Tales of the Road | Page 2

hunt his
customer--the traveling salesman. Certainly there are salesmen behind
the counter, and he has much in common with the man on the road.
To the position of traveling salesman attach independence, dignity,

opportunity, substantial reward. Many of the tribe do not appreciate this;
those do so best who in time try the "professional life." When they do
they usually go back to the road happy to get there again. Yet were they
permanently to adopt a profession--say the law--they would make
better lawyers because they had been traveling men. Were many
professional men to try the road, they would go back to their first
occupation because forced to. The traveling man can tell you why! I
bought, a few days ago, a plaything for my small boy. What do you
suppose it was? A toy train. I wish him to get used to it--for when he
grows up I am going to put him on the road hustling trunks.
My boy will have a better chance for success at this than at anything
else. If he has the right sort of stuff in him he will soon lay the
foundation for a life success; if he hasn't I'll soon find it out. As a
traveling salesman he will succeed quickly or not at all. In the latter
event, I'll set him to studying a profession. When he goes on the road
he may save a great part of his salary, for the firm he will represent will
pay his living expenses while traveling for them. He will also have
many leisure hours, and even months, in which to study for a
profession if he chooses; or, if he will, he may spend his "out of
season" months in foreign travel or any phase of intellectual
culture--and he will have the money of his own earning with which to
do it. Three to six or eight months is as much time as most traveling
men can profitably give to selling goods on the road; the rest is theirs to
use as they please.
Every man who goes on the road does not succeed--not by any means.
The road is no place for drones; there are a great many drops of the
honey of commerce waiting in the apple blossoms along the road, but it
takes the busy "worker" bee to get it. The capable salesman may
achieve great success, not only on the road, but in any kind of activity.
"The road" is a great training school. The chairman of the
Transportation Committee in the Chicago city council, only a few years
ago was a traveling man. He studied law daily and went into politics
while he yet drew the largest salary of any man in his house. Marshall
Field was once a traveling man; John W. Gates sold barbed wire before
he became a steel king. These three men are merely types of successful

traveling men.
Nineteen years ago, a boy of 15, I quit picking worms off of tobacco
plants and began to work in a wholesale house, in St. Louis, at $5 per
week--and I had an even start with nearly every man ever connected
with the firm. The president of the firm today, now also a bank
president and worth a million dollars, was formerly a traveling man; the
old vice-president of the house, who is now the head of another firm in
the same line, used to be a traveling man; the present vice- president
and the president's son-in-law was a traveling man when I went with
the firm; one of the directors, who went with the house since I did, is a
traveling man. Another who traveled for this firm is today a
vice-president of a large wholesale dry goods house; one more saved
enough to go recently into the wholesale business for himself. Out of
the lot six married daughters of wealthy parents, and thirty or more,
who keep on traveling, earn by six months or less of road work, from
$1200 to $6000 each year. One has done, during his period of rest,
what every one of his fellow salesmen had the chance to do--take a
degree from a great university, obtain a license (which he cannot afford
to use) to practice law, to learn to read, write and speak with ease two
foreign languages and get a smattering of three others, and to travel
over a large part of the world.
Of all the men in the office and stock departments of this firm only two
of them have got beyond $25 a week; and both of them have been
drudges. One has moved up from slave-bookkeeper to credit-man slave
and partner. The other has become a buyer. And even he as well as
being a stock man was a city salesman.
Just