Cornell University Liorary 
 HF 5441.H6 
 
 3 1924 013 823 319 
 
 Hate CfJoUEgp nf KgttculturE 
 
 At CJotnell IntuccaitH 
 Jltlfata, Sf. % 
 
 Cihracg 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013823319 
 
GINGER TALKS 
 
GINGER TALKS 
 
 I— THE TALKS OF A SALES 
 MANAGER TO HIS MEN 
 
 BY 
 
 WORTHINGTON C. HOLMAN 
 
 UBERTYVILLE, ILLINOIS 
 SHELDON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1912 
 
COFtBIGHT, 1905, B7 
 
 ,THE SALESMANSHIP CO. 
 
 COPYSIGHT) 1908, BY 
 
 THE SALESMANSHIP CO. 
 
 COFIBIGBIt 1910, BY 
 
 SHELDON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 (successors) 
 
PREFACE 
 
 There is gunpowder in every man, if you can 
 only get the spark to it. 
 
 There is latent power in every salesman — of- 
 ten more than he himself dreams he possesses. 
 All that is necessary is to light the flame of his 
 enthusiasm by showing him his own opportu- 
 nities and possibilities. 
 
 Do but this much for him, and the hidden gun- 
 powder within him will make him explode into 
 sudden and irresistible action. 
 
 "Ginger Talks" are sparks to reach the gun- 
 powder. 
 
To John H. Patterson, president of the Nation- 
 al Cash Eegister Company, this book is dedicated, 
 in recognition of his genius as a teacher and sales- 
 manager and as a token of appreciation of the 
 training the author himself formerly received in 
 the sales and advertising departments of the Na- 
 tional Company, and from two years of Mr. Pat- 
 terson's daily personal tuition in committee and 
 directors' meetings. 
 
 W. C. Holman. 
 
I wisli to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble 
 ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life — the 
 life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to 
 preach that highest form of success which comes, 
 not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but 
 to the man who does not shrink from danger, 
 from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out 
 of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. 
 
 — Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
FIRST GINGER TALK OF A 
 SALES MANAGER TO 
 
 HIS MEN 
 
W. C. HOLMAN 
 
FIRST TALK 
 
 On the great clock of Time there's but one word — Now. 
 Let's take the instant by the forward top. 
 
 — Shakespeare 
 
 You men who get the orders are the chaps who 
 are expected to keep the smoke coming out of 
 the factory chimney. The volume of smoke emit- 
 ted from our chimney during the past two sum- 
 mer months hasn't been large enough to darken 
 the landscape to any great extent. Now that the 
 dog-days are over and the business-revival sea- 
 son has begun, we are addressing to you a short, 
 sharp request on this subject: We want more 
 smoke ! 
 
 You are in this business to make money. So 
 is the company. And what we make we must 
 make together. Ours is a mutual benefit asso- 
 ciation of the most extreme type, though we don't 
 wear any insignia or "put on dog" in a lodge- 
 room. We can't increase our receipts from you 
 without increasing your receipts from us. Every 
 time we pocket the profit on a sale you pocket a 
 commission. All these things being so, we don't 
 feel any coyness in urging you to get out and do a 
 little wholesale hustling. 
 
 We haven't pushed you much for business dur- 
 ing the last two months. July and August weath- 
 
 15 
 
16 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 er will naturally put a check on fast travelling. 
 So far as your arrival with orders is concerned, 
 the figures show that most of you came in on 
 the freight — and some of you were not in the ca- 
 boose, at that! But this month we are running- 
 express. We are going through on schedule time, 
 and there will be no stops for berry-picking. 
 
 We hope you were all down at the station 
 bright and early this morning when the whistle 
 blew, and that everybody is on board the flyer 
 who belongs there. 
 
 Get the right start. Hold a little convention- 
 with yourself, and make up your mind that the 
 first ten days of the month shall produce as many 
 orders as the last ten. It is just as easy to start 
 to get business on Monday morning of the first 
 week as it is on Tuesday afternoon of the third. 
 Time in this business is capital. When you waste 
 a day you are throwing away commissions that 
 belong to you — you are committing petty larceny 
 against yourself. 
 
 Get the right start. Take a leaf out of the 
 Jap's book. The day that war with Eussia was 
 declared was the day that the little islanders be- 
 gan to fight. Their torpedo-destroyers made their 
 first dash into Port Arthur harbor before the ink 
 was dry on the official pronouncement that a state 
 of hostilities existed. 
 
 Admirals and pugilists know that it's a great 
 point in a fight to get in a good hard smash at 
 the enemy as early in the game as possible. 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE 17 
 
 You've had a slack season in which many of you 
 have taken things easy and rested up. You ought 
 to be as full of fight as an unconquered game-cock 
 that has never had a touch of the gaff. 
 
 With all your knowledge of unanswerable rea- 
 sons why merchants should handle our line, and 
 with the accumulated energy and vitality that 
 have been piling up inside you all summer, you 
 ought to hit like a landslide the first half-dozen 
 "prospects" you meet to-day, and carry them 
 completely off their feet. And when you 've made 
 a good start, you ought to keep the good work up 
 right through the month. 
 
 Don 't hang around the office the first week wait- 
 ing for the fellow to come in and buy! Go out 
 and fetch him. He's there waiting for you, but 
 he won 't come, unless you go after him. The man 
 who waits for things to turn up often turns up 
 himself in the poor-house or the jail. Of all men 
 who should shake this waiting habit, the sales- 
 man is the chiefest. Business is like ore: you 
 have to dig for it. You don't expect even the 
 richest mine to waft nuggets to you on the spicy 
 gales! Nuggets are usually anchored fast in a 
 hard hillside, and it takes a lot of good stiff pick- 
 and-shovel work to loosen them up and start them 
 rolling down the hill. It's the same way with 
 orders. If it were not, we wouldn't pay commis- 
 sions to a force of salesmen. Nothing is going 
 to roll your way, unless you go out and start it 
 yourself. 
 
18 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 You may be handicapping yourself at the start 
 by the feeling that you haven't as good a chance 
 as some other fellow. Salesmen have a way of 
 cracking up other men's territories and taking a 
 knock at their own. It is always the far pasture 
 that looks greenest, but you mil generally find, 
 when you actually set foot on the distant field, 
 that the color turns out to be about the same 
 shade of dull green verging on brown that tinted 
 the patch you left. It isn't the territory that gets 
 orders — it's the man. 
 
 There, is a tale extant of a soldier who broke 
 his sword in a battle. He had been putting up 
 a poor sort of a fight anyway, and when his blade 
 broke off in the middle, he threw the remaining 
 half of the sword away and took to his heels, 
 exclaiming: "I can't fight with that thing!" A 
 fellow soldier who had been defending himself 
 as best he could with a short dagger seized the 
 discarded sword with a whoop of joy and made 
 such rattling good play with it that he put to 
 rout both his own antagonist and the man who 
 had fought with his runaway companion. 
 
 Some men can do more with a broken sword 
 than others with a complete arsenal of perfect 
 weapons. The opportunities that some of us 
 would throw away as useless other men would 
 find it impossible to fail with. Every sales man- 
 ager can point to scores of territories where 
 four, five, or six men failed, one after the other, 
 before the right man came along and made a 
 
OP A SALES MANAGER 19 
 
 barrel of money. The possibilities of those ter- 
 ritories were there all the time, but the men that 
 failed couldn't see them. They didn't look hard 
 enough. 
 
 Some one has truly said that, while Opportu- 
 nity knocks at least once at every man's door, 
 the party inside has no right to expect the pan- 
 els to be kicked in. And it may be added that, 
 if the expectant party is a salesman, he had best 
 not wait inside at all. The only way in which 
 he can ever hope to catch a glimpse of Opportu- 
 nity is to get outside the door and do a lot of 
 active searching for her up and down the street. 
 
 "We advise you to begin your search to-day. 
 When we balance up our books at the end of the 
 month, you want to be on the right side of the 
 ledger. The first essential in the process of get- 
 ting there is to start now. You can't secure or- 
 ders in the past or in the future; you must get 
 them TO-DAY. 
 
SECOND GINGER TALK OF 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
ENTHUSIASM BREAKS ALL BONDS. 
 
 GULLIVER was a giant whom the dwarfs captured 
 while he was napping by binding him with tiny 
 threads. Each man was a trifle which he could easily have 
 snapped by itself. But he didn't wake, and the dwarfs 
 wound the threads around him in such number that at 
 last he found himself a prisoner. Are you a modern Gulli- 
 ver? Do you lack enthusiasm? Are you letting the devUs 
 of indifference get the best of you? If so, wake up and 
 scatter them. 
 
SECOND TALK 
 
 The salesman's personal force is an influence that emanates 
 directly from his own unlimited belief in his proposition. It 
 is the magnetic power of sheer earnestness. 
 
 Sand in a hurry, please, gentlemen! We need 
 it in no uncertain quantity on this toboggan slide 
 we've struck. It's time to stop slipping back and 
 begin to climb. A few more slumps like that of 
 yesterday and we shall hit the bottom, with the 
 quota for the month lost beyond recovery. 
 
 And we had so much faith in you at the start- 
 off two weeks ago! We believed that when the 
 month's returns were all in, the sales department 
 would have to go up in a balloon to read your 
 scores. That's where you fooled us. There has 
 been nothing high this month except our hopes. 
 We've been thinking it all over — hard. And now 
 we want to say a few plain, helpful words to 
 you. Let each man paste them in his hat, and 
 wear them around until they strike in through 
 the top of his head and become a permanent 
 part of his mental equipment. 
 
 A chief quality of a successful salesman is 
 earnestness. The reason you are not selling more 
 goods to merchants is that you haven't all sold 
 yourselves yet. You've got to believe in your 
 product yourself before you can make any one 
 
 35 
 
26 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 else believe in it. It's no use to try to start a 
 flame of enthusiasm in somebody else, if your own 
 mind is full of icy doubts. 
 
 Why did that man over on the avenue turn 
 you down yesterday morning? Because he could 
 tell by the look in your eye that you half expected 
 him to do so. And the fellow you called on in 
 the afternoon sized you up the same way. You 
 didn't get anywhere near him. He listened to 
 what you said — but it was with a cold and fishy 
 eye. True, he nodded his head in assent as you 
 talked — but two minutes after you started his 
 mind was wandering. And when you came to 
 put your finger on him at the end to get the order 
 signed, he was like the Dutchman's famous flea — 
 he wasn't there. 
 
 You had lost him. You hadn't impressed him 
 —why? BECAUSE YOU HADN'T BEEN IM- 
 PRESSED YOURSELF. And he knew it. You 
 couldn't fool him. He didn't feel any electric 
 sparks of enthusiasm jumping the space from 
 your mind to his. Nothing but a live wire could 
 give him a sensation, and you were trying to 
 magnetize him with words of wood. 
 
 You put up a smooth enough line of talk, yes — 
 but there wasn't any conviction back of it. It 
 takes belief, earnestness, enthusiasm, warm hu- 
 man personality, to sell goods. If it didn't, we'd 
 discharge all our salesmen and enlist a force of 
 phonographs, or a troop of wooden Indians. 
 
 Now, here's our word to you: Don't try now 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 27 
 
 for a while to sell any goods to business men. 
 Go off around a corner somewhere, where you 
 can be alone, and sell YOUESELF a line of the 
 article we make. Think over its value; realize 
 it; burn it into your mind. Enumerate its good 
 qualities one after the other ; get a realizing sense 
 of each one. Consider what our product will 
 do for a business man, the money it will make 
 for him, the saving it will effect. Sweep out of 
 your mind, like so many cobwebs, any apologetic 
 feeling regarding it. You are not trying to per- 
 suade the business man to waste money. You 
 are not trying to trick or cajole him into doing 
 something that he can't afford to do. You are 
 selling him something that he needs. You are 
 helping him to increase his profits. You are do- 
 ing him as great a favor as he does you, and you 
 must make him see this. 
 
 Say these things over to yourself. Think them 
 in your heart; realize them — they're all true. 
 Light the flame of your enthusiasm and fan it 
 into a good, brisk blaze. Then, when you've sold 
 yourself — when you believe in your own proposi- 
 tion, heart and soul — go back and tackle that 
 same man a second time. Greet him quietly and 
 courteously. Tell him that you don't believe you 
 made your proposition quite clear when you saw 
 him before — and begin again. You are in earnest 
 this time. He'll feel the change. There'll be an 
 atmosphere about you that will carry respect. 
 He'll listen to you. His mind won't wander any 
 
88 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 more than the mariner's needle wanders from 
 the pole. 
 
 Make your arguments actual and personal. 
 Bring them home to him. Stab every point into 
 his mind, so that he can't miss it or forget it. 
 Make him feel each one. 
 
 There 's as much difference between understand- 
 ing a thing theoretically and having a practical 
 sense of it as there is between a boxer's love-tap 
 and a prize fighter's deadly punch in the solar 
 plexus. And it takes solar plexus punches to sell 
 goods these days. Merchants are hard-headed and 
 thick-skinned, and they're all in training against 
 you salesmen. You can hit as smilingly and 
 gracefully as you please, but you've got to hit 
 hard to get inside an up-to-date business man's 
 guard. 
 
 You haven't half made your point with your 
 man, if when you get through, he looks upon our 
 product merely as something he would do well to 
 use in his business. Make him feel that he CAN'T 
 GET ALONG WITHOUT IT. Make him see 
 that he's losing valuable time and labor in his 
 place of business — that real dollars are slipping 
 through his fingers every day he is without it. 
 Many a man who won't reach out very hard for 
 an extra dollar will mighty hard grab hold of the 
 dollar he already has, and shout murder, if any- 
 one tries to take it away from him! If you can 
 once show a man that he is actually losing money, 
 and that you can stop the loss, you won't need to 
 
OP A SALES MANAGER 29 
 
 supply Mm with any entliusiasm — he will take 
 fire himself like a lace curtain in a gas jet. But 
 you've got to be earnest in making these facts 
 plain to him. Enthusiasm, conviction, earnest- 
 ness — these are the qualities that sell goods, and 
 do everything else worth doing. "Nothing great 
 was ever done without enthusiasm." 
 
 There are two weeks left in the month. If 
 you men all get to work to-day with the right 
 spirit, there may yet be time to arrange for that 
 balloon ascension of the sales department after 
 all. 
 
THIRD GINGER TALK OF A 
 SALES MANAGER TO 
 
 HIS MEN 
 
THE SALESMAN'S BOWLING-ALLEY. 
 
 You know what it is that enables you to make a ten- 
 strike in the bowling-alley of your territory and sweep 
 all the pins off the board. You have done that stunt time 
 and again by aiming an irresistible selling point, a clean- 
 cut argument, so straight and true that your customer's 
 prejudices and objections were scattered helter-skelter. 
 Pains, practice and perseverance are necessary to develop 
 the ability to send the ball down the middle of the alley. 
 The new year has begun — a new tournament has started. 
 Are you going to try for the championship I 
 
THIRD TALK 
 
 You can read my book in an hour, but it cost me a lifetime 
 of concentrated attention. I made it my study by day and 
 my dream by night, the alpha and omega of my aims and 
 objects. So must a man study to do any work well. 
 
 — Montesquieu 
 
 The first rule for driving a nail into a board 
 is to get your eye on the nail. Similarly, the 
 first rule for driving a fact into a man's mind 
 is to see that fact clearly yourself. It takes a 
 long time to explain what you don't know. A 
 man can't sail a catboat in a straight line, unless 
 he picks out some particular object to point at, 
 and a salesman can't talk with any effect, unless 
 his mind is fixed on definite, specific ideas. 
 
 It isn't enough, when you begin to talk a prop- 
 osition, to have a general idea of what you are 
 going to say. 
 
 Suppose a hunter out with a gun should re- 
 mark, "I know in a general sort of way what I 
 am aiming at. I've got a kind of idea of where 
 I want these pellets to go. I'll start in and shoot 
 a few rounds at random, and, after I have been 
 firing for a while, I'll begin to find out what I 
 want to hit." 
 
 If there were a thousand birds within range 
 
 35 
 
36 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 of his gun, that kind of hunter couldn't bag 
 enough game to furnish a kitten a square meal ! 
 
 I'm convinced from a study of last month's 
 selling records that a good many of you men talk 
 generalities about our product to prospective cus- 
 tomers. If you got down to brass tacks and put 
 its advantages before them in a definite, specific 
 fashion, it would be impossible for you to lose 
 out on so many sales. The specific merits are 
 there in the goods as thick as plums in a pud- 
 ding, but nobody is going to see them, unless you 
 point them out. 
 
 The trouble with some of you is that you don't 
 see all these points clearly yourself. Your eyes 
 are out of focus — ^you don't know your own prod- 
 uct. You've got a general sort of idea that it's 
 a good thing, and you can talk a lot of loose hot 
 air about it, but you don't get down to hard- 
 pan and make the customer see just what it will 
 do and exactly what each one of its advantages 
 means to him. If you did, you wouldn't have to 
 sell it — it would sell itself. 
 
 The first rule for selling an article is to know 
 the article. Know it inside and out, at every 
 angle and from every point of view. Have a chart 
 of its good points worked out in your mind and 
 carefully classified down to the last detail. Know 
 three unanswerable arguments, a couple of sets 
 of figures, and a handful of illustrations to en- 
 force every point. Never stop studying your 
 product. Every time you look at it hard you'll 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 37 
 
 see something new in it that's good, or some new 
 and telling way of driving an advantage home in 
 the mind of a prospective customer. 
 
 The second rule for selling an article is to 
 know all the objections to it and the answer to 
 every one of them before you face a customer. 
 
 There's some good answer to every objection, 
 if you can only lay hold of it — remember that. 
 We've sent you a book full of these — get them all 
 into your head. Study them up in advance be- 
 fore you make your calls. Never let a customer 
 spring an objection on you that will take you 
 by surprise. Whenever he throws out an objec- 
 tion, your answer ought to go back at him as a 
 return ball reboimds into a boy's hand when he 
 throws it at the sidewalk. You are at the bat, 
 and the customer is trying to strike you out. No 
 matter what kind of ball he pitches you, it's 
 up to you to hammer his delivery. See that you 
 make good hot line hits — don't pop up any feeble 
 flies or fouls. 
 
 You should be so familiar with the answer to 
 each objection that it will automatically jump into 
 your mind and out at your lips when the proper 
 moment comes, just as an actor's speech springs 
 into life when he hears his cue. 
 
 But don't let your familiarity with the answer 
 dull your appreciation of its value, or get you 
 into a mechanical way of repeating it to the cus- 
 tomer. If you want him to sit up and take no- 
 tice, you must tell it to him as impressively as 
 
38 THE GINGEK TALKS 
 
 you would announce that a long-lost uncle of his 
 had just died and left him a fortune. 
 
 Half-way knowledge is all right, if you only 
 want to go half-way to the goal of success. If 
 you want to get across the line and score a touch- 
 down, you've got to know the fine points of the 
 game as you know your own front hall in the dark. 
 You can't compromise on a knowledge of the 
 price-list. 
 
 These college kickers who score ine long goals 
 upon the field that forty thousand people travel 
 miles to see didn't pick up the ability casually. 
 The trick looks easy enough. You see the lad 
 take a couple of quick steps and the ball goes 
 sailing across the bar for four points and a vic- 
 tory. It's all over before you can catch your 
 breaftii But before the young man learned to 
 take those two steps and swing his foot just right 
 he put in a lot of time in sharp practice and hard 
 work, kicking his leg off in futile efforts to catch 
 the knack of it. 
 
 It takes a lot of deep study and a long spell of 
 hard trying before you can learn to do anything 
 in this world that's worth doing. 
 
 There's one man who knows a lot about your 
 business and doesn't charge anything for impart- 
 ing his knowledge. That fellow is the user of 
 your article. He is generally a keen observer, 
 and if you go at him right, it's an easy matter 
 to get good suggestions from him. It pays to be 
 friendly with a user. Ask him questions. He'll 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 39 
 
 know what he is talking about, because he has his 
 money invested in your article, as against your 
 knowledge, and it's dollars to doughnuts that a 
 man is going to keep his eye on his investment 
 and try to learn all he can about it. Go around 
 and see him when you have a spare ten minutes. 
 Your interview will pay you in dividends of 
 knowledge. The salesman who stores up more 
 knowledge of his business in his mental ware- 
 house than is necessary to make his quota is 
 banking extra capital with which to buy a better 
 position with his company. 
 
 This business is like human nature: it has a 
 good many more twists and knots in it than show 
 on the surface. 
 
 There's only one way to get a grasp on them, 
 and that can be summed up in two words, 
 ' ' Study ' ' and ' ' Work. ' ' Hard work was invented ; 
 a long time ago, and in a good many thousand 
 years nobody has ever been able to contrive a sat- 
 isfactory substitute for it. If there is any shorter 
 cut to success in this business, we shall be in- 
 debted to the salesman who will wire it to us at 
 once at our expense — and he needn't send a night 
 message either ! 
 
FOURTH GINGER TALK OF 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
ONE KIND OF DEAD MAN. 
 
 SOME men are dead long before they are buried. It is 
 a delusion that a man has to wait fifty or sixty years 
 to die. If the spirit of the man — the soul of hope and 
 courage within his breast has been extinguished, he is as 
 dead as he ever will be, even though his body continues to 
 walk the streets. His relatives and friends might just as 
 well get together and hold a, funeral service over him now 
 as any time. He has allowed his light to flicker out — the 
 vital spark has fled. He has lost the essential quality of 
 life and manhood — Courage. 
 
FOURTH TALK 
 
 The law of worthy life is fundamentally the law of strife; 
 it is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy 
 and resolute courage, that we move on to better things. 
 
 — Theodore Roosevelt 
 
 Napoleon was no prouder of the matchless sol- 
 diers who conquered Europe under his command 
 than our company is of the salesmen who have 
 made good in this business. 
 
 You are our Old Guard. 
 
 Whenever any of you come in from the firing 
 line for a call at headquarters we feel like order- 
 ing a royal salute of twenty-one guns. 
 
 Once in a while, however, we receive a call that 
 makes us want to drape our colors with black 
 and play a slow, sad dirge. 
 
 Yesterday one of our salesmen came in and 
 informed us that he had about made up his mind 
 to quit the business ; he said he found it too hard 
 to make sales, and didn't think there was much 
 demand for our goods — he didn't seem to find 
 any in his territory ! He hated to be turned down 
 so often — had come to expect to be turned down 
 every time he made an approach, so guessed he 'd 
 try some other business — didn't know just what 
 — hadn't decided yet — ^but he didn't think there 
 was any use of staying on with us ! 
 
 ,45 
 
46 THE GINGBE TALKS 
 
 We had Mm inspect our montMy sales state- 
 ment and note the long list of men who are mak- 
 ing money selling our product. "We also pointed 
 out to him figures showing that the man who had 
 his territory before him had cleaned up large 
 commissions. 
 
 Well, that might be, he said, but he thought 
 ours was a hard business to make good in, never- 
 theless; he didn't seem to make a go of it him- 
 self — guessed he'd try something else. He would 
 be willing to stay, however, if we'd take him off 
 commission and put him on a salary. 
 
 Ten minutes later he was out of our employ 
 for all time. 
 
 Some men are dead long before they are buried ! 
 It is a delusion to think that a man has to wait 
 fifty or sixty years to die. If the spirit of the 
 man — the soul of hope and courage within his 
 breast — has been extinguished, he is as dead as 
 he ever will be, even though his body continues to 
 walk the streets. 
 
 This salesman is one of that kind of dead men. 
 His relatives and friends might just as well get 
 together and hold a funeral service over him now 
 as any time. He has allowed his light to flicker 
 out — the vital spark has fled. He has lost the 
 essential quality of life and manhood — COUR- 
 AGE. 
 
 Of course he can't sell any more goods. No 
 man can who lacks grit. An agreeable presence, 
 a pleasant manner, the tactful ability to approach 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE 47 
 
 men without rubbing them the wrong way — these 
 all count for nothing, unless supported by nerve 
 and backbone. 
 
 A salesman without nerve is like a jellyfish. 
 The jellyfish is an inoffensive sort of animal, 
 with no disagreeable qualities to excite preju- 
 dice ; but he has no spine. Consequently his only 
 possible method of progression is to drift. He 
 washes along with the slow tide and never arrives 
 anywhere. When there is anything worth while 
 doing in the fish world. Brother Jellyfish is never 
 among those present. 
 
 There is a point here for all salesmen, if they 
 are only willing to see it — and the good men are. 
 The others we don't bother about. 
 
 Selling goods is a battle, and only fighters can 
 win out in it. We may not like these conditions, 
 but we didn't have the making of them, and we 
 can't alter them. They are Nature's laws. It is 
 just as well that we can't change them. A fight 
 has valuable uses for those who have the nerve 
 to take part in it. Nothing develops strong qual- 
 ities like opposition. Kites always rise against 
 the wind, not with it. No man ever worked his 
 way in a dead calm. Courageous men know this. 
 They glory in manly strife, providing only it is 
 fair. The world in general loves a fighter and 
 hates a quitter. It takes off its hat to the man 
 who dares, and stands aside to make respectful 
 room for him whenever and wherever he appears. 
 All other men it tramples on. 
 
48 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 Think these truths over, Brother Salesman. 
 Take your courage with you when you enter the 
 selling game; if you don't you'll strike out every 
 time you come to bat, and score nothing higher 
 than a string of goose-eggs ! No man ever made 
 a three-base hit who was afraid of the pitcher 
 — remember that. The fellow who knocks the 
 cover off the ball, or lifts it over the fence for a 
 home run, is always the chap who steps up to 
 the plate with grim determination in his heart. 
 He has no more awe of the lightning shoots that 
 hurtle by him than if they were so many dart- 
 ing swallows on the wing. 
 
 You must have this same grim spirit of deter- 
 mination every time you go to land a sale. You 
 must approach every customer expecting to en- 
 counter indifference, prejudice, objection, strenu- 
 ous opposition. Be prepared to meet these — go 
 loaded for bear. Then you cannot be disheart- 
 ened. Believe that under the guise of a polite 
 interview you are going to have a FIGHT. 
 Either you or the other fellow will come out of 
 it victor. Set your jaw and determine that you 
 will be that man. 
 
 Say to yourself, whenever you approach a cus- 
 tomer : ' ' This man ought to use my product. It 
 will be to his advantage to do so. He doesn't 
 know this now; he won't believe it when I first 
 tell it to him. I don't expect him to. If he had 
 had any desire for my product, he would have 
 bought it before, and there would be no sense in 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 49 
 
 my calling on him. It is precisely because lie 
 doesn't want it that I am here, and for no other 
 reason in the world. It is my business to make 
 him want it. Like many another man, he doesn't 
 know his own best interests. Millions of men go 
 contrary to their best interests every day — will- 
 fully blind to the things that would help them 
 and make them better off. I can increase this 
 man's profits, and I am going to make him real- 
 ize it. There will be a fight, but I shall win out, 
 and when it is over we shall both be better off." 
 
 Suppose you fail after all to make the sale. 
 What then? 
 
 Well, suppose the fullback in a football game 
 fails to make his distance when given the ball for 
 a plunge. What then? Down at the bottom of 
 the heap, with a dozen men piled on his legs, he 
 hears the referee call out, ' ' No gain ! ' ' Does the 
 young man lie still on the ground and mutter, 
 ' ' No use ! I can 't break that line. I guess I '11 re- 
 tire from the game"? 
 
 Not much! There is only one thought in the 
 dogged brain above that bulldog jaw — only one 
 request its owner has to make of the quarter- 
 back : ' ' Give me the ball again ! I failed before, 
 but I'll smash that line this time or know the 
 reason why!" 
 
 Pound ! Pound ! Pound ! he goes at the fightms 
 guards and tackles, barely making his two yards 
 at each charge. But the repeated attacks soon 
 begin to tell. Suddenly the weakening line op- 
 
50 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 posed to him gives way altogether, and he bursts 
 through like an exploding cannon-shell and dashes 
 away for a touch-down. 
 
 Pluck scored that touch-down — sheer grit, cour- 
 age, nerve, determination. 
 
 These are the qualities that win football games, 
 and these are also the qualities that sell goods, 
 and do everything else worth doing. 
 
 The fact that a man has repeatedly said ' ' No ' ' 
 to you is no sign that he won't say "Yes," if you 
 go back at him once more with a little better aim 
 and ammunition. The Japs charged 203 Meter 
 Hill a dozen times before they finally carried it, 
 then lost it — and finally regained it. After that 
 they held it. The Duke of Wellington exclaimed, 
 during the awful carnage at Waterloo: "Hard 
 hammering, gentlemen! We'll see who can ham- 
 mer longest!" Almost every great thing ever 
 done was wrought into a success after a string 
 of failures. It is ceaseless pounding that puts 
 things through. The tired runner that forces 
 himself to sprint at the finish is the one who wins 
 the race, and the salesman who has the nerve to 
 return to the charge after repeated failures is 
 the one who finally turns defeat into victory. 
 
 Courage! That's what every salesman needs. 
 Without it you might as well quit the business. 
 You must have courage — courage to approach 
 men for the first time, courage to go back to them, 
 courage to keep after them until they are landed ; 
 courage to believe in your ultimate success as a 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEK 51 
 
 salesman, and courage to fight for it day after 
 day until you realize it — courage to keep on push- 
 ing toward the goal through all discouragements 
 and over all obstacles. No success can be with- 
 held from the salesman with grit — ^no achieve- 
 ment is too high for him to reach. 
 
 Success is a matter of red corpuscles in the 
 blood — ^that's all. 
 
FIFTH GINGER TALK OF A 
 SALES MANAGER TO 
 
 HIS MEN 
 
DON'T DROP THE ANCHOR! 
 
 WHEN a salesman hits his oflSee in the morning he 
 ought to grab Ms sample-case and fly out again as 
 a rubber ball bounces out of a barrel. The place for him 
 to put in his time is where the money is — among his pos- 
 sible customers. His chances for making money are all 
 outside his door. A loss of two hours a day means before 
 the end of the year two whole months crossed off the calen- 
 dar and the loss of two months' entire commissiona. 
 
FIFTH TALK 
 
 There is not an hour of life but is trembling with destinies 
 — not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can 
 ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold 
 iron. — Buskin 
 
 One of the things a man has to learn before 
 he can achieve any large success in this world 
 is the value of time. 
 
 A good many of you salesmen go on the prin- 
 ciple of old man Methuselah. Methuselah never 
 moved out of a walk. AVhenever he had anything 
 to do, he took his time about it. If he wanted to 
 sit down and rest, or gossip with the neighbors 
 for a while, or knock off work altogether and go 
 fishing for a year or two, he did it. There was 
 always time enough when he came back to finish 
 what he had been working on. 
 
 This sort of thing was all right in his case, 
 but your case isn't exactly parallel. Methuselah 
 had a good deal more time to be reckless with 
 than you have — about nine hundred odd years 
 more, if I remember my boyhood Sunday-school 
 lessons aright. He could afford to slop around 
 and lose a couple of hundred years without ac- 
 complishing anything; when he got through he 
 had still a small matter of seven hundred years 
 or so up his sleeve. 
 
 57 
 
68 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 You are no Methuselah. If you waste a day 
 or two every now and then, you are going to run 
 out of time in a little while. The days in which you 
 can sell goods, or do anything else with all your 
 might, are few enough at best. Youth doesn't 
 last forever. Enthusiasm gets cold and energy 
 begins to walk on crutches as a man grows older. 
 You want to make every day count. The hours 
 flash by as fast as telegraph poles fade away 
 behind a night express, but a good many of you 
 chaps are like the passengers that snore in the 
 Pullman sleepers — dead to all realization of the 
 speed with which you are travelling. I'm the 
 porter, trying to wake you up before you reach 
 the end of the road. 
 
 A good many salesmen begin to waste time as 
 soon as they roll out of bed in the morning. It 
 takes them longer to get a-going on a day's work 
 than it takes a played-out freight engine to start 
 a train of forty coal cars on an up grade. 
 
 The conscientious study which these men be- 
 stow upon the morning paper at breakfast would 
 make the proof-reader's inspection seem like a 
 mere casual glance. 
 
 They feel it a sacred duty, before they start 
 out after orders, to post themselves minutely on 
 recent events in Thibet, the late progress of as- 
 tronomical research, Bryan's chances of being 
 elected President in 1916, the rumors that Jimmy 
 Britt has changed his training diet, and the latest 
 details of the massacres in Armenia. 
 
OP A SALES MANAGEE 59 
 
 If some salesmen took the same feverish in- 
 terest in business that they take in Willie Keel- 
 er's batting average, and followed up customers 
 as closely as they follow the number of strike- 
 outs chalked up to the credit of Iron Man McGin- 
 nity, they'd have a lot more money coming to 
 them in commissions at the end of the month! 
 
 Prolonged study of the newspapers in the morn- 
 ing never helped a salesman to secure a collec- 
 tion of customers' autographs in the lower right- 
 hand corner of his order-blanks. A glance over 
 the headings and the reading of an article here 
 and there is all that is necessary to keep an in- 
 telligent man in touch with progress. 
 
 There's only one worse place than the break- 
 fast table to spend an hour or two reading a 
 paper or discussing its contents, and that's down 
 at the office. When a salesman hits his office 
 in the morning, he ought to grab his sample-case 
 and fly out again as a rubber ball bounces out 
 of a barrel. The place for him to put in his time 
 is where the money is — among his posbible cus- 
 tomers. His chances for making money are all 
 outside his door. He should get out on the street 
 and stay there — unless he can bring a customer 
 to the office with him. 
 
 Yet the average salesman haunts his office as 
 if he were tied to it with a string. His first act 
 on his arrival in the morning is to anchor him- 
 self at the desk and plunge into a mass of de- 
 tails. A clerk at seven or eight dollars a week 
 
60 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 would relieve him of all this work and sift the 
 mail matter that comes in, so that only essentials 
 would be called to his attention. The extra com- 
 mission he could earn in the time saved would 
 pay the clerk's wages and leave a good-sized bal- 
 ance to salt down in the bank. 
 
 But the salesman can't see it. He never has 
 done this, so why should he make a change now? 
 The good old way is good enough for him — the 
 same old gait is fast enough — a quiet, easy jog 
 like that of grandfather 's mare. What 's an hour 
 or two in a whole day? The salesman lights a 
 good cigar and wades through his mail — all of 
 it — business letters, personal letters, advertising 
 pamphlets, stray magazines — everything he finds 
 on his desk. 
 
 Then he answers a few telephone calls, writes a 
 couple of personal letters, asks a friend who drops 
 in how he liked the show the night before, and 
 gets his opinion of the weather, converses at 
 length with Tom, Dick, and Harry, who call to 
 ask him to buy something, or do something, or 
 see something, and he hears the courthouse clock 
 clang out ten long strokes before he finally puts 
 on his hat and goes out to make some money. 
 
 Only two hours gone! But two hours spent 
 in learning new sales arguments every morning 
 would have transformed that agent inside of six 
 months into a selling wizard able to coax money 
 out of a customer's pocket as easily as Hermann 
 draws rabbits and coon babies out of a top hat. 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE 61 
 
 A loss of two hours a day means before the 
 end of the year two whole months crossed off the 
 calendar and the loss of two months' entire com- 
 missions. 
 
 Sitting in an office chair ought to be a dull sort 
 of amusement to a man who is losing money, but 
 a good many salesmen seem to be fitted out with 
 an abnormal sense of humor. 
 
 Some of you chaps can charge up the loss of 
 a great deal of valuable time to the fact that you 
 are such good fellows. You meet a friend on the 
 street who asks you to stand up somewhere and 
 partake of a little liquid refreshment at his ex- 
 pense. Then he leads you into a quiet corner 
 where there's a table and a couple of chairs and 
 keeps you corralled for an hour, entertaining you 
 with a variety of conversation, none of which 
 puts any money in your pocket. 
 
 You would call for the police, if any one stole 
 your pocketbook; you'd shoot the man who broke 
 into your house and tried to carry off your sil- 
 ver; you'd risk a bullet to save your watch from 
 a hold-up man. But your time, the most valuable 
 thing you possess — ^your time, the raw material 
 out of which you can make, if you use it properly, 
 a thousand watches or a row of houses with a 
 rent roll — this you will let any casual acquain- 
 tance steal from you in any quantity at any time, 
 and you will throw in a cheerful smile to show 
 there's no hard feeling — if he merely takes the 
 precaution to begin by asking you to have a drink. 
 
62 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 Your time is your capital, your stock in trade. 
 It is the only kind of capital that costs you noth- 
 ing to get and everything to lose. The success- 
 ful salesman hoards minutes and hours as a miser 
 hoards gold. The spendthrift of time is a sure 
 candidate for failure. 
 
 Boring crawfishes have ruined more dikes than 
 sudden tempests. It is the little things that 
 count. The loss of ten minutes here, an hour 
 there, a day there, will in the end sink any man's 
 ship of success. The salesman who lets the habit 
 of killing time fasten on him is assassinating his 
 main chance of getting on in the world. 
 
 A good many salesmen who aim at success are 
 mere tendencies all their lives. Be an Accom- 
 plished Fact. You never can do so till you learn 
 the value of time. 
 
SIXTH GINGER TALK OF A 
 SALES MANAGER TO 
 
 HIS MEN 
 
THE STAR SALESMAN'S SECRET 
 
 THE tail-ender of the sales force, who had been sitting 
 around hoping that business would spruce up, put 
 this question to the star salesman of his concern: "How 
 do you manage to get so many orders, while I don 't secra 
 to get any at all?" 
 
 "Well," said the other, dropping his voice to an im- 
 pressive whisper, ' ' I make it a point to wear out the solea 
 of my shoes instead of the seat of my trousers. That's 
 one of the fine distinctions that some people overlook. ' ' 
 
SIXTH TALK 
 
 The door to the temple of success is never left open. Every 
 one who enters makes his own door, which closes behind him 
 to all others. 
 
 — The ship never comes in to the loafer on the dock. 
 
 It was the Tail-ender of the sales force who 
 approached the Star Salesman of the organiza- 
 tion one day and asked, "How do you manage 
 to make such big sales, while I don't seem to sell 
 enough goods to pay expenses?" 
 
 "Well," said the holder of many medals, 
 "there's a secret about it. I've been in the busi- 
 ness a good many years, and I've finally solved 
 the selling puzzle. You are a new man, and I'm 
 willing to give you a pointer. But remember that 
 it's a secret." 
 
 "I will," said the Tail-ender, beaming with 
 eager anticipation. "Now for the answer: How 
 do you manage to be so successful?" 
 
 The Star Salesman dropped his voice to an 
 impressive whisper. "I'll tell you," he said; 
 "I always make it a point to wear out the soles 
 of my shoes instead of the seat of my trousers. ' ' 
 
 In selling goods, as in every other line of hu- 
 man activity, nine-tenths of the prescription for 
 success consists of plain, every-day, honest, hard 
 work. 
 
 67 
 
68 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 Some salesmen seem unable to absorb this sim- 
 ple truth. A good many never make the attempt. 
 Philosophers long ago gave up seeking for the 
 principle of perpetual motion, but there are a lot 
 of salesmen who are still hoping to discover some 
 principle of perpetual rest! Every sales force 
 has its complement of floaters, drifters, waiters, 
 and dreamers — luck-seekers hoping to ride into 
 the harbor of success on the crest of some fortu- 
 nate wave that will relieve them of the necessity 
 for effort. 
 
 They forget that the current runs always out 
 of that harbor, not into it. If a salesman wants 
 to get his boat past the frowning headlands at 
 the entrance, he's got to settle down to a long 
 spell of hard rowing. He's bound to have blis- 
 tered hands, a tired back, before he can step 
 ashore on the golden sands, and he might as well 
 make up his mind to it first as last. 
 
 No amount of talent will free a man from the 
 necessity for hard work. Daniel Webster said: 
 "I have worked twelve hours a day for fifty 
 years." Humboldt rose at four o'clock in the 
 morning for thirty years. During most of his 
 life, into which were crowded the achievements 
 of a hundred men of giant intellect. Napoleon 
 slept only four hours a night. Cornelius Van- 
 derbilt, who made two hundred million dollars, 
 was asked the secret of success. "There's no 
 secret to it," he answered. "It's just dig, dig, 
 dig." When some one said to Edison, "Don't 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE 69 
 
 you believe that genius is inspiration!", the man 
 who has taken out more patents than any other 
 inventor who ever lived replied : ' ' No, genius is 
 perspiration." In this world a man can't get 
 something for nothing. He may do it once, but 
 if he attempts to make a living on that principle, 
 he's bound to land eventually in the morgue, the 
 poor-house, or the jail. You can have as much 
 success as you liko, but you've got to be willing 
 to pay its price in the only coin that passes cur- 
 rent in the market where it is sold — hard work. 
 
 There's only one way to make luck come your 
 way, and that is to go out after it with a sand- 
 bag, as a hold-up man goes out after victims. No 
 one is going to besiege your house at night in a 
 frantic effort to get in and force orders on you. 
 There are bunches of money hanging on every 
 tree in the Forest of Prospective Customers, but 
 whistling won't entice any of it into your pockets. 
 You've got to climb a tall trunk for every dol- 
 lar, and be willing to skin your knees and bark 
 your shins all the way up. 
 
 A salesman's territory is like a corn-field: it 
 won't yield a harvest without cultivation. Weeds 
 are the only crop that will come up of themselves. 
 The Indian squaw who used to scratch over the 
 soil in the tribal corn-patch with a stick, drop a 
 few casual grains of corn here and there, and 
 go off in the wake of a hunting expedition until 
 harvest time, never needed any towering gran- 
 aries to contain the crop she raised. If her pack 
 
70 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 of starveling papooses got a dozen square meals 
 all around as a result of her entire season 's farm- 
 ing, tliey could count themselves lucky above the 
 ordinary lot of red-skinned youngsters. 
 
 It is the same way with a salesman's cultiva- 
 tion of his territory. The man who expects to 
 secure results in his field must get out into it 
 promptly at sun-up, and stay until sun-set. He 
 must be willing to work on occasion by the light 
 of the moon. He must do a lot of preparatory 
 plowing and harrowing among his prospective 
 customers. He miist have the right kind of ar- 
 gument for seed, and throw it out with both 
 hands. He must coax the reluctant soil with 
 daily caressing touches of an ingratiating and 
 vigorously wielded hoe. When he gets his crop 
 started, he must sprint all over the field early 
 and late to keep the weeds down. The amount 
 and quality of the harvest he gathers will de- 
 pend entirely on the amount and quality of the 
 efforts he puts forth in bringing it up. There is 
 absolutely no other factor that counts in the re- 
 sult. 
 
 I say "quality of efforts" : it isn't enough for a 
 salesman merely to keep busy — he must keep busy 
 in the right way. He must use system and meth- 
 od in his work. It isn't enough to be always 
 doing something — you've got to get something 
 done. 
 
 Some salesmen are like nothing so much as 
 a switch-engine in a freight-yard. No matter how 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEK U 
 
 much they puff up and down, they never get 
 anywhere in particular. The wheels go around 
 all right and the bell rings, and the whistle is 
 blowing all the time, but there is never any prog- 
 ress toward a definite destination. 
 
 These men are always snowed under in a drift 
 of unfinished effort — lost in a wilderness of loose 
 ends and criss-cross purposes — swamped in a 
 mire of rag-tag and bob-tail! Selling goods is 
 no catch-as-catch-can game. It is high art based 
 on distinct scientific principles, and the first rule 
 of the game after you learn the various holds is 
 to work out a definite plan of strategy in using 
 them. 
 
 How many salesmen go at their life work 
 backwards, as a woman gets off a moving jStreet- 
 car! It is not strange when you think of it that 
 both meet with sudden and unexpected disaster. 
 A little forethought and planning will save a lot 
 of running about. A little clear seeing will save 
 a whole lot of looking. 
 
 A great railroad recently did three hundred 
 thousand dollars of increased business one month, 
 and used but six more freight cars in doing it. 
 Why? Because the cars were handled so that 
 side-tracking was reduced to a minimum ; because 
 they wore loaded with an ingenuity that increased 
 the carrying capacity of each car; because the 
 traffic campaign was so planned that no car moved 
 a mile either way without a full load. 
 
 It is moving empty cars that cuts down a rail- 
 
72 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 road's profits, and it is effort mechanically ex- 
 pended in unintelligent activity tliat cheats a 
 salesman out of high commissions. 
 
 The June-bug is the only thing with wings that 
 never picks a course before he starts to fly. That's 
 the reason he brings up against so many ob- 
 stacles with such thundering hard bumps. You 
 are under no moral obligation to imitate the June- 
 bug. When you get a-going, go as hard as you 
 are able, but first be sure that you are headed 
 in the right direction. 
 
 Think out a plan for every day's work in the 
 morning before you begin to turn on the steam 
 of effort. Divide your day up into sections and 
 decide in advance just what you want to accom- 
 plish as a whole and just how you are going 
 about each part of it. At the beginning of the 
 Franco-Prussian war the great German general, 
 Von Moltke, taught the world a lesson in method 
 that it will never forget until the end of time. 
 Some one woke him up at midnight with the 
 announcement that war with France had been 
 declared. He was the only man in Germany that 
 took the news calmly. ' ' Look in the upper right- 
 hand pigeon-hole of my desk," said Von Moltke. 
 "You will find there some papers that will tell 
 you what to do." Then he rolled over in bed 
 and went to sleep again. 
 
 An hour later regiments and divisions and 
 army corps were in motion all over Germany, 
 and the great general who had planned every last 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 73 
 
 detail for every least part of the activity of half 
 a million men was still slumbering quietly in his 
 bed. It is no wonder that with such a leader in 
 the brief whirlwind campaign which followed the 
 German army checkmated every single move 
 made by the astonished Frenchmen, overwhelmed 
 the French frontiers, toppled Napoleon III from 
 his throne in Paris, and exacted an indemnity 
 large enough to make France practise rigorous 
 economy for a dozen years. 
 
 Hard work alone will accomplish remarkable 
 results, but hard work with method and system 
 will perform seeming miracles. No one can profit 
 more by a realization of these truths than the 
 man who sells goods for a living. 
 
SEVENTH GINGER TALK OF 
 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
JARRED TO THE EXPLOSION POINT. 
 
 ALWAYS remember that when you are talking to a 
 prospective customer you are like a man walking 
 around in a dynamite factory — the slightest misstep is 
 likely to blow you out through the roof, so far as any 
 chance of landing a sale is concerned. Your customer 
 isn't a bag of sand or a load of rock. He is a man — made 
 up of combustibles — pride, prejudices, vanity, sensitiveness, 
 conceit. Be careful not to touch a match to any of these; 
 avoid friction — it throws out sparks. Make your advances 
 with caution, as a man feels his way in the dark. 
 
SEVENTH TALK 
 
 Cheerfulness is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe 
 in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety — all the rust of life, can 
 be secured off with the oil of cheerfulness. 
 
 A genial laugh sells goods. Invest a smile — 
 and get an order. 
 
 A cheerful manner makes an immediate wire- 
 less connection with the heart of a prospective 
 customer and transmits an irresistible call for 
 business. 
 
 A great man once remarked, ' ' When a cheerful 
 man comes into a room, his arrival has the same 
 effect on every one present as the lighting of an- 
 other candle in the circle around a hospitable 
 table." 
 
 Another great man said, "Cheerful men move 
 through life as a band of music moves down the 
 street, flinging out joleasure on every side through 
 the air to every one — far and near — that can 
 listen. ' ' 
 
 There are some salesmen whose entrance into 
 the presence of a prospective customer is like 
 the advent of spring after a hard winter. They 
 bring a burst of sunshiny weather. The tired 
 and ill-humored customer, who has been sitting 
 on the mourner 's-bench all day nursing his 
 troubles, loosens his hold on his grouch in the 
 
80 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 presence of that insistent optimism. It is as if 
 some one had opened a window in a stuffy house ; 
 he feels the invigorating effect of ozone in the 
 air. Cheerfulness is contagious. No man can 
 look a good-natured fellow man square in the 
 face and hang on to a fit of ill-humor. 
 
 JEJvery good salesman knows this. He under- 
 stands the market value of a smile. A tactful 
 well-mannered approach will break down a pros- 
 pect's guard and hold his attention in play dur- 
 ing the first three minutes of an interview better 
 than any oratorical jabs and swings or left-hand 
 solar plexus arguments ever invented. 
 
 Many a salesman has walked straight into the 
 liking and confidence of a prospective customer 
 with the utterance of his opening sentence, 
 merely by the ingratiating power of a pleasant 
 manner. 
 
 Courtesy and cheerfulness are legal tender in 
 every clime. They make up half the salesman's 
 stock in trade. They are his passports through 
 the anterooms of guardian- clerks — his introduc- 
 tion into the privacy of inner offices. 
 
 Armed with these and with persistence, a sales- 
 man can secure an interview with any citizen of 
 the American republic. With these he can an- 
 nounce his errand on even terms of dignity with 
 any prospect. With these he can ward off rebuff, 
 dispel impatience, conquer prejudice, shame abuse 
 into apology — make headway where no other hu- 
 man power could penetrate. 
 
OP A SALES MANAGEB 81 
 
 Anger is powerless when met with good hu- 
 mor. Indifference is transformed into interest 
 by the magnetic power of tact. Gruff and surly- 
 moods are dissolved into friendly feeling by the 
 active chemicals of courtesy and an appealing 
 personality. 
 
 A prospective customer's mind is a castle that 
 cannot be carried by storm nor taken by stealth; 
 but there is a natural way of approach and a gate 
 of easy entry open to the salesman who carries 
 the magical keys of courtesy and cheerfulness. 
 Fit these properly in the lock and the most heav- 
 ily barred door will turn on its hinges. 
 
 Sometimes the salesman will be invited inside 
 and offered a comfortable chair before the warm 
 glow of the hearth; sometimes he is merely re- 
 ceived for a moment and quietly sent on his way. 
 But he has at least gotten in, and if he fails to 
 accomplish his purpose, he is free to return later. 
 
 Not every sale is made at the first call, but the 
 first call always has a great deal to do with every 
 sale that is made. 
 
 It 's worth going out of your way to make every 
 new acquaintance feel glad he has met you, even 
 if you don't do a stroke of business with him. 
 
 You never can tell when the business may come. 
 The man who declines to buy even a monkey- 
 wrench to-day may want an automobile to-mor- 
 row. If he does, the impression you made at 
 your first call is going to determine whether you 
 or some other fellow will get the order. 
 
