Letters from a Self-Made Merchant: reference groups and advice pilot

The father has looked over the son's growing monthly expenses, which show no honours to justify them, and warns him that the old man will not pay once college ends.

• do bring your spending down to what you will be able to earn → the sooner you do, the easier life will be
  The sooner you adjust your spending to what your earning capacity will be, the easier they will find it to live together.

A start is all the father can give; after that the son must fight his own way forward, learning earning before spending, because the saver is the one who buys into the firm.

• do keep saving up and expenses down → the saver ends up buying an interest in the business
  It's the man who keeps saving up and expenses down that buys an interest in the concern.
• avoid spend money as fast as it comes → the spendthrift gets only part value from every dollar and is always short
  Pay day is always a month off for the spend-thrift, and he is never able to realize more than sixty cents on any dollar that comes to him.

Young men alone think recklessness with money makes them good fellows; the father calls the man generous with unearned money the meanest alive, and says the same ambition has filled his office with second-rate clerks.

• avoid spend freely to be thought a good fellow → those who do stay second-rate clerks
  That same ambition to be known as a good fellow has crowded my office with second-rate clerks, and they always will be second-rate clerks.

The son wants two months in Europe before starting work; the father cuts off his allowance in two weeks and says it is worry and drink after hours, not work, that break men's health.

• avoid wear yourself out after hours with worry or carousing → that, not the work, breaks down your health
  It's not what a man does during working-hours, but after them, that breaks down his health.

A florist's bill for fifty-two dollars of roses sent to a speculator's showy daughter reaches the father, who judges her heart beats only for money.

• do tell a money-minded suitor exactly what you earn → they lose interest in you
  tell her you're making twelve a week and ain't going to get any more till you earn it, you'll find that you can't push within a mile of her

A twelve-dollar clerk owing for roses needs a keeper more than a wife; young men pick wives in dim parlours without looking at the family, and a speculating father-in-law will borrow.

• avoid spend a large sum at once on courtship gifts → you come to regret the necessities it could have bought
  there always comes a time to the fellow who blows fifty-two dollars at a lick on roses when he thinks how many staple groceries he could have bought
• avoid marry into a family with a spendthrift or speculating head → they borrow money from you
  while he doesn't marry his wife's father, there's nothing in the marriage vow to prevent the old man from borrowing money of him

The son will start at the bottom, at the mailing desk for eight dollars a week, like anyone else; there is room at the top but no elevator.

• avoid hand a favoured newcomer ready-made success → it does them no good and harms the firm
  I can't hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no good, and it would do the house harm.
• do do the lowest work properly before reaching for higher work → nobody who has skipped it is fit for the work above it
  the man who hasn't licked stamps isn't fit to write letters

Worn down after a month, the father offers the young man heavy labour in a loading gang, expecting him to refuse; he accepts on the spot.

• do keep calling back on a reluctant employer → they give way and offer you something
  Finally, after about a month of this, he wore me down so that I stopped him one day

The young man invents an overhead system that does a gang's work, and later gets time clocks installed, abolishing his own job each time and winning a raise for the saving.

• do find a way to do the work cheaper, even if it does away with your own job → the saving is too big to fire you over, and you are raised and moved up
  Jim was lazy, but he had put the house in the way of saving so much money that I couldn't fire him. So I raised his salary

Men who carouse or brood after work always need holidays and get no good of them; a change of work is the best rest, and a job should be taken the moment it is offered and used as bait for a better one.

• avoid spend your evenings carousing or brooding over troubles → you always need a rest and never get any good from one
  They're the men who are always needing vacations, and never getting any good out of them.
• do take the first job offered and use it to reach a better one → each small catch lands a bigger one
  to take the first job that offered, and to use it for bait. You can catch a minnow with a worm, and a bass will take your minnow

Listen more than you talk; in their first weeks new clerks either learn how little they can do and keep the job, or hold their place and start reaching for the next one.

• do say less and listen more than the other person → you give nothing away and flatter the one talking
  Say less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk; for when a man's listening he isn't telling on himself and he's flattering the fellow who is.
• do hold your own job firmly while reaching for the one above → it marks you as the one worth advancing
  holding down his own place with one hand and beginning to reach for the job just ahead of him with the other

The first year should be driven like a trotting race: start steady, build pace, and be running hardest at the finish when promotions and raises are chosen.

• do start at a steady pace you can improve on, and build to the finish → you are among those promoted at the year's end
  Never start off at a gait that you can't improve on, but move along strong and well in hand to the quarter.

A good first impression matters, but there is no love at first sight in business: a job worth having takes coming early, staying late and long steady work.

• do come early, stay late and keep at it a long time → that is the only way to win a place worth having
  A man's got to keep company a long time, and come early and stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having.

Personal business belongs outside working hours, which the employer has bought; the foreman says the son can work hard when he chooses but seldom chooses, and a wandering mind cannot do even trifling work right.

