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Merchants The Salesman Meets
by
“Served him right,” said the men’s clothing man. “Did you ever know Grain out on the Great Northern?”
“Sure,” said the shoe man. “Who doesn’t know that pompous know-it- all?”
“Well, sir, do you know that fellow isn’t satisfied with any one he deals with, and he thinks that this whole country belongs to him. He wrote me several seasons ago to come out to see him. He had heard one of the boys speak well of my line of goods. I went to his town and first thing I did was to open up. Then I went into his store and told him I was all ready.
“‘Well, I’ve decided,’ said he, ‘that I won’t buy anything in your line this season.’
“‘You will at least come over and give me a look, in that I have come over at your special request, will you not?”
“‘NO, no! No is no with me, sir.’
“I couldn’t get him over there. He went into his office and closed the door behind him. I had hard lines in the town that season. I went up to see another man and told him the circumstances but he said, ‘No, I don’t play any second fiddle,’ and do you know, I didn’t blame him a bit.
“I had made up my mind to mark this town off my list, but you know, business often comes to us from places where we least expect it. This is one of the things which make road life interesting. How often it happens that you fully believe before you start out that you are going to do business in certain places and how often your best laid plans ‘gang aglee!’
“Another man in this town wrote in to the house (this was last season) for me to come to see him. In his letter he said that he was then clerking for Grain and he was going to quit there and start up on his own hook. Somehow or other the old man got on to the fact that his clerk was going to start up and that he had written in for my line. He was just that mean that he wanted to put as many stones in the path of his old clerk as he possibly could, and I don’t know whether it was by accident or design that Grain came in here to Spokane the same day that his old clerk did, or not. At any rate, they were here together.
“Just about the time I had finished selling my bill to Grain’s clerk, the old man ‘phoned up to my room that he would like to see me. This time he was sweet as sugar. I asked him over the ‘phone what he wished. He said, ‘I’d like to buy some goods from you. ‘Don’t care to sell you,’ I answered over the wire. His old clerk was right there in the room then and he was good, too. He had got together two or three well-to-do farmers in the neighborhood and had organized a big stock company with the capital stock fully paid up. The whole country had become tired of Grain and his methods, and a new man stood a mighty good chance for success–and you know, boys, what a bully good business he has built up.
“‘Why, what’s the mater?’ ‘phoned back the old man.
“‘Just simply this: that I have sold another man in your town, and I don’t care to place my line with more than one,’ I answered. ‘Who Is it?’ said he. I told him.
“‘Well, now, look here,’ he came back at me. ‘That fellow’s just a tidbit. He thinks he’s going to cut some ice out there, but he won’t last long, and, do you know, if you’ll just simply chop his bill off, I’ll promise to buy right now twice as much as he has bought from you.’
“If there’s a man on the road who is contemptible in the eyes of his fellow traveling men, it is the one who will solicit a countermand; and the merchant who will do this sort of a trick is even worse, you know, boys, in our eyes.