82 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 The world is full of salesmen who fail to real- 
 ize the importance of a proper manner towards 
 customers. 
 
 Conscious of the merit of their product and 
 their own knowledge of their business, these ego- 
 tistical, self-important chaps lay at the door of 
 the prospective customer the blame for every 
 turn-down they receive. 
 
 "Too stupid to see the advantages of our 
 goods, ' ' they report to the house. * ' A pig-headed 
 fool who wouldn't listen to me." "A miserly 
 curmudgeon unwilling to spend a dollar to in- 
 crease his business." 
 
 Next day along comes a salesman of a rival 
 house — a chap with better manners. 
 
 Armed with personality — the irresistible pow- 
 er of tact and courtesy — he gains a hearing with 
 the "stupid," the "pig-headed," and "miserly" 
 customers— all three — gets them to listen pa- 
 tiently to his story in spite of themselves, drives 
 home his arguments without exciting their an- 
 tagonism, proves his case, and wins his orders, 
 walking out with the signatures in his pocket. 
 
 He had the same goods, the same prices, the 
 same knowledge of the business as the first man. 
 The difference between losing and winning the 
 orders was the cheerfulness, the tact and courtesy 
 that the second man threw into his approach. 
 
 The first step to a sale is to secure a man's 
 good will. He gets an impression for or against 
 you the minute he looks at you. 
 
OP A SALES MANAGER 83 
 
 When some salesmen come into a room, it is 
 as if a cellar-door had been opened suddenly — 
 they bring a chilling draught of clammy atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 How many salesmen walk into offices with long- 
 drawn, funereal countenances, like mourners step- 
 ping beside a hearse ! How many face a prospect 
 wearing exactly the same expression they would 
 assume in swallowing a dose of castor-oil! 
 
 That "I-know-I'm-not-going-to-like-this" sort 
 of expression proclaims as plainly as words, 
 "There's no fun for me in what I am about to do; 
 but I've got to do it, so here goes!" 
 
 How many go about combatively with chips on 
 their shoulders, expecting prospective customers 
 to knock them off, and ready to hand out verbal 
 left hooks and solar plexus punches in return! 
 
 There are some salesmen who live in a per- 
 petual grouch. When they open their mouths, 
 the act is like the removal of a door in front of 
 a bear-cage — you hear nothing coming out but 
 grunts and growls — growls at the house and at 
 the business when they are at the home office or 
 nmong their fellow salesmen, and grunts at the 
 customer's ideas or wishes or objections when 
 they are trying to land sales. 
 
 Now, you can't warm a customer's heart to- 
 ward you by pouring ice-water down his spine, 
 or by jabbing his prejudices with a sharp-pronged 
 pitch-fork of criticism. 
 
 The world hands back to a man exactly what 
 
84 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 he gives out to it. Life is too short for a cus- 
 tomer to waste time on cross-grained, crabbed 
 salesmen who receive objections as if made with 
 purposes of personal attack. Unless it pleases 
 you to please the prospective customer, you might 
 as well get up and go out of his office; if you 
 don't, he himself will more or less literally throw 
 you out in the end. It's only a question of time 
 when you will find yourself out on the sidewalk 
 with an unsigned order-blank in your hand, won- 
 dering why you didn't close the sale. 
 
 The man who is looking for trouble always 
 finds people ready to accommodate him. The 
 salesman who combats his prospects, opposes 
 their ideas without tact, meets their objections 
 with ridicule, and allows himself to be led into 
 an open controversy has no more chance of mak- 
 ing a sale than a lawyer has of winning a jury's 
 verdict by threatening its members with an axe! 
 
 The first principle of salesmanship is never 
 to antagonize a customer actively. Show him the 
 fallacy of his ideas, but do so without reflecting 
 in any way on his own personal intelligence in 
 adopting or following these ideas. 
 
 If he is set in his opinions, try to get around 
 them by careful strategy — don't smash straight 
 into them with bungling frontal attacks! Never 
 forget that half your power consists in what you 
 say to a man and the other half consists in the 
 way you say it. 
 
 Always remember that, when you are talking 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 85 
 
 to a prospective customer, you are like a man 
 walking around in a dynamite factory — the slight- 
 est misstep is likely to blow you out through the 
 roof, so far as any chance of landing a sale is 
 concerned. Your customer isn't a bag of sand 
 or a load of rock. He is a man — made up of 
 combustibles — pride, prejudices, vanity, sensitive- 
 ness, conceit. Be careful not to touch a match 
 to any of these; avoid friction — it throws out 
 sparks. Walk gently — make your advances with 
 caution, as a man feels his way in the dark. And 
 at every stage of the proceedings remember that 
 a spoonful of smile is worth more than a gallon of 
 growl. 
 
 Cheerfulness, courtesy, and tact in a salesman's 
 work are like oil on a machine: they help every 
 wheel go around. Discourtesy and gloom are like 
 sand on the axle: they hold everything back. A 
 grouch never sold any goods ; a smile thrown in 
 with an explanation costs nothing and wins trade. 
 Some salesmen have customers who couldn't be 
 driven away with a club — it's safe to gamble that 
 they didn't get them by growling at them. 
 
 Cultivate the smile that won't come off. It 
 pays. 
 
EIGHTH GINGER TALK OF 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
THE MORNING AFTER. 
 
 THE average salesman would be ashamed to treat a 
 second-hand lawn-mower with as little consideration 
 as he extends to the delicate mechanism of his own body. 
 He' will put ten layers of ten kinds of indigestible food 
 into his stomach from seven till ten o'clock at night and 
 sit up the rest of the night pouring himself full of deadly 
 alcoholic mixtures — and then wonder for the remainder of 
 the week why he doesn't feel up to his work. 
 
EIGHTH TALK 
 
 strong races and stronj;' individuals rest on natural forces. 
 
 Physical exuberance, surcharge of arterial blood, a strong 
 heart and a bounding pulse — these are the basis of the powers 
 that make men and nations great. 
 
 In the last analysis great human achievement rests on per- 
 fect physical health. — Emerson 
 
 I solved a mystery yesterday — one that had 
 puzzled me for months. 
 
 It had to do with one of our salesmen. I'll 
 call him Jones, because that isn't his name. 
 
 Jones has been with us several years. 
 
 He always had a good record — up to six months 
 ago. Then his sales began to fall off, and they 
 have been falling off ever since. Last month was 
 the climax — the worst slump of his career with us. 
 
 Yesterday I was passing through Jones 's town. 
 It occurred to me to stop off the train and call 
 on him. 
 
 I reached his office at about eleven A. M. Of 
 course he wasn't expecting me. 
 
 I found him sitting with his feet propped up 
 on his desk, staring out the window at the brick 
 wall opposite. 
 
 He looked about as cheerful as a conscientious 
 undertaker at a funeral! 
 
 As soon as the first greetings were over, I re- 
 
 91 
 
93 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 ferred to his melancholy expression and asked 
 him what was the matter. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," he said. "I'm discour- 
 aged, that's all. Don't seem to land any busi- 
 ness — don't know why it is — I used to get it all 
 right. But I've had no luck lately— no luck at 
 all. This sort of thing is hard — takes all the 
 ambition out of a fellow. I'm not the same man 
 I used to be. I guess this territory's about worked 
 out, to tell the truth." 
 
 I listened while Jones talked. At twelve o 'clock 
 we went out to lunch. He was still reciting his 
 tale of woe when we sat down at the table, but 
 he stopped long enough to make an intent study 
 of the bill of fare. 
 
 It being the middle of the day, I contented 
 myself with ordering a chicken sandwich and a 
 glass of milk. 
 
 Jones started off with a cocktail. Then he pro- 
 ceeded to introduce into his startled interior in 
 rapid succession a glass of ice-water, a plate of 
 hot soup, a large steak smothered in onions, an 
 assortment of French fried potatoes and other 
 vegetables, half a dozen hot biscuits, a generous 
 piece of mince pie, and a large cup of coffee. 
 
 Even at that he finished soon after I did. Then 
 he arose with a melancholy sigh, walked wearily 
 to the cigar counter, bought half a dozen fat black 
 cigars, lit one, and put the rest into his pocket. 
 
 "No," he remarked, continuing his doleful dis- 
 course as we reached the sidewalk, "I don't seem 
 
OF A SALES MANAGBE 93 
 
 to get the business that I used to. It's very dis- 
 couraging — takes all the ambition out of a fellow. 
 I can't understand it, because I used to be able — " 
 
 I broke in suddenly, "Jones, what did you have 
 for breakfast this morning?" 
 
 Jones stared. I repeated my question. 
 
 "Have for breakfast!" said Jones, wonder- 
 ingly. "Wliy, I believe I had some fried sausage 
 and buckwheat cakes." 
 
 "Three or four plates of cakes, I suppose?" 
 
 "Why, yes, I guess so." 
 
 "And a couple of helpings of sausage!" 
 
 "Think likely I did — though I don't remem- 
 ber." 
 
 "I've been with you since eleven o'clock. In 
 that time you've smoked three cigars. Do you 
 keep that pace up all day long?" 
 
 "I smoke seven or eight cigars a day, I guess 
 — sometimes more. Never thought about it. Why 
 do you ask?" 
 
 ' ' You like a cocktail with your meals, I noticed. 
 Do you generally take a drink or two in the 
 evening!" 
 
 "If I happen to meet a friend, yes." 
 
 "Sometimes five or sis drinks?" 
 
 "Well — I suppose there have been such occa- 
 sions. ' ' 
 
 I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. 
 "Jones," I said, "if you'll agree to live the sim- 
 ple life in the matter of diet for one week's time 
 and put some limit on yourself in the consump- 
 
94 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 tion of cigars and cocktails, I'll back you to beat 
 the best week's selling record you ever made with 
 this company. But if you keep on handing your 
 stomach and nervous system the kind of knock- 
 out blows I've seen you deal out to them to-day, 
 your sales will drop so low in another month 
 that I'll have to fire you. You can take your 
 choice — the matter is up to you." 
 
 We had a little more talk in the office before 
 I left, but I had said all that was essential right 
 there on the sidewalk. 
 
 I took the train for home. 
 
 And now I'm going to keep an eye on Jones. 
 
 I expect to be able to tell by the number of 
 orders he sends in just what he has for break- 
 fast, lunch, and dinner every day for the next 
 two weeks. 
 
 Every selling force has its quota of Joneses. 
 The woods are full of them, and they are the 
 most illogical class of citizens to be found within 
 the borders of the American republic. 
 
 There is no profession that calls for more phys- 
 ical vitality than the salesman's. He must have 
 courage, and courage, the great psychologists tell 
 us, is nothing but a plus condition of mind and 
 body — a state of superabundant vitality. 
 
 The salesman must have enthusiasm. There 
 can be no enthusiasm without strong pulsing of 
 the blood in the brain and arteries. He must have 
 self-confidence, persistence, determination, hope, 
 and cheerfulness. All of these are manifestations 
 
OP A SALES MANAGER 95 
 
 of mental power, and mental power is absolutely- 
 dependent upon and proportional to physical 
 health. You can't have the first without the sec- 
 ond, any more than you can have steam without 
 heat. 
 
 Courage, enthusiasm, optimism, hope — all these 
 are essential qualities of salesmanship, yet how 
 many salesmen cancel their possibilities of having 
 any of the four by their habits at the table ! 
 
 Many a salesman is made a black pessimist 
 for a week at a time by the disorganizing effect 
 of too heavy a Sunday dinner. 
 
 In all this world there's no outside source of 
 discouragement so altogether and completely dis- 
 couraging as a stomach that won't digest food, so 
 take care of your stomach. 
 
 You can't expect to carry around an atmosphere 
 of hope and radiate optimism to any great extent, 
 if your internal organism is all puckered up in 
 a hopeless fight with the dinner you've sent down 
 to it! 
 
 No man can hope to be light and buoyant in 
 his manner, if he is experiencing the sensation of 
 carrying around a section of lead pipe in tlie pit 
 of Ms stomach ! 
 
 The human body is a machine, just like a steam- 
 engine or an automobile, and deserves at least 
 an equal show with these iron pushers and haul- 
 ers. 
 
 The average salesman would be ashamed to 
 treat a second-hand lawn-mower with as little 
 
96 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 consideration as he extends to the delicate mech- 
 anism of his own body. 
 
 He wouldn't expect even a tough old road-roller 
 to get up a head of steam, if he filled the grate 
 up with clinkers and poured a mixture of kero- 
 sene and nitroglycerine into the boiler; but he 
 will put ten layers of ten kinds of indigestible 
 food into his stomach from seven till ten o'clock 
 at night and sit up the rest of the night pouring 
 himself full of deadly alcoholic mixtures — and 
 then wonder for the remainder of the week why 
 he doesn 't feel equal to his work ! 
 
 If he used the same quality of reasoning in 
 dealing with his customers that he uses in his 
 own ponderings upon these phenomena, he 
 wouldn't be able to make a sale once in four 
 years. 
 
 Nine-tenths of all human ills can be traced to 
 the digestive system. 
 
 It is true, as some one has said, that most men 
 dig their graves with their teeth. 
 
 A small percentage of the medical fratern- 
 ity is engaged in ameliorating human suffering 
 due to accidents, heredity, or other unavoidable 
 causes. The rest of the immense army of doctors 
 is engaged in salvaging wrecks of humanity that 
 have deliberately run upon the rocks of ruined 
 health in broad daylight — ^ninety-nine out of one 
 hundred across the dangerous shoals of diges- 
 tion's violated laws! 
 
 And no class of derelicts among these wrecks 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 97 
 
 has a larger representation than the salesman's 
 profession. 
 
 Travelling men are subjected to harder con- 
 ditions in the way of irregular hours and meals 
 in strange places than any other class of men, 
 yet, strange to say, they have less realization of 
 their danger and less disposition to avoid it than 
 any other class of men. 
 
 I am not delivering a sermon or reading from a 
 medical treatise. I am speaking purely from a 
 business standpoint. Experience has taught me 
 that a man can't sell goods for any length of time j/ 
 with any degree of success, unless he maintains 
 his physical condition. I am discussing health 
 purely as a money-making proposition. 
 
 The assistant general manager of one of the 
 largest manufacturing concerns in America re- 
 cently said in a health talk to several hundred 
 of his salesmen: "If we could do nothing else 
 at this convention but induce the men in our sales 
 force to eat the right food and chew it properly, 
 we should increase our orders 20 per cent, in the 
 coming year." 
 
 A salesman's health is his chief asset — the 
 main part of his capital. 
 
 His nerve force is his bank deposit. 
 
 He can draw on it just so many drafts of so 
 much each — and then he is through for all time. 
 
 Nature honors no over-drafts. When that de- 
 posit is exhausted, the salesman is out of busi- 
 ness — ^he might just as well put up the shutters 
 
98 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 and lock the door of his office, for he can't land 
 another customer. 
 
 The officials of the bank of health never make 
 any mistakes in figuring; every trifling amount 
 drawn is entered up by a remorseless bookkeeper. 
 The cashier warns you from time to time in sun- 
 dry ways as the amount gets low. Be careful 
 how you disobey that warning, if you don't want 
 to land in the court of physical bankruptcy. Once 
 there, you can't do any more business. 
 
 The heaviest draft you can draw on the bank 
 of health is the cocktail draft. 
 
 Every time a salesman takes a dose of al- 
 cohol he puts a mortgage on his success and gives 
 a bond to an unrelenting enemy. 
 
 Jags cost commissions. A hang-over from the 
 night before never yet helped close a sale the day 
 after. The salesman who stumbles up stairs in 
 the evening as a result of too much conviviality 
 with the boys is bound to fall down the next day 
 when he tries to land a customer. 
 
 Eight hours of good sound sleep every night 
 will do more to fit a salesman for success in the 
 long run than an acquaintance with the best clos- 
 ing arguments mortal mind ever invented. The 
 argument is the salesman's arrow, but his per- 
 sonality, his nerve force, his vitality — these are 
 the only bow that can drive the arrow home. 
 Without these the salesman is like a dumb man 
 in a crowd of ordinary mortals — ^he may know 
 what he wants to say — but he can't express it 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 99 
 
 in a way that will make it impressive to any one 
 else. 
 
 Health means Power, and Power spells Suc- 
 cess. 
 
 "For performance of great work," says Emer- 
 son, "it needs extraordinary health. If Eric the 
 Northman is in robust health and has slept well 
 and is at the top of his condition, and thirty 
 years old, at his departure from Greenland, he 
 will steer west and his ships will reach Newfound- 
 land. But take out Eric, and put in a stronger 
 and bolder man — a Biorn or a Thorfin, with even 
 greater vitality — and the ships will, with just as 
 much ease, sail six hundred, one thousand, fif- 
 teen hundred miles farther, and reach New Eng- 
 land." 
 
 It is the man with the greatest vitality who 
 wins, no matter what his work or profession may 
 be. 
 
 It is the salesman who bounds out of bed after 
 a night's sleep and hits the floor with a bounce 
 like a rubber ball — the man with a clear head, a 
 strong heart, and the glow of health in every 
 vein — ^who can be depended on to run down the 
 most customers before the close of the day. 
 
 He can do four times the work, bear four times 
 the strain, think four times as quickly and effec- 
 tively, and show ten times the pluck and persis- 
 tence of the man who crawls around carrying a 
 load of dyspepsia, dulness or drowsiness of head, 
 or other physical disability. 
 
100 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 It is a grand thing to meet a healthy, hearty, 
 cheery salesman, whose hand-shake is an inspira- 
 tion and the very tones of whose voice proclaim 
 his power. And these magnetic forces are within 
 the reach of all of us. Give that wonderful ma- 
 chine, your body, some kind of respect and con- 
 sideration. Treat it half as well as you would 
 your horse or bicycle or the furnace in the base- 
 ment of your house — and watch the result in your 
 work. You'll draw larger commissions every 
 week of your life. 
 
NINTH GINGER TALK OF 
 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
THE CEMETERY OF OPPORTUNITIES. 
 
 EVERT selling force has a number of ineapables who 
 drift along on the current of the day as a water- 
 soaked log drifts down a sluggish stream. Their work 
 drags interminably. When a paper demanding action falls 
 into the hands of one of these men it becomes forthwith a 
 dead document — entombed for weeks, months or all time in 
 a convenient pigeon-hole. Such a man's desk is a ceme- 
 tery; his office is a place of stagnation more choked with 
 dead matter than a stagnant pond. A man of this sort 
 has no more initiative than a load of sand. 
 
NINTH TALK 
 
 A day is a more magnificent cloth than any muslin, the 
 mechanism that weaves it is infinitely cunninger, and you shall 
 not conceal the sleazy, fraudulent, rotten hours you have 
 slipped into the piece, nor fear that any honest thread or 
 straighter steel or more inflexible shape will not testify in 
 the web. — Emerson 
 
 I inspected one of our sales offices in a neigh- 
 boring State last week. 
 
 That's why we have a new manager there this 
 week. 
 
 I dropped in at the office quite informally, with- 
 out notifying the manager that I was coming. 
 Seated in a broad, comfortably cushioned chair, 
 he looked as peaceful and placid — and inert — as 
 a blinking frog on a lily-pad. I wondered how 
 long he had been sitting in that chair without 
 moving. 
 
 "How's business?" I inquired. 
 
 "O, very fair," he said cheerfully. "Nothing 
 rushing, but as good as we can expect at this 
 time of year." 
 
 Nothing rushing, but good as we could expect! 
 I choked a snort before it escaped me. 
 
 "How many orders yesterday?" I asked. 
 
 The placid manager turned over a lot of pa- 
 105 
 
106 THE GINGBE TALKS 
 
 pers on his desk. "Where are those salesmen's 
 reports V he inquired of his stenographer. 
 
 "I put them on your desk as requested," the 
 girl replied. 
 
 ' ' Then they must be here somewhere, ' ' he said. 
 He pawed over the mass of disordered papers. 
 
 I waited. 
 
 "I must have mislaid them," he announced at 
 length, with a cheerful smile. "I've been intend- 
 ing to sort these papers out for the last four 
 days, but I haven't had time to get around to 
 them yet." 
 
 He settled back in his comfortable chair, sighed 
 contentedly, and glanced at the clock. "Quarter 
 before twelve," he exclaimed. "Suppose we go 
 out to lunch." 
 
 "Wait a bit," I remarked. "Did you receive 
 a big batch of advertising matter from the com- 
 pany last week?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "Have you sent it out into the territories of 
 your men?" 
 
 The manager fished in his pockets — peacefully, 
 placidly — one after the other. 
 
 I waited. 
 
 And waited. 
 
 And waited. 
 
 At length he drew forth a ragged envelope. On 
 the back was scrawled a tangle of figures. 
 
 He pondered these for a moment, then re- 
 marked: "I have made a note of all I have sent 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 107 
 
 out, but these entries are not up to date. I had 
 a later statement, but I don't seem to find it. 
 Guess I must have left it at home." He began to 
 fish in his pockets anew. 
 
 "What are these papers on your desk?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Correspondence. I haven't had an opportu- 
 nity to answer it all yet, but I'll get caught up 
 in a day or two. ' ' 
 
 I picked up a letter. It read: "Send your 
 salesman down to-day — before three o'clock, if 
 possible." 
 
 I looked at the heading. 
 
 The letter was dated two days back. 
 
 "Have you had a salesman make that call?" I 
 inquired. 
 
 The manager took the letter from my hand. 
 "Oh, that call!" he exclaimed. "No — not yet. I 
 didn't have a man free the day that letter came 
 in, and since then I've had so much to do that I 
 overlooked it. I'll send a man around in the 
 morning." 
 
 I made no comment. I had seen and heard 
 enough. 
 
 I didn't stay to lunch. 
 
 I left for home. 
 
 Three hours later I was interviewing the presi- 
 dent of our company. 
 
 "I hate to let him go," said the president. "He 
 is a first cousin of my wife's, and she will make 
 a tremendous fuss. But business is business. It 
 
i 
 
 108 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 takes live men to get orders — ^we can't carry dead 
 weight and get ahead. You have my permission 
 to make a change in the management of that 
 office. ' ' 
 
 I made the change. 
 
 I appointed as the new manager a salesman 
 who had a record as a business-getter — an as- 
 piring young chap, nervous as a thoroughbred 
 horse and overflowing with spirit and energy. 
 He went into that office as a full head of steam 
 pounds into an engine cylinder — and forthwith 
 every wheel in the organization began to move 
 with the whiz and whirl of power. 
 
 In four days ' time the sales of the office jumped 
 up fifteen per cent. 
 
 The place had awakened from its long slum- 
 ber. 
 
 The manager we let go was a fair type of the 
 common or garden variety of business man — 
 the easy-going, neutral-tinted, second-rate daw- 
 dler. 
 
 Every selling force has a number of these in- 
 lapables — ^men who do business as a beggar lives 
 upon the street — from hand to mouth. They drift 
 along on the current of the day as a water-soaked 
 log drifts down a sluggish stream. The atmos- 
 phere about them is loaded with delay. Their 
 work drags interminably — their mail goes unan- 
 swered — their appointments are postponed — doc- 
 uments pile up before them — orders get cold be- 
 fore they are filled — they carry about important 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 109 
 
 data on scraps of paper in Heaven-knows-what 
 pocket of the Lord-knows-which suit of clothes ! 
 
 When a paper demanding action falls into the 
 hands of one of these men, it becomes forthwith 
 a dead document — entombed for weeks, months, 
 or all time in a convenient pigeon-hole. 
 
 Such a man's desk is a cemetery; his office 
 is a place more choked with dead matter than a 
 stagnant pond. 
 
 A man of this sort has no more initiative than 
 a load of sand. He attends from day to day to 
 the casual details — or some of them — that turn 
 up of themselves at his elbow and force them- 
 selves upon his attention. But he has no per- 
 spective — ^no view of his work as a whole, no 
 clear conception of the main objects that he 
 should accomplish — no systematic method of cov- 
 ering all the points that offer opportunities for 
 profitable action — no scheme of unearthing fresh 
 possibilities and continually throwing out new 
 lines of attack. 
 
 He has no mind to plan and no steam to push 
 a plan through to completion. He lacks every 
 quality of an executive. 
 
 Yet how numerous he is in business ! 
 
 How many men are attempting to fill the posi- 
 tions of business generals, whereas they ought to 
 be carrying water in the army's rear — and will 
 be doing this before the war is over ! 
 
 How many leaders are conducting on to failure 
 business enterprises which under proper manage- 
 
110 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 ment would march straight forward over every 
 obstacle to success ! 
 
 Men of this type do not necessarily neglect busi- 
 ness for other pursuits. 
 
 Their trouble lies deeper than that. 
 
 They get down to the office at the regulation 
 time, they remain at work the regulation time, 
 they knock off work — or their semblance of work 
 ■ — at the regulation time. They put in the regula- 
 tion number of hours all right — but they might 
 as well be a thousand miles away asleep under a 
 shade-tree, so far as actual accomplishment of 
 anything valuable is concerned. 
 
 They are all the time doing things, but they 
 never get anything done. 
 
 The business world demands results — and these 
 men cannot get results. 
 
 It calls in thunderous tones for productive ac- 
 tion — and they can only imitate productive action 
 as a stage soldier imitates marching by marking 
 time. 
 
 They start out, but they never arrive anywhere 
 — they set sail, but they never make port. 
 
 Every stay is slacked on board their business 
 craft — every bolt is loosened — their working 
 equipment is slipping and sliding all over the 
 deck — the compass is out of order — the sails are 
 unbent — the engine is choked with rust — nothing 
 is ship-shape or in working order. Like aban- 
 doned derelicts they go drifting and dodging 
 across the business sea, doubling and redoubling 
 
OP A SALES MANAGER 111 
 
 on their track, headed everywhere in general, and 
 bringing up nowhere in particular. 
 
 They are tranced in inertia, steeped in post- 
 ponement — paralyzed Avith procrastination. They 
 are Eip Van Winkle sleepers — in a world that 
 sets its highest premium on being wide awake. 
 
 And because these men are asleep, they do not 
 realize their own condition. There is nothing in 
 this earthly frame of things more marvellous 
 than the infinite self-complacency with which a 
 slow-going, jog-trot man moves on his sluggish 
 jog-trot way. Uncle Obadiah's old mare upon a 
 country road is a skittish thoroughbred in com- 
 parison ! 
 
 Such a man is conscious of no fault in his meth- 
 ods. He believes that he is moving as fast as 
 anybody. 
 
 And if he isn't, what difference does it make? 
 He is sure that he will arrive all right in the end. 
 
 A jog is a fast enough pace for him. "Fairly 
 good is good enough," is the basic principle of 
 his easy-going philosophy. "0, that will do well 
 enough" is the expression most frequently on his 
 lips. 
 
 He is content to be just holding his own — just 
 getting along. So on he goes — jog, jog, jog — 
 his mind full of peace — even though his pocket be 
 empty of coin. 
 
 The jog-trot traveller esteems himself a busi- 
 ness man because he is in business. 
 
 One may as well say a mud-turtle is a pickerel 
 
112 THE GINGBE TALKS 
 
 because he happens to crawl into a pond fre- 
 quented by pickerel ! 
 
 / A business man is a man who does business — 
 who gets results. 
 
 The first requisite to result-getting is ambition 
 — ^the kind of ambition that fills a man's daytime 
 thoughts and disturbs his dreams — that wakes 
 him up on occasion in the dead of night and sets 
 him to pacing up and down the floor — the divine 
 discontent with present conditions that makes in- 
 action or sluggish action an agony to him. 
 
 Luke- warm water won't take a locomotive any- 
 where, and luke-warm purposes won't lift a man 
 to any height of achievement in the business 
 world. 
 
 The great things of history were never done by 
 jog-trot men, take-your-time men — self-compla- 
 cent plodders — ^placid, peaceful rut-travellers — 
 easy-going followers of routine. 
 
 All of these are men in different stages of 
 slumber. 
 
 It takes a live man to get things done in this 
 world — a man intensely wide awake — a man pal- 
 pitating with eager energy, his head full of the 
 fire of ambition, his heart full of the hunger of 
 achievement, his veins full of red blood. 
 
 Business is a battle, but many men in business 
 have no more fight in them than has a feather- 
 bed ! They are constitutional Quakers — they keep 
 peace with all the world and with every obstacle, 
 attacking nobody and nothing — not even their dif- 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 113 
 
 ficulties. They are drab-colored, half-hearted, in- 
 offensive non-combatants — camp-followers hang- 
 ing around the edge of the business scrimmage 
 and never plunging straight into the thick of the 
 fray, where the hard knocks are dealt out and all 
 the glory and prizes are to be won. 
 
 Genius is intensity. The man who gets any- 
 thing worth having is the man who goes after 
 his object as a bulldog goes after a cat — with 
 every fibre in him tense with eagerness and de- 
 termination. 
 
 It takes force and fierceness, grit and gumption 
 to run down success. 
 
 Life is no dressing-gown-and-slippers game. 
 It is a fight fiercer than a street riot. Destiny 
 is trying to down you. Square off and hit out 
 at her as hard as you are able. 
 
 You alone can save yourself from failure. Be 
 on your guard against your weaknesses. Get a 
 grip on yourself. Take your habit of puttering 
 and dawdling by the throat and choke the life out 
 of it! 
 
 Stop loitering! Quit lagging at the tail of the 
 procession, where you have to take every one 
 else's dust! Hit up the pace — break out of the 
 rear ranks — make a dash for the front of the 
 parade, where you can get a view of the prospect 
 ahead and hear the music of the band-wagon. 
 Bring all your powers into play — go in for all you 
 are worth. Do something — if it be only for a 
 single occasion — with all your earthly might. 
 
114 THE GINGBE TALKS 
 
 Key yourself up to concert pitch. 
 Don't be a lump of dough! Set a little yeast 
 at work in yourself and see if you can't rise. 
 
TENTH GINGER TALK OF 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
THE RIGHT KEY GAINS ENTRANCE- 
 
 Do TOTJ ever meet a man who refuses to listen to you? 
 He has locked you out. But that's all right — you 
 carry a bunch of keys to fit any lock. If you know your 
 man, you'll know what key to use — the right approach to 
 suit his particular ease. Just insert it in the keyhole, give 
 it a twist and the business is done in a jiffy. He's bound 
 to open up and listen. Knowledge of human nature ia the 
 key that opens all doors to the salesman. 
 
TENTH TALK 
 
 When I'm getting ready for an argument with a man, I 
 spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what 
 I'm going to say, and two-thirds thinking about him and what 
 he is going to say. — Abraham Lincoln 
 
 Study your prospect before you call on him. 
 
 Find out what manner of man he is before you 
 put your proposition up to him. 
 
 If you were a prize-fighter with a hard mill 
 ahead of you, you wouldn't step into the ring 
 without first getting some kind of line on your 
 opponent and his methods. If you did, you 'd de- 
 serve to catch a knockout blow in the first round. 
 
 Success is the product of fore-knowledge and 
 preparation. 
 
 Admiral Togo knew all about the ships, arma- 
 ment, officers, and men of Rojestvensky's fleet 
 before he sailed out to wipe that fleet off the map. 
 
 That's one of the chief reasons why he was 
 able to do the job in record time. 
 
 There is information obtainable about every 
 prospect, if you are willing to take the trouble to 
 go after it. 
 
 The facts you need to know about the men you 
 call on are not sealed up in safety-deposit vaults. 
 
 No business man's character, mental tempera- 
 ment, business habits, attitude toward life in gen- 
 
 119 
 
ISO THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 eral, and toward salesmen's propositions in par- 
 ticular, can be kept as matters of private rec- 
 ord — wholly inaccessible ! 
 
 No matter who the man is, there are many peo- 
 ple who know all about him, and usually you can 
 find one of them, if you do a little careful look- 
 ing. 
 
 Hunt one of these men up and ask him a few 
 tactful questions before you call on your pros- 
 pect. 
 
 If you can, learn also the conditions in the 
 prospect's business and lay before him something 
 worked out to fit his particular case. 
 
 Five salesmen out of ten never bother to do 
 this. 
 
 They make the call first and think about the 
 prospect's particular case and personal charac- 
 teristics later — on the way out of the office after 
 they have been turned down. 
 
 It is true that you can't always learn in ad- 
 vance the things you would like to know about 
 a prospect, but you've got to find some of these 
 things out before you can close the sale. That 
 makes it all the more necessary for you to begin 
 to study your man the minute you step into his 
 office. If ever you needed your wits about you, 
 this is the time. Watch out sharp, or you are lost. 
 Keep your eye peeled and your ears wide open. 
 Don't miss a move your prospect makes. Some 
 little sign — some trifling indication — ^is going to 
 give you your clue, if you are quick and ready 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE 131 
 
 enough to perceive it. Wide awake 's the word 
 now. 
 
 Size your man up as a pitcher sizes up a new 
 batter. Try to decide from his general style and 
 from the look in his eye what kind of delivery 
 will stand the best chance of striking him out. 
 
 You can't pitch the same assortment of curves 
 to every man that comes up to the plate. 
 
 Every prospect you approach is different. 
 
 The approach that will take you straight into 
 Smith's confidence and lead direct to a sale will 
 land you in a couple of minutes out on the side- 
 walk with an unsigned order-blank in your pocket, 
 if you try it on Jones. 
 
 Smith and Jones are two different individuals. 
 Both have their approachable side — their vulner- 
 able point — but these are not the same points. 
 
 If you fail to get started with Jones, it will 
 be because you try to fit the wrong key in his 
 lock. If Jones is a busy man, you won't get a 
 chance to try another key. Your chance for a 
 sale will be over the minute you make that first 
 vital blunder. 
 
 The art of making sales is based primarily on 
 a knowledge of human nature. There are some 
 salesmen, strange as it may seem, who never learn 
 this lesson. Intent on telling their story, they 
 enter an office with their minds concentrated 
 wholly on that story and on themselves, and not 
 at all on the individual they are to face. 
 
 These dull-witted fellows make every approach 
 
123 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 in the same mechanical fashion, begin in every 
 case with the same old worn-out formulas, and 
 continue with the same old parrot-like line of talk 
 — until they are cut off suddenly and thrown out. 
 
 All prospects look alike to them. 
 
 A wound-up phonograph, propelled into an of- 
 fice and turned loose upon the ambient air, would 
 make as effective an approach as a good many 
 of these mechanical, Waterbury-watch, wind-up- 
 and-run-down chaps ! 
 
 Hard bumps teach them nothing. Misfortune 
 dogs them — calamity follows on their trail — ^but 
 they never comprehend the reason. They attrib- 
 ute their strings of failures to hard luck, to faults 
 in their product, to the reputation of their house, 
 to the weather, to the condition of the stock mar- 
 ket, the state of crops in Montana, and the ru- 
 mors of war in Abyssinia — to anything under 
 Heaven but the real cause — the single fact that 
 they don't know enough about human nature to 
 be able to make an effective approach. 
 
 Avoid their example as you would the plague. 
 Line up with the quick-witted, artful salesmen, 
 the keen observers and ready interpreters of 
 slight signs. 
 
 Watch your man as you talk to him. Don't 
 orate off into the general atmosphere like a tem- 
 perance lecturer addressing a crowd! Talk di- 
 rectly to your prospect, and observe him every 
 moment. 
 
 Feel your way along. Pick and choose amid 
 
OP A SALES MANAGES 133 
 
 the mass of arguments you have at your com- 
 mand, and watch, the effect of each as you spring 
 it on him. 
 
 Try to discover the point of contact at which 
 his interest can be made to touch your proposi- 
 tion. Be quick to catch the look in his eye that 
 shows you have caught his closer attention, and 
 instantly throw the whole force of your batteries 
 upon the vulnerable point that he has disclosed. 
 
 There are two chief classes of men that you 
 will approach: one ruled chiefly by reason, the 
 other by impulses, emotion, prejudices, enthusi- 
 asm, likes and dislikes. 
 
 The first-named class can be sold only by 
 matter-of-fact mathematical arguments — the kind 
 of evidence that will pass a judge in court. The 
 minds of these men are clear, cold, logic engines. 
 They are impressed only by facts and figures, and 
 will do no business with salesmen who offer them 
 anything else. 
 
 The other class — of impulsive or emotional men 
 — is amenable to persuasion. 
 
 You will not find it so necessary to convince 
 their reasons. Give them the best evidence you 
 have, but mix it with something more. 
 
 Be careful of their prejudices, watch out for 
 the revelation of their likes and dislikes, discover 
 their enthusiasms, suit yourself to their moods. 
 
 Sooner or later, if you know your business, you 
 will uncover the vulnerable spot, and when you 
 learn the vulnerable spot in an emotional man, he 
 
124 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 is yours. Strike him with the right kind of per- 
 suasion and you can walk out with his order. 
 
 Study your prospects. Learn to read the book 
 of human nature. The formulas for success in 
 selling are written on its pages. 
 
ELEVENTH GINGER TALK OF 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
KEEP A-GOING! 
 
 THE man who wins in the selling game is not the chap 
 who starts out to cut a few fancy figures of eight and 
 do eye-opening stunts like the Long Eoll and the Outer 
 Edge. Fancy skaters are seldom strong on endurance, and 
 selling, like distance skating, is a game that calls for stay- 
 ing powers. The fellow with the long, steady stroke and 
 never-tiring stride is the chap who shows up at the finish 
 line when the prizes are being banded outt 
 
ELEVENTH TALK 
 
 The slow penny is surer than the quick dollar. The slow 
 trotter will out-travel the fleet racer. Genius darts, flutters, 
 and tires, but perseverance wears and wins. 
 
 — Marden 
 
 Keep a-going! 
 
 Don't think you've crossed the finish line be- 
 cause you've made a good start! 
 
 The fact that you led the field at the break- 
 away doesn't prove that you won't be distanced 
 in the stretch. 
 
 The race isn't won until you pass under the 
 wire. You won't have any prize ribbons pinned 
 on your coat for starting. The men in at the fin- 
 ish are the only chaps who will have a chance to 
 parade in front of the judges' stand and get a 
 piece of the money. 
 
 Hit up the pace! Go right on reaching out! 
 Hold every inch you gain! 
 
 Keep a-going! 
 
 The bulldog 's claim to fame is based on a single 
 great quality : he can hang on. 
 
 When he attaches himself to anything, it is safe 
 to gamble that time will elapse before he lets go, 
 and if you want to attain to his certainty in se- 
 curing results, you've got to imitate his methods. 
 
 Most men are strong on starting but weak on 
 129 
 
130 THE GINGBE TALKS 
 
 finishing. They catch "that tired feeling" right 
 after they get under way, and they drop out of 
 the race. Then they walk back to the head of the 
 course to rest up and get ready to start in the 
 next race. 
 
 Fifty starts won't make one finish, and the 
 finish is the only thing that has any value. 
 
 When you're travelling to Europe, you haven't 
 arrived until you've walked down the gang-plank 
 on the other side. If you stop half a mile off 
 the coast, you might just as well have never put 
 out from New York. If you can't cover that last 
 half-mile, you have paid your fare and spent your 
 time for nothing — your entire voyage is wasted. 
 
 There's only one way to get profit out of any 
 piece of work, and that is to keep at it till it's 
 done. 
 
 The salesman who makes a great beginning 
 with a set of prospects the first week, neglects 
 them the second, and follows them up spasmodi- 
 cally during the third, won't have any prospects 
 by the time the fourth week comes around. The 
 men he calls on will either have forgotten his 
 name or placed their orders with some one else. 
 
 You can't set your success a-going, then go 
 off and leave it and expect it to run on of itself. 
 
 Every time you stop pushing it, it's bound to 
 back-slide like a freight-train on an up-grade, and 
 go to everlasting smash. 
 
 Getting on in life is like climbing a tree: you 
 must hold fast with your legs what you have al- 
 
OF A SALES MAKAGBE 131 
 
 ready gained, and keep reaching out with your 
 hands for a grip higher up. 
 
 Up you go, inch after inch, foot after foot, 
 hand over hand, till you reach the top. 
 
 No single pull put you there. It was the long 
 succession of pulls, one after another — the con- 
 tinuous chain of efforts. 
 
 You can bank on it that, if you had let up in 
 your steady, painful crawl — ^if you had stopped 
 half-way up to admire the view, or crow over 
 the distance you had gained, you 'd have lost your 
 grip and come down with a run that would have 
 burned the skin off your hands and worn the 
 trousers off your legs ! 
 
 Profit lies in continuous effort. 
 
 A big success is a series of small successes 
 welded together. 
 
 Every considerable result is made up of a num- 
 ber of parts. 
 
 The Japs didn't get into Port Arthur by a 
 single charge. 
 
 You can't break a block of stone with a single 
 blow, but you can break it with a hundred, 
 if you put them, all in the same place. 
 
 Consolidation — adding one thing to another — 
 massing causes together — this is what produces 
 effects. Solid rocks are made by compacting par- 
 ticles. 
 
 That's a statement in geology, but it goes in 
 salesmanship, too. 
 
 It's a general rule in life. It's the law that 
 
133 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 made the successes of all the big men we envy 
 — and refuse to imitate. 
 
 Old Noah Webster put thirty-six years of solid 
 work on end to produce his dictionary. In thirty- 
 six years he wrote only that one book, but it will 
 be remembered. 
 
 Cyrus Field crossed the ocean fifty times to 
 lay a single cable. 
 
 Turner made thirty thousand drawings before 
 he achieved his "Slave Ship"- — and immortality. 
 
 Gibbon worked twenty years on his "Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire." 
 
 Stephenson put in seventeen consecutive years 
 perfecting his locomotive. 
 
 Edison has worked eighteen hours a day for 
 twenty years, and all the great American Cap- 
 tains of Industry have paid the price for their 
 success by a tremendous investment of that same 
 quality — perseverance. 
 
 Perseverance built the Pyramids, and scaled 
 the Alps. It has tunnelled our mountains, bridged 
 our rivers, belted the world with a chain of rail- 
 roads, with steamship and telegraph lines, 
 searched out all the remote places of the globe — 
 reaching even the North Pole amid the icy wastes 
 and unfurling there the American flag. 
 
 No matter where we look, we read this lesson. 
 
 One would think that, with the entire fabric of 
 human society standing for illustration, with 
 everything in human achievement for thousands 
 of years back bearing its testimony to the power 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE 133 
 
 of perseverance, our hives of industry would be 
 jammed mtli individuals compassing their ends 
 by its practice. 
 
 But such a supposition is out of harmony with 
 the principles of human nature. 
 
 It is human nature to hate to persevere. 
 
 We 're willing to start things — but don 't ask us 
 to finish them ! 
 
 We'll begin anything you say — ^but don't ask us 
 to keep it up — for more than a limited period. 
 
 We'll work for three hours, but if a dog-fight 
 starts down the street, just excuse us — we've got 
 to go and see it. 
 
 We hate to persevere. 
 
 If we are salesmen, some of us are apt to start 
 the month with a rush — and "peter out" in our 
 efforts as the days go by. 
 
 And after we have done this for a few months 
 with one company, we are apt to go and do like- 
 wise with another. 
 
 There are many of these chaps at large. They 
 are continually shifting their jobs. They keep 
 breaking out in a new place, and every time 
 they break out, it costs them and their employers 
 money. 
 
 Eestless as gold-miners, they roll up their 
 sleeves and spit on their hands, and swing the 
 pick, working with fury — for a short time. 
 
 Then they quit to go off after a drink, or a 
 sleep — and never come back. The next you hear 
 of them they've bought a new set of tools and 
 
134 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 started digging somewhere else further down the 
 line. At last they wind up by asking friends to 
 stake them with a loan that will enable them to 
 leave the diggings altogether for some distant 
 field. They never stop travelling. 
 
 There's nothing in this weathercock business. 
 You've got to point in one direction for a long 
 time, if you want to get anywhere. You've got to 
 splice one day's work on to the next — dovetail all 
 your efforts together — build the whole structure 
 of your work into one continuous whole. 
 
 You've got to have momentum, and the only 
 way to work up momentum is to keep a-shoving 
 and a-pushing. 
 
 Even your success will be only a place where 
 you are to encamp for the night. After you at- 
 tain it, you will still move on. 
 
 Life and success are a continuous perform- 
 ancfr. 
 
 Keep a-going! 
 
TWELFTH GINGER TALK OF 
 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
ARE YOU IN THE PUMP BRIGADE? 
 
 TEEEITOET gone dry? Well, you might suppose SO 
 if you listened to some of the fellows who stand around 
 and croak that "it's no use pumping — no orders to be 
 found anywhere — country going to ruin." That's their 
 Pet Delusion. Ploodg of business all around them — regu- 
 lar geysers of orders — other fellows pumping up a stream 
 of results close by. The chaps who are working the pump 
 handle have no delusions. They can feel the orders com- 
 ing faster the harder they pump, and that's enough for 
 them. 
 
TWELFTH TALK 
 
 Be jhonest with yourself at least. Never lie to your own 
 soul. Seek out the truth. Look for the actual fact and stare 
 it in the face. See things as they are. 
 
 Did yon ever spend any time in a lunatic asy- 
 lum? I mean as an observant visitor, of course — 
 not as a permanent resident in regular standing. 
 
 If you have made such a visit, you've noted 
 that each of the permanent guests of the institu- 
 tion has some particular Pet Delusion of his own 
 which he hugs to himself as fondly as a little 
 girl hugs her beloved rag baby. 
 
 Sane enough on every other topic, he can't 
 shake off the dominance of this single wrong 
 idea. 
 
 There is the harmless looking gentleman, for 
 instance, who harbors the belief that he is Cap- 
 tain Kidd, just ashore from the Spanish main. 
 He stalks for hours up and down an imaginary 
 bloody deck, ordering hapless prisoners to walk 
 the cruel plank. He halts at intervals to proclaim 
 to all and sundry within hearing: "My name is 
 Captain Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed!" 
 
 If you distract his attention from maritime af- 
 fairs, he will talk to you reasonably on a hundred 
 different topics, but not on that topic. Do but 
 
 139 
 
140 THE GINGBE TALKS 
 
 mention Captain Kidd — and "off goes his trol- 
 ley"! His Pet Delusion assumes full sway. 
 
 Then there's the broken-down pauper who 
 staggers under the imaginary responsibility of 
 an enormous fortune. 
 
 He never had more than seven dollars in his 
 life, but thinks he's a great financier vainly seek- 
 ing a rest from directors' meetings. 
 
 That's his Pet Delusion. 
 
 There's the former police judge, haunted by 
 the stealthy pursuit of imaginary criminals seek- 
 ing revenge for the justice he dealt out to them. 
 He sees a dagger up every coat-sleeve and wants 
 to have the attendant who brings him his meals 
 searched for concealed weapons every time he 
 puts his foot inside the door. 
 
 Then there's the elderly spinster with the piti- 
 ful misfit face, who believes she is the Queen of 
 Sheba and greets as King Solomon every male 
 visitor entering her presence. 
 
 And so the list spins out— harmless lunatics 
 all — each with his or her particular Pet Delusion 
 — each sane enough on every other point, but un- 
 able to escape the domination of that one fool 
 idea. 
 
 Not all the people who harbor hallucinations 
 reside in lunatic asylums. 
 
 We are all "batty" on some point or other. 
 
 We all have our Pet Delusions — idiotic ideas 
 the folly of which is perfectly apparent to our 
 pitying acquaintances — fool notions that we sit 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEK 141 
 
 down with at breakfast and dinner, and take to 
 bed with us, and rise up with in the morning, and 
 carry around all day long. 
 
 People try to rid us of them, but we cling to 
 them with death-like grip. To us they are the 
 Great Eealities — the only sure and certain things 
 in life — the basic truths of most vital importance 
 in our existence. 
 
 We may love them, we may hate them, but we 
 never doubt their truth. 
 
 How many such victims of Pet Delusions there 
 are in our immediate circle ! 
 
 There is Smith, for instance — our Sales Agent 
 up in Oshkosh. 
 
 Smith's Pet Delusion is that he was born un- 
 lucky, and he never lets go his frantic clutch on 
 that idea. Pie thinks Fate has had it in for him 
 since the earliest dawn of time — waited a thou- 
 sand years for him to be born in order to be ready 
 to jump on him good and hard the minute that 
 event occurred. 
 
 He swears that some evil genius follows him 
 around with a monstrous hammer, knocking his 
 structure of success into a cocked hat every time 
 he gets it fairly set up. 
 
 Smith is absolutely certain that he has no 
 chance and reasons that there's no use in his try- 
 ing to make a big go in life — some unseen power 
 is sure to block him. So he doesn't try, but gives 
 up every fight he gets into almost before time is 
 called. He hasn't made his sales quota, for in- 
 
143 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 stance, a single time since he came into the busi- 
 ness — he is always a little behind. 
 
 Bad luck won't let him catch up. 
 
 That's his Pet Delusion. 
 
 We are "onto" him, of course — every one of 
 us. We know why he doesn't get his quota. We 
 could tell him the things in his own character and 
 ideas and methods that keep him from success. 
 
 But would he believe us, if we declared to him 
 that his idea of bad luck pursuing him was a 
 delusion ? ' 
 
 Would the ex-judge in the lunatic asylum be- 
 lieve us, if we told him that the avenging crim- 
 inal he feared had no existence outside his own 
 mind? 
 
 I should say not. 
 
 Well, neither would Smith believe us. He'll 
 carry his fool notion to the grave — and hang on 
 to it after that, if there's any possibility of it. 
 
 Then there's Jones, down in Louisville. 
 
 Jones's Pet Delusion is that he's the hardest 
 working man in the sales force, and he really be- 
 lieves it — has a stronger and more continuous 
 sensation of effort than the lunatic in the asylum 
 who labored under the awful weight of the imag- 
 inary Eockefeller fortune. 
 
 Jones goes home every night with a virtuous 
 feeling of having worked like a terrier from sun- 
 up to sun-down. 
 
 We know that Jones is a putterer and a time- 
 killer. We all see through him. We could tell 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE 143 
 
 Mm liow little actual hard work he really did 
 with all his fussing around. 
 
 But would he believe us? 
 
 Would the pauper lunatic believe us if we told 
 him he had no financial load to carry? 
 
 Why, then, expect Jones to give up his Pet 
 Delusion? 
 
 Then there's Brown of Kalamazoo. 
 