• avoid do your own business on your employer's time → it amounts to stealing from the employer
  Your time is money--my money--and when you take half an hour of it for your own purposes, that is just a petty form of petty larceny.
• avoid let your mind wander from a dull task → the work is done wrong
  A man can't have his head pumped out like a vacuum pan, or stuffed full of odds and ends like a bologna sausage, and do his work right.

Success lies in kneading commonplace virtues into the job; a clerk who crawls in each morning and springs out each night would not be trusted with a branch.

• do work the plain, commonplace virtues into your job → it turns out well
  if a boy will take these commonplace generalities and knead them into his job, the mixture'll be cake
• avoid come in slow and leave the moment you can → you are not trusted with a post of your own
  I'm a little afraid that if I sent him off to take charge of a branch house he wouldn't always be around when customers were

The owner filling a vacancy picks the one who keeps work and play apart and gives full measure, and passes over the one late in and early out; the son's love note cost the firm sixty dollars on a disputed claim.

• do keep work and play apart and give full measure → you are the one picked for the next vacancy
  He's pretty apt to pick some one who keeps separate ledger accounts for work and for fun, who gives the house sixteen ounces to the pound
• avoid come in late and leave early → you are passed over for the vacancy
  to pass by the one who is late at the end where he ought to be early, and early at the end where he ought to be late
• avoid let your personal affairs get mixed into the firm's business → it weakens the firm's hand and costs it money
  I just had to allow Donnelly his claim on those hams, though I was dead sure our weights were right, and it cost the house sixty dollars.

The son keeps skinning through instead of failing or succeeding outright; the father wants the second half of effort, full knowledge of the goods, belief in himself and total commitment.

• avoid do just enough work to keep from being dismissed → you keep a half-way place on a half-way salary
  you are bright enough to be a half-way man, and to hold a half-way place on a half-way salary by doing half the work you are capable of
• do try with your whole effort, not half of it → the second half of effort is what brings results
  It looks to me as if you were trying only half as hard as you could, and in trying it's the second half that brings results.

Between trips the son should spend every spare minute learning the plant; knowledge beyond what the job needs buys a better job, and a seller needs to know the making.

• do learn more of the business than your own job requires → it becomes the capital that buys you a better job
  invests in more knowledge of the business than he has to have in order to hold his job has capital with which to buy a mortgage on a better one
• do ask sensible questions → nothing pays better
  Nothing earns better interest than judicious questions

Like a juggler who keeps taking on more, a young man should not balk at extra work once he can handle the basics; the father wants the son to grow too big for the small trade.

• do keep taking on extra work cheerfully and learning beyond your post → you grow so big that you force your promotion
  I want to see you grow into a car-lot man--so strong and big that you will force us to see that you are out of place among the little fellows.

The son is taken off the road and made assistant manager of a department at fifty a week; the job is to become indispensable to the manager and able to run things without him.

• do do your work so well the chief cannot manage without you, and you could manage without the chief → that is what the post requires of you
  to do your work so well that the manager can't run the department without you, and that you can run the department without the manager

The son is to report to a touchy foreman who resents taking on a man he has not chosen; the father will give him pointers first.

The son says he cannot work under the gruff foreman; the father replies that the firm cares how the boss likes him, not the reverse, that the foreman is rough but loyal and generous, and that everyone has a boss.

• avoid complain that you cannot work under your superior → it shows weakness, and the firm cares only how the superior rates you
  the house isn't interested in knowing how you like your boss, but in how he likes you

Like the boss if you can but give him no cause for dislike; criticism comes from above; make room for older men, keep your temper, approach a kicker gently, and stay clear of the truly vicious.

• avoid report that your superior is no good → the one above them already knows it
  whenever you discover that your boss is no good you may rest easy that the man who pays his salary shares your secret
• do give way to your seniors and let them have the best places → they make room for you in turn
  let the village fathers get their feet on the fender and the sawdust box in range, and you'll find them making a little room for you in turn
• do keep your temper whether you are right or wrong → when right you lose nothing by it; when wrong you cannot afford to lose it
  Remember that when you're in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and that when you're in the wrong you can't afford to lose it.
• do approach a touchy person gently and respectfully → you get peace and what you came for
  if you want peace and her nine quarts, you will naturally approach her from the side, and say, So-boss
• avoid have any dealings with someone vicious on principle → no approach is safe; keep away
  There's never any use fooling with an animal of that sort, brute or human. The only safe place is the other side of the fence

The father wants no more meek, wounded letters in answer to his criticism: a mule that takes the whip too quietly is only growing meaner inside.

• avoid take criticism with sulky, long-suffering resignation → your superior reads it as meanness, not meekness
  I know it's not meekness, but meanness, that I've got to fight, and it's hard to tell which is the worst.

Idle young men claim others rose by pull and that jealous managers hold them down; no pull lifts a man higher than his own effort, and the man held down is usually one his boss cannot hold up.

