is a dangerous thing for a girl to receive 
 attentions indiscriminately from men, especially 
 those who drift across her horizon from the great 
 world outside. It is dangerous (is it necessary 
 to add that it is incorrect?) for a manicurist to 
 accept presents from the millionaire whose hands 
 she looks after. It is unwise for any girl to 
 accept expensive gifts from a man who is not her 
 fiance. 
 
 There are exceptions to this rule, as indeed to 
 every other. At Christmas or at the time a cere- 
 mony or an anniversary employers sometimes 
 
LADIES FIRST? 285 
 
 give their secretaries or another trusted employee 
 a beautiful gift, and it is within the bounds of 
 propriety for the employee to accept it. Often 
 when he has been away from the office for sev- 
 eral weeks a man presents his secretary a gift 
 to express his gratitude for the capable way in 
 which she has managed affairs in his absence, 
 and this gift the secretary is privileged to ac- 
 cept. Gifts are seldom presented except where 
 the association has been a long and highly satis- 
 factory one. 
 
 But the girl who goes to the theatre with a 
 man about whom she knows nothing except that 
 he has the price of the tickets is running a serious 
 risk. She is violating one of the most rigid prin- 
 ciples of etiquette and she is skating perilously 
 out beyond the line marked off by common sense. 
 Nearly every man can, and does, if he is the 
 right sort, present credentials before asking 
 a girl if he may call or if he may escort her 
 to a place of amusement. There are instances 
 in romantic stories and in real life where a 
 man and a maid have met without the help of 
 a third party and have entered upon a charm- 
 ing friendship. They are rare, rarer in fact 
 than in fiction. It is banal to say that a girl 
 can usually teU. But she can, and if she has 
 any doubt (and this is true of all her relations 
 
286 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 with men) she should have no doubt. She should 
 stop where she is. 
 
 Where men and girls work together in the 
 same building or in buildings near one another 
 they often go to the same restaurant for lunch. 
 It is natural that they should sometimes sit to- 
 gether at the same tables. It is correct for a 
 man to sit at a table where there are already only 
 girls (if the girls are willing) , but it is not correct 
 for a girl to sit at a table where there are already 
 only men (however wiUing the men may be). 
 In these mixed groups each person pays for 
 his or hgr own lunch. It is not even ne- 
 cessary for the man, or the men, as the case 
 may be, to offer to do so, and it is a distinct 
 breach of the rules of etiquette for a girl to allow 
 a man to pay for her lunch under such circimi- 
 stances. 
 
 The only time when it is correct for a man and 
 a girl who are associated together in business to 
 have lunch, with him the host and her ihe guest, 
 is when the engagement is made ahead of time 
 as for any other social affair. On such an oc- 
 casion he should be as attentive as he would 
 in any other circumstances, taking care of 
 her wraps and placing her chair if the waiter is 
 not at hand to do it, suggesting dishes he thinks 
 perhaps she wiU like, and making himself as 
 
LADIES FIRST? 287 
 
 generally useful and agreeable as it is possible 
 for him to be. A point about which considerable 
 breath is wasted is whether a man should enter a 
 restaurant with the girl following or whether 
 he should allow her to lead the way. It makes 
 no material difference one way or the other, but 
 usually he permits her to go ahead and follows 
 closely enough behind to open the doors for her 
 and to receive whatever instructions the head 
 waiter has to offer. 
 
 If a man should enter a restaurant and find a 
 girl whom he knows already seated he may join 
 her if he thinks he wiU be not imwelcome, but 
 this does not make it incumbent upon him to pay 
 for her lunch. He may offer to do it, but it is 
 a matter that rests with the girl. If she does 
 not care to develop his acquaintance she should 
 not permit it, but if the two are good friends or 
 if she feels that he is a man she would like to 
 know, she may give him her check to settle along 
 with his own. A girl is herself the best judge 
 of what to do under such conditions, and if com- 
 mon sense does not show her the way out eti- 
 quette will not help. 
 
 Women in business sometimes bring up per- 
 plexing questions and create awkward situations. 
 Suppose a man has asked a girl several times to 
 a business-social lunch and she; has accepted 
 
288 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 every time. It seems that she should, as a man 
 would in the same position, make some return. 
 If she works for a house where there is a dining 
 room in which checks do not have to be settled at 
 the end of every meal she may do so without the 
 slightest difficulty, but if she is compelled to 
 take him to a place where the check must be 
 given to the waiter or paid at the desk before 
 they leave, she must look out for a differ- 
 ent way of managing things. Business lunch- 
 eons are usually paid for by the firm in whose 
 interests they are brought about, and if the 
 girl works for an organization where there 
 are several men employed she may ask one 
 of them to take Jier friend out to lunch. Then,> 
 even if she is not present, her social duty is 
 done. The easiest way out of such a predica- 
 ment, it is superfluous to say, is never to get 
 into it. 
 
 A girl who enters business presumably ac- 
 cepts the same conditions that men have to 
 meet. She has no right to expect special favors 
 because she is a woman. She does get a certain 
 amount of consideration, as indeed she should, 
 but she is very foohsh and childish if she feels 
 resentful when a busy man fails to hold open a 
 door for her to pass through, when he rushes into 
 his office ahead of her, or when he cuts short an 
 
LADIES FIRST? 289 
 
 interview wHen she has said only half of what she 
 had on her mind. 
 
