Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son | Page 6

the bottom. And the bottom in the office end
of this business is a seat at the mailing-desk, with eight dollars every
Saturday night.
I can't hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no
good, and it would do the house harm. There is plenty of room at the
top here, but there is no elevator in the building. Starting, as you do,
with a good education, you should be able to climb quicker than the
fellow who hasn't got it; but there's going to be a time when you begin
at the factory when you won't be able to lick stamps so fast as the other
boys at the desk. Yet the man who hasn't licked stamps isn't fit to write
letters. Naturally, that is the time when knowing whether the pie comes
before the ice-cream, and how to run an automobile isn't going to be of
any real use to you.
I simply mention these things because I am afraid your ideas as to the
basis on which you are coming with the house have swelled up a little
in the East. I can give you a start, but after that you will have to
dynamite your way to the front by yourself. It is all with the man. If

you gave some fellows a talent wrapped in a napkin to start with in
business, they would swap the talent for a gold brick and lose the
napkin; and there are others that you could start out with just a napkin,
who would set up with it in the dry-goods business in a small way, and
then coax the other fellow's talent into it.
I have pride enough to believe that you have the right sort of stuff in
you, but I want to see some of it come out. You will never make a good
merchant of yourself by reversing the order in which the Lord decreed
that we should proceed--learning the spending before the earning end
of business. Pay day is always a month off for the spend-thrift, and he
is never able to realize more than sixty cents on any dollar that comes
to him. But a dollar is worth one hundred and six cents to a good
business man, and he never spends the dollar. It's the man who keeps
saving up and expenses down that buys an interest in the concern. That
is where you are going to find yourself weak if your expense accounts
don't lie; and they generally don't lie in that particular way, though
Baron Munchausen was the first traveling man, and my drummers' bills
still show his influence.
I know that when a lot of young men get off by themselves, some of
them think that recklessness with money brands them as good fellows,
and that carefulness is meanness. That is the one end of a college
education which is pure cussedness; and that is the one thing which
makes nine business men out of ten hesitate to send their boys off to
school. But on the other hand, that is the spot where a young man has
the chance to show that he is not a light-weight. I know that a good
many people say I am a pretty close proposition; that I make every hog
which goes through my packing-house give up more lard than the Lord
gave him gross weight; that I have improved on Nature to the extent of
getting four hams out of an animal which began life with two; but you
have lived with me long enough to know that my hand is usually in my
pocket at the right time.
Now I want to say right here that the meanest man alive is the one who
is generous with money that he has not had to sweat for, and that the
boy who is a good fellow at some one else's expense would not work

up into first-class fertilizer. That same ambition to be known as a good
fellow has crowded my office with second-rate clerks, and they always
will be second-rate clerks. If you have it, hold it down until you have
worked for a year. Then, if your ambition runs to hunching up all week
over a desk, to earn eight dollars to blow on a few rounds of drinks for
the boys on Saturday night, there is no objection to your gratifying it;
for I will know that the Lord didn't intend you to be your own boss.
[Illustration: "I have seen hundreds of boys go to Europe who didn't
bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes."]
You know how I began--I was started off with a kick, but that proved a
kick up, and in the end every one since