• avoid count on connections to lift you → no connection lifts you above what your own effort can
  I never saw one strong enough to lift a man any higher than he could raise himself by his boot straps
• avoid complain that you are being held down → it usually shows your superior cannot hold you up
  when a fellow whines that he's being held down, the truth is, as a general thing, that his boss can't hold him up

Keep your likes and dislikes to yourself; stop being stiff and chesty around the office, since people of real worth need no airs; the branch is doing badly and its managers will suffer if it does not improve.

• avoid tell people your likes and dislikes → it ruins you
  It's generally expensive to have either, but it's bankruptcy to tell about them.
• avoid put on airs around the office → it shows there is little behind the show
  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
• avoid let the branch you run fall behind the others → its managers will be thrown out
  if they don't do better next month I am coming back here with a shotgun, and there's going to be a pretty heavy mortality among our head men

A good man bounces back like a thrown cat or a small football player who is always out from under the pile; one who knows his business needs no bragging.

• avoid talk big about what you know → it shows how little you know
  It isn't what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about. Big talk means little knowledge.

Facts must be sorted and half forgotten before they are useful; there is no cure for a big head, prosperity spoils men, and the son has sulked too soon.

• avoid let yourself get a big head → there is no cure, and it ends by bursting
  Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there's no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust

The son writes that he is doing famously; the father says he need not report his own merits, since real worth is found out and men who do big things are too busy to talk of them.

• avoid keep telling your superiors how good you are → it is needless, since real merit is found out anyway
  There's never any use trying to hide the fact that you're a jim-dandy--you're bound to be found out.
• do give more than you are paid for and let it speak → you need no explanations
  a man who's giving a dollar's worth of himself for ninety-nine cents doesn't need to throw in any explanations

Men who pass as good on their own say-so rise like balloons on hot air and fall hard; the slow path up a mountain is safer than any shortcut.

• avoid rise on talk and show → it carries you up but cannot keep you there, and the fall is hard
  Hot air can take up a balloon a long ways, but it can't keep it there.
• do climb slowly by the steady path → you rise more slowly but do not come down suddenly
  You don't get up so quick, but you don't come down so sudden.

Life is a long climb, not a spurt; some men rush at things with a whoop, announce their plans and peter out, like a crowing rooster, while the hen lays quietly.

• avoid announce your plans loudly and rush at them → you run out of wind before you finish
  They mistake intention for determination, and after they have told you what they propose to do and get right up to doing it, they simply peter out.
• do work quietly and speak only when there is a result → when you are heard from, there is something to show
  But when you hear from a hen, she's laid an egg, and she don't make a great deal of noise about it, either.

The son's brief letter pleases the father, who gives his rules for business talk: have something to say, say it, stop talking.

• avoid start talking before you know what you want, or keep on after you have said it → it lands you in a lawsuit or in poverty
  Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse

A newcomer to a Missouri town, a good talker and bad listener, buys a mule with a bad character, ignoring what everyone says about it.

• avoid talk about what you know instead of listening → you learn nothing about the new dangers around you
  Jeff was a good talker, but a bad listener, and so we learned a heap about how things were done in Wisconsin, but he didn't pick up much information

Tell the affable from the too affable; people are most of the business; the foreman is loyal, and loyalty is beyond price; job seekers who run down their old employer never get far with the father.

• do value loyalty in the people who work for you → it is worth more than you could pay for it
  It is the one commodity that hasn't any market value, and it's the one that you can't pay too much for.
• avoid run down your last employer to a prospective one → you are not hired, since you would run them down too
  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.

The son sets off on the road looking so cocky that the father fears he will answer complaints with repartee; a joke about the product, repeated, comes to be believed.

• avoid answer customers with smart retorts → it makes business dull, and business needs orders
  Repartee makes reading lively, but business dull. And what the house needs is more orders.
• avoid joke about your own goods → people come to believe the joke
  Half the people in the world take a joke seriously from the start, and the other half if you repeat it often enough.

A man offered the father a toy spaniel for five hundred dollars; when the father joked that it should be a mastiff at that price, the man turned the old sausage joke on him.

• avoid joke while bargaining → you lay yourself open to being mocked
  I was pretty hot, I can tell you, but I had laid myself open

Be pleasant with the trade but not too pleasant; flattery makes a fool of the flatterer; never run down a competitor's goods; neither beg for business nor look down on it.

• avoid win buyers with flattery → it only makes a fool of you
  I never knew smoking to do anything good except a ham, or flattery to help any one except to make a fool of himself
• avoid hold yourself too high to see small business → orders pass you by unseen
  don't hold your nose so high in the air that an order can travel under it without your seeing it

Customers' complaints are lies, exaggerations or the truth: settle the true one at once for less than first asked, soothe the exaggerator, ignore the liar, and learn fast which is which.

