A great mistake which some salesmen make when they first start on the
road is to "load" their customers. The experienced man will not do
this, for he soon learns that he will "lose out" by it. A merchant
will not long continue to buy from a traveling man in whom he has no
confidence. He, in great measure, depends on the judgment of the
traveling man as to the styles and quantities he should buy. If the
salesman sells him too much of anything it is only a matter of time
when the merchant will buy from some other man. When a storekeeper
buys goods he invests money; and his heart is not very far from his
bank-book.

The time when the traveling man will ram all he can into an order is
when the merchant splits his business in the salesman's line, buying
the same kind of goods from two or more houses. Then the salesman
sells as much as he can, that he may crowd the other man out. But even
this is poor policy.

I once took on a new town. My predecessor had been getting only a
share of his customer's trade; two others had divided the account with
him. I made up my mind to have all of the account or none. The
merchant went to my sample room and gave me an order for a bill of
hats. He bought at random. When I asked him what sizes he wanted, he
said: "Oh, run 'em regular." "Very well," said I, "but will it not be
well to look through your stock and see just what sizes you need?
Maybe you have quite a number of certain sizes on hand and it will be
needless for you to get more of them. Let's go down to the store and
look through your stock."

We went to his store. The first item on the order he had given me was
one dozen black "Columbias." I found that he had five dozen already on