Sunday to the commercial traveler, if to no others, is preeminently a day of rest. If there are stores open during week days he feels that he ought to be at work, and if he gives himself an extra half-hour at noon or evening his conscience pricks him. But upon the Sabbath there is nothing to be done by way of business, unless in getting from one town to another, and it is his rest day.
I slept so late (I admit that I am always lazy whenever I dare be) that I fancied I would have the dining-room to myself, but I had plenty of company. The hotel where I was had an excellent reputation on the road and was a favorite place at which to pass Sunday. I was fortunate enough to meet here a hardware man from my own city whom I knew well, and who had traveled long enough to know almost everybody.
“How is trade?” was, of course, his first question.
I had no bragging to do over my trade, for, it must be confessed, I was not sure that I had sold even half what I ought to have done. So I said, “My trade is only so-so.”
“Well,” said he, “I guess that is about as much as any of us can say. Times are tight. Goods are so infernal cheap and cost so little that if you sell a man four or five pages it don't amount to anything in dollars and cents. I was just telling White here—by the way, let me introduce my friend, Mr. White; sells notions for Haff & Walbridge, New York. I was just telling White that I took a big order from a house yesterday, one covering six pages of note paper, and each item calling for fair quantities, and it amounted to $92. A few years ago it would have footed up $400.”
“It is so in every line,” said White, “everything is down, but we have new lines every season, and keep up trade by having novelties.”
“What a chain-lightning genius Haff is!” exclaimed my frend. “I remember when he traveled for Howard & Sanger; good-natured, voluble, energetic, and uneasy as a lump of mercury. Suddenly he blossomed out as an inventor, and he's kept on inventing ever since. I've been surprised that the man who is father of so many children has not invented a better nursing-bottle or colic exterminator. What's your last novelty?”
“Base balls.”
“Ye gods! Base balls! Well, you've got a mighty good man to fight against.”
“Who's that?”
“Taylor, of Bridgeport. I don't know when I've seen a man of more push than he. I believe he patented or invented the ball that Warner makes, and they placed him in charge of the ball department. He just has balls on the brain; tosses them in his sleep; takes them to church and plays catch with the tenor, and keeps two balls in the air while he drinks a cup of tea. That kind of a man is bound to succeed.”
“Is the base ball trade a large one?”
“Yes, it amounts to a good deal of money. Every notion dealer in the country carries more or less of them in stock. The ball that sells for a nickel is bought by the barrelful; such a ball is sold to the jobbers at 28 or 30 cents per dozen, and to the retailer at 35 to 40 cents. Balls that retail at 10 to 25 cents are the best sellers, but a few good balls go in every bill.”
“How high do they run?”
“The best sewed balls retail at $1.75 each, but the ordinary 'league' ball retails at $1.50. Such a ball is sold to jobbers at $7 to $9 per dozen, except Spaulding's; he keeps his pretty stiff because he gets them into the hands of the National League, and a certain class, because of that, will buy them and no other.”
“Is there any choice in the different makes?”
“Very little. Certain dealers get balls made with their name on and advertise them as being superior to anything made, and very often the manufacturer cannot sell his own brand in the territory where these are. You know people love to be fooled.”
As we went away from the table, we met a gentleman whom my friend introduced as Mr. Hart, of Bradly & Smith, brush manufacturers, New York. Hart evidently was an old timer on the road, and knew the brush business like a book.
“Trade is fair,” said he, “but New York has to compete with brush factories in every city now, whereas, twenty years ago, we had it our own way. That was the time when my firm ran the Methodist Church and laid out Asbury Park, N.J. It was easier to make $50,000 a year then than it is to make $5,000 now.”
I was struck with a point he made against a buyer for a large jobbing house. Some one had said that they bought in good quantities, as compared with one of their competitors. “Yes, they buy in larger quantities,” said he, “but give me the other men. I sell them both, but here is an incident which tells the kind of big buyers your friends are. A year ago I had a new leather-back horse brush that I was selling at $9 a dozen. I showed it to B.'s buyer and it took his eye at once. 'What is the best you will do if I take a quantity?' he asked. 'I would like to sell that at $9, and if I could do it I'd push them.' I knew there was a good profit to us at $9, even where we sold in small lots, so I figured that in quantities we could sell at $7.50. How many do you suppose he ordered?”
“Well,” said my friend, “knowing that it's mighty hard work to sell a $9 brush nowadays, I should say six dozen would be a good order.”
“Yes, so it would; I expected he would order six or eight dozen, but he ordered twenty dozen.”
“The deuce he did! Did he sell them?”
“I was there yesterday and he had sixteen dozen and a half on hand. I don't call that very shrewd buying.”