• do settle a genuine complaint on the spot, bargaining down from the first figure → you can usually settle for less than was asked
  a man who's making a claim never underestimates his case, and that you can generally compromise for something less than the first figure
• avoid fail to tell honest complaints from false ones → you will not last long with the firm
  if you don't learn pretty quick you'll not travel very far for the house

A smart buyer will show the son his own firm's lard as a rival's to make him run it down before a laughing audience; knowing his goods, he would have turned the joke and taken the order.

• do know your own goods well enough to recognise them anywhere → you turn the trap round and take the order
  And you'd have driven a spike right through that fellow's little joke and have nailed down his order hard and tight with the same blow.
• avoid let a chance to learn a fact slip by → you pay dearly before the next chance comes
  if he misses the first opening he will lose a good deal of blood before he gets the second

Calling a man a liar gets you knocked down, sneering gets you disliked, and a tactful double-edged compliment gets the trade; keep your opinions to yourself, and own up to a mistake at once.

• avoid tell someone plainly that they are a liar → you get knocked down
  Some men deal in facts, and call Bill Jones a liar. They get knocked down.
• do say something about a doubtful person that they will take as praise → you get their trade
  when that comes back to Bill he is half tickled to death, because he doesn't know that the higher criticism has hurt the Baron's reputation. That man gets the trade.
• avoid cover up a mistake → it breeds a lie, and the lie destroys the trust others had in you
  A mistake sprouts a lie when you cover it up. And one lie breeds enough distrust to choke out the prettiest crop of confidence that a fellow ever cultivated.

Taking the cure at a spa, the father mocks high-priced specialists and recalls a glut of canned beef that no booklet of new recipes could move, since every recipe came out as hash.

• avoid try to sell a glut by passing the same thing off in new disguises → it does not work
  after he had schemed out ten different combinations, the other ninety turned out to be corned-beef hash. So that was no use.

A fancy gilt label and a higher price moved the glut at once; the father is glad the son has been promoted to the billing desk, but wary of how parents rate their children.

• do give the goods a fancier label and charge more → people want them
  Of course, people just naturally wanted it. There's nothing helps convince some men that a thing has merit like a little gold on the label.

In a ragged river town where everyone seemed to need clothes, the young father hinted to the storekeeper that the people dressed badly, and was nearly punched and mocked for his own flashy clothes.

• avoid hint to customers that they are shabby and need your goods → they will not even look at what you offer
  he wouldn't even look at my samples, and when I began to hint that the people were pretty ornery dressers

The quack's tricks, songs and tales draw a crowd but sell nothing, since nobody is sick and a rival had already sold the town a cheaper cure.

The quack doses the crying child and pretends to draw a swallowed button-hook from his mouth; in the excitement every mother in town buys a bottle.

• do stage a demonstration that makes the need feel real → the whole crowd buys
  leaving his stock of the Priceless Boon distributed--for the usual consideration--among all the mothers in town

The family never owned a button-hook; the father offers the quack as a lesson in method, not morals: a good salesman creates an appetite, and new methods beat old ones.

• do create a demand where the buyer feels none → that is what makes a good salesman
  a good salesman is like a good cook--he can create an appetite when the buyer isn't hungry
• avoid keep doing things the same way year after year → people tire of it and want a change
  Doing the same thing in the same way year after year is like eating a quail a day for thirty days.

On his one trip to Europe the father was marked as an easy mark, sold two fake old masters, and chose his trade mark over a purchased coat of arms.

• avoid buy the trappings of culture where you cannot judge their worth → you are taken for an easy mark and fleeced
  In London, for the first time in my life, I was taken for an easy thing. Every time I went into a store there was a bull movement.

The father's old roommate neglected his counter job to dream up overnight fortunes, and was forever offering to let the father in on the ground floor for a small stake.

• avoid accept an offer to be let in on the ground floor → the safe course is to stay well clear
  whenever any one offers to let you in on the ground floor it's a pretty safe rule to take the elevator to the roof garden

Years later the schemer, seedy and eager as ever, offers shares in a paper gold company and leaves with a ten-dollar loan; nobody can think for the firm by day and for himself by night.

• do lend a chronic schemer a little rather than hire them → it costs you less
  I have always found it cheaper to lend a man of that build a little money than to hire him.
• avoid think for your employer by day and for your own schemes by night → you end up poor at both, and the employer loses most
  A man who tries that is usually a pretty poor thinker, and he isn't much good to either

The firm will fire the son if he trades again; margin trading is trading on nothing, speculators cannot stop, and being the son of a packer gives him no edge.

• avoid gamble on the market while employed by the firm → the firm will dismiss you
  the particular one is that Graham & Co. will fire you if you do
• avoid start speculating at all → winners cannot stop until they lose, and losers cannot stop until they win
  When a speculator wins he don't stop till he loses, and when he loses he can't stop till he wins.
• avoid count on inside knowledge of the trade to win at speculation → it gives you no edge
  Because you are the son of a pork packer you may think that you know a little more than the next fellow about paper pork. There's nothing in it.

