Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy."Lorimer, George Horace
General
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy."
Lorimer, George Horace
Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Epistolary fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Men -- Conduct of life -- Fiction; Merchants -- Fiction; Social ethics -- Fiction
I don't mean that you should distrust a man who is affable and
approachable, but you want to learn to distinguish between him and one
who is too affable and too approachable. The adverb makes the difference
between a good and a bad fellow. The bunco men aren't all at the county
fair, and they don't all operate with the little shells and the elusive
pea. When a packer has learned all that there is to learn about
quadrupeds, he knows only one-eighth of his business; the other
seven-eighths, and the important seven-eighths, has to do with the study
of bipeds.
I dwell on this because I am a little disappointed that you should have
made such a mistake in sizing up Milligan. He isn't the brightest man in
the office, but he is loyal to me and to the house, and when you have
been in business as long as I have you will be inclined to put a pretty
high value on loyalty. It is the one commodity that hasn't any market
value, and it's the one that you can't pay too much for. You can trust
any number of men with your money, but mighty few with your reputation.
Half the men who are with the house on pay day are against it the other
six.
A good many young fellows come to me looking for jobs, and start in by
telling me what a mean house they have been working for; what a cuss to
get along with the senior partner was; and how little show a bright,
progressive clerk had with him. I never get very far with a critter of
that class, because I know that he wouldn't like me or the house if he
came to work for us.
I don't know anything that a young business man ought to keep more
entirely to himself than his dislikes, unless it is his likes. It's
generally expensive to have either, but it's bankruptcy to tell about
them. It's all right to say nothing about the dead but good, but it's
better to apply the rule to the living, and especially to the house
which is paying your salary.
Just one word before I close, as old Doc Hoover used to say, when he was
coming into the stretch, but still a good ways off from the benediction.
I have noticed that you are inclined to be a little chesty and starchy
around the office. Of course, it's good business, when a fellow hasn't
much behind his forehead, to throw out his chest and attract attention
to his shirt-front. But as you begin to meet the men who have done
something that makes them worth meeting you will find that there are no
"keep off the grass" or "beware of the dog" signs around their premises,
and that they don't motion to the orchestra to play slow music while
they talk.
Superiority makes every man feel its equal. It is courtesy without
condescension; affability without familiarity; self-sufficiency without
selfishness; simplicity without snide. It weighs sixteen ounces to the
pound without the package, and it doesn't need a four-colored label to
make it go.
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