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“‘Then you mean to tell me that for your store here you are picking from one line of goods and are trying to compete with other merchants in this town who have the chance of buying from scores of lines. Now, your brother is certainly a very poor salesman if he can’t sell enough shoes to make a living on aside from those that he sells to his own store. Should he not let his wholesale business and his retail business be separate from one another? You yourself are interested in this concern and ought you not to have something to say? To be sure, when it comes to an even break you should by all means give your brother and his firm the preference; but do you believe that either you or he should have goods come into this house from his firm when you are able to get them better from some other place?’

“‘No, I don’t believe that is exactly business and we don’t aim to.’

“‘Well, if such is the case,’ said I, ‘come up and see what I have.’

“‘Well, I’ll just go you one,’ said the shoeman.

“Do you know, I had him walk with me up to the hotel–he was a good jolly fellow–and when I marched into the office with him, I called the children’s shoe man over and introduced him.

“He said, ‘Well, this is one on me,’ and then explained the bet to Hoover and bought the cigars for three instead of two.”

Don’t put prices on another man’s goods!

I once had a merchant pass me out an article he had bought from another man. “How much is that worth?” he asked. “That I shall not tell you,” I answered. “Suppose it is worth $24 a dozen. If I say it is worth $30, then you will say to me: ‘There’s no use doing business with you, this other man’s goods are cheaper, you’ve confessed it.’ If I say that it is worth $24 a dozen, then you will say to me that I’m not offering you any advantage. If I say it is worth $18 a dozen, you will believe that I am telling you a lie. Therefore, I shall say nothing.”

Don’t run down your competitor.

In talking of this point a furnishing goods man once said to me: “When I first went to travel in Missouri and Illinois I was green. I had a whole lot to learn, but still I had been posted by one of my friends who told me that I should always treat my competitor with especial courtesy. When I was on my first trip I met one of my competitors one day at a hotel in Springfield. I was introduced to him by one of the boys. I chatted with him as pleasantly as I could for a few minutes and then went up street to look for a customer.

“After dinner I was standing by the cigar case talking to the hotel clerk. Up came my competitor very pompously and bought a half dollar’s worth of cigars. As he lighted one and stuck all the others into his pocket case he said to me in a ‘What-are-you?’ fashion, ‘Oh, how are you?’ and away he walked. Heavens, how he froze me! But from that day to this, while I have outwardly always treated him civilly, his customers have been the ones that I have gone after the hardest–and you bet your life that I’ve put many of his fish on my string.”

Don’t run down the other fellow’s goods!

When a salesman tells merchants that he can sell them goods that are better, for the same price or cheaper than he is buying them, he at once offers an insult to the merchant’s judgment. One of my merchant friends once told me of a breezy young chap who came into his store and asked him how much he paid for a certain suit of clothes that was on the table. “This young fellow was pretty smart,” said my merchant friend. “He asked me how much I paid for a cheviot. I told him $9. He said, ‘Nine dollars! Well, I can sell you one just like that for $7.’ ‘All right, I’ll take fifty suits,’ said I.