A dollar earning twenty per cent is either very good or very foolish, and one earning a hundred is heading for ruin; sure things and tips bite. A pious, well-off deacon is introduced.

• do check hard before trusting any unusually high return → it may be very good or very foolish, and you must know which
  when it makes twenty you own a blame good critter or a mighty foolish one, and you want to make dead sure which
• avoid take up sure things and straight tips → they bite you
  looking as innocent as if they hadn't just killed a lamb, but they'll bite

Finding real grain somewhere behind the trading, the deacon declares speculation legitimate and accepts; the broker has already sent the money to the deacon's pastor, who spent it on the poor.

• avoid step off the straight path to pick up easy money → there is a string tied to it, and it is yanked away
  when he reaches down to pick up the money there's usually a string tied to it and a small boy in the bushes to give it a yank
• avoid count on easy money or easy loans → easy money earns nothing and easy loans cost dearly
  Easy-come money never draws interest; easy-borrowed dollars pay usury.

The quiet-looking mule kicks, strikes and bites the newcomer senseless; the father warns that the dangerous people are not the rough ones but the over-smooth.

• do be on guard against anyone who is too smooth → they, not the rough ones, are the ones carrying hidden weapons
  those gentlemen who have more oil in their composition than any two-legged animal has a right to have, that you should be on the lookout for concealed deadly weapons

A widow whose husband left no insurance brings her son to the father for a job, praising him extravagantly; the father takes him on at her valuation.

The father distrusts his own fond judgement and gets an outsider's valuation in figures; he put his son under the foreman to see him through unsentimental eyes, and the foreman rates him a billing clerk.

• do get a disinterested outsider's valuation of what you are fond of → you see the solid facts once the sentiment is strained off
  if you really want a look at the solid facts of a thing you must strain off the sentiment first

The friend's son quits just before being fired, the father loses his old friend's trade, and the young man turns up as a reporter who prints what the father might have said.

• avoid hire friends or their children → you lose the friendship and the friend's business
  it cost me the old man's trade and friendship. I want to say right here that the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.

A horse buyer tests every hair and still offers less; men should be tried in harness before being trusted, as the father learned from a clean-shaven clerk hired on looks who could not add.

• do try someone out in the work before committing to them → you find out what looks cannot tell you
  There's nothing like trying a man in harness a while before you bind yourself to travel very far with him.
• avoid hire someone on looks alone → they turn out unfit and must be let go
  giving a nice-looking, clean-shaven fellow a job on the billing-desk, just on his looks, but he turned out such a poor hand at figures

A polished, careful collector charmed the father, who gave him fifty dollars and marked him for promotion; that evening he proved eight hundred short and gone.

The collector had gambled away the collections; he wired polite thanks from across the border, and the father counts the lesson cheap at eight hundred and fifty dollars.

• avoid trust someone on their manner and polish → you are robbed and learn the lesson at a price
  I consider the little lesson that Charlie gave me as cheap at eight hundred and fifty dollars

The father prefers his trade mark, known everywhere for quality, to an inherited coat of arms; the son can travel once he has worked some years.

• do build your name on the quality of your work instead of borrowed rank → it pays better, and the whole trade trusts it
  and it's a heap more profitable. It's got so now that every jobber in the trade knows that it stands for good quality

A big order earns the son a raise to thirty a week and a new suit at the father's cost, with a lecture on dress: people judge by clothes and will not stay to hear excuses.

• avoid go about looking slovenly → people assume the worst and never get close enough to learn otherwise
  If you look as if you had slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclusion that you have

A cheap shave can win a good job, and a speculator seen taking a morning drink lost his whole corner when rivals took it for bad news.

• do look neat and well kept when it counts → it can win you a good position
  a ten-cent shave and a five-cent shine get a thousand-dollar job
• avoid be seen doing something that looks like a sign of trouble → rivals act on it and your position collapses
  There wasn't even a grease spot left of that corner when they got through.

Success needs looking right as well as being right; you cannot have both leisure and money; and the higher you go, the straighter you must walk. The father once chewed tobacco in his office.

• do take care to look right as well as be right → most of success is making people think you are all right
  it isn't enough to be all right in this world; you've got to look all right as well, because two-thirds of success is making people think you are all right
• avoid expect both plenty of leisure and plenty of money → the more of one, the less of the other
  You can take your choice, but the two lines of business don't gee. The more money, the less fish.

Success and failure are both unforgiven; most people judge by appearance, as the stockyard hands ignored dignitaries and cheered a prizefighter; look the part while young, but do not judge others by looks.

• do look like someone of consequence before you are one → it is a valuable asset while you are still nobody
  while a young fellow isn't anything in particular, it is a mighty valuable asset if he looks like something special
• do be cautious rather than suspicious → suspicion makes trouble, caution saves it
  A suspicious man makes trouble for himself, but a cautious one saves it.

