The goose that had twirled so long before the pine log blaze was now
put before us. The Spanish Senor with his violin started the program,
and our tales for the evening were at an end.




CHAPTER XVII.

HIRING AND HANDLING SALESMEN.


To hire and handle salesmen is the most important work of the head of
the house. When a man goes out on the road to represent a firm, his
traveling expenses alone are from five to twenty-five dollars a day,
and sometimes even fifty. His salary is usually as much as his
expenses, if not more. If a salesman does not succeed, a great portion
of his salary and expenses is a dead loss, and, further, the firm is
making a still greater loss if he does not do the business. In fact,
if a poor man, succeeding a good one, falls down, his house can very
easily lose many thousands of dollars by not holding the old trade of
the man whose place he took. If all the wholesale houses in Chicago,
say, which have a good line of salesmen were, at the beginning of the
year, to lose all of those salesmen and replace them with dummies,
three-fourths of these firms would go broke in from six months to
three years. This is how important the salesman is to his firm.

I put hiring and handling of salesmen before having a strong line of
goods, because if the proper salesmen are hired and are handled right,
they will soon compel the house to put out the right line of goods.