 His Pet Delusion is that he knows all there is 
 to know of any value in commercial life and he 
 says nobody can teach him anything about selling 
 goods, for instance, for he has been at it sixteen 
 years, and is firmly convinced that he has a cor- 
 ner on the world's brain market, so far as knowl- 
 edge of salesmanship is concerned. No use trying 
 to tell him anything— he has an intellect that en- 
 ables him to know by instinct and without effort 
 all the things comprehended in the knowledge and 
 experience of the millions of other men engaged 
 in one way or another in selling goods on this ter- 
 restrial ball ! 
 
 It never occurred to Brown that, if he really 
 had one-tenth of the expert selling knowledge 
 he thinks he possesses, his sales totals and his 
 yearly income would be several times as large as 
 they are at present. 
 
 He never reasons with himself after this fash- 
 ion — of course not! Why expect any man to 
 use his reason on the subject of his Pet Delusion? 
 
 Robinson's Pet Delusion is that the house has 
 it in for him ; that a clique of thugs in the sales 
 
144 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 department at the home office sits up nights 
 plotting low-down deals to hand out to him, seiz- 
 ing upon every little shortcoming of his with 
 fiendish glee, and rejoicing when his sales are 
 low, because that gives the house a chance to 
 jump on him. 
 
 The sales manager, in his mind, is a common 
 assassin, animated by diabolical purposes, trail- 
 ing him relentlessly, waiting only for a good 
 chance to knife him and fling his remains to the 
 crows. 
 
 Parker's Pet Delusion is that his failure to sell 
 goods is due to his territory. He says that every 
 man in the sales force has a good territory ex- 
 cept himself. 
 
 And so it goes. Every man has his Pet Delu- 
 sion — his own particular weak point where his 
 reason jumps its trolley — his own private gap in 
 the fence where his judgment bolts like a fright- 
 ened horse and runs wild across country, upset- 
 ting itself and everything else, and spreading 
 panic and destruction along its trail. 
 
 If you are one of these chaps, get a grip on 
 yourself. Shake off your delusions. Drive away 
 the haunting shadows. There are enough real 
 obstacles without conjuring up imaginary ones. 
 There are enough real living, breathing opponents 
 without seeking out windmills to tilt at. 
 
 See things as they are. Dig down under sem- 
 blances and get the facts. Then face them. 
 
 Seek the truth, and look it square in the eye. 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 145 
 
 See your own faults; admit your own weak- 
 nesses — and try to overcome them. 
 
 Give other people credit both for some degree 
 of brains and moral character. You aren't the 
 only chap in the crowd who loves a square deal. 
 The world is full of men animated by the honest 
 American spirit of Theodore Roosevelt — and 
 ready and anxious to manifest it in their acts 
 toward you. 
 
 Be honest with yourself. Don't fool and be- 
 fog your own mind with wrong ideas. Use your 
 Grod-given brains and judgment. See things as 
 they are. 
 
 Give the go-by to the shadows. Get out into 
 the sunlight. 
 
THIRTEENTH GINGER TALK 
 OF A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
THE PROSPECT'S SIDE OF THE FENCE. 
 
 You and yOur product have no earthly interest for a 
 prospect until you show him some relation between 
 your product and his well-being, or the welfare of his 
 business. 
 
 Therefore, don't begin your approach by talking on 
 your side of the fence, about youraelt, your company, your 
 product, or your desire to sell him. Get over on his side 
 of the fence first. First make him feel that he has a need 
 — then show him that your product wiU fill it. 
 
THIRTEENTH TALK 
 
 We are interested in others when they are interested in us. 
 
 — Publius Syrus 
 
 When you've secured an interview and flagged 
 your prospect's momentary attention, how do you 
 go about working up his interest in your propo- 
 sition? 
 
 Do you proceed to hand him the regulation 
 string of meaningless general remarks about 
 your product that seven salesmen out of ten carry 
 around as their ordinary working equipment ? Or 
 are you one of the three out of ten who know how 
 to make a clean-cut specific opening as skilfully 
 as a champion chess-player? 
 
 Do you bore your prospect until he is driven 
 in desperation to rise up and throw you out, or 
 do you understand the subtle art of jogging his 
 jaded mind into a receptive state for the facts 
 you want to impart to Mm? 
 
 Your prospect is human, with nerves and lia- 
 bility to brain fag, even as you and I. If he is 
 a business man in an office or store, or a buyer 
 for a business concern, he is everlastingly tired 
 of the monotony of interviews with salesmen of 
 the invertebrate type, who all come at him with 
 the same kind of loose-jointed general observa- 
 tions about the goods they handle — mere tire- 
 
 151 
 
153 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 some statements that their goods are the best 
 goods, that their house is the best house, that the 
 prospect couldn't do as well in buying elsewhere, 
 and so on ad libitum, ad nauseam! 
 
 The prospect resents having this sort of thing 
 thrust upon him. He feels that he is no patented 
 cast-iron mail receptacle for casual packages of 
 ill-assorted selling talk that any one who happens 
 along may want to throw into him. 
 
 How would you like it yourself to be a pros- 
 pect strapped fast in your chair without possibil- 
 ity of escape, while the old familiar line of gen- 
 eral observations about "quality," "price," 
 "terms," "prompt shipments," and "prestige of 
 the house" was rammed into your suffering ears 
 by relays of different salesmen on an average of 
 from five to twenty times a day? You would not 
 put up with it, of course! 
 
 Wouldn't it make you a misanthrope? 
 
 Wouldn't you long for a change? 
 
 Can you wonder, if you are one of those who 
 afflict the prospect with this sort of thing, that 
 he doesn't grow enthusiastic over it? When you 
 call on him, can you wonder that he doesn't jump 
 to embrace you and bite his initials in your order- 
 book? 
 
 Remember that you are not trying merely to 
 unburden yourself of a certain amount of con- 
 versation in his presence; you are trying to IN- 
 TEREST him in what you are saying. 
 
 The psychology that underlies the process of 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 153 
 
 exciting a prospect's interest is a very simple 
 thing to understand. 
 
 There are in general two kinds of interest that 
 the human mind is capable of feeling. One is 
 what psychologists call an IMMEDIATE inter- 
 est ; the other is known as a DEEIVED interest. 
 
 IMMEDIATE interest is the interest a man 
 feels in a thing that is DIRECTLY AND SPON- 
 TANEOUSLY INTERESTING IN ITSELF— 
 his dinner, for instance, or an exciting play, a 
 fascinating picture, attractive music, a beautiful 
 or charming woman — an out-door game, if he is 
 an athlete — an instructive book or lecture, if he is 
 a serious-minded man. These things are all in- 
 teresting in themselves; they have an innate 
 fascination that attracts and holds the attention. 
 
 There are a vast number of other things that 
 have merely a DEEIVED interest for a man. 
 They have no fascination in themselves ; they are 
 interesting merely because of their relation to 
 something else — ^merely because they are a means 
 to an end that in itself is interesting. 
 
 I have no IMMEDIATE interest in legal docu- 
 ments called wills, for instance. I would not 
 cheerfully spend time in studying a will as I 
 would in listening to music or a play. But reveal 
 to me that a certain will contains a clause leaving 
 me a fortune, and the most exciting play ever pro- 
 duced will be as dull as a dictionary page in com- 
 parative interest for me. 
 
 You have shown me that document's relation 
 
154 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 to my own intimate well-being — it derives all its 
 interest for me from that relation. 
 
 A man's interest in his business, nine times 
 out of ten, is purely a derived interest. He does 
 not toil and worry and strain because he likes to 
 toil and worry and strain, but because he wishes 
 to make money and to achieve an honorable po- 
 sition among his fellows. His business is a means 
 to this end ; his interest in it is not immediate but 
 derived. When it ceases to make money for him 
 or ceases to give him an honorable standing in 
 his community, its interest for him dies. 
 
 Now to apply this principle to your work as a 
 salesman: you and your company, your product 
 or line, have no immediate fascination for the 
 business man. To begin with the usual mechani- 
 cal string of hackneyed assertions about it and 
 descriptions of it would bore him unspeakably. 
 Your product has no earthly interest for him 
 until you show him some relation between it and 
 his well-being, or the welfare of his business. 
 
 Therefore, don't begin talking on YOUK side 
 of the fence — about yourself, your company, your 
 product, or your desire to sell him. Get over on 
 HIS side of the fence first. First make him feel 
 that he has a need — then show him that your 
 product will fill it. First make him see that he 
 has an opportunity, then show him that your 
 product will enable him to utilize it. Put HIM, 
 HIS NEED, OR HIS OPPORTUNITY in the 
 forefront of your talk, and let your long string 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE 155 
 
 of description of your product and assertions 
 about it follow afterward. 
 
 Patent medicine advertisers understand this 
 principle of salesmanship. In the forefront of 
 their advertisements they catch a reader's in- 
 terest and attention with talk about THE 
 EEADER HIMSELF— his pains and symptoms, 
 troubles, worries, and weaknesses. They warn 
 him that his symptoms are dangerous; that un- 
 less he takes immediate steps to escape, he's 
 bound straight for his shroud and coffin. He 
 hears the microbes gnawing as he reads. His 
 pitying concern for himself grows deeper and 
 deeper, and by the time he has reached the end 
 of the advertisement he is in such a frame of 
 mind that he's not only willing to take Golden 
 Dope, but if no remedy were recommended, he'd 
 go out on a hunt for Golden Dope or some other 
 kind of dope for himself! 
 
 If the advertisement had BEGUN by cracking 
 up the medicine, proving at great length that its 
 ingredients were pure, its taste delightful, and its 
 efficacy certain, its manufacturers established 
 since the time of Noah's celebrated voyage in the 
 ark, would the newspaper reader have hot-footed 
 it to the druggist's to buy a trial bottle? The 
 chances are a hundred to one that he would not 
 have had sufficient interest to read the advertise- 
 ment to the end. 
 
 Tell a man that you have a wonderful consump- 
 tion cure and start to describe it — and he'll yawn 
 
156 THE GINGEK TALKS 
 
 and send you away. But convince him that tie 
 has consumption and he'll come to you and pray 
 for a remedy. 
 
 Tell a man that you have a valuable piece of 
 mechanism called an adding-machine, and he 
 won't have time to listen to your description. 
 But show him with a pencil and paper what it 
 costs him in a year to pay the four clerks who 
 are adding up columns of figures in his office and 
 tell him that you can enable him to dispense with 
 the services of two of them, and he'll ask you 
 of his own accord to bring your machine around 
 and let him have a look at it. 
 
 Tell a farmer that you want to sell him a thor- 
 oughbred collie dog, and he'll say that he isn't in- 
 terested in fancy dogs. But ask him if it doesn't 
 bother him, with his rheumatism, to keep his herd 
 of cows rounded up as he drives them to and from 
 the pasture, and you will be leading him, absorbed 
 with interest, up to the point where the disclosure 
 of your collie's cow-driving ability will make the 
 farmer voluntarily ask you what you will take for 
 the dog. 
 
 This principle holds good in all selling. 
 
 An insurance agent who begins to describe par- 
 ticular policies before he has his man convinced 
 of his need for insurance will never land his man. 
 He is putting his proposition wrong end foremost. 
 
 A loose-leaf ledger salesman who starts to de- 
 scribe his different makes of loose-leaf ledgers 
 before he has made his prospect realize that bound 
 
OP A SALES MANAGEE 157 
 
 ledgers are costing him too much, labor and mon- 
 ey is wasting his time. 
 
 To arouse a prospect's interest, then, begin by 
 getting over on HIS side of the fence. He has 
 a deep and never-ceasing interest in himself and 
 in everything that affects himself or his well-be- 
 ing, comfort, safety, profit, or pleasure. Touch 
 him on those springs of action and he'll respond 
 every time. 
 
 When you've started his interest, lead off a 
 little along the line that caught him. Play him 
 as you would a fish. Let him take the bait and 
 carry it — that is, give him a chance to ask a ques- 
 tion. Lead him into talking about himself, his 
 business, his needs if you can. Develop his in- 
 terest; make it bud and sprout and branch and 
 grow. Carry him along with you as far as he 
 will go. 
 
 If the lead for his interest you tried first was 
 not the right one, try again with another, profit- 
 ing by what you learned from your first failure. 
 
 But see that his interest is hooked securely be- 
 fore you begin to describe your product in detail. 
 Don't, I beseech you, don't unship your jaw as, 
 soon as you get into a prospect's presence and 
 reel off a string of mechanical technical talk about 
 your product, as if it were something you had to 
 get out of your system before you could feel easy 
 in your mind! 
 
FOURTEENTH GINGER TALK 
 OF A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
HT!!?" 
 
 
 -JS^*-. 
 
 6^^ -^"' '-,•?■',- 
 
 SELUNO- 
 
 1R6UMEHT' 
 THAT MflVE 
 
 Been wowd--^^,?. 
 
 BRIGHTEN UP THAT ARGUMENT. 
 
 A SELLING talk needs to be laundered just as often 
 and as thoroughly as a shirt. 
 Into the tub of sales ginger then with all those old argu- 
 ments and selling points, which from continued use have 
 grown a little limp as to the manner in which they are de- 
 livered. Souse them in the suds; put them through the 
 wringer; add a little of the starch of enthusiasm — and 
 hang them on the line to dry. After that iron them out, 
 and there you are. 
 
FOURTEENTH TALK 
 
 Some men use only their lips and tongues in speaking; 
 others put brain-action also into the operation. It is men of 
 the latter class who make good salesmen. 
 
 After you have roused your prospect's interest 
 and are fairly launched into your selling talk, 
 you will find that certain parts of it will not ap- 
 peal to him, although they have appealed to other 
 prospects in the past. Skip these parts. 
 
 Many salesmen are unable to dodge from one 
 part of their selling talk to another, in order to 
 pick out the facts that will strike home. These 
 chaps have to repeat their whole story in routine 
 fashion or not at all. Their information and ar- 
 gument all cohere in one tremendous bunch, like 
 a wad of puUing-candy. They can't yank out 
 one fact from among all the others and hand it 
 to a man. They can't see that he needs just 
 THAT ONE fact or argument and no other. They 
 have learned their entire talk in a certain order 
 and must get it off exactly as they learned it. 
 In many cases they have the very words commit- 
 ted to memory, which in itself is all right, but 
 they have learned MERELY the words and a 
 certain mechanical sequence of facts without real 
 comprehension of the meaning of the words or 
 the true relation of the facts. An interruption, 
 
 163 
 
164 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 or the loss of a few phrases, or an unexpectedly 
 sharp question from the prospect would throw 
 the entire mechanism of their talk out of gear. 
 
 Such salesmen are like the boy in school who 
 has to "speak a piece." 
 
 The urchin begins at a clipping pace: "The 
 boy stood on the burning deck whence all but 
 him had fled." At this point his memory fails. 
 He can't think of the first word of the next line. 
 He MUST think of that word or he can't go on. 
 He begins again: "The boy stood on the burn- 
 ing deck whence all but him had fled." Horrible 
 feeling — he's lost that word! By no possibility 
 could he supply a line of his own to state the next 
 fact about the hero. He doesn't KNOW the next 
 fact about the hero. He has learned only a cer- 
 tain sequence of words without real comprehen- 
 sion of their meaning. He has only a vague idea 
 of what really happened to the chap in the poem. 
 His brain is whirling with confused notions of 
 ships on fire — swirling flames — agonized boy. He 
 couldn't tell you in his own words the story of 
 the poem. He couldn 't analyze the catastrophe or 
 tell you the different stages ^f it. He couldn't 
 answer any question about it. 
 
 The best he can do is to repeat the words of 
 that poem by rote, just as he learned them. He 
 can make the noises with his voice that those 
 word symbols call for, and that is all he can do. 
 If he forgets one of those word sounds, he is lost. 
 
 In his desperation he once more blurts out the 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 165 
 
 first line: "The boy stood on the burning deck" 
 — comes to a dead stop — then loses his bearings 
 altogether and stumbles crazily through the 
 verses, reciting them backwards, crosswise, and 
 down the middle. It was the deck that stood on 
 the burning boy, the flames that had fled, and so 
 forth. At this point the teacher puts an end to 
 the agony with the words, "There, that will do. 
 Go and sit down." 
 
 The urchin speaking a piece is no worse a 
 bungler than many a salesman who has no real 
 mastery of his selling talk. 
 
 The efficient salesman has his arguments all 
 classified and pigeon-holed, so to speak, under 
 their proper heads. He is ready for all emer- 
 gencies, and can produce anything that is needed 
 at a moment's warning. He can shift from one 
 end of his selling talk to the other, omitting much 
 or little, according to his prospect's interest. He 
 never loses sight of the fact that his main pur- 
 pose is to adapt his talk so that this interest shall 
 be kept at white heat. 
 
 An orderly brain, in which data are classified 
 and stored away in compact shape, is a great pos- 
 session. I got this pigeon-hole simile from a re- 
 mark of Napoleon's. The great Frenchman had 
 a mind crowded with a tremendous mass of in- 
 formation connected with his administrative work 
 — law facts, finance facts, military facts, and so 
 forth. 
 
 "VAHien people asked him how he could hold an 
 
166 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 almost infinite number of details in his mind with- 
 out confusion and draw on any of them at will, 
 he said: 
 
 "My mind is like a set of a hundred pigeon- 
 holes: one for law, one for finance, one for mili- 
 tary administration, etc. I open one, take the 
 contents out and work with them, forgetting what 
 is in all the other pigeon-holes for the time be- 
 ing. Then I close that pigeon-hole and open an- 
 other. At night I close them all and sleep." 
 
 The ideas of a salesman with an untrained 
 mind are like a mob of guests at a hotel, who 
 scramble out pell-mell in crazed hurry and only 
 half-dressed at the cry of "Fire!" The prospect 
 has only to speak the one sharp word "Why?" 
 at an unexpected place — that is the alarm cry 
 that upsets all the salesman's usual routine ar- 
 gument, and starts up the excitement. All the 
 facts and reasons in that salesman's selling talk 
 come piling out on the end of his tongue and 
 tumbling over one another, half-clothed as to de- 
 cency of speech, and less than half intelligible to 
 his auditor. 
 
 Subject your selling talk to discipline. This 
 can be done only by keeping each fact in the back- 
 ground until the time comes to use it effectively 
 — then bringing it forth with promptness and ac- 
 curacy, appropriately dressed in words best suit- 
 ed to the service it is expected to perform. 
 
 In no other way can you be sure of getting 
 and holding the prosjiect's interest. 
 
OP A SALES MANAGBK 167 
 
 I spoke of appropriate dress for your argu- 
 ments. There is everything in the expression that 
 you give your ideas. 
 
 It's a delicate art — this one of putting things, 
 and it makes a tremendous difference in results. 
 
 It was a knowledge of this art that transformed 
 an obscure congressman, William Jennings 
 Bryan, into a national character in a single day. 
 
 When Bryan made his great speech at the first 
 Democratic convention that nominated him, he 
 brought forward not one idea that had not been 
 hashed over on the floor of that convention-hall 
 a dozen times before by other speakers. But 
 Bryan marshalled those old, familiar ideas in 
 a new order, gave them a striking form of ex- 
 pression, and so electrified the convention that it 
 straightway nominated him for President. 
 
 Half a dozen writers wrought the Merchant of 
 Venice tale into stories and plays before William 
 Shakespeare seized on it and worked it up anew 
 in his own original way. The half a dozen other 
 versions of the story are forgotten, but Shake- 
 speare's play is immortal. 
 
 Great poets are men able to put commonplace 
 ideas that all men hold into a setting of brilliant 
 expression such as makes them more dazzling 
 than diamonds. 
 
 It's a great art— this one of putting things. 
 
 There's one way of framing up any kind of 
 statement that is more effective than any other 
 way. 
 
168 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 Remember this when you call on a prospect. 
 Don't be content to chuck out at him whatever 
 frayed remnants of conversation about your prod^ 
 uct you may have floating around loose in your 
 mind. See to it not merely that you state the 
 right fact, but that you clothe it in the most ef- 
 fective form of expression that is possible to you. 
 That's the only way to get and retain his inter- 
 est. 
 
FIFTEENTH GINGER TALK OF 
 
 A SALES MANAGER 
 
 TO HIS MEN 
 
THE MAN WITHOUT INITIATIVE. 
 
 THEEE'S an occasional salesman who is like those ag- 
 gravating banjos that you find attached to slot-ma- 
 chines. One of these instruments will start up a tune when 
 you push a nickel in the slot and play just so many min- 
 utes — then the mechanism has to have its interior tickled 
 with another nickel before it will go on. A salesman of 
 this variety has to have complete instructions pumped into 
 him before he can start anything. And when he does get 
 started more instructions are needed at regular intervals 
 to keep him going. 
 
FIFTEENTH TALK 
 
 The story in this talk of the office boy in knee-breeches who 
 became assistant sales manager is taken from life. That office 
 boy is now general manager of an Ohio organization of 5,000 
 men, and he is the inspiration of every employee under him. 
 
 Gentlemen, you snowed me under ! 
 
 And the telegrams are still coming. 
 
 I'm glad to learn from them that you boys are 
 all with me in my choice of Henry Champlin as 
 assistant sales manager. 
 
 If you 've congratulated him on being promoted 
 as much as you've congratulated me on having 
 promoted him, he'll have telegrams enough to 
 make a frieze around all four walls of his new 
 office. 
 
 Since he's in the public eye at the present time, 
 a little more publicity won't hurt him and may 
 help you and the company, so I'm going to use 
 his jDromotion as the occasion of a few remarks. 
 
 You are all proud of his record, and so are 
 we at the home office. I believe I ought to know 
 how to appraise that record rightly, for I was 
 one of two men present when this business was 
 started, and I have kept the official tabs on the 
 field force ever since. 
 
 You are all telegraphing your approval of his 
 173 
 
174 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 promotion ; I wonder how many of you could fig- 
 ure out and state in one word over the 'phone the 
 chief cause of the string of successes that have 
 finally landed him in his present job. 
 
 What's that? Hard work, you say? Well, he 
 certainly has that to his credit. Persistence? Yes, 
 that's one cause. Grit? Yes, that's another. He's 
 square? You bet — that counts also. He's a good 
 fellow? Yes, he makes friends, and that helps. 
 But the chief cause — the quality that sticks out 
 in him more than in any other chap in our or- 
 ganization — you haven't named it yet. There are 
 other men in our ranks with the same grit and 
 persistence, the same capacity for working long 
 hours, the same honesty and happy faculty of 
 making friends. You haven't yet named — what's 
 that? I think I heard the word — once again — 
 Ah, that's it! That's the word! 
 
 Initiative ! 
 
 He has initiative! 
 
 He can do the right thing at the right time 
 without being told. 
 
 He winds himself up, and sets himself a-going, 
 and keeps himself a-going, and stops himself when 
 it is time to stop, and changes direction and goes 
 at something else. He makes an endless chain 
 of this sort of action. 
 
 He's forever finishing up one thing and tack- 
 ling something else. And he does it all alone, 
 without a word from any one, with no need of 
 hints or advice or encouragement or prodding. 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 175 
 
 He thinks up all his action for himself, and exe- 
 cutes all he thinks np. He makes his own plans 
 and carries them all out to the end. Most of the 
 time nobody knows what he's doing until he comes 
 in to report that the thing is done, and then 
 everybody realizes that it was the right thing to 
 do, though nobody else happened to think of it 
 until that moment. 
 
 That's what it is to have initiative. 
 
 He has had it for a long time. He had it to 
 my certain knowledge nine years ago, as a kid in 
 knee-breeches, when he held a job as ofiSce boy in 
 one of our branch offices. I remember the first 
 time I ever saw him. He was out on the side- 
 walk washing the front window as I came up to 
 inspect the office. I had never seen any one wash 
 windows with quite the same vigorous sweep of 
 arm, and I commented on it to the district man- 
 ager inside. 
 
 "He washed that window as if he enjoyed it," 
 I said. 
 
 "He does," said the manager. " 'Tisn't his 
 job, either. But the janitor's sick to-day, and as 
 soon as the kid heard of it, he ducked outside 
 and went at the glass with his sponge and cham- 
 ois-skin. None of us knew of his intention until 
 we looked out and saw him there. That boy can 
 think of more things to do around this place in 
 ten minutes than I could suggest in a week. And 
 he acts on all of his thoughts, too, that's the best 
 of it. He's a "comer." If he were old enough to 
 
1'76 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 wear long trousers, I'd give him a sample-case 
 and put him out in a territory." 
 
 The next time I heard of Champlin he WAS 
 out in a territory — the home territory — right in 
 the city where our plant had been situated for 
 fifteen years. And despite the fact that this city 
 had been worked harder than any six square miles 
 of space in the United States, he sold more goods 
 in it in one month than any one of our 1,000 
 other salesmen sold anywhere else in twenty-seven 
 civilized countries from Alaska to South Africa. 
 He was high man in the hardest territory we had. 
 That's what attracted my attention to him. I 
 had forgotten the boy in knee-breeches of nine 
 years before, but the district manager whose win- 
 dows he had washed wrote in and reminded me 
 of the incident. 
 
 "About a year and a half after the window 
 episode," he said, "the kid bobbed up in front 
 of my desk one day and asked me to dictate some 
 letters to him. I questioned him and learned that 
 he had been studying stenography at night school. 
 And he was on to his job, too. He went at it 
 with dignity — he was wearing long trousers by 
 this time. 
 
 "He lasted as a stenographer for about a year. 
 Then the assistant bookkeeper left, and the young- 
 ster asked for a chance to tackle his work. I 
 found that he had repeated his night school stunt, 
 and was right on deck with a competent knowl- 
 edge of posting and billing. 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 177 
 
 "One day about a year later a prospect came 
 into the office at the noon hour when the man- 
 ager and office salesman by some chance were 
 both out. The young bookkeeper promptly 
 jumped down from his high stool and sold the 
 visitor one of the highest-priced articles in our 
 line. The first we heard of it was when he handed 
 in the order, with the signature on the dotted 
 line O. K. and ship-shape. 
 
 "Questioning brought out the fact that he'd 
 been studying up our catalogue, advertising mat- 
 ter, and other literature at night, and knew all it 
 was possible to learn about our line without at- 
 tending the salesmen's school and getting actual 
 experience in the field. I took him otf his book- 
 keeper's stool for good, sent him to the school, 
 and chucked him out into a territory, and he's 
 been doing stunts there ever since. This getting 
 to be the month's high man is the climax. 
 
 "He's out of my sight now — you watch him 
 after this. In my opinion he's going to keep 
 right on moving up the ladder. Ask him how 
 he did his stunt last month in that worked-out 
 territory." 
 
 I sent for Champlin and put the question to 
 him. 
 
 "Well," he said, "that territory is all right. 
 It's a good field for our product, but those pros- 
 pective purchasers had heard our regular line of 
 talk so often in the last five years that they'd 
 grown hardened to it. I picked out a bunch of 
 
178 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 the best prospects and tried to make a study of 
 each man's particular case, so as to give him an 
 approach and a set of arguments that would be 
 new to him. I also got up a special set of per- 
 sonal letters and had my sister mail one to each 
 of these prospects every third day, so as to keep 
 him thinking of my proposition when I couldn't 
 be with him myself. ' ' 
 
 You see,' gentlemen, Champlin had followed his 
 usual method of securing results. He'd had the 
 initiative to devise strategy of his own — to get 
 up something new — to do something that had 
 never been done before in that territory. 
 
 You know the rest of the story, gentlemen. 
 You know that Champlin was later appointed in- 
 structor of the salesman's school. That's where 
 most of you got to know him and learned to like 
 him and his methods. You know that later he 
 was a great success as a district manager, and 
 now you've seen him come in to assist me in the 
 management of the sales department. 
 
 The main asset that he will bring to us will be 
 not merely his experience or knowledge of the 
 business or ability. We have other men at the 
 home office with all of these qualifications. But 
 he will bring us a great additional amount of 
 that rare quality, initiative. 
 
 There is not one among us who cannot profit 
 by reflection upon his career. He is the kind of 
 man this company wants. You will all do well 
 to pattern after him. There are too many men 
 
OF A SALES MANAGER 179 
 
 in our sales force who are like those aggravating 
 banjos that you find attached to slot-machines. 
 One of these instruments will start up a tune 
 when you push a nickel into the slot and play just 
 so many minutes — then the mechanism has to 
 have its interior tickled with another nickel be- 
 fore it will go on. 
 
 A salesman of this variety has to have complete 
 instructions pumped into him before he can start 
 anything, and when he does get started, more 
 instructions are needed at regular intervals to 
 keep him going. 
 
 He is mute and inactive, if you don't stand 
 right there all the time and feed the machinery. 
 
 Now, we can do some tall thinking to keep the 
 office force in motion, also a certain amount of 
 long-distance thinking for our men on the road; 
 but we can't do all the thinking for any man all 
 the time! 
 
 We can't get inside any salesman's brain and 
 pull the levers and springs of business judgment 
 at the particular moment that his "think-box" 
 needs to be started up. 
 
 Yet there are some men in this force, as there 
 are in every selling force, who seem to depend 
 on us for this sort of thing — men who write in 
 here from their territories to ask questions which 
 they ought to be able to answer for themselves. 
 They write to ask special favors which they think 
 will boost them in this direction or prop them 
 in that, whereas, if they had any initiative at all, 
 
180 THE GINGER TALKS 
 
 they would hustle ahead without boosting and 
 propping. They write in to say that they have 
 cleaned up one piece of work and ask what to do 
 next, when they are in a far better position than 
 the home office is to know exactly what the next 
 move should be. 
 
 Men of this sort are loiterers in the parks of 
 life. They sit around on benches and wait until 
 some one comes along like a policeman to suggest 
 that they move on. They are like toads that sit 
 calmly blinking on a wet sidewalk and refuse to 
 hop along until you plant your foot down beside 
 them with a thud, and then they hop only a little 
 way. If you want to keep them hopping, you've 
 got to keep stamping along behind them or pok- 
 ing them with a sharp stick. They have none 
 of that all-wool, 22-carat, hardwood-finish quality 
 — initiative, which is nothing less than the abil- 
 ity to do for oneself, think for oneself, start some- 
 thing, keep it moving, and bring it to a climax — 
 that is, make it count! 
 
 A man with initiative benefits more people than 
 himself. His capability spurs everybody and 
 everything that he touches. Initiative acts jog 
 things up generally in every direction, as the 
 falling of a stone into the water makes expanding 
 circles start all around it. 
 
 The world is full of examples of the expanding 
 power of initiative force. Humanity has advanced 
 from the stone-hatchet-and-breech-clout stage of 
 development to its present state of amounting to 
 
OF A SALES MANAGEE I8l 
 
 something chiefly because of this quality of in- 
 itiative in the occasional man. 
 
 The men who exercise initiative are builders 
 of the world — all other people are merely tenants 
 and janitors. They are the motors that pull the 
 trains — vast numbers of other people are merely 
 passengers. 
 
 When you make a day's run half-way across 
 the continent on the railroad, recollect that you 
 might have been jolting along in a stage-coach 
 for a month or two, if Watts and others had not 
 had the initiative to work out an improved plan 
 of locomotion. 
 
 The tunnels through the heart of mountains, 
 which save the time it would take to travel over 
 or around them ; the tall buildings that economize 
 space and traffic in congested cities ; the arc-lights 
 that make the flambeaux of our sainted ancestors 
 look like "thirty cents" — and the thousands of 
 other facilities of modern life — these all witness 
 the supremacy of initiative brains. 
 
 There are a lot of people working in Edison's 
 plant, but one mind is starting most of the things 
 that are doing there. It takes a whole army to 
 complete the wonderful things that Edison's in- 
 itiative originates and gets fairly started, and 
 the entire civilized world reaps the benefit. Edi- 
 son launches a new idea, and the results widen 
 out in circles, so to speak, to include the people 
 on the other side of the globe. 
 
 The men who treated the minnows in Boston 
 
182 THE GINGBE TALKS 
 
 harbor to British tea performed an initiative act 
 which put other people up to similarly defiant 
 acts, and as a result came the Eevolution and the 
 birth of a nation. Here again is an example of 
 expanding circles. 
 
 Owing to the initiative of one man who began 
 life as a backwoods sawyer, the integrity of the 
 American Union was preserved and the disrup- 
 tion of a people prevented. 
 
 We can't all be Edisons or Lincolns, but every 
 one of us can show a little bit of capacity for 
 leadership, if he tries. We can at least stop lean- 
 ing on some one else. We can stand alone and 
 start something on our own hook once in a while. 
 
 We often hear it said that experience is the 
 best teacher. It takes hard bumps to teach most 
 men anything. It was the loss of a good pros- 
 pective job that first brought home to me the 
 value of initiative. A number of years before I 
 went into this business I was assistant sales 
 manager in a wholesale house. I was known as 
 a pretty good man at grinding out work after 
 somebody else had put it under my nose and ex- 
 plained to me how to go ahead. 
 
 One day the sales manager unexpectedly threw 
 up his job. I thought that here was the chance 
 of my life. I went to the owner of the business 
 and asked to be promoted to the vacant place. 
 
 "Well," said the old man, "suppose I make 
 you sales manager to-morrow! What things do 
 you think of that ought to be done in that depart- 
 
OP A SALES MANAGEE 183 
 
 ment at once 1 Have you any scliemes or plans up 
 your sleeve — any new wrinkles — any methods for 
 getting better results at less cosf?" 
 
 I hesitated. My calculations hadn't included 
 a consideration of these questions. I'd had my 
 eye on the job and its salary, not on what I would 
 do to "make good" when I got it. But I had to 
 frame up an answer, so I named over half a dozen 
 things which the former sales manager had start- 
 ed, but had left hanging fire when he quit. 
 
 "But all those were Jimson's ideas, weren't 
 they?" asked my boss. 
 
 "Yes, but he left these things unfinished," I 
 said. "They ought to be cleaned up at once." 
 
 "But what new things do you think of," said 
 the old man, "things that were never done in that 
 department before, but ought to be done?" 
 
 I cudgelled my brains in search of an idea, 
 but there was nothing doing at the works. I could 
 only stammer and scratch my head. 
 
 "Look here," said my boss, "I'll just dictate 
 to a stenographer a few possible improvements 
 in that department which occur to me off-hand." 
 
 He did. The list numbered 36 items, every one 
 brand new and practical. All were reeled off 
 without a moment's hesitation. 
 
 "Now," said the old man, "I'm not working 
 in the sales end of the business. I'm somewhat 
 in touch with it, of course, but my mind isn't 
 running much along this line. You should have 
 had many more ideas than I. I want a man in 
 
184 THE GINGEE TALKS 
 
 that place who will think of such good things to 
 do, and so many of 'em, and who will be able to 
 get 'em so well started and carry 'em through 
 so completely that he'll have me living in a state 
 of perpetual astonishment. I don't want a ca- 
 boose to hitch on to the end of this sales depart- 
 ment — I want an engine to get up in front and 
 pull the whole blamed train. I'm afraid you 
 haven't the initiative to hold down the job, so I 
 must look for another man. ' ' 
 
 And I didn't get the job. 
 
 That experience taught me the most valuable 
 lesson of my life. I didn't sleep much if any 
 that night, but I came back to the office the next 
 morning a different man. My entire viewpoint 
 in regard to my work had altered — from that day 
 I changed all my methods. Twelve months later 
 I had another chance at the sales manager's job, 
 and this time, as a result of the change in my 
 tactics, I landed it. 
 
 We want men in this business with the same 
 quality of initiative that the old man demanded 
 from me and turned me down for lacking. 
 
 We want men who can think up new ways of 
 approaching, convincing, and closing difficult pros- 
 pects — ^men who can go up against a hard game 
 and win out, as well as gather in the good things 
 in the way of orders that come easily. 
 
 We don't want men who come back, after call- 
 ing on a prospect, to report that his state of mind 
 is unfavorable to our proposition. We want men 
 
OF A SALES MAI^AGBR 185 
 
 who can CHANGE his state of mind. Of course 
 his state of mind is unfavorahle^if it weren't, he 
 would have ordered our goods long ago of his 
 own free will. We KNOW it is unfavorable — 
 that's exactly why we send a salesman around to 
 see him — to size him up and devise some way 
 to talk him out of that state of mind into another 
 one. 
 
 We could get a staff of messenger boys fully 
 competent to go around and collect the orders 
 that customers had already determined to send 
 in to us. We don't want order-takers — we want 
 salesmen. 
 
 If you are salesmen, we believe that you will 
 have the initiative to find the way to make a sale 
 when your prospect bolts the door against you 
 and has a large-sized bulldog tied to the knob. 
 We don't want you to ask us how to go at a 
 prospect in each specific case ; that 's for the man 
 on the ground to find out — you are in a better 
 position than any one to make the discovery. 
 We '11 give you all the instruction and training we 
 can, but we want you to mix a little initiative of 
 your own with it in applying it in the field. We 
 will send you all the assistance we can, but we 
 don't want you to lean on that assistance as a 
 broken cripple leans on a crutch. You have two 
 sound God-given supports of your own — stand 
 erect on them! Don't let yourself acquire the 
 fatal habit of continually shouting ' ' Help ! Help ! ' ' 
 We will help you all we can, but we want you to 
 
186 GINGEE TALKS 
 
 lielp us in return, and the best way you can help 
 us is to help yourselves. 
 
 Pattern after the leaders in your ranks — the 
 clean-cut, courageous hustlers who take all the aid 
 we give them, but never wait for aid; who seize 
 upon every good idea the house sends out, but 
 never stop pumping up ideas from the bottom of 
 their own minds. 
 
 Initiative can be cultivated as well as muscular 
 force. Give your ingenuity a systematic course 
 of training by continually thinking up new things 
 to do. Develop your executive faculties by per- 
 sistently carrying out all the things that come 
 within the reach of your duty. Equip yourself 
 with a note-book and jot down bright ideas that 
 come to you; transform them into action when 
 the right time arrives. Deepen your interest in 
 the selling game, and that interest will spur your 
 inventive power. You will soon see possibilities 
 to which other men are blind. Jump at every 
 chance; make the most of it while you have the 
 opportunity. Study the methods of other success- 
 ful salesmen; adopt them bodily when you are 
 unable to improve them, think up better methods 
 if you can. Before you know it, you will get the 
 initiatory habit fastened on you, and when you've 
 done that, you've made one of the longest steps 
 towards success that it is possible for you to take. 
 
BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 A SYSTEM OF MENTAL TRAINING 
 FOR COMMERCIAL LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 T. SHARPER KNOWLSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the ART OF THINKING," 
 "BUBINE88: FOR MASTERS AND MEN," ETC. 
 
 
 
 LIBERTYVILLE, ILLINOIS 
 
 SHELDON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1912 
 
COPTBIQHT, 1912, BY 
 
 SHELDON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The application of the known facts of psychol- 
 ogy to the problems of business life is a depart- 
 ment of education as yet in its infancy. It may 
 not be long before the ground is fully covered and 
 all the facts collected and classified, but the claim 
 that there is a psychology of business has still 
 to be justified to some minds. To me the matter 
 has never presented any difficulty, for an object 
 of research, of science, or of art, which gives the 
 mind systematic and continued exercise, demands 
 of necessity a certain method of mental approach 
 and treatment, and this eventually causes an ac- 
 cumulation of facts respecting the origin and de- 
 velopment of ideas and emotions related thereto. 
 There is a psychology of the art-mind and of the 
 science-mind; there is likewise a psychology of 
 the business-mind. The function of each is to 
 say how the artist, the scientist, and man of com- 
 merce think successfully in reference to the ends 
 they individually have in view. 
 
 In the following pages, which are for the most 
 part an expansion of lectures delivered before 
 the School of Commerce at the University of Wis- 
 consin in 1910, I have endeavored to discover 
 the bases of thought life as they are found in busi- 
 ness, offering at the end of each section some 
 
6 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 suggestions as to personal culture. Practical 
 experience in office work has been of immense ben- 
 efit to me, and although it may be responsible in 
 some measure for the non-academic style of the 
 exposition, it will, I trust, give added value to 
 counsels I have ventured to proffer. The editor 
 of the Century Magazine has kindly allowed me 
 to reproduce the article entitled "Imagination in 
 Business." 
 
Introduction 
 Lesson I. 
 
 Lesson 
 Lesson 
 
 Lesson 
 Lesson 
 
 II. 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 V. 
 
 Lesson VI. 
 
 Lesson VII. 
 
 Lesson VIII. 
 
 Lesson IX. 
 
 Lesson X. 
 
 Lesson XI. 
 
 Lesson XII. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 What Is Your Object 
 Life? 
 
 Mental Forces 
 
 The Psychology op Achieve' 
 
 MENT .... 
 
 IN 
 
 Concentration 
 
 The Commercial Value 
 Keen Observation 
 
 OF 
 
 page 
 11 
 
 19 
 
 28 
 
 47 
 64 
 
 74 
 93 
 
 Imagination in Business 
 
 The Cash Value of Sympathy 120 
 
 The Development of Origi- 
 
 nality 
 Memory-Training . 
 
 Will-Power . 
 
 139 
 166 
 
 176 
 
 Hygiene: Mental and Moral 189 
 Problems of Business Ethics 204 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
INTEODUCTION 
 
 The object of this course of study is twofold: 
 it seeks, first of all, to explain those methods of 
 mind-training by means of which you may be- 
 come successful in your business or profession; 
 and in the second place, it provides a system of 
 mental drill which, if systematically carried out, 
 will increase your commercial proficiency by fifty 
 per cent., as well as add in a general sense to 
 your intellectual acumen. The author of this 
 course of study stands in the same relationship 
 to you as a tutor in physical culture whose aim is 
 to restore health and develop muscular power by 
 putting you through a strict course of diet and 
 gymnastics. I want to do for your mind what 
 he does for your body, and just as he is able to 
 change a weak body into a strong one by enlist- 
 ing the enthusiasm and diligence of his pupil, so 
 can I change a man's brain from being an unor- 
 ganized mass of bad habits into a swift and effi- 
 cient instrument of success. Of course, neither 
 the tutor in physical culture nor the tutor in men- 
 tal culture can do impossibilities : the former can- 
 not make every man into a Hackenschmidt or a 
 Gotch, and the latter has no secret method of 
 turning out Rockefellers or J. Pierpont Morgans. 
 But the physical culturist can produce health in 
 
 11 
 
12 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 sluggish organs; he can give tone to the system 
 and brace up the nerves ; he can impart power to 
 flaccid muscles and increase the red corpuscles 
 in the blood, all of which benefits are so great that 
 it is no exaggeration to say he changes a sickly 
 man into a vigorous athlete. Such a change is 
 not only dramatic and impressive : it is more than 
 that, for health is power. The same remarks 
 apply to the tutor in mental training. He can 
 take a man whose weakness is mind-wandering 
 and make him a master of the art of concentra- 
 tion; he can take another and change him from 
 habits of aimless plodding into a man of imagi- 
 nation, teaching him how to use his eyes to see 
 what escapes the vision of others, and how to 
 judge quickly and accurately; he can impart to 
 his pupils the spirit of self-confidence and, in 
 general, organize the whole world of thoughts and 
 emotions. After a course of physical culture 
 there is sometimes great difficulty in recognizing 
 in the athlete, with erect head, straight figure 
 and springy tread, the once weak, round-shoul- 
 dered, flat-chested individual. It is just the same 
 after a course of mental training: the man who 
 was once a mind- wandering, illogical, unimagi- 
 native, pessimistic, ambitionless victim becomes 
 a smart man of business, as keen to detect a flaw 
 in an argument as he is to see a new opportu- 
 nity — a man who looks ahead and prepares for 
 what is coming — in short, a man with a mind that 
 is organized to a high state of efficiency. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 Before going further I should like to draw your 
 attention to another point arising out of the an- 
 alogy between physical and mental culture. We 
 have to-day many systems of gymnastic exer- 
 cises, and even a larger number of schools of 
 diet, whose object is to produce health and 
 strength, and it becomes a tedious question as 
 to which system and which school we ought to 
 follow. The trouble of deciding on a school of 
 mental training is not so great, because there are 
 few in the field. Indeed, until quite recently it 
 appears to have been thought that a man gets 
 all he requires in this respect from the mental 
 labor of studying books and talking to his fel- 
 lows, consequently any applicant for advice on 
 this subject was told to study logic or mathemat- 
 ics. How shallow such advice is may be seen 
 when you put a formal logician at a roll-top desk 
 to do business and commission a mathematician to 
 write advertisements for soap. These men have 
 trained minds, it is true, in their own special de- 
 partments, but what a business man wants is 
 training for business. Hence any system of gen- 
 eral mental culture is only a half -measure : its 
 force is distributed over the field instead of being 
 focussed on one point. 
 
 There are two facts kept in view throughout 
 this course of study. They are : 
 
 (1) The training of your own mind. 
 
 (2)' The art of interpreting commercially the 
 mind of the public. 
 
14 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 You will thus see that mental training for a 
 business or profession is quite different from 
 any other kind of training coming under the 
 same general head. The mental culture we so 
 often hear about deals with knowledge, ideas, 
 beauty, and great names; it is, as Matthew Ar- 
 nold said, "an endeavor to know the best that 
 has been thought and written." 
 
 Mental culture for business is different in so 
 far as it lays stress on special means for special 
 ends. It not only requires a man to develop his 
 own mind on approved lines, but to make a par- 
 ticularly careful study of the mind of the public. 
 Otherwise how can he know what the public 
 wants, or how can he confidently offer that pub- 
 lic some new thing, unless he understands human 
 nature? This is a point which, although as old 
 as civilization, has never yet received the sys- 
 tematic treatment it merits, but in this course of 
 study a brief attempt has been made to remedy 
 that omission. A distinguished Frenchman, Gus- 
 tave Le Bon, in his Psychology of the Crowd 
 has made a fine effort to set forth the thoughts, 
 feelings, and actions of the collective mind, but 
 his illustrative examples are mainly political and 
 social. What is needed, and what we have en- 
 deavored to supply, is the commercial element, 
 showing how people in the mass present a certain 
 number of constant demands with a margin for 
 original forms of expression. Thus food, clothes, 
 and recreations are constants, but there is al- 
 
INTEODUCTION 15 
 
 ways room for originality in the supply of all 
 three. The untrained intelligence not only con- 
 fuses its own likes with the likes of the public, 
 thereby putting on the market a product which 
 only a few people need, but it fails in judging 
 what changes in the form of clothes, or food, or 
 recreation, or anything else, are likely to elicit 
 an immediate response. On the other hand, the 
 trained mind escapes these pitfalls; it can put 
 aside all personal tastes and imagine exactly the 
 taste of the great public, or a big section of it, 
 and it can do this, because it has learned the 
 first principles of business philosophy. 
 
 Have you ever wondered why it is that men, 
 described as having "no education," sometimes 
 become prosperous, leaving others with better 
 abilities far in the rear? The reason is that the 
 so-called uneducated man knows the public mind, 
 how it works, what are its moving desires, and 
 the best way of satisfying them. His standpoint 
 is not "what do I think people ought to have?"; 
 it is "what do the people want?" Just here is 
 the secret of many a lamentable failure. Some 
 men cannot rid themselves of the personal equa- 
 tion. Their own desires, wishes, hopes, and pref- 
 erences obscure every other consideration. You 
 can see it in the world of journalism. A man 
 enters an editor's oflSce with the light of enthu- 
 siasm in his eyes and confidence in his step. He 
 has an idea for a new paper — a splendid idea. 
 The editor motions him to be seated and smiles 
 
16 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 affably, as the otlier man unfolds Ms glorious 
 conception. The judgment is short and bitter: 
 "No, it isn't wanted." A protest against this 
 opinion is made by the man with the idea. ' ' Quite 
 true," says the editor, "the suggestion is excel- 
 lent in itself; it would appeal to you and a few 
 of your friends, but the public would never buy 
 such a paper." 
 
 Now let us suppose that man had had enough 
 money to bring out his paper himself. He spends 
 $25,000 in starting it, and at the end of twelve 
 months has lost $50,000. Then he stops; he can 
 spend no more. Does he blame himself? Not 
 he! He blames the world. He curses its short- 
 sightedness and want of intellect. He seldom 
 looks for the fault in himself. But it is in him- 
 self. A business "bubble" that costs $50,000 is 
 a serious matter, and one which it is worth a 
 course of study to avoid. Hence the importance 
 of knowing your own mind and the mind of the 
 public. 
 
 But, it may be asked, does this apply to the 
 professions? Certainly it does. I don't know a 
 single doctor, or a lawyer, or accountant who 
 can dispense with the first principles of business 
 — at any rate, if they make the attempt, they have 
 to pay the penalty. A professional man is not 
 allowed to advertise, and yet he does advertise, 
 and it is just as necessary for him to know the 
 psychology of other people as it is for the man 
 who keeps the nearest store. 
 
INTEODUCTION 17 
 
 But take the profession of engineering. I will 
 quote the opinion of a man who knows — Mr. 
 James Swinbnrne, F.R.S., one time President of 
 the British Institution of Electrical Engineers. 
 He believed that, "if you confine your atten- 
 tion to engineers, you will find those who make 
 the biggest incomes and occupy the most impor- 
 tant and responsible positions are those who have 
 the most business or practical knowledge. Our 
 leading consulting engineers do not spend a large 
 portion of their lives plotting curves, counting 
 electrons, or even making anything more than 
 arithmetical calculations. They spend their time 
 dealing with large questions on purely commer- 
 cial lines, and as a rule the bigger the engineer, 
 the more he knows about practice and business." 
 
 Exactly; the professional man to-day, in order 
 to succeed amid the keenest of all keen competi- 
 tion, needs the ability to think and act commer- 
 cially. One may, indeed, go so far as to say that 
 every man who has to earn a living must have 
 this kind of mental training, be his calling that 
 of a trader or a professional man — or au em- 
 ployee under either. The present volume, as a 
 body of suggestions for practice, should therefore 
 appeal especially to the younger portion of the 
 business community — men who are still well 
 within the formative period and amenable by 
 taste and circumstance to the course of study in- 
 volved. 
 
 The great problem is to find the right place for 
 
18 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 the personal equation. A set of rules for clear 
 thinking in art, science, or business may look 
 well on paper and carry the reader's assent by 
 their logical consistency, but genius often sets 
 rules at defiance and conquers by its very ir- 
 regularity. This is as true in commerce as it 
 is in literature. There are men who seemingly 
 keep the rules and yet fail wholly or in part ; oth- 
 ers appear to defy them and succeed. But there 
 are limits even to the deeds of commercial ge- 
 nius ; no man can permanently prosper who rides 
 roughshod over the commandment prohibiting 
 dishonesty, for the world demands a "square 
 deal." So, too, he who disregards the laws of 
 health may die just as the coveted prize is within 
 his grasp. We may assure ourselves that these 
 cases of commercial genius which apparently 
 contravene the laws of success are nevertheless 
 governed in some way by those laws they seem to 
 ignore. Hence to know the law and to keep it is 
 the only reasonable course of action. 
 
