The last day on the road must always seem a long day. One figures out just what train he will take, the hour he will arrive at the end of the journey, and the minute he will be with his family or in the store. I had reached my last day and was putting in my “best licks” so as to have a good batch of orders to carry in with me, to make my welcome all the greater. But as luck would have it no day of my trip had been so uncertain and tantalizing.
I spread out my revolvers before four concerns and enlarged upon their remarkable qualities and low prices. “Bulldogs” had stiffened in price at the factories to $2.25, less 10 per cent., and our stock was large and bought at low prices. I used this as a bait wherever I could, but every other man had been throwing out offers of the same kind, and mine were not so greedily taken as I would like to have had them.
“No use of your offering baits,” said one party “there's no life in the gun business any more. Here's Lafoucheaux guns at $7, Flobert rifles at $2, Smith & Wesson revolvers at $8, and the deuce knows where it will stop. Things must be mighty dubious when S. & W. have to cut their prices. Here's Reachum's last billet doux on rifles, quoting them at about 5 per cent, above cost, and yet you expect me to give you an order. No, it's no use; I must wait till somebody wants to buy something that I have.”
“Do you say that about all your lines?”
“Well, it's mighty near it in everything. Here's an order from my man on the Central for a quarter dozen steel squares at 75 and 10 off; cost me that a month ago. Here's strap hinges at 65 and 5 off; I paid that for them. There's a milk-strainer, sold at $1.25 per dozen, cost me $1.20; carpet tacks sold at $1.50 gross, cost me $1.44. All these things in one bill. I tell you I am getting rich fast.”
“I am going in to-night,” I said, “and would be glad to carry in a little order for you. I'll get it out myself and see that nice goods are sent you.”
“No, I don't want anything.”
I heard almost a similar complaint from the next one I saw, but I managed to secure two orders for my day's work, and then I was done. I never paid a hotel bill so gladly or bought a railroad ticket with happier feelings. There was a pleasure in getting my baggage checked home, and no car ever seemed to me quite so comfortable and inviting as the one I rode home in.
When I walked into the store it was difficult to believe that I had been out of it more than twenty-four hours. The bill of goods on the floor looked exactly like the one I saw there the day I started away. The porter and drayman seemed to be talking about the same accident or “wake” that they were engaged in when I last saw them together, and the white head of the “old man” was bent over his books as if it had never moved. I couldn't help saying to myself, “How glad they ought to be that they have only to do the work that comes to them, instead of feeling the responsibility of creating new business.”
They met me as if I had been off on a lark, and ought to feel grateful to them for doing my work while I was away. I wondered if I was ever ass enough to meet our old travelers in any such way. I guess I was.
“Well, old boy, had a good time?”
This from stock clerk, from salesman, from the packer, and from the book-keeper.
Good time! Great Caesar!
Good time! With a constant dread about you that you are going to fail! Pushing yourself boldly into men's offices a dozen times a day, yet always nervously dreading the reception they may give you. Catching late trains and early trains; missing meals or sitting down to tables where things are so uninviting you cannot eat. And all the time, day and night, wondering if your employers are satisfied with your sales and if they recognize the necessity of your cutting prices. A good time! If there is any business in the world that is so little of a “good time” I would like to know what it is. The firm met me very pleasantly. They joked me a little about my new beard and the extra fat they declared they saw on me, and then the welcomings were over.
I took my place at my old desk with a firm resolution to let other men do the traveling; I would stick to the store.
“Come home to supper with me,” said the head of the house; “I'd like to talk over your trip with you, and we can do it better at home this evening.”
This was an honor I had not had before. The other boys looked at me with envy.
“How have things gone? Has business been good?” I asked my old assistant in the stock.
“Things have gone so-so; trade has been only middling. But you did first rate, old fellow. I heard the old man say you were a success.”
“Did he say that?”
“Yes, and lots more. You made a strike.”
This was pleasant news.
After our tea that evening the head of the house began to question me about my trip, and I saw that a detailed story of it was what he wanted. So I began with the first town that I had stopped at, and gave him a history of the trip. He seemed to enjoy it, and to pick up a good many items from it.
“Yes,” he said, “business is becoming less profitable every year. The idiots who are going to get rich by selling flour at 25 cents a barrel less than cost, simply by doing a h—l of a business, are multiplying. Reachum can probably sell goods close and make money, as he has no traveling men; his principal expense is his postal cards. Simmons & Hibbard can sell our goods low because it is only one department of a large business with them, and its proportion of expenses is not great. We will be compelled to do either less or more; either do a smaller business in guns and ammunition and at less expense, or to put in other goods and drum a larger variety of trade. We have pretty much decided to do the latter. What do you think of it?”
I laughingly suggested that in Cleveland and Indianapolis some of the houses were adding a silver mine to their stock, and that we ought to have one too.
“And then compel the traveling-men to buy or not give them orders? That would be a good scheme. But I had not thought of that. Our plan is to lay in a line of goods that will work in well with general trade and sell all the year round.”
I said I thought it was a capital idea.
“Will you give up the stock and go on the road regularly?”
What? Go on the road regularly? Not a bit of it. Keep on, month after month, year after year, hammering after orders? No, oh, no!
“Then you don't like it?”
No, I did not. There was altogether too much anxiety about it for me. There were men so constituted that they did not feel worried whether they got an order or not. They were the proper men to travel. But I was nervous and anxious, and worried when I had no order for fear I was not going to get one; and then worried after I had one, fearing I would not get any more. No, I was not made of the right kind of stuff for a traveling man.
“If I did not see that you are so thoroughly in earnest I would say you are sarcastic. You evidently believe what you say, but you do not seem to understand that the very reason why you will make a successful salesman is this nervous dread of failure. When you meet a man who doesn't care a copper cent whether trade is good or not you have met a second-rate man. Trade can only be secured by persistent and hard work. A man of your disposition will be pulling wires and ingratiating himself into the good will of his customers, while your contented man is playing billiards or making acquaintance of a sport of the town. Taking into consideration the times and the condition of business, your trip has been a remarkably successful one, but the second one will be a better one for the house, and a pleasanter one for you. You will then call on acquaintances, not on strangers, and you will find your task easier and your trade better. Think it over. You will be more valuable to us on the road and it will pay you better.”
But I swore I would not consider it. Afterwards I fancied I might think of it. Then I did consider it, and yes, here I am. I represent the firm of Blank & Blank, Guns and Ammunition. If you are in need of anything in my line I would be glad to figure with you, for I am
A MAN OF SAMPLES.
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