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You know how it goes! A merchant gets to handling a certain brand of goods which is no better than many others in the same line. He gets it into his head that he cannot do without that particular line. This is what enables a man on the road to get an established trade. The clerks in the store also get interested in some special brand because they have customers who come in and ask for that particular thing a few times. They do not stop to think that the man who comes in and asks for a Leopard brand hat or a Knock-’em-out shoe does not have any confidence in this special shoe or hat, but that he has confidence in the establishment where he buys it.

So, when I was in Logan’s town to sell him his usual bill, his clerk hailed me from across the street and came over to where I stood. He told me that he had quit his old job and that he was going to put in a new stock. I, of course, had to tell him that I must stay with Logan, but that out of appreciation of his past kindness to me I would do the best I could to steer him right in my line of goods. I gave him a personal letter to another firm that I had been with before and who, I knew, would deal with him fairly.

Fred went in to market. When in the city he tried to buy some goods of my firm. He intended to take these same goods and sell them for a lower price than Logan had been getting, and thus cut hard into Logan’s trade. But the big manufacturers, you know, are awake to all of those tricks and a first-class establishment will always protect its customers. My house told Fred that before they could sell to him they would have to get my sanction. They wired me about it, and I, of course, had to be square with my faithful old friend, Logan; I placed the matter before him. As I was near by, I wrote him, by special delivery, and put the case before him. He, for self-protection, wired my house that he would prefer that they would not sell his old clerk who was now going to become his competitor. In fact, he said he would not stand for it.

The very next season things came around so that Logan went out of business, and then I knew that I was “up against it” in his town–my old customer gone out of business; Fred not wanting, then, of course, to buy of me. But I took my medicine and consoled myself with the thought that a few grains of gold would pan out in the wash.

Up in a large town above Logan’s I had a customer named Dave, who had moved out from Colorado. He was well fixed, but he had not secured the right location. Say what you will, location has a whole lot to do with business. Of course, a poor man would not prosper in the busy streets of Cairo, but the best sort of a hustler would starve to death doing business on the Sahara. A big store in Dave’s new town failed. He had a chance to buy out the, stock at 75 cents on the dollar. He wished to do so; but, although he was well-to-do, he didn’t have the ready cash.

One night I called on Dave and he laid the case before me. He told me how sorry he was not to get hold of this “snap.” I put my wits together quickly and I said to him: “Dave, I believe I can do you some good.”

The next morning I went to see a banker, who was a brother-in-law of Logan’s and who had made enough money, merchandising and out of wheat, down in Logan’s old town, to move up to the city and go into the banking business. The banker knew all about the way that I had treated his brother-in-law, and I felt that because I had been square with Logan he would have confidence in anything I would say to him. I laid the case before the banker. I told him I knew Dave to be well fixed, to have good credit, to be a good rustler and strictly straight.