LESSON I 
 
 WHAT IS YOXJE OBJECT IN LIFE? 
 "To aim is not enough. You must hit" (German Proverb). 
 
 One of the chief difficulties a young man has 
 to face is to decide what he wants and how he 
 can get what he wants. He learns a good deal 
 from experience, hut seldom organizes experience 
 so that it becomes a science. 
 
 When the years of discretion are reached and 
 life begins in earnest, a theory of values has al- 
 ready been formed. The studious youth soon 
 discovers from rough contact with life that, al- 
 though mental and spiritual matters are supe- 
 rior in range and importance to material ones, 
 it is, nevertheless, an inversion of the natural or- 
 der to feed the mind at the expense of the labor 
 necessary to provide bread for the body. The 
 bachelor in lodgings must away to his work, how- 
 ever monotonous he finds it, else who is to pay 
 his landlady's account? The older man, with the 
 responsibilities of a family devolving upon him, 
 must give the first attention of his mind to the 
 prosaic duty of housing and providing for those 
 dependent upon him. On the other hand, the 
 learning of a language ; the ecstasy of studying a 
 
 19 
 
so BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 new picture, or a fine poem ; the spiritual contem- 
 plation of beautiful ideals; the writing of a 
 charming essay ; the hearing of a lecture on solar 
 systems — all these pleasures of the mental life, 
 which we flatter ourselves is our real life, must 
 be relegated to a secondary place, because the 
 struggle for existence demands that we should 
 first learn how to earn a living and become good 
 citizens. Experience compels us to adjust our- 
 selves to our environment. That is how we learn 
 the theory of values in life. 
 
 Without knowing it, every man who thinks at 
 all creates a working creed by which he guides 
 his actions. Ask him suddenly what that creed 
 is, and he will probably hesitate for a reply. He 
 says he wishes to live a "straight" life and to do 
 good to others; he has little ambitions about 
 which he speaks in an undertone, but his expres- 
 sions contain no trace of precision in thought or 
 logical application of first principles. He is like 
 thousands of others who never give a moment's 
 thought to life as a science. True, there is some- 
 times a semblance of orderly arrangement. One 
 item in his creed owes its origin to a native in- 
 stinct; another is due to home training; another 
 arose out of a book he read years ago; still an- 
 other was developed during an illness — in short, 
 his creed or theory of life is a collection of se- 
 rious reflections, but he has never taken the trou- 
 ble to organise them into a systematic and related 
 whole. His life is lived on the plan of laisser- 
 
WHAT IS YOUK OBJECT IN LIFE? 31 
 
 faire, and a good deal of it is a palpable imita- 
 tion of other people who move on the same so- 
 cial level. 
 
 If you doubt our words, just ask your closest 
 friend — one who will not think the matter trifling, 
 or regard it as a joke — to sit down and write his 
 creed, leaving religion out of the question. Tell 
 him to begin in the orthodox manner: "I be- 
 lieve . . . ." 
 
 It is not too much to say that even some men of 
 education would find the exercise not so easy as it 
 appears, and although in extenuation they might 
 I)lead that a creed was no worse, because it was 
 held in solution rather than in crystallized clauses, 
 there still remains the fact that every department 
 of life calls for an organized plan of action, just 
 as much as business in the factory, the warehouse, 
 or the store does. 
 
 Now, by a plan of action we do not mean a list 
 of duties to be performed, or a series of beliefs 
 as to the attitude we are to assume towards the 
 facts of existence. These have their place, but 
 it is not the first place. To have right decisions 
 we must first know how they are to be obtained ; 
 and to obtain them we must have a rational plan 
 of training the faculties involved. Hence true 
 mental education should be the first aim in life, 
 for any defect in this connection inevitably re- 
 veals itself in false ideals, mistaken judgments, 
 a narrowed outlook, or partial failure. 
 
 For instance, Goethe said "Every day read a 
 
22 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 fine book, see a noble picture, and look at a beau- 
 tiful person." This is doubtless very excellent 
 advice for those who can live up to it; but for 
 the many it is a counsel of perfection quite im- 
 possible of attainment — besides, it leaves much 
 unprovided. 
 
 We are indebted to a man of science — the late 
 Prof. Huxley — for the best definition of a trained 
 mind. ' ' That man, I think, has had a liberal ed- 
 ucation," he says, "who has been so trained in 
 youth that his body is the ready servant of his 
 will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work 
 that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose in- 
 tellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its 
 parts of equal strength and in smooth working 
 order — ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned 
 to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as 
 well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose 
 mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and 
 fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws 
 of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, 
 is full of life and fire, but whose passions are 
 trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the 
 servant of a tender conscience ; who has learned 
 to love all beauty, whether of nature or art, to 
 hate all vileness, and to respect others as him- 
 self." ' 
 
 Observe the comprehensiveness of this defini- 
 tion. Tabulate its contents: 
 
 1. A disciplined body. 
 
 2. Keen perceptions. 
 
WHAT IS YOUE OBJECT IN LIFE ? 23 
 
 3. Human interests. 
 
 4. Capacity for deep reflection and unbiassed 
 judgment. 
 
 5. The power of concentration. 
 
 6. Ample sources of information. 
 
 7. Moral enthusiasm. 
 
 8. Esthetic tastes. 
 
 9. Altruistic endeavors. 
 10. A dominating will. 
 
 We do not say we subscribe to these as a cor- 
 rect delineation of complete education, but the full 
 definition is broader than any others we have 
 seen, and, moreover, is thoroughly scientific. The 
 lonely student, as a rule, is guided by mere rule 
 of thumb. His idea is to train the brain — and by 
 the brain he means the organ confined within the 
 limits of the skull. He knows that the senses are 
 all closely associated with the brain, but he leaves 
 their training to chance ; he knows that feeling is 
 a basic fact in mental phenomena, and yet he has 
 no ordered plan for educating these fundamental 
 sympathies of our nature ; he is aware that stud- 
 ies may impair his efficiency as a citizen by creat- 
 ing a distaste for action, but he takes no steps 
 to cope with the evil. 
 
 Mind-trainmg is not simply &roMi-training ; it 
 is the training of the whole man. If we put Hux- 
 ley's definition into more homely language, it 
 would state that a liberally educated man was 
 one who maintained a healthy physique by ra- 
 tional exercise and developed his perceptions on 
 
24 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 a systematic plan; a man who killed his preju- 
 dices and educated his powers of analysis and 
 synthesis; who aimed at being master of his 
 mind by possessing a controlling will; who read 
 widely and unisfied his knowledge, so that it be- 
 came an organic whole; finally, a man who, in 
 spite of all his inward occupations, did not for- 
 get the beauty and interests of the outside world, 
 but reserved a margin for the duties he owed to 
 others. 
 
 Now, the scheme of this series of lessons is not 
 the education of the whole man in the sense just 
 explained ; it is the education of the mind of busi- 
 ness, but we have thought it worth while to in- 
 troduce the larger scheme, in order that the stu- 
 dent may make his own arrangements for such 
 ideal pursuits as may be necessary to his devel- 
 opment. 
 
 There are three points to be decided before you 
 begin the cultivation of a keen commercial mind. 
 They are (a) a well thought out scheme, (b) time 
 and determination to carry it out, and (c) ad- 
 justment to circumstances. You must know ex- 
 actly what you are aiming at, and this will be 
 conditioned by the extent of your natural gifts, 
 your powers of concentration, and the use you 
 make of your environment. Every scheme must 
 be individual; a foreman in a factory will not fol- 
 low lines identical with those of a bank clerk, 
 though both in ■ a general sense may cover the 
 same ground, since all minds have the same facul- 
 
WHAT IS YOUK OBJECT IN LIFE? 25 
 
 ties in common. Both will cultivate their percep- 
 tion, but the foreman wishes to do this in a way 
 that will enable him to become a master of tech- 
 nical industries, while the clerk keeps his mind on 
 the subject of finance and all the details that 
 affect the money market. This difference in 
 point of view gives an individuality to the plan 
 of training. Self-knowledge is the secret which, 
 when revealed, shows us how to formulate a 
 scheme of life, and nowhere is that truth more 
 strikingly enforced than in the Sheldon System of 
 Business-building. 
 
 It is curious how some men fail to understand 
 the term "self-knowledge." They seem to think 
 it is either self -introspection or an attempt of the 
 self continually to spy on the self, wliich is almost 
 the same thing as a man trying to detach himself 
 from his shadow! Experience teaches us self- 
 knowledge without any effort on our part. In 
 the class-room boys soon know who has the best 
 memory; in the football field a forward more skil- 
 ful than the rest evidences the inferiority of the 
 others, and they quickly realize it ; in business the 
 astute competitor forges ahead, leaving the oth- 
 ers to lament their deficiencies. In this general 
 sense, therefore, life teaches us our limitations 
 with sufficient exactitude, even though a phrenolo- 
 gist may assure us we have the ability to become 
 the President of the United States. But the self- 
 knowledge we refer to here merely means self- 
 measurement in relation (a) to a defined ambi- 
 
36 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 tion, (b) to others, and (c) to circumstances. Our 
 individual plan must not be of a character beyond 
 our powers, and where it concerns others, it 
 should reckon with their chances of success as 
 well as our own. Moreover, while circumstances 
 can always be modified, they have a way of de- 
 ciding some things for us in a manner that can- 
 not be overcome. 
 
 But these individual differences apart, the 
 world is open to every man, and opportunities 
 await him everywhere ; all he needs is the posses- 
 sion of a trained intelligence in the special sense 
 already explained. Around him both in nature 
 and civilization he is confronted by the working 
 of law. Let him meet this display of precise 
 working by a life so regulated and trained that 
 he can make the best of the world and the best 
 of himself. Instead of a happy-go-lucky system 
 of mental development he should secure the ad- 
 vantage of a methodical plan. 
 
 This is the secret of efficiency in business and 
 every other sphere of life. 
 Suggestions: 
 
 The Soeratic form of question and answer is 
 the best way to arrive at self-knowledge and to 
 begin the work of preparing for a destiny. I can- 
 not indicate a better guide than Hyde's "Self- 
 measurement," which covers a vast area of ex- 
 perience. Selecting all questions which directly 
 and indirectly refer to business progress and ed- 
 ucation therefor, the student can formulate his 
 
WHAT IS YOUR OBJECT IN LIFE? 37 
 
 own individual plan. The idea or object of a 
 man's life should be luminous and distinct — as 
 sharply outlined as a silhouette against the sky- 
 line. Vagueness in thought produces vagueness 
 in action. 
 
LESSON II 
 
 MENTAL FOECES 
 
 There is always room for a man of force, and he makes 
 room for many. — Emerson 
 
 The use of the word force as applied to mind 
 and thought is comparatively recent — that is, 
 where the use is no longer merely metaphorical 
 but literal. The superstitions of the past, it is 
 true, have supplied numerous instances of a be- 
 lief in the power of mind over matter, or of one 
 mind over other minds — the evil eye is a case in 
 point. As a superstition, however, it obtained 
 little credence with the learned and those of sci- 
 entific tendencies. Indeed, in those days mental 
 magic was regarded either as the work of the 
 devil or as the proper theme of the charlatan and 
 the impostor. 
 
 Even to-day practical psychology suffers most 
 from the associations in which it is found. Mes- 
 merism and hypnotism were part of the vaude- 
 ville show long before the professional man 
 deigned to consider them worthy of study, and 
 this tardiness on his part put back the progress 
 of our knowledge nearly half a century. We are 
 only just beginning to realize the truth that cer- 
 tain kinds of thought have dynamic qualities, al- 
 
 28 
 
MENTAL FOECES 29 
 
 thougli Dr. Tuke * two generations ago produced 
 sufficient evidence to warrant an acceptance of 
 that fact. The cure quack and the mental healer 
 gave a lamentable set-back to the spirit of in- 
 quiry, and the business man, immersed in prac- 
 tical problems, ignored the movement until it as- 
 sumed a form that satisfied his desire to make a 
 profit. The doctrine that the mind has power over 
 the body to prevent and cure disease is one with 
 definite commercial possibilities, and these the 
 healing fraternity began to exploit with an en- 
 ergy that did not fail to carry conviction in the 
 cases of hundreds of sufferers. The inevitable 
 reaction set in, bringing in its train the heated 
 contestants of both sides: those who deny the 
 force of mind and those who believe in it. 
 
 Out of the jumble of literature — good, bad and 
 indifferent — that deals with the power of thought 
 we shall in time obtain a truly rational system, 
 one that will bear a strict scientific scrutiny, and 
 one that can stand the test of experience. Already 
 the signs are promising. The me4ical psycholo- 
 gist in every country is busily engaged conduct- 
 ing experiments, and when these are all gath- 
 ered together and classified, we may hope to ar- 
 rive at a definite conclusion respecting the power 
 of thought-action on body, brain and character. 
 
 In this lesson I am concerned with mental 
 
 • See "The Influence of Imagination on the Body in Disease 
 and Health," by D. H. Tuke, M.D. 
 
30 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 forces so far as they affect the business man him- 
 self and, through him, the performance of those 
 duties which constitute his calling. First, it will 
 be necessary to ask : What is a mental force ? 
 Next, how may such forces be created? 
 
 I 
 
 In approaching the first question we become 
 conscious of the existence of a preliminary ques- 
 tion — ^namely, "What kind of thinking has force 
 in it?" The best way to obtain an answer is to 
 examine critically a certain number of thoughts. 
 
 (a) At 9 :00 A. M. I am thinking out a geomet- 
 rical problem. 
 
 (b) At 10 :30 A. M. you are trying to determine 
 how you can obtain cheaper freight from London 
 to Chicago. 
 
 (c) At 10:30 A. M. I am doing my best to re- 
 pair a typewriter. I have an increasingly strong 
 opinion that the makers of this machine with 
 many alleged patents are not giving the public 
 true service. Still, I may be unskilful in the art 
 of repairing. 
 
 (d) At 11 :30 you are in consultation with your 
 auditor about the annual balance-sheet. 
 
 (e) At 11:30 I am reading a book descriptive 
 of life in Mexico. I decide that Mexico is a 
 country of great possibilities. 
 
 (f) At 1:00 P. M. you are lunching with a 
 friend who is telling you secrets about the move- 
 ment against the trusts. 
 
 Here are six occasions on which you and I 
 
MENTAL FORCES 31 
 
 have been cauglit thinking — more or less. Let us 
 analyze these occasions closely. 
 
 Is there any mental force in thinking out a 
 problem in geometry? It may be an easy one or 
 a stiff deduction — the difficulty makes no differ- 
 ence whatever. Almost immediately we realize 
 we have not defined the meaning of the word 
 force. What does it connote? The dictionary 
 defines it from many points of view, but the ge- 
 neric idea is "driving power." What driving 
 power is there in the solution of a geometrical 
 problem? None whatever. There is a mental 
 benefit in the concentration involved and in the 
 development of a logical sense, but beyond that 
 we cannot think of anything forceful. The solu- 
 tion casts no light on market prices or on the pos- 
 sibility of unusual crops — in short, it has no 
 force, no "driving power" — it leads nowhere in 
 particular. 
 
 The next thought is very different: you dis- 
 covered from the newspaper that a new line of 
 cargo steamers was about to be started between 
 Baltimore and European ports with London as 
 a centre, and you are curious to find out the 
 freight charges, dates of sailing, and all the de- 
 tails of transportation. Prom the meagre reports 
 of the newspaper announcement you can figure 
 out a few charges, and they look promising by 
 contrast with the rates via New York. You fol- 
 low the thought still more closely and imagine 
 the effect on your annual profits. Is this, then, 
 
32 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 a thought that contains force? Certainly: it has 
 some "driving power" in it. It compels you 
 to take action by writing to Europe and Balti- 
 more for further particulars. Your curiosity is 
 aroused and you will not be satisfied until you 
 know the facts. As a thought, this newspaper 
 item is radically different from the problem in 
 geometry: the latter has no "thrust" in it; the 
 former drives you to action and will persist in 
 driving you until the necessary information is 
 obtained. There is probably as much mental 
 power displayed in the solving of the problem as 
 in the search for cheaper freight from Chicago to 
 London via Baltimore, but it is static power, not 
 dynamic. 
 
 Now, it may sound tautologous to say that the 
 kind of thinking which has force is the kind that 
 leads to action, but it will serve as a tentative 
 definition until the analyses are complete. When 
 I have solved a problem in geometry, I have done 
 with it, and there is nothing more to be said or 
 done; but when I, as a business man, read news 
 about lower freight charges, I am impelled to 
 act — the thought is of a kind which drives me 
 on towards something as yet unrealized. I am 
 both the subject and the object of a mental force. 
 
 The third thought introduces another variety. 
 My typewriter has broken down and I have much 
 difficulty in repairing it. Possibly I am a poor 
 mechanic — possibly also the machine is not what 
 is claimed for it and the makers are palming off 
 
MENTAL FORCES 33 
 
 on the public an inferior article. The mental sit- 
 uation is that of a conflict between two opinions. 
 On the one hand, I hesitate to write a complain- 
 ing letter to the company, for there is the uncom- 
 fortable chance of their sending a mechanic to see 
 what is wrong, who, after tightening a screw and 
 readjusting a wheel — the work of two minutes- 
 will smile at and pity my lack of mechanical abil- 
 ity. On the other hand, there is the chance that 
 the machine is not what is claimed for it and, 
 that being so, I have a desire to expose its weak- 
 nesses to those who have made me pay for it. 
 Whether, therefore, I decide to send for a me- 
 chanic or to return the typewriter as defective, 
 my thinking is of a kind that eventually leads to 
 action. 
 
 The consultation with your auditor is also 
 fraught with consequences. The figures show a 
 decline in gross receipts and net profits ; hence it 
 will be necessary to examine the various depart- 
 ments to see where the losses are originating. The 
 thought that your five per cent, dividend will be 
 reduced to four per cent, has some force in it: it 
 drives you to action, not only by consulting your 
 auditor and comparing the accounts of past years 
 with those of the present, but by studying such 
 items as the cost of raw material, of manufac- 
 ture, and of freight. Departmental efficiency will 
 also receive your attention. 
 
 The reading of the book on Mexico may leave 
 me unmoved, or it may cause me to think thoughts 
 
34 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 that liave their outlet in deeds. Much depends on 
 the constitution of my mind and on the nature 
 of my calling. If I am a student of travel, and 
 nothing else, I shall add to my stock of knowl- 
 edge on the subject and be content to compare 
 Mexican life with that of the Argentine Eepublic 
 or of the dwellers in Mesopotamia. If I am a 
 writer on business topics, I shall feel impelled to 
 contribute an article to some commercial jour- 
 nal, pointing out the immense opportunities in 
 the opening up of Mexico; if I am actually en- 
 gaged in business, I shall probably do more than 
 write an article — I shall either go to the country 
 myself or send a trusted representative to spy 
 out the land. 
 
 When you lunch with your friend who is full 
 of political secrets, divulged with many a know- 
 ing shake of the head and spoken in a hushed 
 whisper, are your thoughts forceful thoughts? It 
 depends on the man — on what he says, and on 
 you. If he has told you that all trusts are in dan- 
 ger of extinction and you are the head of a trust 
 — if he is a man who is likely to know what is 
 true and what is not, then possibly you have a 
 few thoughts that will develop into deeds. Your 
 interests are seriously threatened and it behooves 
 you to be up and doing. 
 
 Our brief analyses of the six thoughts, or the 
 occasions which gave rise to the thoughts, are 
 now complete, and we look for a generalized con- 
 clusion. There seems to be only one thought 
 
MENTAL FOKCES 35 
 
 wMch to all appearances is destitute of force — 
 namely, the problem in geometry. But even tliat 
 may have an object in view. If I were, at the 
 time stated, sitting for a civil service examination 
 which would bring me a position for life, the ef- 
 fort to secure a solution would be unusually 
 strong and the final success would help me in a 
 practical manner. 
 
 All the other thoughts have force in them, in 
 varying degrees — some rather weak, others 
 strong, and others again very strong, and they 
 lead to actions to which the same descriptive 
 phrases apply. The question now arises: What 
 is it that gives force to a thought? The reply is, 
 the emotion arising out of an interest. 
 
 If the solution of a problem in geometry is 
 merely for the development of mental muscle, my 
 success is an end in itself. True, I needed an ac- 
 cess of interest before I could bring myself to 
 study the problem, but the actual thinking led to 
 no change in creed or political opinion and incited 
 me to no new form of action. The other thoughts 
 were different. They were more emotional in the 
 sense that they aroused self-interest and prompt- 
 ed the thinker in the direction of practical issues. 
 The possibility of obtaining cheaper freight and 
 therefore of increasing the amount of the Com- 
 pany's dividends; the annoyance occasioned by 
 a typewriter defect at a moment when I needed 
 the machine most; the dismay felt when the de- 
 crease in gross receipts and net profits compels 
 
36 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 an adverse balance-sheet; the exultation that 
 springs up when I read of untouched gold on the 
 Pacific Coast of Mexico; and the anger that pos- 
 sesses you on learning the wire-pulling secrets 
 of corrupt politicians — these are not the usual 
 thoughts which Tennyson describes as ' ' the freez- 
 ing reason's colder part": they spring from the 
 feeling that resides in the heart. 
 
 We are now a little nearer the centre of our 
 subject. Thought is the force which drives the 
 world, and it is therefore dynamic thought. Static 
 thought is an end in itself. Do not misunderstand 
 me : I am not advocating the one to the detriment 
 of the other. Static thought as seen in culture 
 has a beauty and attractiveness all its own, and 
 no nation can afford to ignore the duty of build- 
 ing up a type of life independent of cash values. 
 But in these pages we are business men, and no 
 kind of criticism shames us, for we believe in the 
 dignity of commerce just as much as we respect 
 the majesty of art and philosophy. Doubtless the 
 distinction between static and dynamic thought 
 is purely an accommodation of language: there 
 are some thoiight-forces that do not eventuate in 
 action. For instance, I gaze at the pictures 
 in an art-gallery with many emotions, but I am 
 not conscious of arriving at any particular deci- 
 sion: the idea of the artist appeals to me, and I 
 share his feeling to the full, and yet it is not a 
 feeling that leads me to do something, although 
 in the future it will find expression in the forma- 
 
MENTAL FOECBS 37 
 
 tion of an opinion or in modifying a course of 
 conduct. Still, the difference between static and 
 dynamic thoughts may be regarded as sound, al- 
 though not so essential as one that is due to the 
 mind of the thinker. On that point I shall have 
 more to say presently. 
 
 Look around you and analyze the men you 
 know, especially the men who are leading in busi- 
 ness, finance and the professions. How are they 
 to be distinguished from those of their fellows 
 who lag behind? By the intensity of their 
 thought-forces. When they think, they think dy- 
 namically because of the depth and extent of 
 their emotional interests. They have little time 
 for the thoughts of the poet, the artist, and the 
 philosopher — the kind of mental activity which 
 ends in the enrichment of consciousness — they 
 think emotionally, and consequently their thoughts 
 have the driving power that ends in deeds. The 
 men who lag behind are not necessarily thought- 
 less : they may prefer, as many do, to live the life 
 of quiet reflection and modest living, or they may 
 be too indifferent to do anything but the daily 
 round and the common task. But both varieties 
 might well read a book on Mexican opportunities 
 and yet remain unmoved; they might read the 
 newspaper item about cheaper freight from Lon- 
 don to Chicago without feeling an appeal to the 
 commercial imagination. The Mexican book and 
 the trade opportunity do not arouse thoughts 
 with force behind them. Why? Because their 
 
38 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 interests lie in another direction. It is surpris- 
 ing to find so many men in business whose hearts 
 are — elsewhere. 
 
 Let me contrast two possible cases: George 
 Buston keeps a store say, in Lincoln, Nebraska, 
 and his brother Sam has one in Toledo, Ohio. 
 Both are honest and highly respected, but while 
 George increases his business rapidly, Sam moves 
 slowly. Analysis shows that George is a " one thing 
 only" man: he lives, and thinks, and dreams for 
 that store. Every thought he has about it is a 
 thought with force in it — once his judgment has de- 
 cided its value. Sam, on the other hand, has other 
 objects in view besides his store. No one could 
 accuse him of a lack of industry — at any rate dur- 
 ing working hours, but when the store is closed, he 
 turns his attention to church work and his favor- 
 ite study of history. There is no reason in the 
 world why we should not commend him for this, 
 but, if he fails to take competition seriously and 
 is content to do now as he has done in the past, 
 despite the fact that a new store has been opened 
 only two blocks away, then he is likely to feel the 
 effect of that law which says "the weakest goes 
 to the wall." 
 
 I hold no brief for the man who says life is for 
 making money and nothing else, but all the same 
 I cannot close my eyes to the fact that this is a 
 competitive age and the prizes are won by those 
 who serve the needs of the public with increas- 
 ing satisfaction. And such service usually de- 
 
MENTAL FOECES 39 
 
 mands a man's entire energies — to the extent, 
 at least, that they stand for his main interest. He 
 who looks upon his calling merely as the source 
 of his bread and butter, while sport is his chief 
 attraction, can hardly expect to get anything more 
 than bread and butter out of it. "Where your 
 treasure is, there will your heart be also." 
 
 As to why G-eorge Buston is different from his 
 brother Sam, I can only say that both are as na- 
 ture made them. There are critics who might 
 say that George would be all the better, if he had 
 a little of Sam's taste for history; other critics 
 would like to see Sam possessed of a more serious 
 concern for the growth of his store. The contrast, 
 however, brings me to the last point: that it is 
 the innate quality of the mind which gives force 
 to the thought. Emotions may be positive or neg- 
 ative — they may assert or deny — but the emo- 
 tion I refer to is of the positive kind: it is a 
 builder and not a destroyer. Some men possess 
 it by virtue of a fortunate temperament; others 
 are destitute of it — wholly or in part — and fol- 
 low their negative disposition to the detriment of 
 self or of others. Critically examine the men in 
 your city and you will soon be able to classify 
 them according to their positive or negative qual- 
 ities ; the positive men will be found in the fore- 
 most positions, while the negative men bring up 
 the rear. The innate quality of the former has an 
 attraction for all thoughts, ideas, schemes, proj- 
 ects, or suggestions that lead to action and prog- 
 
40 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 ress ; the innate quality of the latter just as natu- 
 rally takes the negative view. 
 
 It follows from this that in any system of men- 
 tal education we must begin with the man himself 
 and study his temperament. A hundred men may 
 read the same books, meet the same people, live 
 in the same commercial environment, and study 
 the same market conditions, yet only a small per- 
 centage will turn these things to the best account 
 possible. The reason is that these men compose 
 a group in tune with positive things: when they 
 think, they think with the feeling that produces 
 force. But what are we to do with the other men? 
 Train them — by showing the advantages of cul- 
 tivating positive qualities. 
 
 It is here that the system of development origi- 
 nated by Mr. A. F. Sheldon in his "Business- 
 building" is of such value. It is happily free 
 from the old mistakes which tell us to imitate 
 others, if we would advance to fortune. Instead, 
 we are guided along the lines of natural self-ex- 
 pression, and the most recent psychology is 
 pressed into the service of the student. There is 
 an old saying, "Overcome evil with good." That 
 is the true method in education. Multiply the 
 number and power of the positive forces, and all 
 the injurious tendencies of a man's mind are 
 crowded out. In the past we have tried to de- 
 stroy failure and inefficiency: we have been like 
 surgeons with an operating knife, ready to "cut 
 it out." This is the wrong policy. The destroy- 
 
MENTAL FOECES 41 
 
 ing agencies are the negative qualities — espe- 
 cially of the emotional type, and the surest way to 
 end their blighting career is to make life impos- 
 sible for them by cultivating the opposite tenden- 
 cies. 
 
 To recapitulate: We started out with the in- 
 quiry, "What is mental force?" We discovered 
 that thoughts which had driving power behind 
 them were those possessed of the emotion aris- 
 ing out of an interest, and that the depth of the 
 emotion depended on the nature of one 's tempera- 
 ment. A man in business thinks to some purpose 
 only in so far as he has a definite and clear-cut 
 ambition, and the amount of his ambition is 
 largely determined by his natural endowments. 
 Hence the correction of native tendencies is the 
 first duty of mental education for business. He 
 who would advance must put himself in line with 
 advancing principles and set up an inward at- 
 traction for progress. 
 
 The next question was : How may mental forces 
 be created? The answer is: expel the negative 
 influences by cultivating the positives. The 
 greatest reason why many men do not prosper as 
 they ought to do is because they are indifferent. 
 This is the negative attitude which may be over- 
 come by an access of earnestness. A few men are 
 not so much indifferent as fearful, and it is their 
 duty to replace fear with courage and a stout 
 heart. But the one positive power which may be 
 said to summarize the whole is ambition — a defi- 
 
42 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 nite object to aim at and to live for: once this is 
 fixed in the heart, most of the other virtues im- 
 mediately fall into line. An eye will have to be 
 kept on scrupulous honesty and the sense of jus- 
 tice- — virtues which a ruthless ambition might 
 easily dispense with. 
 
 Methods of Training 
 
 I. Self -analysis comes first: you must know 
 what you are — ^your weaknesses and your 
 strength. I know a man who is an artist to the 
 finger-tips, and yet he is one of the best of busi- 
 ness men. He indulges his artistic proclivities in 
 leisure moments, but years ago he recognized the 
 fact that circumstances did not admit of his de- 
 voting his whole time to art, so he gave his mind 
 to commerce — most successfully, too. Nowadays, 
 he is as keen in business as he is in art and mu- 
 sic. This is rational conduct. In view of im- 
 perative needs he readjusted the relationship be- 
 tween temperament and vocation. Nature made 
 him an artist — destiny made him a man of busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Self-knowledge has been urged upon us from 
 time immemorial, and stern necessity preaches 
 the same doctrine to-day. You should know, for 
 instance, whether you are over-positive or over- 
 negative, or whether the balance is nicely ad- 
 justed. If you belong to the first type, you will 
 accept new ideas almost greedily: a man who 
 
Mental foeces 4^ 
 
 shows you a real estate proposition in wMch 
 there are "millions of profit" will get your at- 
 tention, desire, and action almost in one breath. 
 You think so dynamically that you resign your 
 position at once and plunge into the new scheme. 
 A few days after you meet another man with 
 another plan for making millions out of irriga- 
 tion, and once more you think so forcefully that 
 you change from the real estate proposition to 
 the irrigation company. That is the worst side 
 of the super-positive temperament : like man him- 
 self, as described by the theologian, "he never 
 continueth in one stay." 
 
 On the other hand, the over-negative man is 
 the sourest of all individuals. He was born at 
 a time when "the noes have it." The first word 
 he lingered over when he could talk was "No." 
 There were always better reasons for not doing 
 things than for doing them. Whenever he is per- 
 suaded to act in a positive manner, he feels it 
 necessary to apologize for his foolhardiness, and 
 he would infinitely prefer to talk about the rea- 
 sons why a venture must fail rather than succeed. 
 
 Apart from these decided types of mind are 
 those which take on the qualities of both. Here- 
 in is the ideal, provided the qualities are pres- 
 ent in adequate fulness and proper balance. Suc- 
 cess in business depends much on knowing when 
 to say "yes" and when to say "no." But an 
 overplus of negatives is far more of a hindrance 
 than is an overplus of positives. The man who 
 
44 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 is hampered with too easy a belief in new proj- 
 ects generally learns his lesson in time and reaps 
 the advantage of a progressive instinct: the man 
 who is cursed with an overplus of negatives sel- 
 dom rises superior to their derogatory influences. 
 It is advisable, therefore, to give the positive ele- 
 ment sufficient latitude before you turn your at- 
 tention to the development of caution. 
 
 II. The formulation of an interest, or of a 
 definite ambition, should come next. Sometimes 
 this is not easy because of the indefiniteness of 
 our general plans, but the daily effort to shape 
 the future is certain to have a good result eventu- 
 ally. It keeps the mind alive to passing oppor- 
 tunities and tends to organize efforts into a unity. 
 Its effect upon thought is obvious: instead of a 
 stream of listless and aimless nothings, you get 
 a group of decisive thoughts, the perspective of 
 which leads to a true centre of vision — ^namely, 
 your goal. 
 
 III. Discipline is the third element in train- 
 ing. You set a watch on your thoughts, and if 
 you discover yourself full of dreary negatives or 
 foolish positives, you determinedly adjust the 
 balance. Or, if you find you are living a color- 
 less mental life, with thoughts that cannot be 
 properly described as thoughts in any sense, you 
 begin to revise your habits and banish your in- 
 difference. 
 
 It would perhaps be too formal to practise a 
 daily self-scrutiny, but if at the end of a week 
 
MENTAL FORCES 45 
 
 you find you have done no thinking with force 
 behind it, then the time has come for a change in 
 the programme. There is a trial balance in book- 
 keeping, and there should be one in business psy- 
 chology. Take stock of your thoughts— analyze 
 them, classify them, value them. The criterion 
 of value is the emotive power they possess. 
 
 "What are you doing?" is a question answered 
 by another: "What have you been thinking"?" 
 Not thinking in the sense of abstract reflection, 
 but thinking with some feeling in it. This alone 
 is the mental activity that brings business. 
 
 IV. Summary: 
 
 First, correct any possible vagaries of temper- 
 ament; second, define your ambition; third, dis- 
 cipline your thoughts. Such are the three steps 
 in training. The first puts you into the right 
 mental attitude; the second supplies the emotive 
 power that turns thoughts into actions; and the 
 third is the supervision that secures smooth and 
 efficient working. The reader should make full 
 use of the analytical catechism hereunder given 
 for purposes of self-examination and drill : 
 
 (1) Am I naturally an optimist or a pessimist? 
 
 (2) Do I take on the qualities of both — summed 
 up in the phrase "an optimist — with reserva- 
 tions"? 
 
 (3) Have I an instinctive tendency to stand by 
 old ideas and look askance at the new, or vice 
 versa? 
 
 (4) Are my interests mainly in my business 
 
46 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 or calling, or do I entertg,in other objects in which, 
 centre nay deepest desires? 
 
 (5) What is my ambition? 
 
 (6) How are the foregoing five questions and 
 answers related to force in thinking business 
 thoughts ? 
 
 (7) How often do I collect my thoughts, sort 
 them out, and label them? How often am I satis- 
 fied with the result? 
 
 Desire in some form or other is at the basis of 
 all mental forces, and the problem is to handle 
 that desire in such a way as to enlarge business 
 while serving the public. In Buddhism the devo- 
 tee is taught to extinguish desire, consequently 
 his thoughts are all centred on Nirvana — the 
 heaven of millions in the East. Naturally he does 
 little business. The Parsee has no such doctrine 
 to bind him, and he becomes wealthy. Are you 
 a Buddhist or a Parsee? 
 
LESSON III 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OP ACHIEVEMENT 
 
 In all vital action the manifest effort and purpose of Nature 
 is that we should be unconscious of it. 
 
 — Carlyle 
 
 It has often been remarked that successful men 
 can never tell us satisfactorily how they suc- 
 ceeded. Some critics have taken advantage of the 
 fact to say sarcastic things about success in gen- 
 eral — this getting of wealth which so blinds the 
 intellect that it obscures the causes of its ma- 
 terial advantages. Others with a desperate at- 
 tempt to be shrewd have averred that no sane 
 man would give away his secrets gratis. 
 
 But may not these men who have made money 
 be quite sincere in answering the questions ad- 
 dressed to them by writers and editors? The 
 answers, it is true, are not always illuminating, 
 but their general unsatisfactoriness is a feature 
 that calls for study rather than adverse criti- 
 cism; for the answers of men of advanced edu- 
 cation, professors even, are open to the same ob- 
 jection as those emanating from successful tra- 
 ders. Below I give a selection of these answers 
 from men of standing in very different lines of 
 life. I am indebted for these to Mr. N. C. Fow- 
 ler's The Boy: How to help him succeed. The 
 
 47 
 
48 
 
 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 question put was: "To what one thing or to 
 what two or more things do you attribute your 
 success?" 
 
 Name. 
 Pres. C. W. Eliot: 
 
 Henry Clews, LL.D. 
 
 G.W. Cable: 
 
 Cause of Success. 
 Good inheritance. Good 
 health. Sticking to one 
 job, began young. 
 
 Eternal vigilance, appli- 
 cation and concentration 
 of energies upon the mat- 
 ter in hand. 
 
 I attribute such success as 
 I have achieved mainly to 
 three things : first, the ad- 
 vantage of a particular 
 talent which I could util- 
 ize without the need of a 
 large outlay of time and 
 money for training and 
 equipment ; second, a spir- 
 it of diligence and of con- 
 scientious workmanship ; 
 and third, learning my 
 lessons when in school 
 thoroughly, lovingly, and 
 for their own sake. 
 
 Eev. C. H. Parkhurst, Good parentage and hard 
 D.D. : work. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OP ACHIEVEMENT 49 
 
 Pres. B. I. Wheeler, 
 LL.D. : 
 
 Believing that most peo- 
 ple are mostly well-inten- 
 tioned. 
 
 John W, Gates : 
 
 William L. Douglas : 
 
 Attending strictly to my 
 own business and work- 
 ing sixteen hours per day 
 when the emergency de- 
 manded it. 
 
 (a) Being a thorough, 
 practical shoemaker with 
 an ambition to become a 
 manufacturer, (b) Per- 
 severance and determina- 
 tion to succeed under ad- 
 verse circumstances, (c) 
 Sticking to one thing, not 
 allowing myself to be at- 
 tracted into other busi- 
 nesses, no matter how al- 
 luring the prospect of suc- 
 cess, (d) Maintaining al- 
 ways my credit, (e) Mak- 
 ing honest goods, selling 
 by one method, and per- 
 sistently letting the peo- 
 ple know I have good 
 goods to sell at a fair 
 price by advertising day 
 in, day out, through good 
 
60 
 
 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Luther Burbank : 
 
 times and througli panic 
 times, (f ) By organizing 
 my business, as it grew, 
 into distinct departments, 
 placing capable men in 
 charge, interfering in no 
 way whatever with the 
 conduct of the various de- 
 partments, holding each 
 department manager re- 
 sponsible, judging men by 
 results only. 
 
 Strict temperance. Some 
 disappointments in life 
 which made me think of 
 the welfare of others as 
 well as of myself. Hon- 
 est, sincere, and strict at- 
 tention to business and to 
 the interests of others as 
 well as my own. Throw- 
 ing overboard old super- 
 stitions and listening to 
 the suggestions of nature. 
 
 J. Walter Thompson : Hustle. 
 
 Col. A. A. Pope: 
 
 Self-sacrifice and perse- 
 verance. 
 
 John A. McCall : 
 
 Determination. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ACHIEVEMENT 51 
 
 This list is fairly representative of varied call- 
 ings — university presidents, financiers, and finan- 
 cial experts, one novelist, one divine, a great spe- 
 cialist in horticulture, a shoe-manufacturer, an 
 advertising agent. In analyzing their replies to 
 the question one should take into account the at- 
 tention, small or great, they devoted to thinking 
 out the best reasons and stating them in the best 
 way. An answer dictated on the spur of the mo- 
 ment has not, of course, the same value as one 
 which is the result of reflection. It is fair to 
 presume that in this instance the answers were 
 not hurried and unconsidered, for the question- 
 naire was of such a nature as to call for sus- 
 tained thinking. 
 
 The most surprising confessions are the brief- 
 est. Would Dr. Parkhurst have us believe that 
 good parentage and hard work alone are suffi- 
 cient to explain his position in the religious life 
 of America? Are there not many thousands who, 
 although they possess both qualifications, fail to 
 make any sort of impression on the public mind, 
 albeit they are highly respectable citizens? Is 
 hustle accountable for the business eminence of 
 Mr. J. Walter Thompson? The same question 
 could be modified to suit Mr. Pope's "self-sacri- 
 fice and perseverance" and Mr. McCall's "deter- 
 mination." It is obvious that these gentlemen 
 have succeeded in life without knowing how they 
 did it. I do not deny that the virtues they enu- 
 merate are real forces, but they could never pro- 
 
52 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 duee success unaided by other forces. President 
 Wheeler's statement about well-intentioned peo- 
 ple is almost frivolous: there are men who have 
 followed this principle industriously, and found 
 themselves at last in the bankruptcy court. 
 
 By way of contrast let us look at the reasons 
 offered by a novelist and a shoe-manufacturer. 
 Mr. Cable's statement is reasonably adequate. He 
 confesses to a particular talent exercised with 
 scrupulous care and idealism, and to a love of 
 the kind of work that yields him an income. 
 
 It is, however, Mr. Douglas's confession which 
 merits the palm of psychological accuracy. Briefly 
 put, his success is due to (a) a controlling idea 
 or purpose; (b) concentration; (c) advertising, 
 and (d) executive ability. In later paragraphs I 
 shall try to show how nearly this approaches to 
 the laws governing prosperity. For the moment 
 I purpose to inquire why men of mark so often 
 miss the point in tracing the operation of these 
 laws. The answer I submit is that they obey them 
 so unconsciously as to be unaware of their exis- 
 tence. 
 
 G-ranting President Elot the advantages of 
 heredity and good health, is "sticking to one job" 
 a good enough account of his marvellous role as 
 the sometime president of a great university! 
 Had he no controlling purpose, no concentration, 
 no judicious publicity, and no executive ability? 
 These questions are sufficient of themselves to 
 show the inadequacy of his statement: he ob- 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ACHIEVE: lENT 53 
 
 served a sequence of laws the existence of which 
 was to Mm more subconscious than conscious. 
 
 Again, Mr. Burbank's "reasons" are altogether 
 wrong in their order. Temperance, however 
 strict, does not come first in Ms case. It is the 
 intellectual daring of the man — the idea that new 
 varieties of flowers, nuts, and fruits are not only 
 possible, but practical and permanent. Next I 
 should place "strict attention to business," and 
 last "the welfare of others," not because his serv- 
 ice is essentially last — it is first — but because per- 
 sonal fitness for service is ever a primary. 
 
 A new question now arises: if these distin- 
 guished leaders in education, finance, and industry 
 have attained their ideal in spite of wrong con- 
 ceptions and false estimates, does not that fact 
 prove the worthlessness of the alleged laws of 
 success? Not at all. It only proves that the men 
 concerned do not know those laws — with this dif- 
 ference, that if they had not kept them, they 
 would have fallen behind and suffered the penal- 
 ties of disobedience. On the other hand, there are 
 men who understand the laws thoroughly, but 
 never succeed, because they do not obey them: 
 they never get an idea that controls them for 
 more than a week — if so long, and an ardent de- 
 termination on Monday to stick to one thing for- 
 ever has already cooled off by Friday morning. 
 And yet they know all the time that one of the 
 conditions of success is continuity. I venture, 
 therefore, the opinion that, although successful 
 
54 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 men seem to have but a partial acquaintance with 
 the real facts, according to their own confession, 
 they nevertheless have rendered a true obedience 
 to natural law in the business world, otherwise 
 they could not have attained a position of emi- 
 nence. This leads me to say further that the only 
 solution of the difficulty lies in such help as the 
 modern doctrine of the subconscious mind can 
 give us. 
 
 The ease with which ideas and mental forces 
 pass from the lower into the upper consciousness 
 is a condition that largely determines the nature 
 and extent of destiny. Naturally it is a process 
 of which we know little or nothing, just as we are 
 ignorant of the origin of many ideas that some- 
 how "come." Nearly every man of mark has 
 followed an inward leading — sometimes in the 
 full realization of it, sometimes not; but the im- 
 portant item is not the realization — it is the fol- 
 lowing. Where do these dreams of commercial 
 expansion have their source? What agency is it 
 that gives one man a mental driving power and 
 denies it to another of equal or greater abilities? 
 These are as yet unsolved problems. To a great 
 extent the future of a man's life is in his own 
 hands, and he may repair a niggardliness in nat- 
 ural gifts by a study and observance of success 
 laws; but the advantage of native endowment is 
 too obvious to be set aside as worthy of no con- 
 sideration. By this term I do not mean simply 
 good memory, aptitude for languages, a love of 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ACHIEVEMENT 55 
 
 bargaining, or powers of that description. I mean 
 these things plus the means of ready transition 
 between that mysterious region we call the sub- 
 conscious and our waking consciousness. This 
 may strike the reader as an obscure reason to in- 
 troduce at this juncture, but as yet the origins 
 of any sort of genius are obscure, and the most 
 suggestive solutions come from those who have 
 made a special study of the subconscious. This 
 inability, on the part of successful men, to explain 
 themselves could then be fully understood: of 
 certain obvious virtues they had been necessarily 
 conscious — of other agencies they were not con- 
 scious at all. Here and there we find a man who, 
 in business especially, was compelled by a logical 
 mind to reason out his life's plans and purposes 
 to the remotest detail, but as a rule the explana- 
 tion of success is not satisfactory — not because 
 the individual would mislead us, but because he 
 is only partly aware of the facts. 
 
 It would now be interesting to inquire whether 
 an analysis of biography — that is, explanations 
 of men's success given by others — is marked by 
 the same inadequacy. Take a volume like "For- 
 tunes Made in Business," and what do we find? 
 We find a solution — good, bad, or indifferent — of 
 every victory. There is no hazy verbiage, no iso- 
 lated virtue — like "hustle" — no trivialities. The 
 biographer, standing apart, sees more than his 
 subject ever saw, and reading, as he does, from 
 actions rather than words, he becomes aware of 
 
56 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 inward workings of which the subject may have 
 been only dimly conscious. 
 
 When Pres. Eliot's biography appears, as in 
 the time to come it will, the writer of it will have 
 much more to say than "good parentage, good 
 health, and sticking to my job." Granting for 
 the moment that modesty plays its part in these 
 personal confessions, restricting the pen to simple 
 virtues, one must admit that even with full free- 
 dom the pen would not tell the whole truth. 
 
 Mr. C. M. Schwab, one time manager of the 
 Steel Trust, said: "People are asking me how 
 I rose from working for $2.50 (10/-) a week to 
 a position with a salary of $800,000 (£160,000) a 
 year, and upon my word I don 't know. ' ' But his 
 biographer, in the person of the writer of the 
 article, seems to know: "Schwab at an early age 
 had set his mind oh becoming an engineer. ' ' This 
 at any rate was the primary motive, and, added 
 to native ability plus a fine array of business 
 virtues, makes his success not difficult to explain. 
 
 A study of the lives of men who have had great 
 difficulties to contend with— out of which they 
 emerged with honors and success — should be 
 fraught with useful suggestion, and having made 
 this investigation in the hope of discovering prin- 
 ciples that will be of service to the reader, I will 
 briefly tabulate the results: 
 
 The first result of such a study is to realize 
 that nearly all successful men have had a con- 
 trolling idea or purpose. Behind this idea was an 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ACHIEVEMENT 57 
 
 emotive power, a mental force, perpetually driv- 
 ing them onwards towards the aceomplisliment of 
 their aim. We see it in the case of Mr. Schwab 
 just noticed. His mind was set on becoming an 
 engineer. We see it in the case of Lord Arm- 
 strong, of big gun fame, who confessed, "I was 
 always an engineer." But his parents made a 
 lawyer of him and he settled down to deeds and 
 precedents. Later on his work brought him into 
 contact with machinery and the "idea" got its 
 chance again. He was soon mechanical adviser 
 as well as legal adviser; and finding the former 
 more profitable and congenial, he satisfied his 
 natural promptings by becoming an engineer, ul- 
 timately revolutionizing warfare by the innova- 
 tions he made in gun manufacture. 
 
 Were we to analyze a hundred cases, we should 
 find them to be replicas more or less of these two. 
 The "idea" does not always spring from a nat- 
 ural proclivity: it may take its rise in a chance 
 happening. 
 
 Thomas Cook, of tourist fame, did not grow up 
 from youth with a keen desire to cheapen travel. 
 His first excursion train was an event connected 
 with the work of spreading temperance principles, 
 but it suggested an idea which developed as he 
 thought about it, until at last it became a fixed 
 policy. 
 
 Again, John Smith may have no special pur- 
 pose in life except a determination to get on, until 
 he meets his friend Dawson. Dawson is a mine 
 
58 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 proprietor and wants a reliable steward. He can 
 trust Smith, and away Smith goes to the uplands 
 of Brazil. Mining becomes his "idea." He is 
 a good steward, but he is learning the other de- 
 partments of the business all the time. In a few 
 years he is a shareholder, and later becomes an 
 owner himself. Thus the controlling purpose may 
 have its origin in the mind of the individual, a 
 tendency due to innate facility; it may spring 
 from circumstances, chance, or friendship. The 
 great question is not where it comes from, but 
 whether it is there in the centre of the soul. 
 
 The second result of our study is to find that 
 the successful man has power in several combina- 
 tions. He has mind power, character power, pow- 
 er of faith, and power of will. The first we usu- 
 ally construe as ability. Some men have this 
 as a natural heritage; with others, scarcely less 
 distinguished, it is the outcome of education and 
 experience. Ability has many manifestations. 
 Mr. Carnegie may know nothing about the monads 
 of Leibnitz or the philosophy of Bergson, and he 
 may care less; but he knows a good deal about 
 business. He has shown himself to be a man of 
 vast ability in his own line, just as the university 
 professor may dazzle the students in the class- 
 room and excite the admiration of an appreciative 
 public. Ability, therefore, means mental efficiency 
 in one's work, and the successful man is never a 
 dullard in this respect. He is, moreover, a man 
 of character in the broad sense of the term. He 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OP ACHIEVEMENT 59 
 
 is not easily daunted. He can overcome difiBcnl- 
 ties. There is an element of reliability about him. 
 He cannot afford to be "tricky": his reputation 
 counts for too much. He wants to have a good 
 name for square dealing, and he regards the con- 
 fidence of the public as more precious than rubies. 
 By the power of faith I mean confidence in him- 
 self and his work — a belief that he will at last 
 come into his own. 
 