Settled among old families, he gilds his railings, parades in a red-wheeled carriage and leaves cards up and down the street, but finds every family out every time.

He throws a grand opening with a band, fireworks and beer; none of the invited come, ten thousand strangers do, and the neighbours call the police, who need the reserves to clear it.

• avoid try to force your way into a closed circle with a lavish show → it ends in a riot and the police
  they had to turn in a riot call and bring out the reserves before they could break up Hank's little Boston tea-party

Pride spurs the strong and drags the weak, making them fear a laugh, live on tomorrow's pay and ape richer men; the father was once caught stealing a watermelon and led home by the ear.

• do let pride drive your work and your conscience → it keeps you straight and at your work
  it keeps his conscience straight and his back humped over his work; it makes him appreciate the little things and fight for the big ones
• avoid let pride make you keep up appearances → you live on money not yet earned, imitating richer people
  it makes him live to-day on to-morrow's salary; it makes him a cheap imitation of some Willie who has a little more money than he has

An old storekeeper put off everything, from rising to prayers to firing and raising clerks to paying bills, and lost his meals, his church, his cash, his good men and his business.

• avoid put off dismissing bad staff → they make off with the cash
  he would keep putting off firing his bad clerks until they had lit out with the petty cash
• avoid put off raising good staff → a competitor hires them away
  he would keep putting off raising the salaries of his good ones until his competitor had hired them away
• avoid put off paying what you owe even when you have the money → the business is ruined
  Running a business on those lines is, of course, equivalent to making a will in favor of the sheriff and committing suicide so that he can inherit.

One year the preacher refused to hold extra meetings for the backslider and left him to himself; a merchant likewise has too many promising young men to waste time on those who will not help themselves.

• avoid leave it to others to keep hauling you back into line → they soon stop wasting time on you
  Very few men are worth wasting time on beyond a certain point, and that point is soon reached with a fellow who doesn't show any signs of wanting to help.

The father caught a clerk chewing tobacco, stood over him until he had to spit, then instead of blasting him proposed they both swear off; the higher one climbs, the plainer one is seen, and the boss's son is watched by many hoping he fails.

• do give up the habit yourself as you correct someone else for it → they give it up too
  I just went up to the boy and put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Let's swear off, son." Naturally, he swore off
• avoid do as you please once you are high up → everyone sees it
  a man can't do what he pleases in this world, because the higher he climbs the plainer people can see him

A manager must give what he asks and set the example, treat each man as a special case, never wound pride, lead men to see their own faults, and never miss a chance to praise.

• do set the example yourself by coming early and working hard → your people work harder
  There's no alarm clock for the sleepy man like an early rising manager; and there's nothing breeds work in an office like a busy boss.
• avoid hurt the pride of someone under you → it is almost never forgiven
  A hundred men will forgive a blow in the face where one will a blow to his self-esteem.
• avoid tell someone the blunt truth about their faults → they will not believe you
  you won't shame the man you're trying to reach, because he won't believe you
• do set them on the road to seeing the truth for themselves → they reform before anyone else finds them out
  if you can start him on the road that will lead him to the truth he's mighty apt to try to reform himself
• do praise good work when you see it → it repays itself
  Praise judiciously bestowed is money invested.

Learn about your men only from themselves; be slow to hire and quick to fire, paying a month but not keeping a man a day; never threaten; keep close to your staff and do not rule by fear.

• do let a wrong hire go at once, with a month's pay → a dismissed person kept on becomes a centre of soreness
  Pay him an extra month, but don't let him stay another day. A discharged clerk in the office is like a splinter in the thumb--a centre of soreness.
• avoid threaten those under you → if you do not follow through it damages your credit with them
  Never threaten, because a threat is a promise to pay that it isn't always convenient to meet, but if you don't make it good it hurts your credit.
• avoid rule by fear → you are hated behind your back
  a man who is feared to his face is hated behind his back

Knowing the business wins a buyer's attention, but confidence takes tact: a man who tried to please both wife and mother under one roof lost both, where tact would have kept them apart and each content.

• avoid try openly to please two rivals at once → you make both of them angry
  when he tried to make them both happy he only succeeded in making them both mad
• do keep rivals apart and let each think they are getting slightly the better of it → each stays content
  kept them in separate houses, and have let each one think that she was getting a trifle the best of it

A salesman needs the confidence of both firm and buyer: cheat the buyer and lose the trade, trifle with the firm and lose the job; push business in good times and bad. A travelling quack comes to the father's boyhood town.

• avoid cheat the customer, or play games with your employer → you lose the customer's trade, or your job
  If you skin the buyer you will lose your trade; and if you play tag with the house you will lose your job.
• do push for business in good times and bad alike → in good times it comes easily, and in bad the orders are needed
  When business is good, that is the time to force it, because it will come easy; and when it is bad, that is the time to force it, too

Think of a thing first and go for all the trade; success goes to some heads so that they use authority as a club; an assistant is blamed by both clerks and manager, and must neither explain orders nor make excuses.