Sitting in the smoking room was a tall, slim, Yankee-looking sort of a man, who smoked in a nervous way, and when he talked seemed to speak with great earnestness. He was introduced as Mr. Rockwell, a cutlery manufacturer of Meriden, Conn. Somehow these Meriden men are all alike. They are great pushers in business, wire-pullers in politics, and in season and out of season stand by each other. If Wilcox and Curtiss and the Rockwell family were only guaranteed fifty years more of life they would own the State of Connecticut. Rockwell was discoursing upon pocket cutlery, and as it was a subject about which I knew nothing, I took a back seat.
“American manufacturers,” said he, “not only have to fight against poor foreign goods, but what is worse, they have to fight against them under American names and labels. Thirty years ago if a man got up a fancy brand he put 'Sheffield' on it; now this is changed; everything has to have at least an American name. The result is that American goods are damaged by foreign trash, which, having an American brand, is supposed to be American-made. A farmer buys a knife branded 'Missouri Cutlery Shops,' thinking he is getting an honest, home made article. The probabilities are that it was made in Germany, and is of the poorest quality. It does not give satisfaction; so he damns American goods and goes back to his old IXL. And when he gets a poor IXL knife, as he very frequently does, he swears it is bogus.”
“That's so,” said one of his friends. “I often hear men sighing for the old knife of their daddies.”
“Why, here is a sample of the man in this letter. Let me read a few lines. After mentioning our advertisement, he says:
Now I have been hunting a good knife for twenty years, but too much “protective tariff” having shut out competition, we now only get such “pot-metal” cutlery as monopolists choose to give us; nice handles with hoop-iron or cast blades, not as good for $2 as the old “Barlow” knife boys could buy for a “bit” forty-five years ago. If yours are good I will be glad to get them, but if they are a cheat, I will call on you with a shot-gun, on my way to Canada, where I will then have to look for a good knife.
“That man,” continued Rockwell, “believes what he says, probably, but a man of 45 who knows so little ought to be shut up in an idiot asylum. If we could have a law here as they do in England, permitting no goods to be labeled or branded as American-made unless they were made here, such a man would hang his head with shame at his injustice to home manufacturers.”
I liked to hear Rockwell talk; he had a way of giving a sentence in a crisp, sharp way, and then half shutting his eyes for a moment, as if he was waiting to see what the other fellow would say and be ready with an answer.
My friend spoke of him with great enthusiasm, saying his house had done business with him for many years, and looked upon Rockwell as one of the most growing men in the trade. In talking with him afterward about pocket cutlery, he said to me: “No cutlery factory in this country is paying a penny to its stockholders; we are looked upon by the free-traders as coining money, but our men are averaging twice the wages of the English, and three times those paid by Germany, and the labor is about eighty-five percent, of the cost of the pocket knife. The leading American makers turn out good goods, far above the average English or German; but the consumer is not able to tell whether he is using an American or foreign-made knife, because of the habit of branding everything with American names, and we have to bear the curse.”
“Why is it that Meriden people hang together so?” I asked.
“Do we?” he asked, laughing. “Perhaps it is because they're all such good fellows. The rich men there, and there are a good many of them, have always been ready to help any enterprise that came to the town and could make a fair showing. You will find the same men stockholders in a great many different companies; their salesmen help each other, and they are closely united socially. They work together and love their city.”
I don't know any better eulogy to deliver upon a body of business men.
Later in the day, a rather warm conversation near us drew us toward five or six men who seemed to be growing excited. A traveling salesman appeared to be giving a manufacturer some good advice.
“You men,” said he, “seem to think you do a very smart thing when you go to these big buyers and give them an extra 10 per cent., but you don't seem to be capable of learning that in doing this you are cutting your own throats. Only a few months ago I was talking to Simmons. 'I don't like these low prices,' said he, 'nor to have everything down so close to cost; we can't get extra discounts as we can when prices are higher; the most we can get now under ordinary circumstances is 2-1/2 to 5 per cent.' 'How much do you think you ought to get?' I asked him. 'Ten per cent., at least,' said he.”
“But he doesn't get it,” said the manufacturer.
“Oh yes, he does, on a good deal of his stock. He must get it on your goods or he would not be quoting them at the price we pay you for them. We paid you $3.60 for the last lot we bought, and I saw a quotation from him on your goods at $3.62. He is no fool; he does not sell goods at cost. When I saw his quotation my price was $3.60 and will be $3.60 until we clean your goods from our shelves, and it will be a good while before any more of the same brand ever go back there again.”
“But that is all nonsense,” said the other, “he buys the goods at exactly the same price your house does.”
“Then it is time we quit them. If we have no protection on your goods we want to drop them.”
“That's pretty tough,” said the other, half disposed to be angry. “I have no control over your prices; I sell your house as I sell him; I advertise the goods so that the jobber could make a profit if he would, but if he won't I cannot compel him to do it. The jobber has no idea of anything but to beat his competitor in buying and then beat him in cutting the price. Nothing counts in business but a 'cut.' I don't know where we are going to.”
“Well,” said my friend, “suppose we go to dinner.”
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