 A few men seem to have advanced both with 
 rapidity and ease ; the majority have had to fight 
 — sometimes with their back to the wall, well-nigh 
 exhausted. John Brinsmead, of piano fame, was 
 a country boy whose first work was farming, but 
 whose "idea" was "to make things." He satis- 
 fied himself for a time as an apprentice to a cab- 
 inet-maker, but he longed to make better things 
 and resolved to become a pianoforte manufac- 
 turer. To this end he walked from his village 
 all the way to London, the centre of the industry. 
 Then began a struggle for capital, opportunity, 
 and success. But he had the faith power which 
 brought him through triumphant. Minus this 
 gift he would inevitably have succumbed to his 
 difficulties. It is the same with most men who 
 attempt great tasks : unless they have faith, they 
 fail. They have a feeling — not always bright per- 
 haps — that they can do what they essay to do. 
 Associated with this feeling is will-power, deter- 
 mination to do what faith believes can be done. 
 
 The volume on "Fortunes Made in Business," 
 
60 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 containing the cases I have studied, is full of 
 instances illustrating force of will. For example, 
 when John Rylands, the cotton prince, lost $200,- 
 000 (£40,000) in a fire which destroyed his stock 
 and premises, he felt the shock so deeply that for 
 several days he thought of retiring from the mer- 
 cantile part of his business. His friends, how- 
 ever, advised him to go on, and at last he resolved 
 to do so. However, for a man of smaller moral 
 calibre, the blow would have been too great. 
 Without decision, and the power to make it con- 
 tinuous, success becomes impossible. 
 
 A third result of our study reveals the pres- 
 ence of a desire to supply public wants, in the 
 case of an employer, and to render good service, 
 in the case of an employee. This is seen in the 
 case of Joseph Chamberlain as the inventor and 
 manufacturer of a new screw. The old kind of 
 screw had a blunt end: he put a point on it and 
 made his fortune. It was his habit to ask him- 
 self questions as to public needs, and he was ever 
 on the lookout for new opportunities and new 
 markets. He had the firm's literature translated 
 into foreign languages and quoted prices in for- 
 eign moneys, believing his goods would be as ac- 
 ceptable abroad as they were at home. 
 
 Sir Thomas Sutherland of the P. & O., when at 
 Hong-Kong many years ago, saw there were no 
 cargo coasting steamers, and he brought a fleet 
 into being — greatly to the profit of the firm and 
 to his own advancement. It will be found that 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OP ACHIEVEMENT 6l 
 
 every distinctive aeliievement in business has its 
 base in some service to the community, and tbe 
 greater tlie service the larger the returns. 
 
 This brings me to the final result of a brief 
 study of successful careers : These men had com- 
 prehensive views. They did not regard them- 
 selves, their business, or the world with narrow 
 vision. They were expansive — they looked around 
 and they looked ahead. Any other course is sure 
 to lead to partial failure at least, for restricted 
 notions are incompatible with service: they hold 
 back imagination and screen activities within a 
 small area. 
 
 To recapitulate: A successful man, when an- 
 alyzed by others, as distinct from his own self- 
 analysis, is marked by the possession of the fol- 
 lowing: (1) a controlling idea or purpose; (2) 
 power of mind, character, faith, and will; (3) a 
 desire to supply public wants; and (4) compre- 
 hensive views. Every ease may not display them 
 in this order, and some cases may be a little out 
 of perspective through a lack of the idea of public 
 service; but I venture to think the life story of 
 any commercial magnate will be found to contain 
 all four qualities, and for the most part their 
 significance will be in the order given. 
 
 Method of Study 
 
 (1) By self -analysis test your own programme 
 in the light of the foregoing findings. Most men 
 
62 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 "have some ambition, although in too many cases 
 it is planless and undefined. Get your "idea" 
 or "purpose" and let it control you — not as an 
 outside force, but an inward compulsion that is 
 part of yourself. 
 
 This suggestion for a map of life has already 
 been touched upon, but here it appeals to us in a 
 special business sense : the kind of work you are 
 to do, the county or city where you will reside, 
 the firm you will work for, and what will happen 
 after that. 
 
 Undue haste is to be deprecated. If you have 
 not the idea now, it will have to be brought out 
 by experience. How can you recognize it ? What 
 enables you to decide confidently? That is what 
 no book can teach you. It is better so. How else 
 can you learn self-reliance? But there is no mis- 
 take as to the necessity of having a defined am- 
 bition. 
 
 (2) Not much need be said about the cultivation 
 of ability, of character, of faith, and of will, but 
 do not let their obvious nature tempt you to re- 
 gard them lightly. To say that any odd moment 
 will do for practical development is bad policy. 
 Remember that the ability referred to is business 
 ability, not mathematical profundity or psycho- 
 logical depth. The great question for you is, 
 "How can I serve the public and make a profit 
 for myself?" So keep more to facts. A new 
 railway concerns you more than a new comet, al- 
 though astronomy is very interesting. Your val- 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OP ACHIEVEMENT 63 
 
 ues are commercial, not scholastic, and the worth 
 of science is not in its information, but in the 
 money possibilities of its information. If this 
 realism is hard to swallow, gulp it down and the 
 nest dose will be easier. Everybody in business 
 believes in this realism, but it is considered im- 
 polite in some quarters to acknowledge it. 
 
 As for character, the Nemesis of wrong-doing 
 is all about you. The man who defrauded his 
 clients and is now in jail is an object-lesson, just 
 as the rectitude of a great merchant is a similar 
 lesson on the other side. Faith and will are dealt 
 with elsewhere and need no further attention 
 here. 
 
 (3) Business is the supplying of public wants, 
 consequently those wants require special investi- 
 gation as well as the best means of supply. Effi- 
 ciency is the selection between a public need and 
 its most satisfactory solution. Get "Fortunes 
 Made in Business, ' ' or any equivalent production, 
 and follow the careers of great merchants. You 
 will find they catered to the obvious needs of the 
 population, and afterwards, in some instances, 
 discovered needs to people who were only vague- 
 ly conscious of them. Where there was no de- 
 sire for certain goods they created the desire by 
 creating the goods. 
 
LESSON IV 
 
 CONCENTEATION 
 
 Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the 
 ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it 
 has to be done, whether you like it or not ; it is the first lesson 
 virhich ought to be learned, and, however early a man's train- 
 ing begins, it is probably the last he learns thoroughly. 
 
 — Huxley 
 
 When a group of people are talking on mental 
 subjects, one of the commonest confessions is, 
 "I cannot concentrate my mind on anything for 
 long together. If I take up Gibbon, I get through 
 a page or two, then begin to think of something 
 else of which his words have reminded me. If 
 I sit down to write a few thoughts on a subject 
 that interests me, my mind runs off into side 
 issues. I suppose I am made like that, but I 
 would give a good deal to be able to bring my 
 whole powers to bear on one subject at one time." 
 
 Now, the best way to put the matter into un- 
 derstandable form is to ask, "What do we mean 
 by concentration?" and "What methods should 
 be adopted to develop this power T' 
 
 (1) It is a popular mistake to suppose that 
 concentration is the focussing of the mind on one 
 thought, or even more than one. Take an illus- 
 tration: Darwin wished to investigate the origin 
 
 64 
 
CONCENTEATION 63 
 
 of the climbing powers of certain plants. To do 
 this he had to observe all the details of a great 
 variety, for specimens may be found throughout 
 the whole of the plant kingdom. Day after day 
 he would investigate facts which escaped the or- 
 dinary eye, the point of view changing almost 
 every minute as he brought out each fact in the 
 light of his great theciry. This was most em- 
 phatically concentration of the highest order, but 
 how different it is from the idea many people 
 seem to have ! They imagine a sort of grim and 
 heroic fight against intruding thoughts, and a 
 keen determination to think only of one thing. 
 Darwin thought a hundred different thoughts 
 about the climbing powers of plants, but his mind 
 was on the one subject all the time. There were 
 gradations in the poiver of climbing, in the means 
 of climbing, as by the twining of the stem, by 
 leaf-stalks, and by tendrils ; and all these distinct 
 facts claimed separate attention. 
 
 Concentration does not imply a monotonous 
 stare at a single idea: it is a continual working 
 to and fro of such analytical gifts as we possess 
 — a departing from and a returning to the orig- 
 inal starting-point of thought. In the words of 
 Prof. Wm. James, we start with one thought and 
 immediately travel on to the nearest thought re- 
 lated to it; concentration is the power of swiftly 
 returning to the original thought. "There is no 
 such thing as voluntary attention sustained for 
 more than a few seconds at a time. What is called 
 
66 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 sustained voluntary attention is a repetition of 
 successive efforts which bring back the topic to 
 mind. ' ' * 
 
 This is as true in business as it is in science. 
 Let us take two men occupied with the same prob- 
 lem — ^namely, meeting severe competition. One 
 is the proprietor of a large iron-foundry and 
 his troubles gather round three facts: the sup- 
 plies of ore, the cost of manufacture and trans- 
 portation, and the getting of orders. He is hav- 
 ing a quiet hour at home, pencil and paper be- 
 fore him. For a minute he will think of an ore 
 deposit that has been offered him, then of a big 
 contract that may mature, yielding a handsome 
 profit. Next he returns to the ore deposit which 
 the said profit may enable him to buy — for it is 
 dirt-cheap — but everything depends on orders. 
 How is Delaney doing in carrying through the 
 negotiations in Chile? (He makes a calculation 
 of the time that must elapse before Delaney re- 
 turns.) The men have been troublesome of late. 
 Will they strike? He does not like the spirit of 
 the foreman. Still the men are better paid and 
 more comfortable than others. Costs will remain 
 as they are. Railroad rates and shipping next 
 receive attention, and finally he comes to the con- 
 clusion that he has not spent enough in securing 
 a market for his goods: another man must be 
 put on to look after contracts. 
 
 Now, that proprietor has concentrated for an 
 
 • "Principles of Psychology," Vol. I, p. 420. 
 
COXCENTEATION 67 
 
 hour. He did not keep his mind centred on one 
 thing like a Hindoo Yogi reciting the blessed word 
 om. His mind moved freely within the prescribed 
 limits selected, going and returning, until a defi- 
 nite policy was reached that should modify fu- 
 ture action. 
 
 The other man thinks on the "That reminds 
 me" principle. He is a hop, skip, and jump 
 thinker. His mind runs away with him. See how 
 he tackles his problem ! He commences with a 
 determination to reduce his working charges. It 
 is so simple and requires no hard brain exer- 
 cise. There's the salary list. 
 
 "Dickinson, Thompson, Jones, Draycott — no, 
 you can't economize in the office!" (He thinks of 
 the workshop.) ' ' Higgins, the foreman — well, he 's 
 a good man enough, but . . . weird thing, that — 
 Mrs. Higgins, a foreman's wife, eloping with 
 a clergyman . . . the strangest thing that 
 ever happened in Buttonville ! If I were he 
 . . . but then you never can tell! The laun- 
 dry-woman with whom the clergyman lodged still 
 believes his reverence was kidnapped. By the 
 way, what a big account that laundry sent in last 
 week! Such charges are awful. They ought 
 . . . ah! charges. "Well, I can't reduce the 
 foreman's wage. There's the carpenter, the ma- 
 chine-men — h'm — I might get one of those new 
 machines and save two men's wages. How much 
 will it . . . That new automobile of Stew- 
 art's is classy, if you like. Wonder how he got 
 
68 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 the money to buy it. Perhaps she bought it. They 
 say she has a lot, but keeps it quiet. Still, it's 
 good to be Stewart and have a new machine 
 . . . ah! where was I? Oh, it would cost $10,- 
 000 to put it in the workshop ready for going. 
 Now, I shall have to get one soon, or not at all. 
 There's Teddy Smith who might . . . good 
 old Teddy was in fine form last night. Wish his 
 son did not hang about him so much ... I 
 might be a thief . . . and Teddy's Havana 
 cigars — ^how much do they cost, I wonder ! Cost ! 
 Ah, well, I must have that new machine to reduce 
 working expenses and increase the output. 
 (Yawns.) Time for a drink." 
 
 In the first case the mind wandered about a 
 prescribed area, but it had intention in every step, 
 observing, classifying, comparing, and judging — 
 always with a definite end in view. In the second 
 case the mind wandered outside the limits of busi- 
 ness into the world of elopements, automobiles, 
 and convivial gatherings. The first is concentra- 
 tion, the second is diffusion. But mental and 
 physical training are responsible for much of this 
 waste of energy, and a nervous break-down will 
 sometimes make consecutive thought extremely 
 difficult. There is also that fiimsy something 
 which in a few men passes as character : they are 
 sketchy, casual, superficial, and unsatisfactory. 
 On this foundation nothing secure can be built, 
 for one of the first conditions of concentration 
 is that business must be taken seriously. Occa- 
 
CONCENTRATION 69 
 
 sionally, however, we meet men who want to get 
 on, but who suffer from the mind-wandering 
 habit : they start out on the main line of thought, 
 but anybody or anything on the side of the track 
 can switch them off on to a side issue. They de- 
 plore this habit and want to cultivate the power 
 of bestowing attention at will. 
 
 What ought they to do? The answer is short 
 and simple: get interested. When your heart is 
 in your work, only a tired body, a weary brain, 
 or a real worry will make concentration impos- 
 sible. I do not deny the presence of certain help- 
 ful conditions, and perhaps it would be wise to 
 deal with these at once. Tranquillity of mind 
 and body is necessary. A sharp neuralgia or a 
 bit of bad news, or both, will render your task so 
 difficult as to be impracticable. "Driving" your 
 brain when it is tired after a day's hard work is 
 not good practice. Any kind of overstrain is a 
 mistake, and overstrain means persistence in the 
 pursuit of a tired line of thought. Rest can often 
 be secured by change. The figures which refuse 
 to balance after three hours' analysis may bal- 
 ance easily in five minutes, when you bring to 
 them a clear mind refreshed by sleep or by an 
 hour spent socially with your friends. 
 
 The hahit of concentration needs time for its 
 formation. To take pains one week and to bo 
 careless the next is bad training. Continuity of 
 effort is desirable. Begin with brief periods at 
 first and increase the time slowly. Half an hour 
 
70 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 may be long enougli to start with — later you may 
 find three hours no burden. 
 
 But interest is the real emotive power. If you, 
 as a business man, realize the stern necessities 
 of modern competition, if you have a vigorous 
 ambition to prevail where other men lose, if you 
 are in dead earnest, then there will be no trouble 
 about concentration. The depth and power of 
 your enthusiasm will carry you through. It will 
 be no difficulty to work out problems in commer- 
 cial arithmetic, to sift the chaff from the wheat in 
 trade news, and to weigh the pros and cons of a 
 big expenditure. Your difficulty will not be to 
 concentrate, but to find time for an observance 
 of the laws of mental and physical health. The 
 man who complains of mind-wandering may be 
 suffering from a nervous disorder, but often 
 enough he is simply destitute of interest : he pur- 
 sues his calling without an emotion. It does not 
 grip him. His eyes never brighten as he thinks 
 about it, and his pulse never quickens its beats. 
 He may be industrious in a dull sort of way, punc- 
 tual in keeping hours, correct in the discharge of 
 his duties, and possibly honest to the core, but 
 his motive power is necessity. He works because 
 he must. The other kind of man works because 
 it is his treasure. Consequently every mental fac- 
 ulty is in a state of complete subjugation to the 
 main interest. 
 
 But there is another kind of concentration I 
 must notice : let us call it vocational. You meet 
 
CONCENTEATION 71 
 
 with people from time to time called "wobblers." 
 Last year they were salesmen ; this year they are 
 going to be druggists; next year they will be in 
 a factory, and something different the year after. 
 Then again there are the men who follow two or 
 three different businesses at the same time. They 
 keep a store perhaps, manage a gas company, act 
 as secretary for a trade association, and do other 
 things in addition. Where the returns from one 
 source are small, it is only natural that further 
 sources of income should be sought, and in such 
 cases a man may be quite equal to the demands 
 made upon him. But when the returns from one 
 source are ample and the duties onerous, only a 
 man of exceptional parts can venture into new 
 regions and dabble with interests that bring more 
 money. Experience proves unquestionably that 
 concentration in one sphere of labor pays best. A 
 distribution of energy calls for a finer discretion 
 than the average man possesses, and even so the 
 tax upon his health is generally greater than he 
 can bear. The apostolic method "This one thing 
 I do" is a wise rule for the modern man. 
 
 Methods of Training 
 
 (1) In a guide-book to mental power I find the 
 following: "By a supreme effort of will, drive 
 every thought and fancy out of the mind. Hold 
 the mind a blank as long as possible." This is 
 inadvisable, perhaps impossible, and certainly 
 
72 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 dangerous. It reminds one of the invalid old 
 man who was asked how he spent his time. "Oh," 
 he replied, "sometimes I just sets and thinks. 
 Then again I just sets." Now the man who just 
 ' ' sets ' ' is evidently a gifted mortal, but he is nt)t 
 to our fancy. Besides, this cultivation of the 
 blank habit as a preliminary to concentration has 
 no mental value, and people who practise it will 
 experience a peculiar kind of exhaustion which 
 does the brain no good. 
 
 (2) When in a state of mental calm, select some 
 subject in which you are interested. Let us sup- 
 pose it is poster advertisements. Get one which 
 is new and resolve to look at it and think of 
 nothing else until you have discerned the artist's 
 intention and weighed the pros and cons of his 
 achievement. The danger spot is where you will 
 be tempted to compare his work with that of other 
 artists. Keep comparisons at a distance. If you 
 fail, don't despair! Return to the picture before 
 you and concentrate as before. To aid your ef- 
 forts, use pen and ink, freely jotting down your 
 thoughts as they come, afterwards rearranging 
 them in sequential order. Eepeat this exercise, 
 with other subjects for which you have a decided 
 liking. 
 
 (3) Select a subject for which you have a slight 
 distaste, or one in which it is difficult to arouse 
 interest. Eesolve to devote a full hour to the 
 work of examining it in all its bearings. Let us 
 suppose the history of the Alaskan boundary is 
 
CONCENTKATION" 73 
 
 a theme towards which you have no leanings. 
 Eead a book on this or an allied topic and keep 
 your mind close to the reading until the allotted 
 time has elapsed. You may then be sufficiently 
 interested to proceed. Vary the exercise from 
 time to time, but always take half as many of the 
 distasteful kind as you do of the preceding. 
 
 (4) Narrate the observations made on a cycle 
 ride or a long walk. The method to be pursued 
 in writing is to go over every step of the road 
 mentally (if possible, beginning at the end and 
 working backwards), reseeing everything and 
 making a written record. This must be done at 
 one sitting and without interruption. The writ- 
 ing should occupy at least thirty minutes. No 
 attempt must be made to write a descriptive es- 
 say, as the exercise is purely one on concentration. 
 
 (5) Write out answers to the following ques- 
 tions : 
 
 (a) How would an increased power of mental 
 concentration favorably affect your own particu- 
 lar business? 
 
 (b) Do you find any difficulty in concentrating 
 when you have a deep interest in the subject? 
 
LESSON V 
 
 THE COMMBECIAL VALUE OF KEEN OBSERVATION' 
 
 In regard to observation, which seems to he the easiest of 
 mental operations, we are taught by experience to rank it 
 among the rarest. — E. P. Whipple in "Success" 
 
 It has been said there are five gateways to 
 knowledge, and of these vision is the most im- 
 portant. The statement may or may not be true, 
 but a good case can be made out in support of it. 
 One has only to take the experiences of a single 
 day and tabulate them according to their origin, 
 in seeing or hearing, in order to realize how much 
 the eye serves for the acquisition of information 
 and resultant perceptions. But the relative value 
 of the organs of sense is not a question we can 
 deal with here: it belongs to pure psychology. 
 All that is necessary at the present moment is 
 to appreciate the importance of observation as 
 a factor in mental development, and leaving in the 
 hands of the psychologist its relation to other 
 factors, we pursue our special study with a true 
 sense of its mental perspective. 
 
 Observation means something more than see- 
 ing things — the seeing is but half the real proc- 
 ess. The eye may be the veriest glutton for 
 ' ' sights ' ' and yet leave the mind starved and un- 
 
 74 
 
COMMEBCIAL VALUE OP OBSERVATION 75 
 
 reflective. Newman speaks reprovingly of the 
 man who travels round the world without get- 
 ting a new idea — almost like the individual who 
 traversed the United States and returned to tell 
 his people he did not like the American way of 
 eating hoiled eggs! And this after seeing the 
 magic of Niagara in the sunlight, and in the dark- 
 ness when the stars looked down on its roaring 
 tumult — after crossing almost measureless prai- 
 ries and rushing through canyons in the Rocky 
 Mountains into the gardens of California ! He 
 had seen many things with the eye, a hundred 
 wonders of nature and civilization, but they had 
 never ripened into perceptions, nor in any way 
 become part and parcel of himself! 
 
 Now, the observation we speak about is observ- 
 ing with inference, as the psychologists put 
 it — seeing with the mental eye by means of the 
 physical eye. To see fifty things in a day and 
 catalogue them is an item of little consequence, 
 except as a surface training of faculty ; to see six 
 things and obtain sis new ideas is a real intellec- 
 tual work. In business the difference between 
 an advance and a mere standstill, or even a retro- 
 gression, often depends upon a single perception 
 — arising, it may be, out of a number of small 
 happenings that come easily within the range of 
 every man's vision, but the true inwardness of 
 which was discovered by only one man — and he 
 reaps the reward. 
 
 But before writing at length on the commercial 
 
76 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 value of a tutored eye, it will be interesting to 
 show the values that are scientific and literary, 
 likewise the value belonging to the artist. No 
 reflection is needed to show how much a painter, 
 for example, depends on accuracy of observation : 
 his physical eye must take in the exact forms of 
 phenomena — his mental eye must see them in 
 new groupings, while retaining their original 
 shape or modified by their new relation to other 
 phenomena. It is precisely the same with the 
 novelist, for his success in characterization turns 
 upon the fidelity with which he reproduces actual 
 traits of bodily and mental expression. The peo- 
 ple who professedly live in his pages are either 
 portraits of real men and women, or new crea- 
 tions to whose personalities he has given vraiseui.- 
 hlance — else they are mere puppets who cannot 
 live in the reader's imagination, partly because 
 the writer failed in observation and partly be- 
 cause he has not mastered the art of writing. 
 
 The scientist has always been our greatest 
 teacher of observation.* He has shown us how 
 easy it is to be deceived by appearances ; how in- 
 dividual observers, looking steadily at the same 
 phenomenon, may disagree as to what really hap- 
 pened in the changes that took place, and how 
 
 * Observation, accurate and sympathetic, true-eyed and 
 true-hearted, is the mother alike of literature and science, and 
 just in so far as we, too, are observers, shall we be able to 
 appreciate the art woi-k of science and the art work of liter- 
 iture. — Lloyd Morgan, "Psychology for Teachers," p. 209. 
 
COMMEECTAL VALUE OF OBSEKVATION 77 
 
 necessary it is to correct the vagaries of the eye 
 by the severe test of experiment. Without these 
 precautions there can be no trustworthy knowl- 
 edge of nature. Indeed, a trained observer in 
 science is a man whose vision and judgment are 
 in a condition of the nicest possible adjustment, 
 the natural belief of the eye being met by the 
 cautious skepticism of the mind. 
 
 Now, observation in business has a similar story 
 to unfold, both as regards the origin of profit- 
 making ideas and the need of training and ad- 
 justment. As in the case of the artist, the novel- 
 ist, and the scientist, success depends upon things 
 seen and accurately interpreted. Evidence of this 
 is forthcoming from the following opinions kindly 
 communicated to the author at his request by the 
 gentlemen referred to : 
 
 Question: How much of your success do you 
 owe to keen observation? 
 
 Name. Answer. 
 
 Sir Hiram Maxim : Fifty per cent. 
 
 A. W. Gamage : Seventy-five per cent. 
 
 T. A. Edison : A very considerable amount. 
 
 Stewart Dawson : Nearly all of it. 
 
 Sir Hiram Maxim is so well known that his 
 reply does not call for explanation, and the same 
 remark applies to Mr. Edison. In both instances 
 their inventions have brought them before the 
 public in a manner which is hardly possible to 
 
78 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 the mercliant or trader. Mr. Gamage and Mr. 
 Dawson are Britishers who from small beginnings 
 have developed businesses of colossal proportions, 
 the one as head of a large store, and the other as 
 the proprietor of one of the largest jewelry es- 
 tablishments in the world. An average of the 
 testimony of these four men cannot be stated in 
 figures, but seventy per cent, would not be an 
 exaggeration, and the fact is worth pondering. 
 It is a much higher percentage than we ourselves 
 should have imagined to be correct, and it com- 
 pels some interesting queries. How far would 
 the opinion of these men be indorsed by other 
 men? I have tested it by personal inquiry and 
 find it is accepted as true. I have also put the 
 matter before the readers of a weekly journal 
 with the same result. I have observed men in 
 the making and can come to no other conclusion. 
 Observation takes a man out of the ruts into 
 which it is a normal tendency for many to travel. 
 The proprietor of a factory discovers a good 
 and economic method of making doors or manu- 
 facturing locks, and, even though he has a pro- 
 gressive mentality, he unconsciously drifts into 
 believing his method has some finality in it. The 
 keen realization that there may be a better way 
 would keep his mind open and his eyes alert. 
 This, indeed, is the secret of the American readi- 
 ness to scrap new machinery for the newest, and 
 the newest for the last thing that came from the 
 workshop only yesterday. To conservative minds 
 
COMMBECIAL VALUE OF OBSEEVATION 79 
 
 it savors of reckless extravagance, but, after all, 
 it is the compelling power of invention, and in- 
 vention is the result of observation with infer- 
 ence. 
 
 That men of professional and commercial dis- 
 tinction should give so high a place to trained 
 faculty suggests to others the desirability of not 
 leaving that training to chance. Against this it 
 may be urged that these men did not themselves 
 pursue such a course of study. The reply is a 
 direct contradiction. They did. They trained in 
 their actual daily duties. Of course every man 
 may determine to follow their example, but not 
 every man in a subordinate position has an op- 
 portunity of doing so. His vision is confined to 
 a round of work, leaving little leisure for wider 
 and deeper observations. Besides, there is no 
 reason why mental education should be exclu- 
 sively reserved for any one set of circum- 
 stances — even for those that are most pertinent 
 and practical. 
 
 Mal-observation 
 
 A true observer not only sees, and not only 
 thinks about what he sees, but he tries to think 
 correctly. The stages here represented are sen- 
 sation, perception, reflection, and conclusion, in 
 the form of judgment. 
 
 To show how sketchy our ordinary habits of 
 observation are, it is only necessary to take a 
 dozen average men and ask them to draw from 
 
80 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 memory a picture of their own watches, being 
 careful to show the shape, the figures, and the 
 hands. At least half of them will put in the fig- 
 ure VI, though invariably it is obliterated by the 
 second-hand. The manner in which a detail can 
 escape the untrained eye is almost incredible. Not 
 that the detail is itself of first-rate importance — 
 it may be purely secondary or of no consequence 
 whatever — but that the eye can see so familiar an 
 object as a watch and yet be unable, even uncon- 
 sciously, to take in one of its chief features. 
 
 Prof. Claparede, of the University of Geneva, 
 once gave his students a test in this matter of 
 unconscious observation by asking them to de- 
 scribe a certain window in one of the college 
 buildings which they passed every time they came 
 into his class-room. Forty-four out of fifty-four 
 denied the window existed ! * No doubt this was 
 a particularly bad case, but such tests may be 
 made to mean more than they can legitimately 
 carry. The students might have asked the pro- 
 fessor how many buttons he had on his waistcoat, 
 or whether there was a band of blue in the cloth 
 of his smoking- jacket — and he might have been 
 unable to answer. The point is this : no man can 
 afford to use his time in amassing an encyclo- 
 paedia of observations that amount to nothing 
 when the pile is complete. The students who 
 never noticed the window may be smart fellows 
 notwithstanding, and the professor is no less ca- 
 
 * Experiences sur le Temoignage, p. 358. 
 
COMMBECIAL VALUE OF OBSEEVATION 81 
 
 pable because he is a button sliort in his waist- 
 coat calculation, and is ignorant of the delicate 
 blue in his smoking-jacket. On the other hand, 
 these failures do indicate the need of training, not 
 with the object of making us notice absolutely 
 everything — the exact pattern of every man's 
 neckwear, for instance — that would be painful; 
 but with the object of preventing losses due to 
 visual laziness or mental indifference. I do not 
 refer to the scientific training of the tea-taster 
 or the wine expert, whose palates are brought to 
 a high state of efficiency by practice and experi- 
 ence. I refer to the average man of business who 
 depends on his own abilities for advancement. 
 He must not only see things, but see them truly. 
 
 Science is full of opposite illustrations of this 
 fact. Wundt in his Psychologie shows how easy 
 it is to observe falsely, even when great care is 
 used. He instances a case where Pierre Huber, 
 a reliable man, took an ant from its nest and re- 
 turned it after an absence of four months. It 
 was immediately "recognized" by its friends, 
 from which observation Huber inferred ants have 
 memory. Lord Avebury confirmed the fact, but 
 not the interpretation. He took ant larvae from 
 the nest and returned them when fully developed. 
 The result was the same as before — they got a 
 friendly reception, but there was no "recogni- 
 tion." It was the action of the blind instinct. 
 
 We find like conditions in business. Not every 
 change detected as a chance is necessarily as good 
 
82 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 as it looks. It may have been observed by only 
 one man, but before it can be seized there must 
 be a trial, an experimenting, a testing of what 
 the eye sees by that which the mind knows. More 
 than one man has ''seen" real imitation rubber, 
 but it vanished when the stern fact of a few hun- 
 dred miles' wear stared him in the face. 
 
 Training in Observation 
 
 As the mind is a unity, there is no such thing 
 as the isolated training of a single faculty. In 
 following up the exercises of this section a stu- 
 dent is using every power of the mind: feeling 
 in his constant desire to excel, thought in his 
 persistent reflection, and will in the directive con- 
 trol of his mental forces. Nevertheless, it is pos- 
 sible to train a single sense where the training 
 of a single faculty may not be so obvious, and 
 the first aim should be to acquire the ability to 
 see many things at a glance, so that by means of 
 exercises consciously carried out the eye will af- 
 terwards unconsciously transmit to the mind an 
 ever-increasing number of sensations. 
 
 Take an illustration from language: when we 
 speak to one another, we are not thinking of the 
 rules of grammar. We have left the rules behind 
 us long ago, and, instinctively and by habit, we use 
 the singulars and plurals in the proper way. Now, 
 this section deals with the grammar of observa- 
 
COMMEECIAL VALUE OF OBSEEVATION" 83 
 
 tion — the rules that must be followed in order to 
 insure efficiency — but after a period of practice 
 you will not consciously think of these rules. You 
 will have made them part of your intellectual out- 
 fit, just as English grammar is, and you will no- 
 tice things unconsciously where before you had to 
 do so deliberately. That is the raison d'etre of 
 the system of training. 
 
 The literature of this part of the subject is not 
 as full as it might be. Indeed, for adults it can 
 hardly be said to exist. Harriet Martineau's 
 "How to Observe" is a guide to the traveller as 
 moralist and reformer. Colonel Jackson 's ' ' What 
 to Observe" is much on the same lines, and both 
 are out of print. The rest is a series, mainly 
 for school children, except one or two manuals 
 specially prepared for artists. Consequently we 
 are left to our own devices and shall divide the 
 educative process into two parts: (1) General, 
 and (2) Particular. 
 
 The first deals with the training of observation 
 on broad lines with no definite end in view, and 
 the second confines its attention strictly to busi- 
 ness. 
 
 General Training 
 
 (a) The classic example of excellence in ob- 
 servation plus reflection is Shakespeare, and I 
 will quote from an interesting chapter by Prof. 
 Halleck on "How Shakespeare trained his 
 
84 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Senses" in his "Psycliology and Psychic Cul- 
 ture": 
 
 "Although Shakespeare received fine sense training from 
 the field, the forest, and the sky, his genius must have made 
 him instinctively know that this v^as incomplete. There is 
 to-day the tendency to train the senses almost exclusively on 
 natural objects. The flower, leaf, bird, insect, and sky ought 
 always to be included in the list of text-books for sensory 
 training, but Shakespeare's example ought to emphasize to us 
 the fact that these are not all. Human beings of almost every 
 occupation vrere observed with keen interest by Shakespeare 
 in his boyhood. Had he not supplemented the training due 
 to natural objects by watching his own kind as carefully as 
 he noted the 'strange fowl' alighting on 'neighbouring ponds,' 
 we should not to-day have his dramas. The rascal Autolycus 
 and the alewife Mistress Quickly demanded as keen observa- 
 tion as the violets or the temple-haunting martlet. In no re- 
 spect does Shakespeare tower above the rest of humanity more 
 than in his careful observation of all classes of men in every 
 mood." 
 
 Now, although it is true to say that a man of 
 business needs special training for special ends, 
 it must be admitted that general training has a 
 reflex influence upon mental activities of a specific 
 commercial character — eye-training of any kind 
 will assist in developing observational powers for 
 making profits. Besides, the broad cultural value 
 is an item not to be forgotten. 
 
 Below is given a suggestive outline of a four 
 weeks' course of study, to be varied at the read- 
 er's convenience as regards the order prescribed, 
 or to be expanded by the inclusion of other series 
 which may be to his advantage : 
 
COMMEECIAL VALUE OF OBSERVATION 85 
 
 First Week: Natural Objects — 
 
 Study clouds and the face of the sky. Read 
 Euskin on clouds, and see how far you can follow 
 him by actual observation. Do not be content 
 with impressions or perceptions. Seek to have 
 clear judgments. When you see a sky color that 
 is hard to define, cast about you until you find the 
 right word. Use a note-book freely. 
 
 Second Week: Human Faces — 
 
 You may commence with a number of questions, 
 or you may dispense with them. Some may find 
 it more interesting to form a theory, e. g., that 
 facial expression is one of the most misleading 
 of human phenomena. Other people would rather 
 form their theories after scrutinizing scores of 
 faces. 
 
 What is a hard face? And tragic eyes — what 
 are they? Is there really a criminal face? Does 
 character thus reveal itself or hide behind a mask? 
 
 Such questions, in any case, will arise in the 
 inquiring mind, and perhaps it is as well to draw 
 up a list, ere we go forth to study our fellows. 
 
 Third Week: Pictures — 
 
 In the galleries, in the picture-shops, in draw- 
 ing-rooms — everywhere ! The point of view may 
 vary: you may seek pleasure and enlightenment, 
 or you may study as indications of the occupants' 
 character the pictures in the houses you enter, 
 
86 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 but the main thing is to see them, to think of 
 them, to understand them, and to theorize about 
 them. 
 
 Fourth Week: Streets — 
 
 Has a particular street a character that can be 
 distinguished from that of another street? Is 
 there any difference between streets with many 
 public houses or saloons in them and those with 
 few? What is the difference, and how does it 
 show itself? Can there be a "Soul of London" 
 or of Chicago? Is our talk about streets and 
 cities a mere fanciful nothing, the reality of which 
 amounts to bricks and mortar rated at so much 
 in the dollar or the pound ? 
 
 Draw up your list of questions, and then begin 
 to study streets: mean streets, dirty streets, 
 streets of model flats for working-men, wide 
 streets, narrow streets, the alley and the "dead 
 end" — squares, crescents, and "gardens." All 
 these are like clothes, and like clothes they con- 
 tain a philosophy. What is it? 
 
 This plan for the period of a month is intended 
 only as a suggestion. Observation cannot be 
 taught as one would teach geometry or botany, 
 and each student will have to map out a course 
 for himself; but if he will do it intelligently and 
 follow the plan conscientiously, we are certain 
 that the tutorial results will be as surprising as 
 they are refining. 
 
COMMEECIAL VALUE OF OBSBEVATION 87 
 
 Do not despise those aids which appear to be 
 mechanical. Thus, in the following figure 
 
 you might not be able to tell at a glance how many 
 dots there are ; you will have to count. But there 
 are children in advanced schools whose powers of 
 observation are so trained that they can "count 
 without counting," and a glance is sufficient to 
 tell them how many dots there are in a figure like 
 the one provided. It is no small advantage to 
 have quickened perception to enable us to take in 
 details rapidly. 
 
 Particular Training 
 
 In its fundamental state the business mind is 
 concerned with one thing: How can I make a 
 profit by rendering a service to the buyer? Every 
 man has his own variation of the question. The 
 grocer is on the lookout for new customers, the 
 advertising agent for new patrons and new spaces 
 for display, the chemist for some compound that 
 will cure diseases. We are all on the qui vive for 
 a profit. Success and failure, to a certain de- 
 gree, turn on the ability to notice the chances 
 
88 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 whicli others fail to notice, hence trained faculty 
 is of the highest importance. I cannot use a bet- 
 ter illustration than that of Baden Powell's "Aids 
 to Scouting." A scout is a man whose eyes are 
 trained to see signs of the enemy by no means 
 existent for untutored vision, and to interpret 
 these signs with the best possible story of the 
 movements they represent. His training is a fine 
 study in inductive logic, and "Aids to Scouting" 
 is an excellent text-book of that science. The 
 author says that on one occasion during the Mata- 
 bele War a British force was encamped near a 
 high hill and believed the enemy did not know of 
 its proximity. He started out at night with other 
 scouts to examine the enemy's position six or 
 eight miles away, as a surprise night attack was 
 intended. Stealthily and silently they proceeded, 
 when suddenly high up on the hill he noticed a 
 quick flash, a flicker, then darkness again. This 
 incident conveyed much. It told him the enemy 
 knew of the presence of the British and were on 
 the watch against surprises. As he says, "On 
 the strength of this one flash of a match our whole 
 plan of action was altered." 
 
 Take a further illustration from an entirely 
 different source. Lord Avebury tells us that 
 there are savages who can recognize individuals 
 by their footprints. A Mr. Laing, while travel- 
 ling near Moreton Bay in Australia, pointed to a 
 footprint and asked whose it was. The guide 
 glanced at it without stopping his horse and at 
 
COMMEECIAL VALUE OF OBSEEVATION 89 
 
 once answered: "White fellow call him Tiger." 
 This turned out to be correct ! * 
 
 Now these instances of highly trained faculty 
 are suggestive of what can he done by concentra- 
 tion. In the ease of the savage, or of the Arab 
 who knows the footprints of his own camel, it 
 is only natural that the absence of civilized habits 
 should result in the acquisition of a sense per- 
 ception quite extraordinary in degree; but the 
 scout, to whom the position of a horseshoe lying 
 on the road is full of meaning, is not far behind, 
 and the medical specialist with a stethoscope has 
 probably finer hearing than any of James Feni- 
 more Cooper's redskins. 
 
 The argument, therefore, is this: the man of 
 business, in his own sphere, may develop by prac- 
 tice a sense perception as keen as any other, so 
 that no opportunity slips by unnoticed, although 
 he may fail to score, because he misread the true 
 meaning. Let us see how it works : In the daily 
 paper to-day there is a story about an actress 
 who "noticed" a small painting just peeping out 
 from behind a mass of second-hand wares in a 
 Fifth Avenue shop. She stopped to examine it, 
 and having been trained in art appreciation, she 
 saw it was a real "find." Offering $2.00 for it, 
 the dealer accepted the price and she got a pic- 
 ture that was a genuine Eubens worth $10,000. 
 Chance? Not at all — it is a good illustration of 
 the general eye-training which takes in objects 
 
 * Prehistoric Times, p. 579. 
 
80 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY: 
 
 that otherwise escape notice, and of special train- 
 ing which enables one to see a value where other 
 people^ — the dealer here — could not. 
 
 To revert to the notion of scouting : The busi- 
 ness man should make a study of the signs which 
 denote the activity of his competitors, the im- 
 minence of coming changes, and the prospects of 
 the future. John Jones notices a firm of solici- 
 tors at a property sale and sees how eagerly they 
 go about making a purchase of a big lot down- 
 town. He may idly wonder why they are so keen 
 for this purchase, or he may be wide awake with 
 curiosity ; but the difference between the two men- 
 tal conditions is the difference between a struggle 
 ahead and no struggle at all, for the law men 
 represent his chief competitors and a purchase of 
 the property means a fierce fight for supremacy. 
 
 Now, this suggests the importance of news, and 
 every progressive man should have his own press 
 agency in the sense that he collects and codifies 
 trade news for himself by personal observation 
 and reading. The journalist is always aiming 
 at being ahead of time — this morning's news is 
 dead, and his eyes have a forward look. So should 
 it be in business. To be in time is as important 
 in the market as anywhere else, and to be ahead 
 of time brings the same financial reward. 
 
 Not long ago, after the conclusion of the Boer 
 War, a Boer was buying clothes in a New York 
 store for his family of boys. The salesman was 
 one of the best the store possessed for selling a 
 
COMMEECIAL VALUE OF OBSEEVATION 91 
 
 big bill, because he always sent away Ms custom- 
 ers satisfied and well supplied with, goods. He 
 had succeeded, as usual, in filling a large order, 
 including hats for all the boys except one little 
 chap who wore a "sailor." It had on it an in- 
 scription which was so plain and suggestive that 
 one can only marvel it did not immediately at- 
 tract the smart salesman's eye. His attention 
 was called to it by another salesman. The words 
 ran, "His Majesty's Ship Powerful." The situ- 
 ation dawned on him at once, and stepping up 
 to one of the elder boys he smilingly remarked, 
 "That's a nice line on your little brother's hat- 
 band." The elder brother read the words, and 
 like a flash snatched the hat from the little boy's 
 head and exclaimed rather excitedly : 
 
 "Please show me to your boy's hat depart- 
 ment. ' ' 
 
 Can it be that he, too, had failed to observe 
 the anomaly? The Britisher who reads this in- 
 cident may be sorry his Majesty's ship lost a 
 good advertisement, but he can hardly be sur- 
 prised that a son of a vanquished Boer should 
 object to parading the streets of New York wear- 
 ing a badge of the conqueror like a phylactery! 
 The hat might, it is true, have been "made in 
 Germany" — a reflection offering some relief to 
 indignant feelings, but in this story of an act of 
 observation the merit must be ascribed to the 
 man who figures least in the narrative — who 
 saw the anomaly that escaped the eyes of the 
 
92 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 other two, and by calling attention to it was the 
 means of securing an additional sale.* 
 
 (a) Cultivate the habit of looking everywhere 
 for trade news, but look particularly in your trade 
 journals — not the hurried look which you give the 
 morning paper, but the studied reading of every 
 item. Among the "Personal Notes" you find 
 that Mr. Samuel E. Baytiff has gone to England. 
 Does that convey anything to you? Perhaps not 
 at first until you remember having lunched with 
 him a week ago and he said nothing about the trip 
 abroad. You go into the matter more deeply, 
 make discreet inquiries, and find at last that a 
 big business scheme affecting your interests is 
 afoot and you must be up and doing. 
 
 "News" may come in quite a different manner. 
 You meet it at the club, or you hear it at a so- 
 cial function. Time given to sociability is not 
 necessarily wasted time — indeed, it may be time 
 exceedingly well-spent, both as a mental recrea- 
 tion and as affording an opportunity of gleaning 
 valuable information. Like everything else, the 
 evil lies in excess. 
 
 * Salesmanship, Vol. I, p. 31. 
 
LESSON VI 
 
 IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 
 
 Imagination is always the ruling and the divine power, and 
 the rest of man is only the instrument which it sounds or the 
 tablet on which it writes. — Buskin 
 
 When Prof. Tyndall delivered his memorable 
 address on the uses of imagination to science he 
 had to plead on behalf of a mental power that 
 was regarded as quite unsuitable for exact re- 
 search. "There are tories even in science," he 
 said, "who regard imagination as a faculty to be 
 feared and avoided." Since those days, how- 
 ever, the progress of systematized knowledge has 
 justified the claim of the celebrated physicist, and 
 the gift of creative thought, once the sole and 
 distinctive possession of literary genius, 
 
 " — to madness near allied," 
 
 has now established itself as a responsible agent 
 in furthering the discoveries of physics, chemis- 
 try, astronomy, and biology. 
 
 Of course the first guesses at the riddle of ex- 
 istence were permeated with imaginative effort, 
 and if "Newton's passage from a falling apple 
 to a falling moon was, at the outset, a leap of 
 the imagination," the same must be postulated 
 
 93 
 
94 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 of the Eleatics, and of the Eastern philosopliers 
 who lived before them. The theory of Herodotus 
 in reference to the rising of the Nile was perhaps 
 the earliest attempt at science, and yet it con- 
 tained all the intellectual qualities of the very 
 latest hypothesis. 
 
 But heresies die hard, and although it is al- 
 lowed that imagination has certain uses — ^mark 
 the word — outside the realm of art, men still be- 
 lieve that its primary function, if not its true 
 and only mission, is found in poetry, painting, 
 and prose literature. 
 
 As for imagination in business — that is, in fac- 
 tories and workshops, in docks and offices, in 
 buying and selling merchandise — well, the idea 
 is absurd. The world of commerce, we are in- 
 formed, is essentially practical; it is governed 
 by facts and common sense; imagination is just 
 the one thing to which it is opposed. So indig- 
 nant are the partisans of these beliefs that it is 
 only after a comfortable dinner you can persuade 
 them to talk at all. 
 
 I have sometimes put the matter to the test by 
 asking my literary friends the bluntest of ques- 
 tions in the bluntest possible manner: "When 
 Swinburne was imagining Atalanta in Calydon 
 and Lipton imagining the means of adapting par- 
 ticular blends of tea to the quality of local water 
 supplies, was the poet using a faculty quite dif- 
 ferent from that of the provision dealer?" I 
 confess the replies to this question were more 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 95 
 
 strenuous in language than they were clear in 
 meaning, but they all agreed that Swinburne's 
 mental activity was imagination par excellence, 
 while Lipton's was mere reasoning about the prof- 
 itable distribution of a commercial product. With 
 this verdict I find myself in total disagreement; 
 it confuses ideal values with real values, and it 
 is bad psychology. How differently did the an- 
 cients regard these matters, for, as Bacon says, 
 founders of states, generals, and lawgivers were 
 with much state honored as demi-gods, such as 
 Hercules, Theseus, Minos, Romulus ; but inventors 
 and discoverers of new arts to benefit man's life 
 were ever consecrated as gods themselves, as 
 Ceres, Mercury, and Apollo ! 
 
 II 
 
 That a i5ne poem, full of real singing and re- 
 plete with chiselled phrases, is of greater national 
 significance than the inventiveness embodied in 
 an improved collar-button may be readily ad- 
 mitted: idealism will always take precedence of 
 mere utility. But it is impossible to argue that 
 therefore the poem is a result of imagination per 
 se, while the despised though immensely useful 
 little collar-button is the product of intelligence 
 working on a lower plane. Both are the offspring 
 of mind working in the same way, but directed 
 to different ends: the one aims at achievement 
 on the lines of the ideal, the other is content with 
 
96 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 mere usefulness on the lines of the real. My 
 argumentative friends believed they had cornered 
 me when they instituted a bold comparison be- 
 tween a celebrated poet and a soap-maker. ''Do 
 you mean to say, ' ' they exclaimed, ' ' that the lan- 
 guage of an advertisement in the Dail^ Tribune 
 demands the same, faculty to produce it as the 
 language of Shelley? Here is a shout from the 
 soap-maker : 
 
 WILKINSON'S PEERLESS CLEANSER 
 
 Now, contrast it with lines like these : 
 
 Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity. 
 
 Do you tell us that the soap-maker and the poet 
 used the same kind of imagination?" 
 
 It was expected that I should blush for very 
 shame, and slink from the presence of my critics 
 like a guilty cur, but I saw no reason to do either, 
 I replied that there is only one imagination, just 
 as there is only one memory. I may try to recall 
 a saying of Plato, or Goethe, or Browning, or I 
 may make an effort to remember the price I paid 
 last year for breakfast bacon, or whether it rained 
 on Easter Monday, but in each case I use the one 
 faculty of memory. So with the imagination. 
 There is not a set of brain-cells for imagination 
 in poetry and another set for business. Besides, 
 the mot in literature has its perfect correspond- 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 97 
 
 ence in commerce. Flaubert never looked more 
 carefully for the one word to express his meaning 
 than the business man does to set forth the pre- 
 cise nature, use, and attractiveness of his com- 
 modities. When Stevenson in The Silverado 
 Squatters describes a pail of water being carried 
 uphill, the water lipping over the sides, and a 
 quivering sunbeam in the centre, we can see with 
 what care the italicized words were selected. But 
 may not the soap-maker have exercised a similar 
 care? For aught we know, his phrase about 
 the "peerless cleanser" may have cost hours of 
 sustained reflection. He had to consider the need 
 of brief and easily understood terms to describe 
 the article adequately, and to attract the public 
 eye as well as to create a desire to buy. I claim 
 that between the mental activity involved in seek- 
 ing such a phrase, and that of seeking the mot 
 in literature, there is no difference whatever. 
 Modern advertising is in fact a triumph of the 
 imagination. For years the world of commerce 
 was content to announce its existence in the bald- 
 est manner. It gave its name and address, in- 
 formed the public what it existed for, but beyond 
 this all was vague and unattractive. There was 
 no glow, no art, no understanding of human na- 
 ture. Nowadays we follow a different method. 
 Advertising has its text-book of psychology and 
 its own art studios — which is only another way 
 of saying that it has pressed imagination into 
 its service. 
 
98 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGYi 
 
 III 
 
 Carry the argument a step further. Sir Walter 
 Scott, in the prime of his powers, was overtaken 
 by financial disaster and found himself morally, 
 though not legally, responsible for £120,000. How 
 could he raise so large an amount? The question 
 is more easily asked than answered. He had to 
 imagine a way out of his difSculties by seeking 
 suggestions, selecting the best, testing them, and 
 finally arranging a practical scheme. Was there 
 then a real psychological ditference between the 
 imagining of this plan for raising money and the 
 imagining of the siege of Torquilstone in Ivan- 
 hoe? Did the brain-cells of the literary imagina- 
 tion go on a strike and refuse to be used for the 
 low-grade work of thinking in terms of cash ? The 
 question surely contains its own answer. 
 