• do go for all of the trade, not a share → that is how you get a share
  the way to get a share of the trade is to go for all of it
• avoid use your new authority to keep your people at a distance → the office fills with resentment
  a boss with a case of big-head will fill an office full of sore heads
• avoid explain your orders to those below, or excuse yourself to the one above → you lose your authority below, or your usefulness above
  if he explains his orders to the clerks he loses his authority, and if he excuses himself to the manager he loses his usefulness

An assistant must never need telling twice and should carry the petty details for the manager; one who serves the manager well and sees the good in the clerks is helped from both sides.

• avoid need telling twice → the boss would sooner do it himself
  It's easier for a boss to do a thing himself than to tell some one twice to do it.
• do make yourself your superior's right hand → the rest of the organisation helps you in turn
  An assistant who becomes his manager's right hand is going to find the left hand helping him
• do look for the good points in those under you → they find good points in you
  it's not hard for a clerk to find good points in a boss who finds good ones in him

Ignore both abuse and flattery, and please your own side since you cannot please both; a lady once asked to borrow a vacant lot of the father's for a day nursery, and he agreed.

• do ignore both abuse and flattery → the one cannot harm you and the other cannot help you
  There are two things you never want to pay any attention to--abuse and flattery. The first can't harm you and the second can't help you.
• do please your own side rather than trying to please both → you cannot please both anyway
  As long as you can't please both sides in this world, there's nothing like pleasing your own side.

Never marry a poor girl raised like a rich one, nor marry for money or without it; the girl who marries the son for his father's money will be cheated.

• avoid marry someone raised above the means they will actually have → you get the vices of the rich without their advantages
  Never marry a poor girl who's been raised like a rich one. She's simply traded the virtues of the poor for the vices of the rich

The hotel clerk joins the joke; the moral is that you cannot trifle with a woman set on marrying, nor average out one marital mistake with another, and marrying the wrong one is for life.

• avoid trifle with someone who has made up their mind to marry → you end up married to them
  the foolishness of thinking you can take any chances with a woman who has really decided that she wants to marry
• avoid marry the wrong person → you live with the mistake all your life
  marrying the wrong girl is the one mistake that you've got to live with all your life

On the voyage home the father met a sensible, pretty young woman who knows a great deal about the son; he asks the son's intentions, and says fifty a week will do with the right wife, but money must be considered.

• avoid leave money out of your thinking before you marry → you have to think about it far too much afterwards
  When a boy and a girl don't think enough about money before the ceremony, they're going to have to think altogether too much about it after
• do marry a sensible partner even on modest pay → a modest income buys a great deal of happiness
  you can buy a whole lot of happiness with fifty dollars a week when you have the right sort of a woman for your purchasing agent

Two cannot live as cheaply as one; an unmarried man is unimproved land, and many rich young men are made land, ooze and drink under their fathers' dollars, that women build on without testing.

• avoid marry a pampered heir without first testing what lies under the money → the marriage cracks and falls in
  a lot of women will go right ahead without any preliminaries and wonder what's the matter when the walls begin to crack and tumble about their ears

The father blesses the match and favours short engagements; the time to size up a partner is before the engagement, and the thing to learn is how they are at breakfast and with a baby.

• avoid propose before you know the person as they are day to day → you complain later that you are stuck
  Some fellows propose to a girl before they know whether her front and her back hair match, and then holler that they're stuck

A man should know whether his partner will hear him about expenses and how she is when angry: the noisy temper blows over, the quiet one simmers, and nagging drives a man mad.

• do cross the person a little before you commit, to see their temper → you see how they are when angry
  there's nothing like stirring her up a little now and then to see if she spits fire and heaves things when she's mad

A trained fighter beats a brawler only if he keeps his muscle hard; a narrow, joyless businessman resolves to have his son's living handed to him and sends him through every school.

• do add training to hard effort and keep the effort up → the trained person wins, but goes under if they have gone soft
  the fellow with a little science is the better man, providing he's kept his muscle hard. If he hasn't, he's in a bad way

The father dies broke and the over-schooled son fails at banking, reporting, bookkeeping and selling; as a teacher he tells his principal he is doing it all wrong and loses that job too.

• avoid tell a new superior straight away that they are doing it all wrong → it sets them against you
  he told his principal right on the jump that he was doing it all wrong, and that made him sore

The moral of the over-schooled son: knowing a little and how to use it counts for more than knowing a great deal.

• do learn to use what you know rather than to know more → that is what counts
  it isn't so much knowing a whole lot, as knowing a little and how to use it that counts

The son of a speculator ruined in a wheat corner asks the father for any post down to office boy, is put off politely, and keeps calling twice a week.

Sons do not always turn out as represented; it is best to let a boy follow his bent, because the way to show him he chose wrong is to let him try it.