 Much is said about the man who keeps his 
 seat on a train while a woman stands. His de- 
 fense rests upon two arguments, first, that his 
 need is greater than hers (which is not true) 
 and, second, that she does not appreciate it even 
 when he does give it to her (which is not true 
 either) . Unfortunately, there are as many rude 
 women in the world — and this statement is not 
 made carelessly — as there are rude men, and in 
 almost half the cases where a man rises to give 
 a woman his place the woman sits down without 
 even a glance toward her benefactor, as if the 
 act, which is no small sacrifice on the part of a 
 tired man, were not worth noticing. Every act 
 of civility or thoughtfulness should be rewarded 
 with at least a "Thank you" and a good hearty 
 one at that. 
 
 Old people, cripples, and invahds rarely fail 
 to secure seats, however crowded a car may be. 
 A man seldom offers his place to another man 
 unless it is evident that the other, because of age, 
 infirmity, or extreme fatigue is greatly in need 
 of it. Well-bred girls resign their seats to 
 old men, but if they refuse to accept, the 
 girls do not insist. At a reunion of Confed- 
 erate veterans several years ago a girl rose 
 
290 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 from her place on a street ear to allow a feeble 
 old man to sit down. He gripped the strap 
 fiercely. 
 
 "I ain't dead yet," he responded sturdily. 
 
 One of the chief petty complaints brought 
 against women is that they do not keep their 
 places in line. Some of them appear to have 
 neither conscience nor compunction about dash- 
 ing up to a ticket window ahead of twenty or 
 thirty people who are waiting for their turn. 
 Men would do the same thing (so men them- 
 selves say) but they know very well that the 
 other men in the line would make them regret 
 it in short order. Two or three minutes is all 
 one can save by such methods and it is not worth 
 it. Even if it were more it would stiU not be 
 worth it. 
 
 When a woman breaks into a line it is quite 
 permissible for the person behind her (whoever 
 he or she may be) to say, "I beg your pardon, I 
 was here first." This should be enough. Some- 
 times there is an almost desperate reason why 
 one should get to a window. Many times every- 
 body in the hne has the same desperate reason 
 for being in a hurry, but now and then in indi- 
 vidual cases it is allowable for a woman (or a 
 man) to ask for another person's place. But 
 only if there is a most urgent reason for it. Much 
 
LADIES FIRST? 291 
 
 of courtesy is made up of petty sacrifices, and 
 most of the great sacrifices are only a larger 
 form of courtesy. It all comes back to Sir 
 Philip Sidney's principle of "Thy need is greater 
 than mine," but it is only extraordinary circum- 
 stances which warrant one's saying, "My need 
 is greater than thine." 
 
 Since the beginning of time, and before (if 
 there was any before) women have done their 
 share of the work of the world. Formerly their 
 part of it centered in the home but now that ma- 
 chinery has taken it out of the home they have 
 come out of the home too, to stand in the fields 
 and factories of industry by the side of their 
 fathers and husbands and brothers. Because 
 they have recently been thrown into closer asso- 
 ciation in their hours of work than ever before 
 there has sprung up a certain amount of strife 
 between men and women, and a great deal is 
 said about how superior men are to women and 
 how superior women are to men. It is pure 
 nonsense. If all the men in the world were put 
 on one side of a scale and all the women on the 
 other, the scale would probably stand perfectly 
 still. 
 
 The woman in business should never forget 
 that she is a woman but she must remember that 
 above all things she is a citizen, and that she her- 
 
292 THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE 
 
 self has value and her work has value only as 
 they contribute to her community and her com- 
 munity as it contributes to her country. Cour- 
 tesy is one of her strongest allies, this quality 
 which, alone, can do nothing, but, united to the 
 sohd virtues that make character, can move 
 mountains. 
 
 We have said a good deal as we came along 
 about courtesy toward oneself and other people, 
 but perhaps the most valuable of all courtesies 
 in business is politeness toward one's job. It 
 is desirable for every woman to be pretty, well- 
 dressed, and well-groomed, but it is much more 
 desirable for the woman in business to be able 
 to do capable and efficient work. She may be 
 ornamental but she must be useful, and while 
 she is at the office her chief concern should be 
 with her job and not with herself. The end of 
 business is accomplishment, and courtesy is valu- 
 able because it is a means of making accomphsh- 
 ment easy and pleasant. It is this that gives 
 us the grace to accept whatever comes, if not 
 gladly, at least bravely. 
 
 It is a poor workman who quarrels with his 
 tools (or with his job), so the proverb says, and 
 there are two hnes of Mr. Kiphng's that might 
 be added. He was speaking of a king, but in 
 a democracy we are all kings: 
 
 I I 
 
LADIES FIRST? 293 
 
 The wisest thing, we suppose, that a king can do for 
 
 his land 
 Is the work that lies under his nose, with the tools that 
 
 lie under his hand. 
 
 And the lines are just as true when "girl" is 
 substituted for "king" and the pronouns are 
 changed accordingly. 
 
 THE END