 But what do the psychologists themselves say? 
 It must be admitted that as men of science they 
 are not prejudiced in favor of theories of mental 
 inspiration; and poets especially are sometimes 
 rather roughly handled when they claim functions 
 denied to the ordinary man. The results of "fine 
 frenzy" show up very badly in Dr. Crichton 
 Browne's "Dreamy Mental States" where "imag- 
 ination" is treated from the medical point of 
 view, and some of the poet's dearest fancies are 
 written down as insanities. It will be said that 
 an alienist is not a reliable critic — that he suffers 
 from the prejudice of the specialist. Perhaps so. 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 99 
 
 but take an authority like Th. Eibot, and wliat 
 do you find? That imagination is in no sense 
 whatever a prerogative of the idealist, despite 
 the form in which he expresses himself. In com- 
 paring the artistic with the commercial imagina- 
 tion, Eibot says: "There is an identity of na- 
 ture between the constructive imagination of the 
 mechanic and that of the artist : the difference is 
 only in the end, the means, and the conditions. 
 . . . Taken as a whole, its psychological mech- 
 anism is the same as that of any other creative 
 work. In the first instance the idea arises from 
 inspiration, from reflection, or by chance. Then 
 comes a period of fermenting, during which the 
 inventor sketches his construction in images, rep- 
 resents to himself the material to be worked upon, 
 the grouping of stockholders, the making up of 
 a capital, the mechanism of buying and selling, 
 etc. All this differs from the genesis of an aes- 
 thetic or mechanical work only in the end, or in 
 the nature of the images. In the second phase it 
 is necessary to proceed to execution — a castle in 
 the air must be made a solid structure. Then 
 appear a thousand obstructions in the details that 
 must be overcome. As everywhere else, minor in- 
 ventions become grafted on the principal inven- 
 tion; the author lets us see the poverty or rich- 
 ness of his mind in resources. Finally, the work 
 is triumphant, fails, or is only half successful." * 
 
 These are the opinions of the one man in Eu- 
 
 * The Creative Imagination, 
 
100 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 rope wlio more than any other has devoted a 
 trained mind to the elucidation of creative proc- 
 esses. One may therefore readily admit that, al- 
 though the poet will, as an idealist, always be 
 supreme, while the inventors of soap advertise- 
 ments and little collar-buttons will sink into ob- 
 livion, the purveyors of practicalities must not 
 on that account be denied a share in the use of 
 the one faculty which gives man his greatest dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 W 
 
 The modern merchant is too busy making 
 money — or trying to make money — to care much 
 about psychology; mental workings have no in- 
 trinsic interest for him, and were he' told that his 
 imagination and the poet's were at bottom one 
 and the same thing, the chances are that, instead 
 of being pleased, he might begin to ask whether 
 it was not a new form of insult, for this man at 
 the roll-top desk is sensitive, as all men are — 
 somewhere. One thing he specially dislikes, and 
 that is to be accused of having the transcendental 
 temperament which is equivalent to being a fool 
 "whose eyes are in the ends of the earth." He 
 is quite wrong, of course. 
 
 British commerce as we know it to-day had 
 its origin in the day-dreaming of practical men 
 who bound themselves together in trading guilds 
 for the purpose of capturing the best business the 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 101 
 
 world could offer. When bold discoverers re- 
 turned from voyages to unknown regions, these 
 adventurous traders were ready with schemes to 
 found new markets; they formed companies and 
 financed them; they selected reliable men to sail 
 the seas and sell their goods even where the face 
 of the white man had not been seen before. Take 
 the Society of Merchant Adventurers. Who, in 
 the face of a title like that, can deny imagination 
 in business 1 These were men who lived in the days 
 when chivalry was passing away; the tournament 
 was out of date, and the knight was no longer a 
 practicable ideal. But the spirit of adventure 
 needed an outlet, and commerce supplied the open- 
 ing; they pursued foreign trade in the spirit of 
 romance. And a business man who is a fighter 
 is ever a man to be feared. We read that "Sir 
 John Philpot, a London grocer, being much ham- 
 pered by Scottish pirates, did not wait for the 
 government to act, but fitted out a fleet at his 
 own expense and was so successful that he be- 
 came the scourge of the Scots, the fright of the 
 French, the delight of the Commons, the darling 
 of the merchants, and the hatred of some envi- 
 ous Lords." 
 
 The expansion of American commerce has the 
 same story to tell. Indeed, the spirit of adventure 
 has left the old country and settled in the new. 
 On this continent more than anywhere else the 
 commercial imagination is at work ; men are ever 
 seeing the unseen and realizing it objectively. In 
 
102 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 the far west they gazed upon barren wastes and 
 imagined irrigation, bringing in its train a fruit- 
 ful soil, abundance of useful products, and a pros- 
 perous people, so that now the wilderness rejoices 
 in plenty, and fruits and flowers adorn a once 
 unproductive region. Some men "saw" manu- 
 factures, others steel, others railroads — that is, 
 before these beneficent facts of industry became 
 real, they were ideal — creatures of imagination. 
 
 But let me supply another and more striking 
 instance: The trade of New York City is grow- 
 ing, growing, growing. It grew last century, and 
 it grows now. Where is it going to end? That 
 is the question which the shipping trade especially 
 is asking itself, and its anxiety is embodied in 
 the presence of an expert who sits in an office 
 with maps and charts before him. His business 
 is to prepare for the future — to arrange for dock 
 accommodation during the years that are to come, 
 and to carry out the schemes necessary to accom- 
 plish this end. He is not on piece work. He is 
 paid to think. He has an official title, but I pre- 
 fer to call him Acting Professor of Imagination 
 to the Shipping Interests of New York. 
 
 We may take it for granted, after all that has 
 been said, that no man of business ever succeeds 
 unless he knows how to use the faculty which was 
 once claimed by the poet as particularly his own. 
 The question of working methods — ^i. e., the man- 
 ner in which imagination is made a useful serv- 
 ant, and how it may be trained — has still to be 
 
IMAGUSTATION IN BUSINESS 103 
 
 discussed, and I propose now to enter upon that 
 task, somewhat unfamiliar, it is true, because as 
 yet business psychology is an infant science. 
 
 First, there is the general attitude towards an 
 unrealized future as contrasted with a particular 
 attitude at once definite and forceful. It may be 
 truthfully said of the vast crowd of men that they 
 neglect the mental duty of mapping out a regu- 
 lated course of action covering the next ten or 
 fifteen years of their life, and this neglect is in 
 turn due to the lack of an imaginative ideal. A 
 year's prospect is good enough for them, and 
 sometimes it is so marred by the crossing of other 
 features (standing for a superabundance of pleas- 
 ures or social recreations) that even the schemes 
 for a twelvemonth's vista lose point and signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Since imagination has so much to do with the 
 things that have no actual existence, except in so 
 far as they live in mental pictures, its work in 
 fashioning an unrealized future is a matter of 
 considerable importance. It would be interest- 
 ing to take half a dozen young business men and 
 inquire into their mental attitude towards the 
 years that are ahead. Selected haphazard from 
 among those who are hurrying to catch the morn- 
 ing train, we could present the six with a ques- 
 tionnaire paper containing the following: 
 
 1. Does your view of your future carry you 
 forward to a definite end realizable in twenty-five 
 ^ears? Or is it limited to a briefer period! 
 
104 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 2. If you do not measure your aims by time, 
 but by a specific achievement, is the day of ma- 
 turity near or remote? 
 
 3. How far does an imagined future, with finan- 
 cial conquest, affect your present activity in the 
 matter of its direction? 
 
 4. What loss of energy have you sustained by 
 imagining troubles that never arrived? 
 
 The six would probably write answers to the 
 last question first, and, no doubt, all the answers 
 would be practically the same ; for the percentage 
 of men who do their best and then cease to worry 
 is small indeed. Imagination is a helpful and 
 brilliant faculty, but it has its decided drawbacks. 
 In lively form it can conjure up the spectres of 
 failure, robbery, fire, and a host of other depress- 
 ing fears — in fact, the man who is always worry- 
 ing is the man who has more or less lost control 
 of his imagination and memory : they are driving 
 him before them as they will, giving him no rest 
 until actual events, good or bad, lay the spectres 
 low. 
 
 But there is a vast difference among the select- 
 ed six as to the length of vista along which the 
 eye of imagination is making the future visible. 
 One of them has determined to be the controller 
 of a new Real Estate Company. He is twenty 
 now; he will be forty ere his plans have matured, 
 so that he lives with a twenty-year imagination. 
 At the end of ten years he is so much nearer 
 the goal that a closer inspection of his chances 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 105 
 
 indicates the possibility of achieving his object 
 in five years, and he works on with redoubled 
 efforts to clutch the coveted prize, perhaps ruin- 
 ing his health in the process and thereby show- 
 ing a need of balance, such as a right course of 
 training would give him. Another of the six is 
 a ditferent kind of man altogether. He is the 
 manager of a grocery store, and his imagination 
 is busy trying to solve the problem of saving and 
 getting money to buy the store for himself. A 
 third man is the chief clerk of a firm of attor- 
 neys, his object in life being the carrying out of 
 his duties with speed and accuracy, but with no 
 particular demand on what is virtually a feeble 
 faculty of imagination. The fourth man is a 
 money-getter, a type found in Throgmorton 
 street. Wall street, and any European bourse. 
 His attitude towards the future is indefinite ex- 
 cept in so far as, it postulates the necessity of 
 making more money: his day-dreams are of dol- 
 lars and bank balances, varied by reflections on 
 the low state of human nature which caused him 
 to lose heavily in recent deals. The fifth man is 
 a packer in a warehouse whose ambition is to be 
 a foreman — imagination never takes him beyond 
 that stage, for his practical sense tells him it is 
 the limit of his abilities. The sixth man is the 
 acting head of a shipping firm: his eyes are on 
 distant ports; he is m^editating the invasion of a 
 monopoly, arranging the finances, marshalling the 
 fleet, drawing up the regulations — for the time 
 
10$ BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGYi 
 
 being lie lives in a world unrealized, one in a 
 state of becoming. 
 
 Now, it is evident that in various ways the 
 mind of every man with ambition is constantly 
 picturing a possible future, and the range of 
 quality in these pictures decide his place in the 
 ranks of progressive men. If, like the lawyer's 
 clerk, he is content to do his duty with satisfac- 
 tion to his employers, a day may come when he 
 will have to rely for a living on his slender re- 
 sources, or else depend on the good will of his 
 principal. If, endowed with only mediocre abil- 
 ities, he can attain no higher position than that 
 of foreman, as in the case of the aspiring packer, 
 he will have to fend for himself in times of sick- 
 ness, lack of work, or old age — and that may mean 
 destitution. But if, as in the other cases, imagi- 
 nation has a longer flight and a wider sweep of 
 interests, the chances are infinitely better for the 
 individual in the struggle for existence and pow- 
 er; he has a keener desire, because his vision is 
 brighter and more alluring, and this in turn en- 
 gineers a stronger will. 
 
 Every young man starting out in business 
 should give serious attention to this matter of 
 imagining the future. Not that there is any need 
 to hurry about it. The pictures of inexperience 
 at eighteen will give place to those that arise out 
 of more matured knowledge ; changes will succeed 
 changes until the clear vision arrives. Even this 
 panoramic process is not without its charm. But 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS lO? 
 
 to drift — that is the great misfortune! If we 
 could take the brain pictures of a good many 
 men and examine them on the table at our leisure, 
 we should find too heavy a percentage of them 
 referred to interests that were immediate and 
 local; the pictures of an idealized future would 
 be both few and indistinct. Mind-training for 
 business, therefore, has to find a place for imagi- 
 nation as a mental duty, and it justifies this course 
 by showing how successful men have always been 
 " dreamers "—thinking the things that came true. 
 Let us now inquire into the precise manner in 
 which imagination works — how the distant vision 
 affects the present reality. Some people tell us, 
 with a wealth of vague detail, that there is a 
 subtle power in thought which transmits an idea 
 from the plane of the ideal to the plane of the 
 real. Here is an illustration: I am engaged, I 
 will suppose, in the mail-order business. To in- 
 crease that business all I have to do is to imag- 
 ine it increased — to "see" last week's orders in- 
 creased by fifty, then by one hundred, and so 
 forth, until— well, these people are shy about giv- 
 ing limits, but if the law is true for fifty, it ought 
 to be true for one million — if I can imagine so 
 many. Of course the "law" is not true; it is 
 quack psychology, a mere travesty of a fact that 
 has been known for generations — namely, that if 
 you imagine more business, you desire more, and 
 if you desire more, you work for more, and if 
 you work for more, you get more. I do not say 
 
108 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 this is a full explanation of tlie manner in wMch 
 an unrealized idea affects one's present policy, 
 but it does explain all the mystery there is be- 
 hind the verbiage of much "new-thought" teach- 
 ing, especially the so-called law of success and of 
 opulence. 
 
 The real truth is contained in that passage of 
 Scripture where the disciples were told to ask 
 for what they wanted in faith, the exact words 
 being: "Believe that ye receive them and ye shall 
 have them. ' ' The philosophy underlying this pas- 
 sage is this: we are to act in the present, as if 
 the future were an accomplished fact. That 
 scheme of yours which cannot mature for some 
 years — do not wait until the years have passed 
 and then expect to behold the fait accompli. Be- 
 gin now and prepare for it. Business growth is 
 not magical: it is progressive. You create the 
 mental picture and proceed to give it objective 
 reality. This is curiously illustrated in that new 
 development of psychotherapy — healing by auto- 
 suggestion. Its basis is really a modern applica- 
 tion of Dr. Tuke's "Influence of the Imagination 
 on Disease" published in the eighteen-fifties. The 
 medical psychologists of France, notably those of 
 Nancy and the Salpetriere, have devoted special 
 attention to nervous complaints, and Dr. Levy in 
 his L'£!ducation Rationelle de la Volonte has men- 
 tioned numerous instances of cures by auto-sug- 
 gestion. Let us suppose you are a victim of in- 
 somnia. He would tell you to appeal to your 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 109 
 
 imagination and conjure up a picture of dream- 
 less sleep. Having done that, he would ask you 
 to act as if you were sleepy — lie down, get into 
 an easy position, yawn, and tell yourself you are 
 really very drowsy. In other words, you are to 
 act as if the present were the future : sleep is the 
 thing imagined, and you make it a reality by 
 acting as if it were already upon you. Now, the 
 surprising part of the matter is this : sleep often 
 comes when so invited, pain will disappear, and 
 even functional disorders are charmed away. How 
 is it done? Prof. Levy says it is because every 
 thought tends to become an action. One would 
 like to add that there must be something in the 
 nature of thought and in its action on the body 
 that as yet we do not understand. But the point 
 which concerns us here is not the cure, but its 
 modus operandi. An ideal is made real by as- 
 suming that the unrealized is already real. This 
 looks very much like lying — and in a sense it is. 
 When a man has had no sleep for three nights 
 and, following Dr. Levy's prescription, lies down 
 and says, "I am very sleepy," he is apt to feel 
 that he is only lying to himself; but if he be- 
 lieves in the power of mind, he knows that, by 
 accepting what is not true, the truth will happen. 
 Now, in business the process is not identical, 
 but it is similar. You can dream you own a big 
 office building, or a large dry-goods store, but if 
 you do nothing to give actuality to those dreams 
 you accomplish nothing. In physiology to think 
 
110 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 disease is often to have disease, and to imagine 
 a cure is to have a cnre. The thought itself is 
 potent enough for both results. It is not the same 
 in business: the thought supplies the picture of 
 wealth and advancement, the mind conceives a 
 passion to make the picture a reality, and will- 
 power does the rest. But if the mental picture 
 be absent, then the other powers are dormant, 
 and this shows the immense importance of a vivid 
 imagination — one that is not fanciful, changing, 
 and easily demoralized, but sane, persistent, and 
 always in a glow. Some men in business abuse 
 this faculty to their own hurt. They advertise 
 a commodity for sale and get only a small num- 
 ber of replies, but they tell their friends it took 
 two postmen to carry the mail-bags and almost 
 strained the elevator ! Such men are not men of 
 imagination ; they are only liars. Of course every 
 hopeful and aggressive mind places the best con- 
 struction on partial failure, and to declare vic- 
 tory is better than to cry defeat; but the busi- 
 ness that is built on lies has no sure foundation 
 — the lies like scum rise to the surface eventually. 
 Such was the case of a young publisher who start- 
 ed out with a few hundred dollars and announced 
 a first edition of 30,000 copies of his first book! 
 The book failed and he failed with it. His cred- 
 itors found 300 unsold copies out of an edition 
 of 1,000. 
 
 To recapitulate : we have seen that a definite 
 use of the imagination is a duty which the would- 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 111 
 
 be successful man owes himself; that without it 
 he sinks into a state of inertia, neglecting his op- 
 portunities, or confining his attention to the local 
 and temporary; and that the attitude of mind 
 which causes a man to see himself successful, 
 when as yet he is not, is truly psychological, re- 
 ceiving also the indorsement of practical experi- 
 ence. We now turn our attention to methods of 
 training. 
 
 Methods of Training 
 
 1. The notion of training the imagination is, 
 in some quarters, still received with incredulity, 
 and such critics are evidently forgetful of those 
 sections in the text-books of psychology where 
 this very subject is treated pedagogically. I re- 
 fer to the works of men like James, Sully, Thorn- 
 dike, Angell, and Halleck. True, these sections 
 refer for the most part to the training of youth- 
 ful minds, but if the growing intelligence can be 
 catered to by a series of exercises, there is no 
 reason why a second series should not be drawn 
 up for those of riper intellect — otherwise we are 
 reduced to the position of claiming that the adult 
 imagination is, forsooth, a perfect instrument for 
 commerce, for art, and for everything else ! The 
 only other course open is to affirm this man has 
 imagination and that man has not — a statement 
 which may be allowed to pass as correct now and 
 again, but which is futile when the mass of men 
 are grouped together. 
 
112 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 2. The exercises proposed come under the two- 
 fold heading of (a) Literary and (b) Practical. 
 The first render a purely psychological service in 
 developing the creative faculty; the second con- 
 tribute the more valuable exercise of experiments 
 in the actual field of trade and commerce. No 
 student can faithfully follow out these directions 
 without obtaining immense benefit. 
 
 Literary Methods 
 
 1. To solve the denouement of a novel or a 
 detective story is both fascinating and educative. 
 Edgar Wallace's "Four Just Men" is a suitable 
 book, as it was written for this very purpose. If 
 you cannot get a copy easily, ask a friend to give 
 you a problem plot in writing, taken from a nov- 
 elist of repute, and then begin to anticipate the 
 solution. Detective mysteries are perhaps the 
 best, and sometimes you can put yourself in pos- 
 session of the main facts by reading the first part 
 of the story. Close the book and try to see how 
 the writer solved a puzzling situation. 
 
 2. Take a poem — say Browning's "My Lust 
 Duchess" — and write out the unrecorded actions 
 — actions which are only indicated, not stated. 
 Here again is an exercise at once agreeable and 
 instructive, and Browning's monologues offer a 
 fine field for this type of imaginative inquiry. 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 113 
 
 Practical Methods 
 
 1. A student is not necessarily in tlie best posi- 
 tion to employ a practical method of training, in 
 the sense that he carries out in the conduct of 
 affairs a series of experiments in imagination; 
 but if we understand the word practical to refer 
 to the kind of material he deals with, it will be 
 evident that he can give the faculty in question 
 every useful exercise in the utilities of business 
 life. For instance, in 
 
 2. Locating the site of a factory, he will have 
 to employ his imagination as much as any other 
 mental power. In answering so simple a question 
 as "Is there room in this city for another fac- 
 tory!" he must pass from an analysis of present 
 conditions to those which are likely to prevail 
 in the future : it is only by imagining a state of 
 trade that will exist ten years hence, but does 
 not exist now, that he can handle successfully the 
 initial query. Then in seeking a favorable loca- 
 tion he finds it necessary — after deciding such 
 important items as nearness to transportation, 
 the accessibility of workers, disposal of waste 
 products, and a score of like matters— to look 
 ahead and judge of what may be done with the 
 adjoiping vacant plots by their respective owners. 
 Will they sell the land to possible competitors? 
 Is the new railroad likely to cause land values to 
 rise? If so, ought he not to buy the adjoining 
 plots as an investment as well as a protection 
 
114 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 against competition? Every student of this 
 course who is engaged in manufacture should give 
 an exercise of this kind his best attention : it pro- 
 vides activity for analysis, but most of all for 
 synthesis. 
 
 3. Current business problems offer an inviting 
 opportunity to imaginative zest. Take American 
 shipping: What is the best way of building it 
 up as rapidly and as securely as possible! To 
 some extent it is a matter for dry reason based 
 on hard facts, but it is more than anything else a 
 picturing of the future improved by a tonnage 
 that at present is not on the national register. 
 How can such a tonnage be added? If subsidies 
 are taboo, why should not trading guilds be 
 formed by capitalists to build fleets of fast cargo 
 boats for ocean traffic? Would the competition 
 with existing carriers be successful? What per- 
 centage could be paid to investors in the stock? 
 How would a favorable issue affect internal 
 trade? These and other questions open out the 
 discussion to its widest extent — a discussion 
 which, though based on actual facts, is chiefly 
 concerned with unrealized ideas, and is, therefore, 
 a true exercise in commercial imagination. Other 
 subjects are (a) aviation as a business proposi- 
 tion, (b) universal cooking by electricity, (c) the 
 stock exchange as an anachronism, (d) banking 
 laws of the future, and (e) real estate as affected 
 by the negro. The advantage of serious atten- 
 tion to these and similar problems is not only 
 
IMAGINATION IN" BUSINESS 115 
 
 that they assist in mental development, but that 
 they are educative in the truest business sense. 
 
 4. Needed inventions, of which lists are easily 
 procurable, present further opportunities for so- 
 lution by imagination. True, the difficulties are 
 usually great, and a certain amount of scientific 
 knowledge is often required, but, this granted, it 
 must not be forgotten that the rewards are also 
 great. Moreover, solutions sometimes come more 
 easily to the mind that is new to a problem than 
 to the one which, by conning it for months or 
 years, has got into a groove and cannot get out. 
 Whether a solution is arrived at or not, the ben- 
 efit to the student cannot easily be measured: 
 he has the advantage of a peculiarly close study 
 in observation and concentration, and crowning 
 both is the synthetic power, uniting, disjoining, 
 recombining, until something at least tentative 
 is accomplished. 
 
 5. Personal Interests. Any student of this 
 course who is also in business, either for himself 
 or as a salaried employee, is naturally interested 
 in the training of faculty as a means of making 
 more money; and, as our aim is practical, it re- 
 mains for us to show how imagination can be used 
 to this material end. 
 
 (a) It is used in advertising, in window-dress- 
 ing, in designing attractive publications, and in 
 every form of appeal to the public taste. How? 
 Like this — to take the simplest illustration : Two 
 men were selling dolls in the streets of London. 
 
116 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 One did fairly well, tlie other badly. Mr. Heine- 
 mann, a publisher, asked the latter to hold up 
 two dolls at a time and shout "the Heavenly 
 Twins" (at that moment Sarah Grand's book 
 was all the rage). He did so, and was soon do- 
 ing a roaring trade. In this case the shout was 
 an appeal to the imagination — not brilliant, but 
 effective enough to advance the sales rapidly. It 
 is the same with every form of public address 
 in matters of trade: the bare fact is not enough 
 — there must be added something which touches 
 the imagination. An Iowa chemist discovered a 
 good headache cure, but it was not sufficient mere- 
 ly to announce the discovery: he had to impress 
 it on the minds of those who passed his window. 
 So he got a head of cabbage and on it placed a 
 label: "This head has never ached," and on a 
 skull he placed a label: "This head has often 
 ached." Beneath he set forth the virtues of his 
 own discovery, and as a result he was soon doing 
 all the business there was in headache powders. 
 Thus the man with anything to sell should be 
 ever on the lookout for the newest ideas which 
 when realized will adorn the bare fact, i. e., the 
 goods he has to dispose of. If they are boots that 
 do not take water, let him do what others have 
 done— namely, prove it by occasional immersion, 
 so that when people see the water running off 
 the leather, as if it were afraid to stay, they may 
 imagine the protection such boots would afford 
 in bad weather. 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS lir 
 
 (b) In such efforts the synthetic faculty is deal- 
 ing with details: it is the microscope applied to 
 business. Equally important is the larger view 
 — the view of distant and greater possibilities. 
 That is the use of the telescope. Questions like 
 the following are to be answered, not hastily, but 
 after much inquiry and deliberation : 
 
 1. What new conditions are likely to arise in 
 my business during the next ten, fifteen, or twenty 
 years ? 
 
 2. Will such conditions be universal or only 
 local? 
 
 3. In either event what steps are necessary to 
 meet them? 
 
 4. How far am I in a position to take those 
 steps? 
 
 Complete answers to these questions would 
 prepare a trader for most eventualities. Not only 
 would he have the inestimable advantage of know- 
 ing present conditions, but future prospects would 
 in some measure be clear to him — ^moreover, he 
 could be preparing himself for whatever might 
 happen, whether fortunate or unfortunate. Ex- 
 perience with past students assures us of the 
 practical value of this imaginative ei¥ort. 
 
 (c) The salaried man is in a different category. 
 He has first to decide whether he is going into 
 business for himself, or whether he intends to 
 remain in a salaried position. Even this deci- 
 sion depends on how far and how accurately he 
 
118 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 can divine his chances, supposing he elects to 
 venture on his own account; but in the main he 
 thinks of promotion and how it can be brought 
 about. To imagine himself in the position of 
 manager is to be spurred on to learn managerial 
 duties; to desire a position with another firm at 
 a higher salary suggests the need of greater pro- 
 ficiency and the means of attaining it. One day 
 he is surprised to find that a man of his own age 
 and experience, employed by another firm, has 
 made a startling advance — and he says, ' ' Why did 
 not I think of that?" It consisted in a scheme 
 for saving the firm a thousand a year in its pack- 
 ing expenses. Now, this is one field for the sal- 
 aried man's imagination: there are a score of 
 others besides economy. Here, for instance, are 
 some general questions he may answer : 
 
 1. In what way can I advance tke interests of 
 my employer by reducing working expenses or by 
 increasing orders? 
 
 2. How can I fit myself for more advanced po- 
 sitions in the office or the factory? 
 
 3. What trade movements are likely to affect 
 the rates of salary paid to employees? 
 
 4. Are the prospects for the future good or 
 otherwise? 
 
 5. If bad, what ought I to do to control them? 
 
 Answers to he sent in to the tutor in charge: 
 1. No. 2 of the "Literary Methods." 
 
IMAGINATION IN BUSINESS 119 
 
 2. No. 3 of "Current Business Problems," se- 
 lecting one form from a, b, c, d, or e. 
 
 3. (b) of the "Personal Interests" section (in 
 the case of men in business for themselves), or 
 (c) in the case of men in receipt of salaries. 
 
LESSON VII 
 
 THE CASH VALUE OF SYMPATHY 
 
 Moral altruism is feeling for others; business altruism is 
 feeling with others. — Anon. 
 
 The dictionary defines sympathy as "a feel- 
 ing that enables a person to enter into and, in 
 part, share another's feelings." I wish to keep 
 strictly to that definition, mainly because it is 
 the realization of other people's feelings that has 
 a cash value, but partly because there are other 
 forms of sympathy with which the subject of this 
 chapter may easily be confused. With some of 
 these it is necessary to deal — the sympathy seen 
 in the various forms of philanthropy, for instance 
 — but the sympathy with ideas is so closely re- 
 lated to that with feelings that it is important 
 some attention should be bestowed on a brief 
 analysis. 
 
 Let us begin by trying to remember our first 
 thoughts after reading a great novel, a scientific 
 theory, or a political policy. Perhaps Socialism 
 would afford a good test. What did you think 
 of Marx's Capital, or some other exposition of 
 that creed? You would probably be conscious of 
 one of three attitudes towards the theories there- 
 in advanced: (a) attraction; (b) antagonism; or 
 
 130 
 
THE CASH VALUE OF SYMPATHY 131 
 
 (c) indifference. You may have felt no interest 
 in the subject at all — an unlikely contingency; 
 or you may have believed that here was the so- 
 lution of all economic problems; or, lastly, you 
 may have started up in bitter antagonism against 
 a system which, as you put it, "was the exploita- 
 tion of the strong by the weak." Are we not 
 right? Was it not one of these three? 
 
 Now, what is the origin of these attitudes of 
 mind towards ideas not our own? Why do we 
 feel these instinctive attractions to some theories, 
 and antagonisms towards others? Because of 
 the power of prejudice — that is to say, before 
 these theories reach us they are pre-judged. You 
 may have been trained to believe in competition 
 as the very salt of life, or you may have been 
 trained to regard it as a curse. Such ideas in- 
 stilled into the intelligence during the formative 
 period of life are difficult to eradicate, and con- 
 trary ideas are at once met with antagonism. 
 This is the prejudice of training. 
 
 But our minds have an individuality of their 
 own; we are conscious of a certain definite ten- 
 dency towards particular groups of ideas, and 
 frequently this tendency is so strong that it 
 overcomes the influence of early training and we 
 strike out in the direction we feel to be right. 
 This is a prejudice of temperament. Again, in 
 the valuation of ideas we may become conscious 
 of a strong disposition in favor of those which 
 bear the American stamp as opposed to the ar- 
 
123 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 tide made in a foreign country. This is tlie 
 prejudice of nationality. 
 
 You will see, therefore, there are many kinds 
 of prejudice, and the problem of evolving true 
 intellectual sympathy becomes more difficult than 
 at first is apparent. Some people, indeed, tell us 
 our prejudices are too interesting to be abolished, 
 and they quote Charles Lamb's essay on "Im- 
 perfect Sympathies" as an evidence of their con- 
 tention that individuality is made up of strongly 
 marked personal preferences, whereas a disposi- 
 tion to analyze every idea with philosophic calm 
 takes all the color and glow out of personality, 
 thereby reducing the self to a passionless machine 
 for measuring ideas. The point is not important 
 here, but as a study in psychology and life it is 
 worth noting for future reflection. On looking 
 back at our definition of sympathy, the reader 
 will observe the use of imagination. No unimagi- 
 native man can be sympathetic, except in cases 
 where his experience has been identical with that 
 of another who is, let us suppose, narrating the 
 details of an illness, or the loss of money in a 
 business transaction; but even then there is no 
 direct imaginative effort: the connection between 
 the experience of the two men is automatic by 
 means of memory. 
 
 To value ideas we must use the faculty of im- 
 agination and thus make them our own for the 
 time being. We are to put aside the opinions and 
 convictions already formed and give ourselves up 
 
THE CASH VALUE OF SYjMPATHY 123 
 
 entirely to those which lie before ns awaiting 
 judgment. Here we sometimes meet with the 
 prejudice of temperament in a violent form. "So- 
 cialism?" (or it may be a religious topic), we 
 hear a man say, "Why, I have not even patience 
 to discuss such nonsense!" This is a true sign 
 of the uncritical mind — the mind which cannot 
 take the first steps in the art of intellectual sym- 
 pathy. There are men of the greatest mental 
 power on the side of the individualist, but they 
 did not arrive at their conclusions in haste : they 
 patiently examined each proposition and mental- 
 ly followed the results of its application to eco- 
 nomic facts. They are sparing in the use of ad- 
 jectives like "absurd," "nonsensical," and 
 "Utopian," because they know a false notion is 
 more easily slain by logic than by abuse. 
 
 Mental projection! That is the first lesson to 
 learn. Suspend your own dogmas for the mo- 
 ment, and get inside those of other people. Don't 
 think of the man, the instrument of expression, 
 any more than you think of the personality of 
 Euclid when working a deduction in geometry. 
 Keep your attention wholly on the theme. 
 
 "Every subject has two sides," it is often re- 
 marked. "Many sides" would be our version of 
 this saying, and you can see them only by imagi- 
 native sympathy. 
 
 On a previous page we stated there were three 
 possible attitudes of mind towards ideas not our 
 own: attraction, antagonism, and indifference. 
 
134 BtrSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 There is, as a matter of fact, a fourth, attitude — 
 one which arises out of the first two: it is criti- 
 cism. A real critic is one who can suspend his 
 prejudices (to get rid of them, entirely is impos- 
 sible) and project himself into the ideas of an- 
 other man without being wholly an antagonist 
 or wholly a disciple. An American professor, in 
 drawing up a practical lesson on the exposition 
 of a theme, hit upon the plan, both simple and 
 effective, of using three sheets of paper, writing 
 on the top of the first sheet "What it is not," 
 on the second "What it is," and on the third 
 "What it is like." "As ideas occur to the stu- 
 dent, from observation or reading, he can then 
 jot them down on the appropriate sheet. In this 
 way the substance of an essay will grow almost 
 without conscious effort on the part of the writer, 
 and shape itself into a very fair orderliness. For 
 instance, let us suppose that, realizing that criti- 
 cism is one of the most important and character- 
 istic genres of literature at the present day, I 
 undertake to expound my idea of what criticism 
 is, and that I have prepared my thxee sheets of 
 paper for notes. I happen, we will suppose, to 
 hear some one say of a shrew or a gossip, that 
 she is a very critical person — forever finding 
 fault. Is that, then, what I mean by criticism — 
 "finding fault'"? Certainly not. I therefore jot 
 down on my first sheet of paper: Criticism is 
 not mere fault-finding. Again, we will suppose, 
 I think of going to a certain play, and, asking a 
 
THE CASH VALUE OP SYMPATHY 135 
 
 friend whether it is worth while or not, I am 
 advised to consult So-and-So, who is excessively 
 fond of the theatre. So-and-So is evidently held 
 to be a good critic, because he is fond of what he 
 criticises. The idea is suggestive, and I enter on 
 my second sheet the note that criticism is sym- 
 pathetic, modifying the statement, on second 
 thought, by entering again on my first sheet the 
 memorandum that of course criticism is not mere 
 finding favor any more than it is merely finding 
 fault. On my third sheet observation might lead 
 me to note that criticism is, like justice, unpreju- 
 diced. Such memoranda, made mentally or re- 
 corded, are in most cases the necessary steps to- 
 wards rendering to ourselves a clear account of 
 our ideas. ' ' * 
 
 Yes, the true critic looks at the artist's inten- 
 tion, puts himself in his place, feels his feelings, 
 and thinks his thought. The personal appearance 
 of an artist, a poet, a litterateur has nothing to 
 do with criticism, and the circumstances of pri- 
 vate life have no connection with the truth or 
 falsity of their ideas. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve is largely responsible for the inti- 
 mate and personal method of criticism which has 
 obtained so much vogue. In this lesson, however, 
 we seek higher ground; we wish to secure that 
 mental detachment which will enable us to deal 
 with ideas in an unprejudiced manner, no matter 
 
 * Introduction to Tbeme-writing, J. B. Fleteber and G, 
 B. Carpenter. 
 
126 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 whence they come or by whom they are promul- 
 gated. As an ideal it is not easy of attainment 
 — indeed, some writers claim it is impossible. 
 They assert that our inborn prejudices are so 
 strong, the pull of our intellectual training and 
 environment so pronounced, that it is hopeless to 
 expect a really impartial estimate of opinions we 
 feel we cannot accept. On the other hand, if we 
 are drawn towards such opinions in a flood of 
 enthusiasm, we are just as likely to overstate 
 the elements of truth they may contain. These 
 contentions are not altogether without force, but 
 they need not distress us. Any man who can- 
 not examine the doctrines of modern socialism 
 without considering the personnel of the move- 
 ment is still in his mental swaddling-clothes. So 
 keep the personal element out, and value the ideas 
 as ideas. Depend upon it, if you cannot over- 
 come their power without animadverting on their 
 origin in a particular brain, there is a rightness 
 about them which is worthy of further thought. 
 One can readily admit there is a connection be- 
 tween the man and the idea, but it is secondary, 
 not primary. 
 
 "Why," it is sometimes asked, "do men of in- 
 tellect differ so widely in their opinions and con- 
 victions!" An intensely practical question. For 
 instance, spiritualism was pooh-poohed by Tyn- 
 dall and Huxley, but Wallace and Crookes be- 
 lieved the phenomena were real. Carlyle had no 
 sympathy with Huxley's views on the origin of 
 
THE CASH VALUE OF SYMPATHY 1,27 
 
 man, but at the same time he alleged Cardinal 
 Newman had "the intellect of a rabbit." That 
 great thinkers disagree on important issues needs 
 no evidence: the real question is why? Where 
 does intellectual sympathy come in? Unfortunate- 
 ly it has too few opportunities of asserting itself, 
 for, although a man may have great brain capac- 
 ity, it does not follow he has great moral courage. 
 Even Huxley, usually honest to the core, had 
 weak moments when his native prejudices had 
 full play. 
 
 An accepted theory of life allows little room 
 for the in-coming of new knowledge; that is the 
 prejudice of the theorist. We are all sinners 
 sometimes and can never hope to be entirely free 
 from the influences which act upon us when criti- 
 cizing notions alien to those we hold; and yet 
 there is no reason why we should not use our 
 utmost endeavors to be just in every critical esti- 
 mate we offer. And we can be just only by the 
 exercise of imaginative sympathy. Herein lies 
 the success of a great judge. He does not simply 
 apply the law as he understands it: he must first 
 get at the facts, and he can do this only by the 
 aid of constructive imagination. It is strange, 
 on the surface, but not strange on second thought, 
 that his intellectual sympathies should lead him 
 to sum up against a criminal, when guilt is not 
 palpably evident; and yet it was by those very 
 sympathies he was enabled to look at the crime 
 through the eyes of the condemned man, and, in 
 
128 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 conjunction with the testimony of others, arrive 
 at a conclusion as to his gnilt. 
 
 In military campaigns the successful general 
 is the man who joins an expert knowledge of 
 warfare with a capacity for imagining correctly 
 what the opposing general will do; and in busi- 
 ness the man who forges ahead is the man who 
 knows his work and can imagine the programmes 
 of his strongest competitors; he is the man who 
 can so sympathize with the feelings of the pub- 
 lic that he knows how it will take to a new ar- 
 ticle or a new scheme; he "senses" their likes 
 and dislikes. In a word, his power of sympathy 
 has a solid cash value, partly because it saves 
 him from costly mistakes, but more because it 
 enables him to adapt his policy to the laws of 
 human nature. 
 
 This power to interpret the mind of the pub- 
 lic comes first from an understanding of our own 
 minds and desires. As a general principle it may 
 be said that an article which appeals very strong- 
 ly to you will appeal strongly to other people; 
 likewise a proposition which, when presented to 
 you, meets no answering response will fail to 
 awaken the desire of other people. Human na- 
 ture has certain fundamental identities the world 
 over: a gramophone will arouse the interest of 
 a civilized being and tickle the fancy of the lowest 
 savage, but social and national elements exercise 
 a modifying influence, and the particular type of 
 human nature found in a South American repub- 
 
THE CASH VALUE OF SYMPATHY 139 
 
 lie is marked by real differences from that found 
 in China or Japan. Consequently a business man 
 of but average sense knows at once that goods 
 may find a ready market in the Argentine Re- 
 public which would be unsalable in the Orient: 
 the "likes" of the Spanish-speaking peoples are 
 not the same as those of the dwellers in the far 
 East. 
 
 It is when we come to handle goods among the 
 people we know best, the members of our own 
 nationality, that we feel the need of a keener in- 
 sight into human feelings. The goods may be 
 concrete articles, town-lots, a patent, a new kind 
 of hat, an educational scheme — it does not mat- 
 ter in the least what it is — the great question is : 
 "Will the public buy!" There are, of course, 
 men in business who never have to ask the ques- 
 tion in that way. The purveyors of necessities, 
 such as food and clothing, know that the people 
 are compelled to buy their products in some form 
 or other; the only occasion on which they may 
 pause to consider the desires of their customers 
 is when some change is about to be made, or some 
 new article put upon the market. But a large 
 number of business men are continually beset 
 with wonder, not to say anxiety, as to the out- 
 come of a projected scheme. The key to success 
 lies in the power of rightly interpreting what the 
 world will think and feel about it. 
 
 As previously stated, the general habit is to 
 judge the feelings of the world outside us from 
 
130 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 what we know of our own feelings. The man who 
 made the first safety razor and used it for a 
 lengthened period to test its wearing qualities 
 would reason that, if he found it an excellent 
 thing for his own purposes, other men would also 
 believe it to be excellent. Similarly a dealer in 
 real estate would expect the prospective buyer of 
 a lot to take the same view of a well-situated fifty- 
 acre estate as he did when he bought it. In these 
 two cases, it will be noticed, the sympathy with 
 other people's thoughts and feelings is a simple 
 act of imagination plus judgment; there are no 
 special difficulties to be overcome, and the argu- 
 ment is between man and man on the same level 
 of experience. But take the case of a man who 
 is writing a book for boys. He has been a boy 
 himself and knows the youthful mind with all 
 its mischief and fun. He is now probably a beard- 
 ed man, and yet he is successful as a writer only 
 in so far as he goes back to his own boyhood days, 
 meantime suspending the sobriety and wisdom of 
 his maturer years. 
 
 This introduces another and more definite form 
 of imaginative sympathy, for, although all men 
 have been boys, not all men can write a story 
 that will interest boys, because they have lost 
 the power to reproduce the emotions and desires 
 of youth. The lapse of time and the stern real- 
 ities of manhood have blunted the fine edge of 
 memory — besides which, story-writing requires 
 facility in the art of expression. 
 
THE CASH VALUE OP SYMPATHY 131 
 
 But tlie same problem comes before the inven- 
 tor of children's toys. He cannot argue that what 
 pleases his mature mind will please the juvenile 
 minds. Indeed, he sinks for the time being the 
 gravity of age and becomes a child again, a child 
 with the advantage of suggestions from the older 
 mind which ever and anon intrudes itself into the 
 thoughts of the assumed child mind. The "climb- 
 ing ape" toy, which has brought thousands of 
 dollars to its inventor, is a practical illustration 
 of the cash value of sympathy, and this is by no* 
 means an isolated instance. 
 
 The logic which says "what pleased me will 
 please the public" is only partially sound. It 
 applies to a certain set of circumstances where 
 the conditions are practically identical, as in the 
 case of the safety razor : what is efficient for one 
 man will, in nine cases out of ten, be efficient for 
 another. It is the process of reasoning by anal- 
 ogy, but when the analogy fails, the conclusion is 
 bound to be at fault. For instance, I might say, 
 ' ' This article has sold marvellously well in Amer- 
 ica. We have had orders from every State in the 
 Union. I therefore believe it will sell largely in 
 Europe." This may be accurate reasoning or it 
 may be false : everything depends on the analogy 
 between the conditions — personal, social, and com- 
 mercial — of the two continents. A good deal of 
 information under those heads may be obtained 
 in the ordinary way, but in the last resort the 
 decision turns upon a knowledge of the psychol- 
 
133 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 ogy of nations, and that is a matter for imagi- 
 native sympathy. 
 
 Therein is the speculative element of many 
 business ventures. There are some about which 
 no man can be dogmatic and say, "This will be 
 snecessful," and "That will be a failure"; ex- 
 periment alone can decide the issue, but as the 
 world grows older and its commercial experience 
 widens, there is built up a record of such observa- 
 tion and experiment. Our first knowledge of what 
 human nature is, what it thinks and feels, comes 
 from a scrutiny of our own hearts ; our secondary 
 knowledge is the fruitage of experience. It fre- 
 quently happens that a business man has to cater 
 to a class of people on whose plane of being he 
 has never lived himself. They may be higher 
 or lower than he, but in either case he can reach 
 them only by imagination and experiment com- 
 bined. Their likes and dislikes are not known 
 to him as intimately as those of the men and 
 women who are of his own station in life : he is 
 compelled to reach them in another way. How 
 often do we hear it said as an explanation of 
 failure, '*He did not know the business," or "He 
 had had no experience in dealing with such peo- 
 ple"! 
 
 There is no maxim of trade that can be placed 
 on a pinnacle higher than others, and Sheldon's 
 fourfold requirement in his system of business- 
 building is pre-eminently sound : he says we must 
 know ourselves, know human nature, know our 
 
THE CASH VALUE OP SYMPATHY 133 
 
 goods, and use that knowledge to create confi- 
 dence and satisfaction. To know tlie customer is 
 a great aid to success, and we can know him only 
 by "becoming him." The more certainly we can 
 get his point of view and know to a nicety how 
 he will feel about our goods, the more easily 
 shall we persuade him to buy. Not only so, but 
 we shall be spared the possible loss of launching 
 a speculative scheme conceived in the hope of a 
 favorable result, but with little more than hope 
 to justify it. Business is nowadays a science, and 
 there is every reason why the study of the cus- 
 tomer should form a part of that science, for to 
 spend money blindly, trusting to luck for a happy 
 issue, is as unscientific as anything could be — in 
 fact, invites disaster! 
 
 The cause of the largest number of bankruptcy 
 cases is, admittedly, incompetence, and nowhere 
 is incompetence more manifest than in bad judg- 
 ment. It will be readily seen that the judgment 
 of a Board of Directors as to the feasibility of a 
 new departure dei^ends on the accuracy of their 
 imaginative insight into conditions. 
 
 A hasty argument from analogy may ruin the 
 finances of a good business, just as surely as a 
 correct survey will increase its dividends or cause 
 the project to be abandoned. But before a deci- 
 sion is made, the following points respecting a 
 new article or a new scheme require investiga- 
 tion: 
 
 (1) On what, precisely, does its success depend? 
 
134 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 (2) In what sense will it serve the interests of 
 the public? 
 
 (3) Has the public ever expressed its opinion 
 on analogous propositions? 
 
 (4) In what respects is your article in advance 
 of all its predecessors? 
 
 (5) Why should other people think as well of 
 the thing as you do? 
 
 (6) What are the chances that they will think 
 differently? 
 
 (7) How is it adapted to the needs of the peo- 
 ple whom you have in view? 
 
 I do not say the answering of these questions 
 will solve the whole problem: I only affirm that 
 the questions will, if properly handled, let day- 
 light into parts of a proposition that are often 
 left in darkness. 
 
 Methods of Training 
 
 (1) The air is frequently full of rumors as to 
 what is going to happen in the world of business, 
 and, as these rumors are seldom missed by the 
 reporter, the daily paper is one of your sources 
 of good material for thought. You find a pas- 
 sage like the following: 
 
 A correspondent from Detroit informs us that Baker & Co, 
 are about to add a travelling library to their many activities 
 as purveyors to the needs of the public. No details are given, 
 but we understand there is to be a wide area covered by auto- 
 mobile deliveries. The manager has studied the best lending- 
 
THE CASH VALUE OF SYMPATHY 135 
 
 library methods all the world over and is reported to have 
 improved upon the best he has seen, etc., etc. 
 
 Now, you may not be interested in Baker & Co. 
 or in travelling libraries, but for the sake of 
 mental training work up an interest in both. For 
 the time being view this new proposition as if it 
 were your own. Figure out the cost of starting 
 the library with 10,000 books, the cost of equip- 
 ping the autos, the salaries to be paid, and the 
 expenses. Then try to estimate the demand for 
 books. How will the public regard the new offer? 
 From what you know of human nature will they 
 tend to be satisfied with present arrangements, 
 or are they likely to break loose and welcome a 
 progressive idea? When you have riddled the 
 subject with questions, arrange the answers in 
 the order of growing importance. Let the mat- 
 ter rest for a week and then go over the ground 
 again — slowly and with all the imaginative power 
 you can summon. You may decide against the 
 new venture or you may not, but you have had a 
 fine exercise in sympathy, and if you watch the 
 experiment from its inception, checking its expan- 
 sion until it overbalanced itself and fell, you will 
 be able to test the power of your mind to gauge 
 future conditions. This is only one instance, and 
 there are many every day. 
 
 (2) You can learn from the failures of the past. 
 Commercial history is too much confined to the 
 national development of trade, and even then too 
 
136 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 little attention is devoted to the failures and too 
 much to the successes. As for the individual, we 
 can trace his story only in a general way; and 
 once more failures are neglected in order to en- 
 large upon successes. 
 
 A well-written account of a big failure like the 
 South Sea Bubble exercises a cautionary influ- 
 ence that can be felt, and if we could find a vol- 
 ume of recorded mistakes in imaginative sym- 
 pathy, it would be worth a good deal to the se- 
 rious student. There was a time when, after 
 elaborate preparations, a noted cafe in New York 
 opened its doors with great expectancy that the 
 wealthy members of the community would patron- 
 ize its tables. A chef was brought over from 
 Paris in order to insure menus of the highest 
 class, and the rule was given out that no one 
 would be admitted who was not in evening dress. 
 The scheme failed. One critic was of opinion that 
 the rule about evening dress was to blame; an- 
 other said the cafe was on the wrong side of the 
 street, and that there is a right side from a psy- 
 chological standpoint. The former is more likely 
 to be the correct diagnosis, and is accepted by 
 most people who have delved into the matter. If 
 the enacting of such a rule was the reason why 
 the cafe closed its doors, inasmuch as city men 
 in sufBcient numbers had not time to go up town 
 and change, then we have an excellent illustration 
 of a failure to estimate the action of the public. 
 
 Instances of less degree are not unplentiful. 
 
THE CASH VALUE OF SYMPATHY 137 
 
 The man who opens a little store and hangs on 
 until he is bankrupt is another illustration, and 
 so is the milliner who did not rightly gauge the 
 trade situation when, more in hope than in rea- 
 son, she decks out a window with goods that are 
 never bought. 
 
 (3) Questions addressed to people about to em- 
 bark on new propositions about which they are 
 glad to talk to interested parties will, when an- 
 swered, provide ample food for reflection. The 
 man who is going to show the inhabitants of B. 
 how to sell pianos and pianolas in his new store 
 in Pligh street, the man who has bought a patent 
 for turning over the sheets of piano music by 
 touching a pedal, and who is going to make a 
 fortune in twelve months — these are enthusiasts, 
 and you can learn much from them — especially 
 from the gaps in their thinking. 
 
 Then there is the more serious man who has 
 labored for a year or two on the problem of a 
 branch business in Denver. If you are not in 
 his line, he will probably be willing to talk over 
 the pros and cons of the enterprise, and You can 
 learn how far he has calculated the action of 
 every factor in the case. 
 
 (4) Lastly, there is the problem you can set 
 yourself to work out. For instance, how would 
 a golf club be received in your district, presuming 
 you have not one already? What is the probable 
 number of members'? Where would they come 
 from? Are the surroundings attractive? Such 
 
138 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 questions sound obvious enough, but it is the re- 
 ply that is important. Further, the discovery of 
 the question itself is a task, otherwise when fac- 
 ing failure, we should not hear the remark: "I 
 never thought of that." 
 
