The Book of Business Etiquette

Book of Business Etiquette, by Nella Henney

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Title: The Book of Business Etiquette
Author: Nella Henney
Release Date: October 13, 2007 [EBook #23025]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Book of BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

The Book of Business Etiquette
Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
First Edition

RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED (AS BEFITS AN AUTHOR)
TO THREE BUSINESS MEN

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
It would be a pleasure to call over by name and thank individually the business men and the business organizations that so graciously furnished the material upon which this little book is based. But the author feels that some of them will not agree with all the statements made and the inferences drawn, and for this reason is unable to do better than give this meager return for a service which was by no means meager.

CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 1
II. THE VALUE OF COURTESY 17
III. PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 40
IV. PERSONALITY 70
V. TABLE MANNERS 94
VI. TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 108
VII. TRAVELING AND SELLING 130
VIII. THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 153
IX. MORALS AND MANNERS 183
PART II
X. "BIG BUSINESS" 209
XI. IN A DEPARTMENT STORE 242
XII. A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 250
XIII. TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE 268
XIV. LADIES FIRST? 279

[Transcriber's Note: Please note that the book does not credit an author. The Library of Congress lists Nella Henney as the author.]

PART I

THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

I
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN
The business man is the national hero of America, as native to the soil and as typical of the country as baseball or Broadway or big advertising. He is an interesting figure, picturesque and not unlovable, not so dashing perhaps as a knight in armor or a soldier in uniform, but he is not without the noble (and ignoble) qualities which have characterized the tribe of man since the world began. America, in common with other countries, has had distinguished statesmen and soldiers, authors and artists--and they have not all gone to their graves unhonored and unsung--but the hero story which belongs to her and to no one else is the story of the business man.
Nearly always it has had its beginning in humble surroundings, with a little boy born in a log cabin in the woods, in a wretched shanty at the edge of a field, in a crowded tenement section or in the slums of a foreign city, who studied and worked by daylight and firelight while he made his living blacking boots or selling papers until he found the trail by which he could climb to what we are pleased to call success. Measured by the standards of Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages, when practically the only form of achievement worth mentioning was fighting to kill, his career has not been a romantic one. It has had to do not with dragons and banners and trumpets, but with stockyards and oil fields, with railroads, sewer systems, heat, light, and water plants, telephones, cotton, corn, ten-cent stores and--we might as well make a clean breast of it--chewing gum.
We have no desire to crown the business man with a halo, though judging from their magazines and from the stories which they write of their own lives, they are almost without spot or blemish. Most of them seem not even to have had faults to overcome. They were born perfect. Now the truth is that the methods of accomplishment which the American business man has used have not always been above reproach and still are not. At the same time it would not be hard to prove that he--and here we are speaking of the average--with all his faults and failings (and they are many), with all his virtues (and he is not without them), is superior in character to the business men of other times in other countries. This without boasting. It would be a great pity if he were not.
Without trying to settle the question as to whether he is good or bad (and he really can be pigeon-holed no better than any one else) we have to accept this: He is the biggest factor in the American commonwealth