LESSON VIII 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF OEIGINALITY 
 
 The merit of originality is not nobility: it is sincerity. 
 
 — Carlyle 
 
 The original man in the modern world of busi- 
 ness may be described in sporting phrase as "an 
 easy winner." He steps out of the crowd, and by 
 a single thought expressed in action attains the 
 fame and the wealth which other men attain only 
 after years of strenuous labor. Where he is not 
 envied and criticized adversely, he is worshipped 
 as a favorite of fortune or of the god of luck. 
 But there is no mistake about the ease and mas- 
 tery of his deeds, whatever doubt there may exist- 
 as to the origin of his gift. He is the model for 
 thousands of silent aspirants who emulate his 
 commercial conquests, and who frequently badger 
 themselves with the question, "Why did / not 
 think of that?" 
 
 The need of originality in business is too well- 
 known to call for lengthy comment. The real 
 question is, "Can originality be taught?" — a 
 question which almost always raises a smile of 
 skepticism on the face of every one. "Genius," 
 they say, "never learns. It is either there in the 
 mind or it is not." I am not anxious to break 
 
 139 
 
140 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 a lance with the defenders of the loneliness of 
 genius, commercial or otherwise ; I prefer to leave 
 that much discussed and somewhat abused word 
 out of our purview and keep to the one more eas- 
 ily understood, i. e., originality. It may be ob- 
 jected that originality is likewise much discussed 
 and much abused, but it has the merit of being 
 more certain in its etymology and usage. Taking 
 Carlyle's definition as quoted at the beginning of 
 the lesson, we affirm that all originality is the ap- 
 plication of the individual mind to the facts, 
 events, theories, and problems of life; it is, in 
 vulgar parlance, "coming to our own conclu- 
 sions." 
 
 The reverse type of mind is that of the copyist 
 who comes to the conclusions which other people 
 form for him, and which he finds in the advertise- 
 ments and practices of his competitors — in news- 
 papers, in books, and in conversation. He is not 
 a sincere man in Carlyle's sense — that is, he is 
 not himself, but an imitator — an echo, not a voice. 
 The general notion that originality is something 
 new is the right one, but the new, after all, is 
 never absolutely new : it is new only in a relative 
 sense. Very often in the world of literature a 
 striking book is simply a reversion to an older 
 type, and in business one finds the same result : 
 the much welcomed innovation is really an adap- 
 tation of an old article to new needs. Absolute 
 originality is practically impossible, although the 
 newness of some new things approaches a condi- 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORIGINALITY 141 
 
 tion that borders closely on the absolute — in the 
 every-day use of that term. Take the telephone 
 as a case in point. The first man to make suc- 
 cessful experiments in long-distance hearing was 
 vastly more original than, say, G-eorge Stephen- 
 son, who realized the earlier idea of James Watt 
 and produced a steam-engine ; for before his time 
 nothing like the present telephone apparatus had 
 been seen, heard of, or imagined. And yet Bell 
 and his predecessors, like Marconi and those who 
 went before him, had to take as the basis of their 
 operations certain facts already in existence. 
 They did not originate space, nor electricity, nor 
 Hertzian waves, nor copper wire. Their original- 
 ity lay in putting pre-existing materials to new 
 uses. You may try to be so original as to imagine 
 a new color, but you are not likely to be success- 
 ful. A new arrangement, or a new blend of the 
 colors, we know, is no doubt possible, but an ab- 
 solutely new color is outside our mental range. 
 Thus there are three elements in originality: 
 
 (a) The pre-existing material. 
 
 (b) The individual mind at work. 
 
 (c) The new result. 
 
 I will deal with these seriatim: 
 (a) The first will not detain us long, for the 
 evidence of the need of such material is too ob- 
 vious. Shakespeare, perhaps the greatest of orig- 
 inal poets, borroAved freely from his predeces- 
 sors, and there is no man of business in high po- 
 sition anywhere who has failed to build his for- 
 
142 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 tune on the discoveries of those who have pre- 
 ceded him in the same line. We build upon the 
 foundations laid by others, or, to change the fig- 
 ure, we say in the language of Emerson that every 
 house is a quotation from a quarry and every 
 man is a quotation from his ancestors. 
 
 But pre-existing material is not only a neces- 
 sity: we are further bound down to the limita- 
 tions it imposes upon us. As between the orig- 
 inality possible to a dry-goods merchant and a 
 dealer in eggs and bacon there is a considerable 
 difference. The egg-and-bacon man can do prac- 
 tically nothing new in the way he offers his goods 
 to the public. He cannot alter the shape of the 
 egg, and th'e modes of growing and curing bacon 
 are not infinite in number. True, he can go to 
 the root of things and accomplish new work in 
 the improvement of poultry-breeding, thereby in- 
 creasing the supply of eggs, and he may make bet- 
 ter arrangements for marketing them in large 
 centres of population, but he can do little with 
 the egg itself. In the same way he may make an 
 advance in the quantity of bacon and secure a 
 needed drop in the price paid by the public for it, 
 but his originality has its limits, and beyond ba-' 
 con per se he cannot go. 
 
 On the other hand, the opportunities of the 
 dry-goods merchant are well-nigh infinite. The 
 range of his wares is so wide and their possible 
 variations in detail so extensive, that one can as- 
 sign no limit to the originality of which they are 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORIGINALITY 143 
 
 susceptible. No doubt the originality will in many 
 cases take the form of mere surface novelty, such 
 as a new design for a coat or a new pattern for 
 a tie, but such departures from older designs do 
 not exhaust the chances that are open to the mer- 
 chant, although the resources of the artistic imag- 
 ination thus realized are truly the avenue to im- 
 mense profits. He is open to the purchase of rela- 
 tively new materials, and the spacious rooms of 
 his store will hold a thousand and one things 
 which in art pottery, cutlery, jewelry, silks and 
 satins have not yet been seen or imagined. The 
 form of display in his windows is a never-ending 
 tribute to the originality which is possible to him 
 as a man of business. 
 
 And who shall prescribe limits to the busi- 
 ness developments which are your main interest 
 in life? The elements which are fixed and deter- 
 mined for all time are common to every man en- 
 gaged in the same occupation, but those which 
 are shaping, and those that are not yet dreamed 
 of, are waiting for the ingenuity of your brains. 
 To despair of ever being able to discover the new 
 thing is a mental habit as old as the hills. Cen- 
 turies before Julius Caesar landed on the shores 
 of Britain and a thousand years before Columbus 
 sighted America, a Hebrew philosopher bewailed 
 the fact that "there is no new thing under the 
 sun." We have found a few since then. Dr. C. 
 Pearson believes we shall never have another epic 
 like Homer's, or a great poem like Dante's Divina 
 
144 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Commedia. Mr. A. J. Balfour affirraed that the 
 real age of fiction has passed, because the subject 
 matter is exhausted. The pessimists will always 
 be with us — in business as in literature, and we 
 need to brace ourselves against their depressing 
 influence. 
 
 (b) In regard to the second point, it will be 
 noticed that I speak of the individual mind at 
 work. I lay emphasis on the italicized word, be- 
 cause true originality is essentially the outcome 
 of individual effort. When asked to write an 
 article on the poet Burns, or socialism, or railway 
 rates, most men make it their first duty to study 
 what other men have said. That is why they are 
 copyists. Gibbon, on sitting down to read a new 
 book, first arranged his own thoughts on the sub- 
 ject (however little he knew about it) and then 
 began to compare them with those of the author. 
 That is the method which men should pursue in 
 business problems. To do as others have done 
 is the policy of the man who seeks a mere living ; 
 to do better than others have done is the way to 
 fortune, and "doing better" can come only by 
 personal study. Follow no precedent and take 
 your eyes off the other man whose example may 
 vitiate your own natural ingenuity. You thus give 
 full play to the talents you have. 
 
 Carlyle defined the original man as the sincere 
 man, i. e., the man who is himself — who does not 
 try to be somebody else. He who commences a 
 financial business and tries to be a J. Pierpont 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORIGINALITY 145 
 
 Morgan, or a steel business and aims at a Car- 
 negie ideal, may be credited with some ambition ; 
 but he is a copyist after all, and he cannot but 
 know that there are a good many like him. The 
 personnel of every business is for the most part 
 made up of bundles of imitators who create an 
 unnecessarily artificial competition among them- 
 selves by seeking precisely the same end in the 
 same way. That is why the original man has so 
 distinctive a value; he relieves the pressure of 
 the crowd and reaps a rich reward for his serv- 
 ices. 
 
 In literature there is what may be called a trick 
 originality, and it seems to be adopted by men 
 who could afford to rely on their own brains for 
 the ideas they would offer the public. The trick 
 lies in the open challenge or the simple inversion 
 of accepted truths. 
 
 "Challenge these accepted truths," the trick 
 seems to say, "and the world will listen to you. 
 Deny its hoary inferences on virtue, religion, pol- 
 itics, art, and everything else. You will be aston- 
 ished at the result. The world is startled out 
 of its sleepy acquiescence in what it thought was 
 the exact truth; the other side of the shield is 
 laid bare, and the showman author of this dis- 
 concerting business is hailed as a literary light of 
 the first order. ' ' Is this an exaggeration ? I hope 
 not. It is the method pursued by Rousseau in 
 his first theme — namely, that the arts and sciences 
 had been detrimental to moi'als. Go through the 
 
146 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 books of some of our younger writers on politics, 
 the drama, art, and religion, and you will find 
 that plain challenge is the trick that does it. 
 
 Would you like to see how it is done? Very 
 well — here is Bernard Shaw on Shakespeare: 
 
 "As you know, I have striven hard to open 
 English eyes to the emptiness of Shakespeare's 
 philosophy, to the superficiality and second-hand- 
 edness of his morality, to his weakness and vulgar 
 prejudices, his ignorance, his disqualifications of 
 all sorts for the philosophic eminence claimed for 
 him. . . . The preface to my 'Three Plays 
 for Puritans' contains a section headed 'Better 
 than Shakespeare' which is, I think, the only ut- 
 terance of mine on the subject to be found in a 
 book. . . . There is at present in the press 
 a new preface to an old novel of mine called ' The 
 Irrational Knot.' In that preface I define the 
 first order of literature as consisting of those 
 works in which the author, instead of accepting 
 the current morality and ready-made religion 
 without question as to their validity, writes from 
 an original moral standpoint of his own, thereby 
 making his book an original contribution as to 
 morals, religion, and sociology, as well as to 
 belles-lettres." * 
 
 Yes, instead of accepting or analyzing what you 
 find, challenge it. True, a man needs ability and 
 knowledge even to write an effective challenge of 
 accepted ideas, but there can be no secret about 
 
 * See "Tolstoy on Shakespeare," p. 114. 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OEIGINALITY 147 
 
 the method itself. Choose the unpopular side of 
 great questions and preach it with all your might : 
 that is one of the tricks of pseudo-originality. 
 
 Another is the process of simple inversion. By 
 this method you turn a statement around and 
 show how it is truer when read backwards than 
 forwards. Buxton, in his Notes on Thought, says, 
 "The reverse side of a proposition is often of 
 more value than the proposition itself. How much 
 fame did Wordsworth get by simply turning on 
 its back the obvious truth that the man is father 
 to the boy, and giving as the converse that the 
 boy is father to the man?" *' 
 
 It would seem, then, that in one critic's estima- 
 tion even Wordsworth was not above employing 
 the method of inversion! But did he? Was it 
 not a real insight into the truth of things rather 
 than the mechanical effort of reversing the words 
 of a sentence to see what new notion he could 
 get out of it? No one who knows Wordsworth 
 will pause for an answer, but let us experiment 
 for ourselves with a few statements : Shakespeare 
 has said, "The weakest goes to the wall." The 
 proper attitude to take is to challenge the state- 
 ment, and affirm that the weakest prevail every- 
 where. So we begin : " A prof ounder thinker than 
 Shakespeare said, 'The race is not to the swift 
 and the battle to the strong, ' and if it be imagined 
 that men smitten with disease, weakness, lunacy, 
 
 * The reference is, of course, to the poem "My heart leaps 
 up," and the " Ode to Immortality." 
 
148 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 and every blight of modern civilization are going 
 to the wall, a journey through any metropolis 
 will exhibit the fallacy of the idea. Instead of 
 rooting out disease, we endow it and keep it alive 
 in hospitals and laboratories, in order that future 
 generations may study it; a strong man needing 
 sympathy is passed by, while a loathsome wretch 
 is taken to a home, wept over by pious people, 
 and pampered as an erring child of God. 'If 
 Chatterton had been blind, or drunk, or idiotic, 
 or incurably diseased, how many benevolent 
 hearts would have yearned after him,' says a 
 modern writer, 'and yet he never roused a mo- 
 mentary pity in any philanthropic heart.' No, 
 too often the weakest are bolstered up, and the 
 strongest go to the wall." 
 
 Who will deny there is a crumb of truth in 
 such a view? And who will deny that it is still 
 emphatically true that "the weakest goes to the 
 wall" — everywhere and always? 
 
 Take another sentence — this time from econom- 
 ics: "Communism is brotherly love in action." 
 Eule: deny and justify. Hence to say that "com- 
 munism io brotherly love" is to state an absurd- 
 ity; to claim that it is even love is humorous; to 
 call it ' ' brotherly love ' ' is surely to rouse the very 
 gods of Olympus to merriment ! ' ' Communism is 
 the whine that comes from the weak, saying 'give 
 us of your money, for ours has all been spent. 
 Let us share your possessions, for although we 
 have nothing to offer in return, you are welcome 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OKIGINALITY 149 
 
 to our society, our appetites, and the deep love 
 of our grateful hearts.' And the lazy commu- 
 nists, being more numerous than the diligent and 
 strong, eventually conquer. In fact, communism 
 in any shape or form is the exploitation of the 
 strong by the weak." Again, we are ready to 
 admit the crumb of truth, but we are just as ready 
 to affirm the need of an unselfish course of action 
 in the distribution of the rewards of labor. 
 
 Another rather apt illustration may be seen in 
 the London Daily News for June 13th, 1908. 
 Mr. G. K. Chesterton, writing on tyranny, says: 
 "I have come to be convinced of late of a certain 
 theory of tyranny. It may be right or wrong, but 
 I think it is at least worthy of thought in con- 
 nection with a highly interesting matter. Broad- 
 ly speaking, the common theory of tyranny has 
 been this : that men have groaned under some sys- 
 tem for centuries and have at last rebelled against 
 it ; but I think that men have actually done quite 
 otherwise: they have rebelled against the system 
 under which they have not groaned. ' ' Could you 
 find a better instance of mechanical inversion? 
 Further examples might be multiplied at length, 
 but these will suffice, and although the method 
 can be found in classic authors of all kinds, it is 
 safe to assume that its presence there is acci- 
 dental, whereas its use by other writers is purely 
 mechanical. It must be conceded, however, that 
 the many-sidedness of truth provides some jus- 
 tification for the employment of inversion as a 
 
150 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 method of seeking ideas: the plaintiff has not 
 the whole truth, and much may be said for the 
 defendant. 
 
 But what about originality in business? Is 
 there room for dodges to avoid close thinking and 
 hard work? Not at all. In commerce the thinker 
 leads, and the organizer comes next. True, one 
 may find a good deal of imitation here, as every- 
 where: a fine invention is sooner or later in- 
 fringed on, a big success is followed by a tribe of 
 little ones, and so it will be to the end of the 
 chapter. However, being original in business, 
 where you deal with concrete facts, is a very dif- 
 ferent thing from striking out a new line in the 
 realm of ideas. There may be less glory in de- 
 vising a hitherto unthought-of method of packing 
 eggs, or freezing New Zealand mutton, but Ihe 
 grim test of experiment is always present to de- 
 termine the real from the counterfeit. You can't 
 produce a good balance-sheet from a mock orig- 
 inality; it needs more than fine phrases to pay 
 dividends and satisfy shareholders. "Is there 
 money in it?" That is the criterion of a new 
 idea in trade operations. And yet it is true that 
 just as great success comes from an original way 
 of supplying human needs as from appealing to 
 our ideal emotions. The kings of commerce are 
 not only plodders and models of industry: they 
 are thinkers in the highest sense. 
 
 They have brought an individual mind to bear 
 upon commercial complexities and devised a new 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OEIGINALITY 151 
 
 and advantageous result. I will take a recent il- 
 lustration from tlie pages of a business magazine : 
 ' ' A machinery house in the Northwest discovered 
 that its selling cost was entirely out of proportion 
 to other expenses. The excess was due to the 
 distance which separated its markets for dredg- 
 ers, excavators, stamps, hoists, and other heavy 
 machinery from the places where the machines 
 were installed. Its buying interests centred in 
 Chicago, New York, and a dozen other cities, yet 
 the bulk of its installations of machinery were in 
 the new countries — the Southwest and far West, 
 Canada, and Mexico. To bring the prospective 
 buyer and the machines together — a necessary 
 preliminary to every order — long railroad jour- 
 neys had to be made. Transportation and other 
 expenses were eating a big hole in the profits. 
 Searching for a remedy, the advertising manager 
 borrowed an idea from the moving-picture shows. 
 If a stereopticon and a travelling film can re- 
 produce the rush of a railroad train, a cavalry 
 charge, or the shimmer of an Alpiae waterfall, it 
 ought to be able to convey what the company's 
 machines look like at their daily tasks." The 
 scheme was tried and proved to be an unquali- 
 fied success. 
 
 The crux of the whole matter of discovery lies 
 in the new use of a comparatively old invention, 
 but how long was it before the manager found 
 that idea? How many scores of ideas were tested 
 before he suddenly thought of this one? We do 
 
153 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 not know. Probably the manager himself could 
 not tell us, but the mental stages are clearly re- 
 vealed. On the one hand we have huge machines 
 in a centre, A ; in many other far-away centres — 
 called B, C, D, etc. — we have men who need such 
 machines. It is impossible to send out specimens — 
 they are too large; so possible buyers are asked 
 to take long journeys at the company's expense 
 to view the machines at work. The results are 
 not satisfactory and the problem is to bring the 
 machines and the buyers together in a cheaper 
 and better way. Photographs are inadequate: 
 they are too static. What is needed is a picture 
 of the machines at work. To us who know the 
 story the idea of applying the cinematograph is 
 as simple as possible, but it is marvellous how 
 long the brain can hover round an idea without 
 recognizing it. That manager may have spent 
 much time on his problem before he solved it so 
 simply and so obviously. Still, it was an individ- 
 ual mind at work, and any kind of new result is 
 brought about in that way. 
 
 (c) The new result may appear in a hundred 
 different manifestations — for instance, a new 
 kind of nut for machinery; a new method of re- 
 ducing expenses ; a new design for manufacturers ; 
 a new sort of paper-fastener; a new implement 
 for the laundry, guaranteed not to tear good lin- 
 en ; a new pipe and cigar-cutter ; a new fountain- 
 pen that will not leak — we might fill pages with 
 these possibilities. Viewed psychologically, the 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OP OEIGINALITY 153 
 
 fact that we describe as "new" is a result of the 
 individual mind at work on the old material. 
 There is nothing so absolutely new that no trace 
 of the old appears either in substance or associa- 
 tion; hence this originality is relative, albeit it 
 has elements of surprise in it and can be traced 
 to its source in the work of the individual mind. 
 If we take a new and beautiful poem, we shall in 
 all probability find that there is not a single word 
 in it with which we are not familiar, and in that 
 sense it can never be original, for the poet has 
 used no material that did not exist before; but 
 when we see his new ideas and new metaphors 
 and feel the influence of his spirit in the beauty 
 of his song, we realize that he is truly original — 
 he has uttered a new thought with all the music 
 of poetry in it. 
 
 In business a man's originality may be just as 
 pronounced, although he uses no new material. 
 Even as Charles Lamb used the English lang-uage 
 and stamped it with his own personality, so may 
 a man in trade use all the materials others use, 
 and yet give them a distinctive style — the impress 
 of his sincere self, unhampered by imitations of 
 the men who preceded him. This is specially true 
 of the man who brings a new business into being. 
 Thomas Cook, the tourist agent, quite accidental- 
 ly hit upon his train exetirsion idea. He was a 
 temperance orator and desired the Leicester peo- 
 ple to be present at a Loughborough festival. He 
 thought a new thought in his endeavor to bring 
 
154 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 about the desired end. There was no convenient 
 train, so he asked himself, ' ' Why not run a special 
 one?" He arranged it at once and the big tourist 
 agency that we now know commenced its career in 
 earnest. We perhaps smile at this "originality" 
 now, but it was one at the time and it still con- 
 tinues to be the greatest of its kind, notwithstand- 
 ing the changing conditions of modern travel. 
 
 He who invented the policy of "Money back if 
 not satisj&ed" carved out a most welcome orig- 
 inality, the only marvel being that some one had 
 never anticipated him. It is so obviously to the 
 advantage of the seller to insure the customer's 
 satisfaction and confidence, that one is surprised 
 that the centuries of trade slipped by with no sign 
 of such a desirable relationship. Indeed, one 
 might say every new result in business is attended 
 by this element of surprise that no one had 
 thought of it before, and this fact would seem to 
 suggest that there are numerous originalities and 
 novelties just beneath the surface of things and 
 awaiting discovery by some man with more 
 thought and initiative than his fellows. Take a 
 case in point: Ladies' hats in theatres sometimes 
 make a view of the stage impossible, and a re- 
 quest to remove the obstruction is not always easy 
 to prefer or easy — apparently — to comply with. 
 The theatre-manager comes to the rescue — he 
 does in picture-theatres, at any rate — and on the 
 screen we read: 
 
 "Will ladies kindly remove their hats, so that 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OEIGINALITY 155 
 
 persons behind them may see the pictures on the 
 screen?" 
 
 For a long time there was no improvement on 
 this kind of notice — plain, polite, and unemotional. 
 Then one day a man began to think. He thought 
 of a little film where the hat tragedy could be 
 depicted and made into a comedy. So on the 
 screen we saw a picture of three girls with enor- 
 mous hats. What was behind them it was im- 
 possible to say. Suddenly, we learn, they were 
 requested to remove their hats, and the wry faces 
 they make are very laughable. However, they 
 "unpin," and, as the hats are lowered, we see 
 four jolly boys behind them, elated with the fact 
 that they can now "see." The next scene is a 
 mingled mass of letters of the alphabet, all on the 
 move, and gradually shaping themselves into the 
 old request to ladies about their hats ; but as the 
 "s" in the word "ladies" wanders to its place, it 
 takes hold of the "k" in "kindly" and hugs it 
 affectionately by way of emphasis, finally seek- 
 ing its own destination at the end of the word 
 to which it belongs. Everybody is amused and 
 the lady "who hates to take off her hat" does so 
 with good humor. Now, the man who thought out 
 this scheme understood human nature, and was 
 at the same time both an artist and a humorist. 
 He knew that a cold request like the old one awoke 
 only a sense of irritation, however polite the 
 phraseology, and he took the sting away by pic- 
 torially representing the disadvantage of a big 
 
156 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 hat to the person sitting behind — this was the 
 logical element — and by introducing the element 
 of fun he removed the sense of irritation. An 
 ordinary man might have argued in this way : "I 
 have displayed a request on the screen; I have 
 spoken to ladies myself; my assistants have done 
 the same; what more can be done? If hats are 
 still worn, I can't help it. I have done my best 
 to regulate matters." The other man also asks, 
 "What more can be done?" but not in the hope- 
 less sense. He believes more can be done. And 
 he does it. Originality in business is one-fourth 
 brains and three-fourths optimism — a quality, by 
 the way, susceptible of cultivation. 
 
 That new results have not ceased to be, and 
 that they never will, may be regarded as an axiom. 
 Manifestly they cannot be described in these 
 pages, for as yet they do not exist except as 
 potentialities. They are embryonically reposing 
 in the brain of that youth who has a fancy that 
 the boss's ways of effecting the repair of auto- 
 mobiles or something else are not the best; or 
 in the mind of the mature man who knows that 
 methods of street lighting have not yet reached 
 the perfection of which they are capable. The 
 pessimist may stumble perchance on a new result, 
 but as a rule it belongs to the optimist — and some- 
 times he has to suffer the jeers of a skeptical 
 public before his discovery is accepted. Often 
 the same public will receive a similar benefactor 
 with an extravagant chorus of praise. 
 
THE DEVELOPMEXT OF ORIGINALITY 157 
 
 Mental Training for Originality 
 
 Having determined the use of the word "orig- 
 inality" in this connection, it will no longer ap- 
 loear irrational to claim that the mind may be 
 trained to secure an original output. Every man 
 is original who is himself, the only difference 
 between him and the genius being that their re- 
 spective originalities have not the same merit or 
 value. I may be myself through and through, 
 and yet not be notable, for unless my personality 
 and gifts are capable of growth and expansion, I 
 cannot hope to equal the results of the man whose 
 powers are of a higher order. But a commercial 
 value is not measured in the same way as a lit- 
 erary value. Darwin's theories have an ideal val- 
 ue — namely, that of explaining phenomena ; Aris- 
 totle's Poetics is the first systematic literary crit- 
 icism; Newton's laws are an original discovery 
 in motion, and yet these ideal values in relation 
 to commercial or real values have features in 
 common. 
 
 Take the maker of paradoxes and the adver- 
 tiser of patent pills, and compare their methods. 
 A parados is a truth standing on its head to at- 
 tract attention. So is a pill advertisement with 
 its letters so: 
 
 •xoq B j^nop euo — snid ^W^^O s^eSuABg 
 
 The object of the upside-down method is to get 
 attention. Every other line in the paper is right 
 
158 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 side up, but the wily advertiser, hoping to at- 
 tract more notice than the other men selling the 
 same goods, arranges to have his pill display in 
 paradoxical form. 
 
 How can you become an original man in your 
 business? or, if not original, then a man of such 
 freshness and novelty that you light upon devel- 
 opments productive of a handsome profit? 
 
 (1) The first condition is that you know your 
 kind of business, as it is at present constituted, 
 from A to Z. There must be no question of pro- 
 duction, sales, or administration with which you 
 are not familiar. 
 
 (2) Next, you need to have a knowledge of as- 
 sociated businesses — the businesses which supply 
 you with some of your raw material, or on which 
 in some way you depend for certain supplies nec- 
 essary to your own business, just as an iron-mas- 
 ter depends on a colliery proprietor. 
 
 Knowledge of this extensive character is a 
 requisite for originality, because without it there 
 can be no intelligent estimates of possible de- 
 velopments. Then, you must know the likes and 
 dislikes of that portion of human nature to whom 
 you appeal. Nothing can atone for a lack of 
 knowledge regarding your customers ' preferences 
 — of how they look at things and what novelties 
 will attract their attention. Thus you see how 
 necessary the element of knowledge is to the 
 would-be original man — knowledge of things and 
 knowledge of men. Even then we have not said 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OP OEIGINALITY 159 
 
 all that can be said under this heading, for changes 
 in political and social life are always exerting an 
 influence on commerce, and a watchful eye on 
 such changes is an important part of business 
 equipment. 
 
 (3) The third factor is to look ahead. The 
 average man has his nose close to his ledgers and 
 his order-books, or else he gives all his spare at- 
 tention to prices. He is not to be laughed at for 
 this devotion : rather would we commend him. A 
 good many traders and manufacturers are not 
 half so industrious. But the truly original man 
 must have time to think. So he pays good sal- 
 aries to chiefs of departments, or to a manager, 
 in order to have a few hours occasionally for this 
 duty of looking ahead. What does looking ahead 
 mean? It means a projection of one's knowledge 
 of the present into the future, and an effort to 
 imagine what changes time will bring. How often 
 does one meet with the phrase, "He saw what was 
 coming" as descriptive of some genius who left 
 his competitors far behind! To see what is com- 
 ing is one result of looking ahead, but orig- 
 inality does not stop there: it enables a man to 
 make things come which otherwise would not 
 come — if we may use so colloquial an expression. 
 Wireless telegraphy would never have come of 
 itself, if Hertz and Preece and Marconi had not 
 looked ahead, imagined, and experimented. 
 
 The original man is pre-eminently a thinker, 
 and an inventor is a good example of the type. 
 
160 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Before me I have an article headed "Inventions 
 that Await the Touch of Genius ' ' one is the pro- 
 duction of a new substance out of which to 
 make paper, another the invention of a process 
 for treating complex ores, and still another is 
 flexible glass. Ah, you say, these are matters 
 calling for much time, many experiments, and 
 great expense! Very true, but the same mental 
 outlook, and the same conditions in a less de- 
 gree, are just as necessary to secure originality 
 in your business. Originality is not a "fluke," a 
 bit of luck. Sometimes it may appear as if it 
 were, but this is only on the surface. The story 
 of a brilliant business idea is something like this : 
 
 "I experimented three years; spent $5,000, 
 and was on the point of giving up when — I found 
 what I wanted." 
 
 Or like this : 
 
 "I watched and waited for every opportunity 
 I had to save my capital, for to ask others to 
 help me meant giving the idea away. The oppor- 
 tunity came and I seized it. I was a made man." 
 
 A Suggested Method 
 
 (4) There is in the nature of things no set 
 method of arriving at anything new, but if the 
 psychology of invention in the fine arts or the 
 practical arts teaches anything at all, it teaches 
 the wisdom of definite search for the new idea — 
 until it arrives. It often arrives unexpectedly 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORIGINALITY 161 
 
 and at a moment when one is engaged in matters 
 that are quite alien to it. To investigate this 
 process fully would require a long digression, in- 
 volving as it does the discussion of the place 
 which the subconscious mind occupies in the 
 realm of thought production. C. Gr. Leland had 
 a profound belief in the ability of his subconscious 
 mind to supply him with new ideas, if he desired 
 them ardently just before dropping off to sleep. 
 Next morning the new ideas knocked at the door 
 of his consciousness and sought admittance. There 
 is a good deal of evidence in the field that upholds 
 Leland 's results, although they may not prove 
 his theory. The practice of "sleeping over it" 
 indulged in by hard-headed men when confronted 
 by a deep problem, and the solution of complex- 
 ities in mathematics during sleep, indicate that 
 there are in the slumber condition mental in- 
 genuities that are absent in the waking state. 
 
 But the normal man likes to get his new ideas 
 by persistent effort during working hours, and I 
 therefore suggest that he make the acquaintance 
 of what may be called his creative moods. Cer- 
 tain outward circumstances are frequently found 
 to be necessary to productive thought. The phi- 
 losopher Kant, when thinking out his proposi- 
 tions, formed the habit of looking out of his win- 
 dow at a church-tower, and that tower became a 
 real factor in his mental reflections — so real, in- 
 deed, that, when in the course of time the trees 
 grew up and obscured it, he felt unable to think 
 
163 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 properly and petitioned the council to have them 
 cut down. The council sympathetically obliged 
 him. 
 
 It is fairly certain that the practical man of 
 business discovers there are times, places, and 
 circumstances which bring about the production of 
 more and better ideas than are possible under 
 other conditions. Perhaps the secluded fore- 
 shore of a seaside resort, or a walk through the 
 country, or even a night session in one's own 
 house will supply those outward facts that de- 
 termine the inward creative mood. 
 
 The iDsychological side is best developed on the 
 Socratic basis. Put your business into the wit- 
 ness-box and cross-examine it — not once, but 
 again and again. Take a section of it and be 
 as remorseless as you can, but be just as hopeful 
 when you use the catechism on the matter of new 
 developments. Believe that, if you ask long 
 enough, the hesitating witness will blurt out the 
 truth and make you a happy man. Of one thing 
 you may be reasonably certain : the determination 
 not to be a copyist is the first step towards orig- 
 inality. It was a humorous French cynic who 
 said, "Whom shall I imitate in order to be orig- 
 inal?" He knew, and you know, how keen a shaft 
 this is, when modern business is surveyed. The 
 big man gets a new idea and the little ones tread 
 on his heels in their eagerness to be like him. 
 They are on the wrong tack: every man should 
 be like himself. He ought at least in common 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OEIGINALITY 163 
 
 decency to give his own individuality a chance, 
 and he can do this without assuming superiority 
 over others. To shut out the world, to obtain 
 those outward conditions which favor thought 
 production, and to cross-examine persistently 
 with an eye to the future — these are at least some 
 of the highways to originality. Thereby are sug- 
 gested new theories which on reflection give way 
 to the newer and the newest, until at last the one 
 idea sought for comes into full view. 
 
 Some specimen lists of questions on the Socratic 
 basis are given here. They are intended as sug- 
 gestive only, and make no pretense to complete- 
 ness: 
 
 (a) Are my profits as large as they ought to 
 be? If not, how can they be made larger I 
 
 (b) Have I reached the limits of economy in 
 buying, in producing, in packing, in selling, etc.? 
 
 (c) What steps or what course of action would 
 raise me above my competitors? 
 
 (d) How can I serve the public better? 
 
 (e) Are there any new ways in which I can 
 give a better degree of satisfaction? 
 
 To draw up a list of closely analytical questions 
 is like opening up a series of avenues leading to 
 the centre of success. It is worth while to write 
 out complete answers. The answers of six months 
 ago will sometimes appear "simple," but there 
 is no better test of mental growth, unless it be 
 achievement itself. 
 
 But the tug of war lies in dealing with the fu- 
 
164 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 turQ, and your questions about these are more 
 easily asked than answered. Thus : 
 
 (1) In my business what charges are probable 
 in the next year or two as regards the following? 
 
 (a) The position of my factory. 
 
 (b) The prices of my goods. 
 
 (c) The salary demands of my staff. 
 
 (d) The prices of raw material. 
 
 (e) The cost of manufacture. 
 
 (f) The effect of foreign competi- 
 
 tion. 
 
 (g) The prosperity of the country. 
 
 (2) Possible departures from present practice: 
 
 (a) In what new way could I profit- 
 
 ably offer my goods to the 
 public 1 
 
 (b) Could I with advantage adver- 
 
 tise in a novel manner? If 
 so, how? 
 
 (c) What departure would be spe- 
 
 cially welcomed by purchasers 
 of my goods? 
 
 (d) In what direction does the move- 
 
 ment towards development 
 proceed among my competi- 
 tors? 
 
 (e) Are inventions just on the mar- 
 
 ket likely to affect me? 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OEIGINALITY 165 
 
 (f) Could I with advantage add a 
 
 new but related line to my 
 present one? 
 
 (g) What new uses are possible for 
 
 the goods I sell? 
 
 The apparent simplicity of these questions is 
 very delusive. Not one of them could be answered 
 properly by any business man, unless he spent 
 many hours in investigation. Indeed, they are 
 not questions at all: they are statements as to 
 policy, and the interrogative form is rather sec- 
 ondary than primary. 
 
 Success in following the method outlined de- 
 pends, as does everything else, on the individual 
 mind. The love of precedents is so inborn in 
 some people that they try to find a new idea in 
 an old way. Better start out with an unfettered 
 self, your only limitation being that of the ma- 
 terial you have to work with and the proved re- 
 sults of those who have preceded you. 
 
LESSON IX 
 
 MEMORY-TKAINING 
 
 The leading inquiry in the art of education is how to 
 strengthen the memory. — Bain 
 
 The object of this chapter is too severely prac- 
 tical to leave any room for an analysis of memory 
 as a mental power. Such an analysis would offer 
 many attractions, for memory is one of the most 
 wonderful of all our gifts as well as the most 
 dramatic in its manifestations in disease and 
 health. But this pleasure must be declined, and 
 instead I propose to be frankly utilitarian by 
 asking on what a good memory depends. 
 
 I need hardly preface the answer by empha- 
 sizing the value of a reliable memory to business 
 men. Eationality depends on our power to con- 
 nect one event with another and thus create ex- 
 perience. A mind that is minus memory is thus 
 no mind at all. In like manner memory is abso- 
 lutely necessary in the every-day life of buying 
 and selling, not only because intelligence depends 
 on the power to remember, but because even iso- 
 lated acts of forgetfulness are sometimes well- 
 nigh fatal. A signal-man may have no difficulty 
 in performing his duties for 312 working days 
 of the year, but a slip of memory on the 313th 
 
 166 
 
MEMOEY-TRAINING 167 
 
 may bring ruin to himself and a hundred others. 
 "I forgot" is a phrase which sometimes links 
 psychology with destiny. 
 
 A good memory depends on natural ability to 
 recall past sensations and perceptions, as well as 
 on health and systematic training. It will be 
 conceded that the power to remember by conscious 
 or unconscious effort is not the same in degree 
 in every person. It is like the gift for mathemat- 
 ics, languages, or science: it varies with the in- 
 dividual. Sometimes it happens that a youth of 
 twenty finds himself possessed of a good memory 
 mainly on account of the manner in which he was 
 educated: the methods employed were truly psy- 
 chological instead of being, as they too often are, 
 quite the reverse. Usually, however, the strong 
 memory is there as a gift of Nature — not so much 
 as a brain organ, separate and distinct, but as 
 a result arising out of the true and ready work- 
 ing of the laws of association, directed by the 
 will. As a gift it may be cultivated like any 
 other, but to start life with powers a good deal 
 above the average is a great boon. A naturally 
 weak memory may be vastly improved — indeed, 
 there seems to be no limit to this improvement, 
 as we shall see later; but the training takes time 
 ■ — more than the busy man is usually prepared 
 to give. 
 
 Health is another important factor. The nu- 
 merous cases of lapsed memory reported in the 
 papers are nearly always traceable to mental and 
 
168 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 physical strain, a plain indication of the fact that, 
 unless the blood and the nerves are in good con- 
 dition, the power to recall will be affected adverse- 
 ly. It is curious to observe how, when we are 
 tired, we begin to use the accommodation phrases 
 for names and places we cannot remember at the 
 moment: "Mr. Thingum-bob, " '*Mrs. What's-her- 
 name," or "You know the city I mean." Stu- 
 dents at examinations are aware of the sudden 
 lapses due to the strain of preparation and the 
 policy of ceasing the grind two or three days be- 
 fore the test commences is designed to avoid the 
 vagaries in which an overtaxed brain will some- 
 times indulge under pressure. The man of busi- 
 ness, therefore, has good reasons for keeping fit : 
 it is not merely to make work a pleasure and to 
 reap the advantages of physical endurance, but 
 to maintain his memory and other mental powers 
 in a state of efficiency. 
 
 Training, however, is the chief item in the pro- 
 gramme, and to this I wish to give special atten- 
 tion. There is a system that is applicable to 
 everybody, and there is one part of the system 
 that is certain to call for individual study. Few 
 business men would fail to receive benefit from a 
 scientific training in memory; fewer still would 
 fail to derive advantage from a method designed 
 to overcome a particular weakness of remem- 
 brance, such as forgetting faces or figures. In 
 other words, there are not many men whose mem- 
 ories are so strong that they never feel the need 
 
MEMOKY-TEAINING 169 
 
 of some kind of tuition, and nearly every man 
 has a defect personal to himself, such as inabil- 
 ity to identify any object seen only once, although 
 he may remember names almost infallibly. 
 
 Attention is the first psychological study. Why 
 is it that an ordinary clerk can tell you, without 
 consulting a reference-book, the price of Canadian 
 Pacifies or Milwaukees five years ago, even quot- 
 ing the variations between? Because these items 
 have had his attention — exact and concentrated. 
 This is not the whole reason, but it is the first 
 reason. His duties have required him to investi- 
 gate the ups and downs of these and hundreds 
 of other stocks, and he obtained a clear idea of 
 how they stood at the beginning, and what has 
 been the nature of their development. Had he 
 "glanced" at the figures and comprehended them 
 just for the moment, with no more interest in 
 them than to answer a client's question, the 
 chances are that, the interest being momentary, 
 the memory would be momentary also. When he 
 required those figures again, he would have only 
 a vague notion of them, unless his power to re- 
 call were unusually strong in that direction. The 
 Stock Exchange clerk, as a rule, owes his knowl- 
 edge of prices and dividends to three things : in- 
 terest, attention, and repetition, and these three 
 things apply to memory in any line of business. 
 The reader may be a trader, a lawyer, or an em- 
 ployee in a store — it matters little — and if he de- 
 sires a good memory, he must have an interest 
 
170 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 in his work. There is no need to expatiate on 
 this point: it is too obvious, but you may have 
 the deepest interest, you may want to remember 
 the details of your business with all your heart, 
 and yet fail, unless you exercise the right kind 
 of attention. Take the case of a medical student 
 who is very anxious to pass his examinations. 
 The demands on memory are great, and if you 
 have ever seen a tabular statement of the vari- 
 eties in heart-beats, you will know what I mean. 
 His desire to pass the final test generates a strong 
 interest in his work, but interest, he finds, is not 
 everything. True, it compels him to be diligent, 
 and yet he may be diligent in the wrong way. He 
 may skim through a mass of pages in his haste 
 to absorb knowledge, thereby failing to grasp 
 each fact in its relation to the facts which go 
 before and come after. Then he learns the need 
 of concentrated attention. He proceeds cautious- 
 ly, one step at a time, mastering each situation 
 before proceeding to the next. Lastly, he realizes 
 the need of repetition. He goes to and fro and 
 up and down his subject; he repeats facts ac- 
 cording to groups until by the laws of associa- 
 tion and contiguity they are part and parcel of 
 his very consciousness. 
 
 Attention and repetition are usually wanting 
 in defective business memories. The commercial 
 traveller who is suddenly asked for an unexpected 
 quotation and begins to fumble in his waistcoat- 
 pocket for a quotation-list does not recommend 
 
MEMOEY-TEAINING 171 
 
 himself to the customer and cannot feel proud 
 of his lack of readiness. Quotations are things 
 he ought to be able to remember, and the fact 
 that he does not argues a lack of attention, how- 
 ever eager he may be to sell his goods. Complete 
 mastery comes by attention plus repetition. 
 
 Methods of Training 
 
 (1) Interest. Remember the difference between 
 the spirit of the man who says "I have to" and 
 the man who says "I want to." The one regards 
 the doing of work and remembering its details 
 from the viewpoint of necessity; the other is 
 moved by personal desire. You must belong to 
 the latter class. There is some gain, no doubt, in 
 remembering because you must; but there is more 
 in remembering because you keenly desire to do 
 so. Here, as before, the dynamic power is emo- 
 tive; your mind is operated in this respect by a 
 controlling feeling. 
 
 Eibot says : " A rich and well-stored memory is 
 not a collection of impressions, but an assemblage 
 of dynamic associations, very stable and very 
 readily called forth." It is safe to say that, if 
 in business matters you are in dead earnest, for- 
 getfulness will not give you a great deal of 
 trouble. 
 
 (2) Attention. Avoiding the disputes of psy- 
 chologists about the nature of attention, the man 
 of practical affairs can take it to mean that kind 
 
173 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 of knowledge or understanding which, accrues 
 from a careful examination of the object. A rapid 
 inspection of the clauses of an agreement for a 
 foreign concession will result in only a general 
 remembrance of their import; a scrupulous at- 
 tention is more likely to lead to a remembrance 
 of its phrases — a very important difference, if 
 instant action is required and the agreement is 
 not handy for reference. 
 
 In dealing with any item in business — be it 
 one of a group so different as the adoption of 
 a general policy, the study of economy in buy- 
 ing wrapping-paper, or the rendering of a ledger 
 account — the test question is, "Do I understand?" 
 It may seem an absurdly elementary question, 
 but to answer it requires concentrated attention, 
 and nothing tends more than that to fix the facts 
 securely in the memory. 
 
 Among the reasons given to explain the suc- 
 cess of forceful men is "attention to business." 
 It is a fairly comprehensive phrase and preferable 
 to the "early rising" and "plodding" virtues 
 which used to figure so largely in the moral liter- 
 ature of a past generation. It connotes observa- 
 tion and analysis and suggests there is little that 
 escapes the eye and nothing can pass the sentry- 
 box of the mind without a challenge. Such a man 
 has few memory troubles, not because he has the 
 gift of remembrance to a marked degree — ^he may 
 be only average in this respect — ^but because he 
 sees things clearly by virtue of close attention. 
 
MEMOEY-TEAINING 173 
 
 (3) Bepetition. He becoines familiar with them 
 by constantly going over the ground they cover, 
 just as the student acquires a knowledge of the 
 irregular verbs in French. Modern business is 
 split up into departments and sections, and while 
 it is hardly possible for one man to know them 
 all, every man should know his own with great 
 precision — an end he can accomplish only by re- 
 vising them from A to Z — not once, but con- 
 stantly. 
 
 This is the general basis of memory-training. 
 There are many systems, and perhaps the Pel- 
 man Foster one is the best, because it works on 
 exact psychological lines. But in taking up the 
 work of educating the memory there are one or 
 two points that the individual should observe be- 
 fore he begins to improve his power to recall. 
 
 (1) First, never abuse your memory. To be 
 always saying "I have a wretched memory" is 
 a perpetual crime against the laws of mind, for, if 
 you believe your memory is bad, it 7vill be bad 
 despite everything. You are using the law of 
 suggestion to kill a highly respectable faculty. 
 By affirming "I can't remember" you make it 
 next to impossible to remember! Treat the fac- 
 ulty with respect and confidence, and it will begin 
 to respond; scourge it with perpetual censure, 
 and it shrinks into the uncertainty with which you 
 characterize it. 
 
 (2) Trust your memory, but do not overload it. 
 There is naturally a line of demarcation between 
 
17'4 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 giving the memory too much work and too little, 
 but some expositors are so pronounced against 
 note-hooks and memory aids that we might think 
 it a crime to assist ourselves by recording an 
 engagement, or taking steps to insure the per- 
 manency of some important figures. If it is a 
 duty to remember everything, why not dispense 
 with ledger-clerks and the whole office outfit! 
 Manifestly there is a limit to the burdens we may 
 put upon an obliging faculty. On the other hand, 
 the slavish dependence of some on pencil and 
 paper for appointments, trains, figures, and or- 
 ders is much to be regretted: it indicates mental 
 sloth. The trust which we repose in the reliabil- 
 ity of memory is rewarded according to its depth 
 and persistency. 
 
 (3) Discover your particular weaknesses. Mr. 
 Gladstone had no memory for faces. He once 
 confused a man to whom he spoke one afternoon 
 with another man — to the first man's disgust. The 
 Premier offered an apology. They met again on 
 the evening of the same day, by a curious co- 
 incidence, and Mr. Gladstone actually repeated 
 his blunder! Had he been a trader, such a day 
 of mistakes might in the long run have cost him 
 a lot of money by mortally offending a good cus- 
 tomer. Face-memory is a great asset in all com- 
 mercial dealings. The man behind the counter 
 who can call to mind instantly a lady customer's 
 face and name and remember what she usually 
 buys is valuable to his employer, a blessing to 
 
MEMOKY-TEAINING 175 
 
 the purchaser, and a dangerous competitor to Ms 
 fellows. 
 
 Sometimes the weakness is in recalling names : 
 "I know your face, but cannot remember your 
 name." The originating cause is partly consti- 
 tutional and partly due to lack of attention — in 
 fact, that is really the sole cause, for the consti- 
 tutional cause is a natural lack of attention due 
 to small interest. Let the interest be strong, as 
 in the artful discovery of a young lady's name, 
 and a young man with a no-name memory will 
 remember with the utmost ease. He uses atten- 
 tion and — repetition. 
 
 In this connection one sees the importance of 
 sense-training, so frequently advocated in this 
 book. Names in print are usually more easily 
 remembered than spoken names. The latter are 
 merely sounds, and where the ability to "catch" 
 them and hold them is weak, assiduous practice 
 is the only cure. 
 
 "What do I most easily forget?" is a question 
 every business man should ask and answer, and 
 when the answer is unmistakable, steps should be 
 taken to provide a remedy on lines already laid 
 down. 
 
^ LESSON X 
 
 WILL-POWEK 
 Everything in this world depends upon will. 
 
 — Disraeli 
 
 In the long run efficiency in business life turns 
 on skill in action, and action depends on thought 
 as directed by will. Business is not a contem- 
 plation wholly, neither is it wholly a thing of 
 deeds divorced from careful reflection. It is a 
 fine blending of subjective and objective ele- 
 ments, but neither of these is complete without 
 the other. An efficient man is of necessity a 
 thinker, but if he were to do nothing more than 
 think, he would be a failure: he must act, and 
 action is the will in vital expression. Hence no 
 treatment of business psychology would be satis- 
 factory, if it lacked a section devoted to the train- 
 ing of will-power. There will be no opportunity 
 to discuss will in relation to the other powers of 
 the mind, or even to analyze the diseases of the 
 will. I propose to examine the problem from the 
 viewpoint of the practical man and to use the 
 results of psychological investigation as a guide 
 to the solution of his difficulties. 
 
 (1) There is a popular misunderstanding about 
 the nature of will-power: it is supposed to be a 
 
 176 
 
WILL-POWER 177 
 
 massive and violent something that occasionally 
 surges np from the depths of consciousness. Just 
 as if, to change the figure, a man's will were a 
 reservoir, and, as circumstances needed it, the 
 sluices were opened and there followed a gigantic 
 rush of water that carried everything before it! 
 As often as not this kind of thing is not will- 
 power. It is bad temper. Will is not a power 
 that is kept "on ta^," as it were— one day you 
 never draw a drop, the next you do nothing else. 
 Will-power is, in its right exercise, a continuous 
 expression of one's intentions. Some of these in- 
 tentions are naturally unimportant, and the exer- 
 cise of will is unconscious ; others are of mediate 
 importance, and the determination to act is a 
 little more evident on account of the need of 
 thought as to what course to take ; others, again, 
 are of the utmost importance, and the needful 
 courage to act is almost entirely dependent on 
 an access of will-power. But there is really no 
 condition of mind where for any length of time 
 the will is absolutely inoperative. Even to day- 
 dream and give up the reins to imagination is 
 a decision of the will, and to cease day-dreaming 
 by beginning work again is another act of will. 
 Akin to the idea that will-power is occasional 
 and not continuous is the equally false idea that 
 it is violent and not tranquil. I do not say a 
 decisive determination is always made in a calm 
 mood — sometimes the "I will" is accompanied 
 with deep emotion and dramatic gesture ; but I 
 
178 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 do say that the strongest will-power is usually 
 quiet like Tennyson's flood: 
 
 Too full for sound or foam. 
 
 The resolve that vents itself in passionate ut- 
 terance loses a good deal of its force when the 
 feeling has evaporated; it is then that "better 
 counsels prevail." 
 
 Emotion has a profound effect on thought, and 
 decisions arrived at in the height of such a mo- 
 ment are frequently defective in logic and con- 
 sistency, although it must be admitted we are 
 quite as much moved by sympathy as by dry rea- 
 son. But will, if we may judge from experience, 
 prefers a calm analysis of the situation — a re- 
 solve that has a longer Ufe and a greater power 
 to break down opposition. Excitement may en- 
 gineer a whole crowd of volitions, but the danger 
 lies in their lack of intelligence and the ease with 
 which their underlying intention may be aban- 
 doned. 
 
 These abstract pleadings have abundant impor- 
 tance on the plane of the real. Annoyed by a 
 number of petty strikes among his workmen, aij 
 employer determines to crush all opposition by 
 a lock-out. He may succeed or he may not. Most 
 likely not, if he has in his anger overlooked cer- 
 tain factors which the men may proceed to em- 
 ploy. He would be far more likely to stand his 
 ground, if he coldly scrutinized every aspect of 
 
WILL-POWEE 179 
 
 the trouble and then made his plans for the fu- 
 ture in the same calm spirit. 
 
 Take the youth whose ambition causes him to 
 aspire to a pinnacle of success altogether beyond 
 his gifts and possibilities. He may gain some- 
 thing from the possession of an advanced ideal, 
 but, as time passes and its realization comes no 
 nearer, there is an unnaturally heavy drain on his 
 mental resources ; despondency sets in and cramps 
 his efforts until life is a burden and not an in- 
 spiration. 
 
 But will-power is not confined to action : it has 
 much to do with inertia. If you are tempted in 
 a heated moment to go to law, and your attor- 
 neys have already begun work, when you discover 
 a flaw in the evidence, it requires courage to with- 
 draw. That is to say, the will not to do a thing 
 must often be as strong as that needed for its 
 performance — ^nay, it is sometimes finer far to 
 conquer by acquiescence than by pugnacity. Finer 
 or not, the demand on will is great, and it is 
 never met by a spirit of warfare. Only the calm 
 mood can give it birth. 
 
 (2) What the will is itself we do not appear to 
 know, except that it is an expression of the ego — 
 the self. Consequently will-power depends on 
 personality to a large extent; a weak-willed man 
 is one whose ego is not possessed of a deep in- 
 tensity. The "I" is not identified with life as 
 closely as it ought to be; events easily outman- 
 oeuvre any intention the will may have enter- 
 
180 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 tained. By contrast the strong-willed man dis- 
 plays the most intimate association with events — 
 so intimate, indeed, that the ego seeks to domi- 
 nate them, because the ideal is conquest and su- 
 premacy. 
 
 But will-power possesses no magic by which 
 alone it accomplishes anything. It is impossible 
 to divorce the action of one mental power from 
 another, and every expression of will is also an 
 expression of thought and feeling; consequently 
 will-power is simply mental potency that is wait- 
 ing for an opportunity to be used. The power- 
 house of an electric railway may possess an abun- 
 dant supply of energy, but without some product 
 of thought — the over-head wire and surface car, 
 for instance — this energy is quiescent. It needs 
 intelligence and previous efforts of will to justify 
 its existence and prove its utility. So it is with 
 human will-power. It is a reservoir of reserve 
 ready for immediate service. Of itself it can 
 do nothing, rationally; it needs the presence of 
 an idea to give it aim and reasonable purpose. 
 
 Thus the talk about "an invincible will" needs 
 guarding. It is not mere volume that we seek 
 after, but power of control. It is not the size, so 
 to speak, of a man's determination that makes 
 him master of a railway or a big store ; it is quiet 
 intensity illuminated by reason. The "irresistible 
 will ' ' of some people is an ungoverned flood. They 
 let loose the gates of resolve, and out comes their 
 will-power in a torrent — of language and deed. 
 
WILL-POWEE 181 
 
 Then comes the hour of thought, and, as they 
 survey the empty reservoir on the one hand, and 
 the destruction on the other hand, they realize 
 that spasmodic exhibitions of what they believed 
 to be their greatest and most glorious faculty are 
 not so faithful as they supposed, while the majes- 
 ty of self has disappeared in the flood of emotion. 
 This is the weakness of an overplus of passion. 
 
 Over against it is the weakness arising out of 
 an under-supply of thinking. We call it obsti- 
 nacy. A man says, "I will not pay for these 
 goods, because they are the wrong goods," but 
 discovers afterwards they are right. Neverthe- 
 less, because he has said he would not pay, he 
 will stick to his word. This is not will-power; 
 men on the market call it loig-headedness. The 
 stupid person himself may believe he has an un- 
 breakable will; I should prefer to say he has an 
 impenetrable intelligence. 
 
 Methods of Training 
 
 (!) If, on some occasion when you can enjoy 
 privacy for an hour, you enumerate and tabulate 
 in the order of their importance the strong- 
 est desires of your nature, you will take the first 
 step towards solving the problem of will-power; 
 for, as we have seen, that problem arises out of 
 a conflict of desires, some of which are out of 
 perspective. 
 
 Keligions — especially enlightened religions — 
 
182 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 have always exerted a strong influence on tlie 
 regulation of desire ; the Buddhist would destroy 
 it ; the Christian would control it. Ethical creeds 
 have the same object in view. The business man 
 who happens to have no religious convictions or 
 moral codes, except the simplest, may find him- 
 self at a slight disadvantage, unless he chooses to 
 form a working policy of his own. I will for con- 
 venience' sake draw up a plan of human desires 
 as they exist in men we meet every day. The 
 length of the line in the following scheme indi- 
 cates the quality, extensively and intensively, of 
 the desire opposite which it is placed: 
 
 Arnold Bechwith. Age fifty. Lawyer. Been 
 in business twenty years. Doing well, but wishes 
 to do better. 
 
 Desire to make money 
 
 Desire to shine socially 
 
 Desire to travel 
 
 Desire to be a great lawyer- 
 Desire to purify politics 
 
 Desire for rectitude 
 
 Now, here is a man who will spend more on his 
 house, his servants, and his automobile than he 
 should, because his desire to shine socially is the 
 keenest one he has. It is even stronger than the 
 money desire — indeed, that desire is only as 
 strong as it is, because the money is needed for 
 the satisfaction of his social ambitions. Akin to 
 these is the desire to travel ; it is a form of pleas- 
 ure closely associated in his case with a love of 
 
WILL-POWBE 183 
 
 display. To be a great lawyer is not outside Ms 
 wishes ; it is certainly there, but is not to be com- 
 pared with the other projects dear to his heart. 
 Altruism is only a passing humor, as is shown in 
 his occasional impatience with jobbery. 
 
 Now, this man has certain dangers before him. 
 in spite of a desire for rectitude. They have 
 always been before him, it is true, but circum- 
 stances have never provided an opportunity for 
 a strenuous test of his will. That test, when it 
 comes, will find him with two desires stronger 
 than rectitude — ^namely, social ambition and the 
 hunger for dollars. He may be fortunate enough 
 to have a sudden access of the sense of justice — 
 a feeling that, after all, the scheme for rapid 
 money-making has too many pitfalls in it and 
 must be reluctantly abandoned. Or, perchance 
 he falls in with it and is finally before the court 
 on a charge of misdemeanor. But it is easy to 
 see how the right action can proceed only from 
 a right regulation of desire. To commence train- 
 ing the will before you put your ambitions in 
 order is mere rule of thumb psychology — minus 
 an atom of science. So, in the quiet hour, make 
 an analysis of self. Become acquainted with 
 your desires until you can map out their exact 
 measurements — honestly, not as you wish them 
 to be, but as you know they are. When that is 
 done, commence the work of arranging a truer 
 perspective. In business there is one principle 
 which effectively answers the end : it is the desire 
 
184 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 to serve. Get that, and it will as if by magic 
 reduce all other desires to their right position. 
 You may have schemes put before you which 
 promise thousands of dollars and immunity from 
 all trouble, but you will easily dismiss them, even 
 though you were born with a "get-rich-quick" 
 compartment in your brain. You know you can- 
 not serve the public by taking even a "legal" ad- 
 vantage of its ignorance, or by "lawfully" trading 
 on its gullibility. 
 
 (2) Will-power, in its highest condition, has no 
 conflict ; it is a habit. That is why Novalis said, 
 "Character is a completely fashioned will." If 
 a man of business were to have a conflict each 
 morning between his desire to stay in bed and 
 his desire to get up, we should set him down as 
 an extraordinarily weak man — or else as one who 
 was physically diseased. Such impotence as that 
 described would mark him down as a second-rater 
 from any point of view — unless, like Buffon, he 
 were constitutionally deranged. So in regard to 
 honesty: the man who is in perpetual conflict as 
 to whether or not he shall embezzle his employ- 
 er's money is either a criminal by nature, or has 
 never mastered the very elements of right con- 
 duct. The average man is not a thief in this 
 sense, because his will is permanently placed on 
 the side of honesty; he has no struggle not to 
 steal, he has a deeply rooted habit that compels 
 him to respect the property of other people. It 
 is easy to be honest — difficult to be dishonest. 
 
WILL-POWER 185 
 
 "Quite true," tlie reader may say, "but the 
 case is different when sudden disaster entails 
 untold labor, suffering, and perhaps degradation. 
 Is will-power a question of habit then?" Most 
 certainly. The habit of looking at dark events 
 hopefully can be cultivated like any other habit. 
 I know people who believe everything happens 
 for the best, even when misfortunes overtake 
 them. They are not pious people necessarily, but 
 Ijeople who embody that belief in their philosophy 
 of life based on experience. They really believe 
 that misfortunes are blessings in disguise, and I 
 think most of us have been through dark days 
 which later on we saw were luminous with light. 
 Now, to such people adversity comes as a dis- 
 cipline, not as an enemy or as the cruel handi- 
 work of the god of fate. Though not insensible 
 to its hurt, they smile through their tears and 
 never give way to fits of repining and despair. 
 They have formed the habit of resistance to un- 
 pleasant happenings mainly on account of the way 
 in which they think about these things. To think 
 of them as enemies is to fight them by excited 
 threats of destruction — threats which, if put into 
 execution against people alleged to be behind the 
 unpleasant happenings, would serve only as 
 evaporators of valuable energy that could be used 
 in constructive work. 
 
 Will-power, in its action, depends more than 
 we usually suppose on the nature of our opin- 
 ions and convictions about resistance. Uncon- 
 
186 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 sciously we draw up a list of deeds wliich. ought 
 to be resisted and a list of those that can be al- 
 lowed to go unnoticed. Very often the first list 
 is a big one and the second microscopically small. 
 There is much trouble ahead for a man with such 
 a disproportionate creed. He will spend half his 
 time in fighting — time that could be better spent 
 in creative employment. But the point is this: 
 to acquire the habit of will-power we must obtain 
 right ideas, for to act intelligently implies that 
 the power used in action is adequately informed 
 by thought. 
 
 (3) Some men find they need an access of emo- 
 tion to make their will-power irresistible. There 
 is quiet determination as well as passionate deter- 
 mination. The first says, "I will not, in any cir- 
 cumstances, sell these goods at a cent less than the 
 quoted price." The second says the same, but 
 if it did not flush its face with feeling and bang 
 the table with its fist, the chances are it would 
 never hold to its decision. A crafty buyer would 
 insinuate a bargain and down would come the 
 price. 
 
 Now the question arises: "Ought will-power 
 to be quiet or passionate?" The answer is that 
 it ought to be temperamental. The quiet man 
 will decide quietly and the passionate man pas- 
 sionately. The only danger to the latter lies in 
 the possibility of thinking passionately and thus 
 arriving at a wrong decision. But will-manifesta- 
 tions are individual, just as our manner of talk- 
 
WILL-POWEE 187 
 
 ing is, and if we find an emotional determination 
 is more endurable than the other kind, we ought 
 to employ it. 
 
 Accused of weakness of will, some men have 
 defended themselves by saying, "An intelligent 
 man does not fear to change his mind." Quite 
 true, unless changeability itself becomes a men- 
 tal characteristic. I have examined numerous 
 cases of this type and find they originated in a 
 primary want of thought. For instance, there 
 was a man whom I will call Vincent Little, a pub- 
 lisher, who resolved to produce a splendid edition 
 of Paradise Lost at a huge outlay. He spent a 
 good sum in initial preparations, then abandoned 
 the project. In three different schemes, later on, 
 he repeated this performance, and he changed his 
 mind, because he had not given sufficient care at 
 first to "making it up." If he had, he would 
 never have embarked on any one of the four 
 schemes. He was wise in cutting his losses — 
 he would have been wiser, if he had not incurred 
 them, and this would not have been the case, had 
 he analyzed the propositions before starting to 
 realize them. Changeability is seldom a sign of 
 deep reflection, and it suggests suppleness rather 
 than strength of will-power. 
 
 (4) The curriculum therefore is: 
 
 (a) Clear thinking. 
 
 (b) Fidelity to decision. 
 
 (c) The formation of a habit of will, 
 (a) You cannot dispense with thought, so an- 
 
188 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 alyze the proposition, whatever it may be, and see 
 it from every point of view. When you know it, 
 you are not very likely to go wrong ; if you do not 
 know it, you will certainly have to modify your 
 plans or turn back altogether. Eemember that 
 list of resistances — the things you feel you must 
 fight — scrutinize the list and prune it down. You 
 need all the energy you can spare for constructive 
 work. 
 
 (b) Once a decision is made, be faithful to it 
 —this for two reasons : it is the only way to grow 
 will-power, and it is the one way to create self- 
 respect and engender confidence. 
 
 The sense of "I can" is not developed by a 
 policy of "wobbling"! You can say "I can" 
 only when from a survey of the past you feel cer- 
 tain of victory, because you have previously con- 
 quered by adhering to determination. 
 
 (c) The ideal is not a perpetual conflict with 
 enemies, be they men or things, but a mastery so 
 complete that it is as easy as the breath we draw. 
 You are to form the habit of will-power — to ac- 
 quire the ability to say ' ' yes ' ' and " no " with the 
 utmost ease whenever an aiErmative or a nega- 
 tive is needed. Practice is the only road to suc- 
 cess, but it should be carried out with the spirit 
 of faith. Start out with the "I can," continue 
 with it, and at length it will drop out of conscious- 
 ness, for you will be able to say "I do what I 
 will." 
 
LESSON XI 
 
 HYGIENE : MENTAL AND MOEAL 
 
 Let no complaisance, no gentleness of temper, no weak de- 
 sire of pleasing on your part, no wheedling-, coaxing, nor 
 flattery on other people's, make you recede one jot from any 
 point that reason and prudence have bid you pursue. 
 
 — Chesterfield 
 
 The line of demarcation between a mental and 
 a moral act is not so clear as our own use of 
 these terms would lead us to suj^pose. Take the 
 case of a man who has been working at an inven- 
 tion for some years and cannot see the one thinii: 
 he has been looking for to make the mechanism 
 complete. He is in despair and almost ready to 
 confess his failure. His friends say he lacks will- 
 power, for he is within an ace of the discovery 
 that has thus far eluded him. This judgment may 
 or may not be true, but is the alleged deficiency 
 in his nature purely mental or purely moral, or 
 does it partake of both? Of both, undoubtedly. 
 That is why many men of only average ability but 
 of strong character (for character is "a complete- 
 ly fashioned will") have left men of commercial 
 genius behind them in the race for wealth and 
 power. Sheer intellect is only half the equipment 
 of success. The other half — perhaps more than 
 
 189' 
 
190 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 half — is moral — not moral in any confined sense, 
 or in the sense of churcli dogmas, but moral in 
 the broadest interpretation, i. e., energy and de- 
 termination. If the would-be inventor yields to 
 discouragement, he will either be a victim to ig- 
 norance of mental hygiene, or he will lack moral 
 vim — will-power. As likely as not his failure will 
 be due to ignorance. Had he any real knowledge 
 of practical psychology, he would know that the 
 brain has a "stale" limit, just as the biceps 
 muscle has, and beyond this it is useless to go. 
 
 The course of action to be taken is an entire 
 mental change for a week or more. Let him read 
 fiction as he spends a lazy holiday at the sea-side, 
 or indulges in a game of golf with jolly compan- 
 ions. As likely as not the long-sought idea will 
 "come" to him suddenly when he is not thinking 
 about such matters, and he will rush home to take 
 up the task with renewed energy at the point 
 where he had dropped it in despair. 
 
 This is no imaginary case, but one that is hap- 
 pening every day, and it suggests the advisability 
 of keeping physically fit as well as the need of 
 finding a suitable form of mental change. A busi- 
 ness man cannot afford to eat what he likes, or 
 drink what he likes, or work twelve hours a day, 
 week in and week out. A strong man is tempted 
 to adopt this programme, because he persuades 
 himself he can stand it. So he can, for a while, 
 but we sometimes meet the once strong man wob- 
 bling — not walking — on a California sea-front, 
 
HYGIENE: MENTAL AND MOEAL 191 
 
 or up to tte neck in a mud bath, trying to get 
 his dissipated strength back again. Occasionally 
 he recovers, in part, but he confesses he is not 
 the same man as before, and that is because the 
 vigor of the mind is largely dependent on the 
 health of the body. 
 
 A scheme of mental training for business, there- 
 fore, includes physical culture, not for muscle- 
 building, but for health — particularly that of the 
 nervous system. The strenuous competition of 
 modern days demands an endurance which can- 
 not in most cases be met without preparation — 
 the kind of preparation found in an " exerciser, ' ' 
 in cold baths, in walking, in golfing, and last, 
 but not least, in change and rest. These are in- 
 deed the merest commonplaces of the medical 
 man, but they are too frequently ignored on that 
 account, and restless ambition is none the worse 
 for a few prosaic reminders about the value of 
 respect for simple rules of health. That value is 
 not only one which enables a man to keep office 
 hours regularly and endure an occasional pres- 
 sure of business: it saves him from yielding to 
 temptation during a season of continued strain. 
 
 I have in mind the case of a merchant of strong 
 native moral sense who, when passing through a 
 very bad trade year, allowed his physical strength 
 to go down to zero, with the result that he had 
 less power to fight his anxieties and no resistance 
 to offer when he thought of using some funds in 
 his possession belonging to a girl for whom he 
 
193 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 was trustee. Trade revived and he was beginning 
 to pay the money back, when circumstances caused 
 an exposure and he was haled before the judge 
 and cast into prison — a good man whom unsought 
 events made into a sinner, I have studied several 
 similar cases with considerable care, and my con- 
 clusion is that in all of them good training, phys- 
 ical and mental, would have saved the delinquents 
 from the embezzler's cell. 
 
 The specific mental regime needed is more eas- 
 ily felt than described in detail. Fear of some 
 kind is the business man's deadly enemy — par- 
 ticularly the fear of financial disaster. "We are 
 all human and we can sympathize with him. A 
 public failure is in itself one of the worst things 
 that could happen to anybody. It is, rightly or 
 wrongly, regarded as a confession of weakness, 
 and its effects on future prospects are likely to be 
 a severe handicap. But, after all, there are worse 
 things than a failure, or at least than one with no 
 crime in it, and, while nobody would regard even 
 such a failure with lightheartedness, yet the dis- 
 position to believe that all is not lost and that 
 "the best is yet to be" is the right feeling to cul- 
 tivate. To be distraught is, in a world like this, 
 worse than to be hopeful in the face of wreckage 
 and loss. Far better is it to be like the man I 
 once heard of: "Pie is a cork — you can't sink 
 him ! ' ' 
 
 The value of optimism is one of the trite things 
 paraded by the moralist, just as a health maxim 
 
HYGIENE: MENTAL AND MOEAL 193 
 
 is a commonplace of the doctor, but we need the 
 first as we need the second. Undue sensitiveness 
 has a hard time of it in the modern world, and 
 the ultra-sensitive man requires an extra dose out 
 of the optimistic bottle. He has a social position 
 to maintain, and, if business is slack, he would 
 rather encroach on his capital than move into a 
 smaller house. 
 
 Yes, we can sympathize with him. It goes 
 against the grain to make those public and hu- 
 miliating descents and be compelled to explain 
 to our friends, lying right and left, and apologiz- 
 ing for this, that, and the other. 
 
 But how much better is it to have an inde- 
 pendent mind which is too proud to be affected 
 by the opinions of other peo^Dle, and wliich can 
 make a descent in the social scale without turn- 
 ing a hair or fraying a nerve ! It may be thought 
 that no kind of mental training can accomplish a 
 spirit of stoicism such as this, but that is a mis- 
 take. It may be more difficult for some than 
 others, inasmuch as the not-to-be-beaten disposi- 
 tion is only half a faculty in many men ; but train- 
 ing can do wonders with the willing mind. With 
 the indifferent and unwilling it can do nothing. 
 
 The first need is that of overcoming fear by 
 substituting courage. Draw up an honest list of 
 the things you are afraid of, and you will find 
 in most cases they are contingencies which, while 
 calling for foresight, do not in themselves justify 
 any of the inward torments that accompany re- 
 
194 BU-SINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 flection on them. I will draw up a " scratch ' ' list 
 of those belonging to man in general: 
 
 1. Loss of health. 
 
 2. Loss of money. 
 
 3. Family bereavement. 
 
 4. Accidents and injuries. 
 
 5. Bankruptcy. 
 
 6. Death. 
 
 These are the great general fears of civilized 
 humanity, most of which can be obviated by some 
 form of insurance. 
 
 Then there are particular fears. Is that $1,000 
 investment going wrong? Does my partner abroad 
 attend to his duties? Will the Board of Trade 
 pass my account? How will Judge O'Hanahan 
 regard my case as plaintiff? Can I stave off my 
 threatening creditors until the next remittance 
 arrives from London? These questions are easily 
 stated, and on their face carry no suggestion 
 of carking care, but, as realized in actual fact, 
 they often bring suicide in their train. True, so 
 lamentable a finale is in most cases a confession 
 of mental weakness: the man was not made of 
 the stuff which takes disaster philosophically as 
 well as seriously. Now, it is a reasonable con- 
 tention that worry, while impossible of banish- 
 ment, is often relieved by systematically divert- 
 ing the attention from an ever-circling inspec- 
 tion of its cause. Litigation may be taken as an 
 instance: it is easy to say no man should go 
 to law, unless he is sure he has been deeply 
 
HYGIENE: MENTAL AND MORAL 195 
 
 wronged, but at any rate the sense of needed 
 justice should be the first motive. The next should 
 be the calculated chances of a successful issue, 
 for litigation is one of the biggest gambles in 
 the whole world. When these two matters have 
 been settled, and the case is down for trial in a 
 month's time, the plaintiff's mind is frequently 
 the arena of an agonizing suspense. The worry 
 of the result is always with him, and, should the 
 verdict go to the defendant, it is easy to imagine 
 the effect on the anxious plaintiff. 
 
 Now, let us grant that the trial is one from 
 which he could not escape with honor to himself 
 or without serious financial loss, for we ought to 
 remember that the life some people teach — call 
 it the worriless life — is merely pious flapdoodle. 
 Every man has to face a stern crisis once — 
 sometimes more than once — and prolonged sus- 
 pense is one of the fine arts of the devil to de- 
 stroy sanity, so finished is it in its ability to drive 
 men to distraction ! How can we meet the real 
 mental anxiety of waiting for an unknown result ? 
 By entering into some new method of occupying 
 one's time, or, if a new method be difBcult, by 
 making the old method more engrossing. To at- 
 tempt a universal prescription would be inadvis- 
 able, but the data of a few known cases may be 
 suggestive : 
 
 Case A. Harold Brown — a fictitious name for 
 obvious reasons — was being blackmailed by a dis- 
 charged employee utterly without scruple and de- 
 
196 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 termined to act. The threatened revelation re- 
 ferred to an incident in Brown's "salad days," 
 twenty-five years ago, and if made public now 
 would destroy or, at any rate, prejudicially affect 
 his standing in the church of which he is an of- 
 fice-holder — and a respected one at that — as well 
 as materially lessen his business reputation and 
 his ambition to take part in the government of 
 his country. The blackmailer gave him seven 
 days in which to pay $2,500, and Brown slept 
 little during the nights of the first three. On the 
 fourth he resolved to face the music and se- 
 cure the conviction of the blackmailer; on the 
 fifth he suddenly decided to take stock of his 
 goods, although the usual time was ten days later. 
 He personally superintended the work, forgot his 
 troubles, became very tired, ate a good supper, 
 slept like a top, and arose fresh for the duties of 
 the next day. He went to the police department 
 and secured its help. Traps were laid when the 
 man came for the money on the seventh day; he 
 fell into them, was jailed, tried, and sentenced. 
 And all that the public loiew was that Harold 
 Brown's assailant had got a stiff term of impris- 
 onment. A week before Harold Brown, prosper- 
 ous man of business and respected deacon of his 
 church, had felt that his days were numbered and 
 that he had better shoot himself at once. A week 
 later he smiled to think that he should ever have 
 taken so dismal an outlook. 
 In this condensed narrative of a real incident 
 
HYGIENE: MENTAL AND MORAL 197 
 
 illustrating how sins come home to roost one 
 sees how differently some men would have solved 
 the problem. A weak man pays the price in order 
 to have no bother, forgetting that the money 
 handed over is tantamount to admitting the charge 
 preferred against him, or else he temporizes and 
 tries to negotiate an understanding, which is per- 
 haps a worse proceeding. Occasionally an other- 
 wise strong man will be tempted to end the sus- 
 pense by sending the required dollars, for, if he 
 can get the blackmailer out of the way, he argues 
 that it will be better than going into court and 
 having the case reported in the papers. The only 
 right method is to give the criminal no quarter, 
 and, as the law in this respect is definitely on 
 the side of the traduced party, there is every en- 
 couragement to deal promptly with demands for 
 money under threats. Mr. Brown fortunately 
 assumed this position, but there remained the 
 days of suspense, of capture, of arraig-nment, of 
 trial, of sentence, and of press publication. How 
 did he meet these? By the policy of excluding 
 worry through added work. The problem in a 
 time of anxiety is to know what to do with the at- 
 tention, for under the influence of fear it is always 
 busy with troubles ahead, circling round and 
 round them until consciousness itself becomes a 
 torment. The solution lies in giving it something 
 to do that will absorb its powers and thus relieve 
 the strain of too much concentration on one thing. 
 Fixed ideas and madmen are allied, and worry 
 
198 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 and fixed ideas are dangerously close companions, 
 as will appear from 
 
 Case B. Silas M. Eetgen had indorsed a $1,500 
 note for Todd, a friend. Tlie signing was stated 
 to be "merely a matter of form, you know; just 
 to satisfy So-and-So ; the note was to be destroyed 
 in a month's time." Instead, it became due and 
 Eetgen was called upon to pay. He was beside 
 himself with indignation, and in a heated inter- 
 view with Todd drew a pistol and shot his friend 
 in the leg. He was seized and taken before the 
 magistrate, was fined $1,500 for assault, necessi- 
 tating the sale of the small house he had just 
 bought and paid for. 
 
 "A fool all through," you remark. He was. 
 But there are men whose natural generosity is 
 so large that they will do foolish things in order 
 to satisfy a friend, and this is a case where the 
 victim suffered from a temperament that needed 
 special training and correction. His generosity 
 was too emotional and impulsive ; it required more 
 caution — in a word, more brains. Having made 
 a fatal mistake, he again suffered from a false 
 impulse by shooting at his friend, involving the 
 payment of a fine in addition to the amount of 
 the note. 
 
 Now, the laws of mental and moral hygiene 
 prescribe a particular course of training for men 
 like Eetgen. On the mental side they would ask 
 him to study a book of law cases where evidence 
 has to be carefully followed, the effect of which 
 
HYGIENE: MENTAL AND MOEAL 199 
 
 study would be to side-track conclusions and deci- 
 sions that were the outcome of mere impulse. The 
 faculty of judgment would assume a slower mo- 
 tion and would be less likely to fly otf at a tan- 
 gent. On the moral side Eetgen would be asked 
 to study the art of sympathy and learn that, while 
 a feeling for others in difficulty is highly ethical, 
 there is such a thing as enlightened self-interest ; 
 that the duty he owes to his fellows must be con- 
 ditioned by the responsibilities he owes to him- 
 self and those dependent upon him. As it is, his 
 action compels him to begin life over again with 
 no capital, and, instead of wasting energy in use- 
 less whining, he had better learn his lesson once 
 for all, facing the future cheerfulty and confident- 
 ly. Is not that better than bewailing hard luck 
 and going steadily downhill "? 
 
 Such cases could be multiplied many times 
 over, for they exist in manifold varieties. There 
 is, for instance, that fear of criticism which is 
 the bane of life to scores of people. They do 
 not live their own lives, but, as Mrs. Poyser says 
 in Adam Bede, they live the life other people 
 expect them to live: they exist in other people's 
 thoughts about them. They are often retiring in 
 disposition, and a shy, reserved nature is ill-fitted 
 for the sometimes truculent strife of the market- 
 place, where sensitive feelings are given no quar- 
 ter. But courage and the high-mindedness that 
 rises above the taunts of the vulgarian are feel- 
 ings that can be developed, and when this has 
 
200 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 been accomplished, the withering sarcasm and the 
 rude jest die on the lips of him who utters them. 
 
 Methods of Training 
 
 (1) It is no part of my duty to state what a 
 writer of the New Testament meant precisely, 
 when he said: "All things work together for 
 good," but if the reader can accept these words 
 literally for himself, he will make an investment 
 in the security called Faith that will stand him 
 in good stead and return dividends with regular- 
 ity and increasing content. It is not a matter for 
 scientific proof so much as for the test of ex- 
 perience. The only condition which is exacted 
 is that we must act with rectitude and judgment. 
 There is an unknown "x" in every life — the "di- 
 vinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how 
 we will" — and whatever of destiny is in our own 
 hands, the power that rules by law gives com- 
 pensation for every disaster, just as certainly 
 as it puts the fly in the ointment of success. 
 
 The first discipline, therefore, is to have faith 
 in the order of things, and faith as defined by 
 Mozley is reason working on a higher plane. You 
 may not call it faith, but that matters little. The 
 man who believes in what he terms his "star" 
 may never regard himself as a man of faith, 
 but he is nothing else. 
 
 Nature has had and is still having an evolu- 
 tion, and this is true of the individual. Life is 
 
HYGIENE: MENTAL AND MOEAL 201 
 
 moving forward and its happenings are organ- 
 ically associated in the effort towards progress. 
 Grasp this truth not once, but repeatedly, and ad- 
 versity, instead of being a towering mountain, 
 obstructing progress, becomes but a temporary 
 pause in the advance movement. 
 
 (2) Physical health is a comparatively simple 
 matter, but mental health requires some extended 
 notice. For instance, how can we be bright and 
 alert at the office when we know that at home a 
 member of the family is seriously ill and that a 
 telephone message, one of many, may summon 
 us to the bedside? How can we face with equa- 
 nimity the loss of all our savings'? When some- 
 body in whom we trusted deceives us villainous- 
 ly, can we go about as if nothing had happened? 
 The voice of universal experience says these 
 things are impossible. Suffering is inevitable, 
 and we are human enough to feel it. Were we 
 to concentrate our attention on business at the 
 office, while one of our children was lying at 
 death's door, we should be doing violence to the 
 laws of natural affection and giving a serious 
 affront to the sympathy of our friends. If we lost 
 $20,000 and never suffered a moment's dismay, or 
 allowed a base deceiver to escape without giving 
 way to our indignation, we should be on the high 
 road to stoicism — a doctrine which sought to abol- 
 ish all pleasure and all pain. 
 
 So long as there are experiences which give 
 great happiness, there will be others that bring 
 
202 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 deep misery. But how long ought that misery to 
 last, and how far should it be allowed to deterior- 
 ate our vitality? This is the problem of our emo- 
 tional life. A family bereavement is one thing to a 
 believer in immortality — another thing to a pro- 
 nounced materialist — that is to say, the sting of 
 death is not so severe in the former case as in 
 the latter, because a life after death suggests 
 knowledge beyond the grave, whereas absolute ex- 
 tinction carries with it no hope. I do not argue 
 these points — they are outside my province, but 
 the difference between the two outlooks is an ef- 
 fect and the cause is faith. 
 
 Can we not produce a creed, an operating be- 
 lief, which in business will save us from the ill 
 effects of adversity? I think we can. The first 
 duty is to control the mind itself. A period of 
 unrestrained grief, however natural, makes a se- 
 rious inroad on reserve strength and greatly in- 
 terferes with the discharge of those duties which 
 we have to meet every day. One need not be a 
 stoic and deny the influence of pleasure and pain, 
 but one may nevertheless be brave enough to take 
 bereavements and reverses in the spirit of men. 
 
 There is no dignity or self-control in the spec- 
 tacle of a spirit that is paralyzed by events, 
 when the thinking powers are replaced by va- 
 cancy and the will by irresolution. The phrase 
 "prostrate with grief" is thought to be a striking 
 testimony to the reality of love. Truly, it is a 
 testimony, but it is not necessarily complimentary. 
 
HYGIENE: MENTAL AND MOEAL 203 
 
 It does not argue strength so mucli as weakness. 
 The man who suffers deeply but holds his head 
 high, who is conscious of a lacerated heart and 
 yet can command attention for business proposi- 
 tions, is certainly a nobler figure. Self-control, 
 therefore, is the prime necessity in seasons of 
 adversity. 
 
 The second duty is this : accept the inevitable, 
 but make use of it. Turn a disadvantage, if pos- 
 sible, into an advantage. Find a place where 
 trouble can be fitted into the scheme and made an 
 integral part of the whole. This is more easily 
 said than done, but to get the right viewpoint is 
 something worth while. We are here dealing with 
 the subtleties of emotion, and success depends on 
 an infinite simally small turn given to the feel- 
 ings. Submission is a much bepraised virtue, just 
 as the fighting spirit is inordinately extolled. 
 There is a happy medium, and the business man, 
 passing through the deep waters of suffering and 
 loss, will do best for himself and for others, if 
 he resolves cheerfully to accept the situation — - 
 not in the spirit of inaction, but of resolution. 
 There is less danger of sinking out of sight, if he 
 will hold his head up and strike out vigorously 
 for the shore. 
 
LESSON XII 
 
 PE0BLEM8 OF BUSINESS ETHICS 
 
 Most people think nowadays the only hopeful way of serv- 
 ing your neighbour is to make a profit out of him, whereas 
 in my opinion the hopefuUest way of serving him is to let 
 him make a profit out of me. — Buskin 
 
 At first sight ethics may appear to be outside 
 the range of this book, confined as it is to mat- 
 ters of thought, but a moment's reflection is suffi- 
 cient to show that, since action is determined by 
 thought, it is therefore necessary to think rightly 
 in order to act rightly. Besides, our code of pth- 
 ics is a standard of judgment on conduct, and 
 judgment is a reasoned mental operation, conse- 
 quently the morals of trade originate in mind as 
 it is affected by experience. 
 
 The subject of what is right and wrong in busi- 
 ness dealings is full of subtleties — some of them 
 hoary with age and accepted as gospel truth for 
 that very reason, despite their evident sophistry; 
 others are based on trade history — e. g., that a 
 thing has been done in the past is good reason 
 for doing it now, even though the ethical quality 
 of the deed is not of the highest; others again 
 depend on the alleged merit of secrecy — the buyer 
 . is satisfied and therefore it does not matter, if 
 
 204 
 
PEOBLEMS OF BUSINESS ETHICS 305 
 
 he lias been deceived; lastly, there is the persis- 
 tent doctrine that honesty is always the best pol- 
 icy. Some of these moral maxims and vagaries 
 I shall deal with on a later page. 
 
 The great question which the modem man of 
 scruple asks himself is identical with that of the 
 Hebrew psalmist: "Why do the wicked pros- 
 per?" For the purposes of discussion I will 
 divide the question into two: "Is it a fact that 
 the wicked do prosper? If so, why?" By 
 "wicked" I mean the man who will steal, deceive, 
 and act without mercy. By "prosperity" I mean 
 making money. No one who has looked into life 
 closely will deny that such men often accumulate 
 large fortunes, while many of them secure more 
 than a modest competency. Unfortunately, civil 
 laws are not always worded in a way that will 
 protect the man of principle. Indeed, the wicked 
 man often pursues his wickedness quite legally. 
 
 For generations civilized communities have been 
 trying to legislate for the borrower, but up to 
 the present the money-lender ajDpears to have 
 had it all his own way, or nearly so. Some years 
 ago an English lady borrowed five hundred dol- 
 lars from a money-lender at a rate of interest 
 which worked out at forty-five per cent. She 
 fell into arrears of payment and he fined her five 
 dollars a week for several weeks. Fearing ex- 
 posure, she sold some securities and paid off the 
 loan, the final rate being about sixty per cent. 
 No doubt this lender pursued the same tactics 
 
20G BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 with other customers, and he may be taken as a 
 good specimen of the wicked man in prosperity. 
 He has no scruples whatever; he takes every ad- 
 vantage of other people's disadvantages, and ex- 
 acts blackmail from unhappy borrowers by im- 
 posing fines which are illegal, but which he be- 
 lieves will be paid as the price of secrecy — in 
 short, he is a dastardly thief. 
 
 Now, thieving in one of its many forms is the 
 sole explanation of the prosperity of the wicked. 
 The bandit who holds up a western train at a 
 lonely spot in the hills, the ' ' sweater ' ' who steals 
 the rightful wages of his employees, the trader 
 who adulterates his goods and sells an impure 
 article as a pure article — these, and a hundred 
 others, are thieves who steal more or less di- 
 rectly from the public. The bandit is of course 
 a brutal thief, but methinks he is a trifle more 
 honest and less of a hypocrite than the trader 
 who by selling adulterated goods steals with a 
 pious lie on his lips. But both the bandit and 
 the false trader may be prosperous- — for a time, 
 at least; the former may "get religion" and take 
 to farming on his "earnings," and the latter, if 
 a milk-seller, may even have enough money to 
 overcome the disgrace of a prosecution for too 
 liberal a use of the pump! 
 
 Careful and astute thieving will bring a cer- 
 tain degree of wealth: that is a fact which we 
 cannot deny, although some people have a curious 
 hesitation in admitting it. I have known men to 
 
PEOBLEMS OF BUSINESS ETHICS 207 
 
 make one hundred thousand dollars in two weeks 
 by a form of suggestion to purchase which was 
 quite Avithin the law, and yet it was polite theft 
 all through. Hence the honest man constrained 
 to work hard for small profits, grits his teeth 
 when he beholds the sudden fortune of others — 
 fortune which came by methods he despises. 
 
 Just here is the danger-point. Men are apt to 
 reason in this way: "It's no use doing right, if 
 you want to make money. Bamboozle the pub- 
 lic — that's the only way. They like it, because 
 they are mostly fools. Get a decoction made up 
 that professes to remove wrinkles, and all the 
 women in creation will send you their dollars. 
 Even a few silly men will do the same. Not 
 square! Of course not, but what is the use of 
 being square? You can toil honestly for an em- 
 ployer until your hair is gray — then, one morn- 
 ing, you are asked to see the cashier. You are 
 fifty, gray-headed, and seeking a job which you 
 never find. I know the honest life. It doesn't 
 pay. The other does, and, even if you never re- 
 move a wrinkle, you make the ladies think you 
 do, and that's just as good. Besides, what harm 
 have you done to anybody?" 
 
 It does not require much analysis to see that 
 this argument is a modification of the highway- 
 man's policy — it is theft pure and simple. Polite 
 it may be — garbed in the habit of an ordinary 
 business transaction it undoubtedly is ; but essen- 
 tially it is stealing money from the public by 
 
208 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 false pretenses. It exploits a human weakness, 
 promising for a given price exemption from tlie 
 ravages of age and climate, when all the time 
 there is no certain knowledge, or even probable 
 knowledge, that the specific will fulfil its claims. 
 
 At the same time there is one factor that cannot 
 be dismissed so summarily: it is the too frequent 
 failure of the "honest" life. Sometimes one can- 
 not wonder that men with large ambition and 
 small scruples find that years of industrious serv- 
 ice yield very uncertain rewards. The gray head 
 receives little consideration nowadays — its owner 
 must give way to youth and energy ! Hence there 
 is a temptation to work out schemes that are dubi- 
 ous in character, although they promise rapid and 
 excellent returns. 
 
 But, after all, the temptation is not well- 
 founded; only the mentally short-sighted or the 
 morally obtuse are ever seriously troubled with it. 
 It is not the honest life that is a failure, but the 
 honest life that relies solely on its honesty for 
 success. To succeed in business a man must de- 
 velop his natural ability and nurse an ambition. 
 He must know himself, his goods, his customers, 
 and apply that knowledge. Good character alone 
 will never place a man on the pinnacle of suc- 
 cess. Some people think it ought to do so, but 
 we have to accept facts as we find them. There 
 are men of evil life who are abundantly prosper- 
 ous, because they have great business abiMties 
 and use those abilities in the best way (they 
 
PEOBLEMS OF BUSINESS ETHICS 209 
 
 would of course be more prosperous, if they were 
 upright in conduct), and there are men of good 
 life who are almost failures, because they either 
 lack ability or have never developed the ability 
 with which Nature endowed them. They would 
 reduce the amount of failure, if they realized that 
 success works by law — not by character alone. 
 
 Perhaps I can illustrate the fact in another 
 way: A diabolical sinner and a perfect saint es- 
 say to cross a river by walking on the water with 
 bare feet. They are unsuccessful. Natural law 
 is against them. It says that human bodies are 
 too heavy to be supported on the surface of wa- 
 ter by the tread of the feet, and the saint sinks 
 as readily as the sinner. In other words, Nature 
 takes no account of moral character; it has no 
 prejudices for or against ; it simply fulfils its law 
 without respect of persons. The "live" wire will 
 kill the man who has never committed a dishonest 
 deed just as easily as it will the man who never 
 did anything else than practise dishonesty. 
 
 It is the same in regard to the laws of busi- 
 ness. We frequently regret that a high standard 
 of private character is not better rewarded finan- 
 cially than it seems to be, but in so doing we are 
 confusing two things: the world of virtue and 
 the world of profit. The making of a profit de- 
 mands that you render the customer a certain 
 service. He does not say you cannot make a 
 profit, unless you are virtuous, or sober, or re- 
 frain from gambling. You may be a wife-beater 
 
310 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 and yet be able to make ten per cent, on your 
 turnover. Not that wife-beating is a crime with- 
 out its effect on business, for the customer has 
 no wish to patronize a blackguard and will prob- 
 ably transfer his custom elsewhere when the fact 
 leaks out. But this moral element is not the 
 primary fact; ability comes first, even though it 
 may not always maintain the lead. In order to 
 make a profit, you must know how, and if you 
 know how and act accordingly, profit comes, be- 
 cause you obey the law. This explains why men 
 of great ability but of double life morally often 
 advance to fortune, while others of less ability but 
 of indubitable morals linger behind in the race. 
 To argue that therefore good morals are a 
 hindrance to money-making is to miss the point 
 altogether. Character in the long run is pre- 
 eminent, but, since profits are results dependent 
 on business acumen, it follows that the greatest 
 profits go to the mind which shows the highest 
 commercial ability. The owner of such a mind 
 may have a doubtful personal reputation, but if 
 he is clever in supplying the wants of the public 
 and is keen on a bargain, the public does not ask 
 for a certificate of character before putting its 
 money on the counter. 
 
 A lady, on being reproved by another lady for 
 buying a hat at a store the proprietor of which 
 had figured in a shady prosecution, said, "Yes, 
 I'm afraid he's no good, but the hat was such 
 a bargain, you know — a perfect dream!" Pre- 
 
PEOBLEMS OF BUSINESS ETHICS 311 
 
 cisely. Business is — ^business. Men and women 
 in store transactions do not set up a confessional, 
 or put each other through a course of catechism 
 before buying and selling. Let the goods be 
 right and the price right — ^nothing more is wanted. 
 
 But we must not imagine that "character 
 doesn't matter." The shady proprietor referred 
 to loses a measurable amount of credit and in- 
 fluence by his misdeeds; wholesale houses watch 
 him more closely, and people with keen con- 
 sciences trade elsewhere, if they can. Besides, 
 weakness in one department of character has a 
 habit of travelling further afield, and a man who 
 allows his house property to be used for illegal 
 purposes may eventually find it easy to play ducks 
 and drakes with other people's money. 
 
 When business ability has a basis in strong 
 character, its advantages are superlative; when 
 it is associated with obvious weaknesses, the way 
 to deterioration is seductive enough, as the cases 
 in court reveal. The banker who commenced as 
 a poor boy, and, by a mixture of brains, hard 
 work, long hours, and positive cheating, became 
 wealthy, finds out at last that his disposition to 
 polite robbery is more than a match for his judg- 
 ment. So he oversteps the mark, the detective 
 gives him a call, and the court tliinks it best he 
 should have ten years ' reflection in prison. Then 
 the honest man rejoices and says that at last 
 justice has been done. Why "at last"? Justice 
 was being meted out all the time. The banker 
 
213 BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 had brains and he used them to bnild up a big 
 business — sometimes legitimately, sometimes not. 
 But would you say his clever ideas ought not to 
 be taken by the community, because his life was 
 not all it ought to be ? You would not say so, but 
 you would think it ought to be the case. 
 
 We have a deep-rooted belief that a good life 
 ought to be rewarded with big profits and an evil 
 life to have no profits whatever. But the law is 
 impartial! It says that a marvellous invention 
 shall receive a marvellous reward, because it is 
 the outcome of a marvellous brain. The brain 
 may belong to a reprobate, but that is not in the 
 reckoning, when business values are discussed. 
 If the invention is judged to be worth one million 
 dollars to the purchasing syndicate greedy to 
 buy at once, the determining factor is the profit 
 in sight, not the reprehensible life of the inventor. 
 Suppose, for a moment, a different kind of man 
 approaches the syndicate with another invention. 
 
 ' ' We do not think there is a market for it, ' ' 
 says the syndicate. 
 
 "But you bought a previous patent for one 
 million dollars from a man whose life and deeds 
 are odious," argues the inventor. 
 
 "Yes, the patent was worth it, too. We have 
 nothing to do with his life and deeds. ' ' 
 
 "But I am highly respectable. Why not buy 
 my patent?" 
 
 "Pleased to meet so good a man, but to us 
 there is no money in your invention." 
 
PEOBLEMS OP BUSINESS ETHICS 213 
 
 Thus, at considerable length, I have tried to 
 answer the questions with which we commenced 
 this discussion: "Do the wicked prosper? If 
 so, why?" The first answer is that they can and 
 do make money by "taking" it, and that theft 
 is a hydra-headed method of accumulating wealth. 
 The second answer is that there are natural laws 
 of success, many of which even a man of unde- 
 sirable character can obey to his financial ad- 
 vantage. The third answer is that, so far as 
 men deteriorate from high standards, whatever 
 their ability, in so far do they endanger the per- 
 manence and quality of their success, for quality 
 must not be left out of the reckoning. Better a 
 small competency with honor than a surfeit of 
 wealth with unsavory associations! 
 
 It remains now to deal with some of the more 
 detailed questions of right and wrong in business 
 matters. I do not set myself up as a casuist in- 
 tent upon deciding cases as a Jesuit doctor would 
 in moral theology. I desire only to show the ne- 
 cessity for clear thinking in. its relation to action, 
 and to advance a principle which to my mind does 
 away with "case law" and "custom" in business 
 transactions. 
 
 The question of "graft" is always in evidence, 
 and as between men who practise it, the giver 
 and the receiver, and those who do not, the ad- 
 vantage is unfairly on the side of the former. 
 
 In England the Secret Commissions Act is not 
 yet a success, although its effect has by no means 
 
214' BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 been nugatory. There have been some severe 
 prosecutions followed by startling penalties, but, 
 unless the poulterer pays the lady's cook a com- 
 mission, the game somehow is never ' ' right, ' ' and 
 the cook suggests a new dealer — to her own ad- 
 vantage. The contract which wins is not neces- 
 sarily the best, for in spite of everything there 
 are "understandings" which nobody can trace 
 and payments about which everybody is silent. 
 
 In America matters are no better. Mr. G. W. 
 Alger in Morals in Modern Business says that 
 large and prosperous houses adopt methods which 
 can hardly be distinguished from those of the 
 burglar. To enter a man's house and steal is not 
 very different from entering a business office and 
 bribing a buyer to purchase goods. 
 
 These are facts, but they need not be unduly 
 depressing. They are no doubt highly provoca- 
 tive to the honest dealer who sees trade being 
 filched out of his hands by "smart" practices. 
 And yet to think it wisdom to go and do likewise 
 is bad psychology — it is nothing less than a se- 
 rious resolve to join the thieves. 
 
 Furthermore, "smart" practices are going out 
 of fashion. They do not pay in the long run. 
 There is growing up a feeling of caste in busi- 
 ness. The high-class house gets the respect and 
 confidence of the public and of the banking com- 
 munity; the men of the "get-rich-quick" broth- 
 erhood are valued according to their deeds. 
 "Make a customer rather than a sale" is a motto 
 
PEOBLEMS OP BUSINESS ETHICS 215 
 
 the soundness of which is equalled by its increas- 
 ing popularity. 
 
 The principle which reduces all ethical prob- 
 lems to a single issue is that of service as fully 
 explained in the Sheldon system of business- 
 building. In the final analysis the science of 
 business is the science of service. A true sale — 
 and we are all sellers of something — must produce 
 a profit for the seller and afford satisfaction to 
 the buyer. If you truly desire to serve the pub- 
 lic, you need not worry your mind about business 
 ethics. You will be too much occupied in getting 
 the best values and offering them at the fairest 
 prices. This is real service, and service means 
 success. Christ embodied all the Jewish laws in 
 one law. Said he, "If you love me, you will keep 
 my commandments." Love is the fulfilling of 
 the law. So in business the desire to serve is 
 the power which banishes all our little quibbles 
 about right and wrong. We move on a higher 
 plane. We are saved the anxieties of conforming 
 to standards and customs in this, that, and the 
 other. The customer is our friend, and we treat 
 him in such a way that we are never afraid to 
 meet him again. We seek to gain his confidence, 
 for that is the basis of trade. 
 
 The wicked have prospered in the past, they 
 prosper now, and they always will, but abiding 
 prosperity, dignified in its massive proportions, 
 is always and everywhere the fruit of sei-vice.