• do let someone try the work they are set on, instead of arguing → if it is wrong they will quit on their own, and if it is right you had no business stopping them
  If it really is the wrong thing you won't have to argue with him to quit, and if it isn't you haven't any right to.
• avoid keep someone's leaning bottled up → it comes out harder later
  the longer you keep it bottled up the harder it comes

An old friend's son is sent to learn the hide trade at the father's firm and announces on arrival that whatever he wants to do, it is not leather; his father had brushed that aside.

The young man drifts back to life with a rescue story and earns ten thousand a year in New York; a dog born to point should not be run after foxes, and the son seems made for the family pack.

• do leave the trade you were placed in for one that suits your gifts → you earn far more than you ever could have in the wrong trade
  drawing ten thousand a year, which was more than he could have worked up to in the leather business in a century

The son asks a job for a friend who will take nothing beneath his former position; the father refuses: the friend has sponged on his ruined father for years, and the only undignified job is loafing.

• avoid hold out for work worthy of your old position while living on others → you sink to the bottom, and nobody will hire you
  He's one of those fellows who start in at the top and naturally work down to the bottom, because that is where they belong.

The father would rather the son be a clean man than a scholar; the harm in college comes from its amusements, where he should go slow and choose.

• do go slow and choose carefully among amusements → the amusements, not the work, are where the harm lies
  It's down among the sweets, among his amusements and recreations, that he's going to find his stomach-ache, and it's there that he wants to go slow

The son will say he must do as the others do; the father answers that the follower buys at the top and loses, while the one who thinks for himself ends up a director.

• avoid do things just because everyone around you does them → you stay poor and serve others all your life
  The boy who does anything just because the other fellows do it is apt to scratch a poor man's back all his life.
• do think and act for yourself, against the crowd → you end up in the directors' meetings
  It's the fellow who has the spunk to think and act for himself

An old steer at the packing house leads each new herd up the runway to the killing pens and slips away at the top; every crowd of boys has one, and the son should keep away from any crowd following him.

• do keep away from a crowd following a smooth leader, even if it leaves you alone → the followers are led into trouble the leader himself escapes
  If you find your crowd following him, keep away from it. There are times when it's safest to be lonesome.

The papers show the son golfing on a working afternoon; play is dessert, not dinner, and the father warns him off the society bug.

• avoid let amusement take the place of work → you pay for it early
  Any one who lets sinkers take the place of bread and meat gets bilious pretty young

Society everywhere means descent from a moneymaker long enough dead to forget his shop; those who think themselves the choice cuts prove worthless once parted from their money.

• avoid rate people by the family and fortune behind them → without their money there is nothing to them
  when you separate them from their money there's nothing left, not even their friends

He blames the neighbours' manners; standing won in one world means nothing in another; good society is any congenial company, but the son should avoid people who make play their profession.

• avoid assume that standing earned in one world carries into another → it counts for nothing there
  Because a fellow cuts ice on the Arctic Circle, it doesn't follow that he's going to be worth beans on the Back Bay.

Send orders, not long letters; the firm does not want to hear how a competitor got an order after the fact. On his own first trip the father was sent to the river towns.

• avoid explain at length how a competitor beat you → nobody at headquarters wants to hear it
  We aren't specially interested in orders that the other fellow gets, or in knowing how it happened after it has happened.

The whole town laughed at him; he learned to dress like the locals and to sell where the money is, wrote home long explanations, and was asked by wire what he himself was doing, so he resigned.

• do dress as the local people of standing do, not as fashion says → you are not laughed at
  it's safer when you're out of his sphere of influence to follow the styles that the hotel clerk sets
• do go where the money already is rather than where the need seems greatest → that is where things sell
  the place to sell clothes is in the city, where every one seems to have plenty of them
• avoid send explanations in place of results → you are left with nothing to do but resign
  I saw then that the time for explaining was gone and that the moment for resigning had arrived

The father wants the export cattle trade investigated at once: rivals have been taking it, a firm must do the whole thing to do anything, and anything with a profit is in their line.

• do take up every profitable branch of your trade instead of leaving it to others → a business that does not do the whole thing cannot do anything
  Unless you do the whole thing you can't do anything in business as it runs to-day.
• avoid dismiss a profitable opening as not your line → the profit goes to someone else
  it won't do to say that it's not in our line, because anything which carries a profit on four legs is in our line

Newspapers say rivals have caught the father short on lard; he tells the son not to mind, since he never sells what he cannot lay hands on and is ready to fight.

• do never commit to deliver what you cannot lay hands on → rivals who try to squeeze you find you ready for them
  I never sell goods without knowing where I can find them when I want them

A mistake is excusable once; the father has seen hundreds of graduates go abroad for polish and come back with nothing but ill-fitting clothes, since culture is not a change of climate.

• avoid make the same mistake twice → there is no excuse left but carelessness
  When a fellow makes the same mistake twice he's got to throw up both hands and own up to carelessness or cussedness.
• avoid go abroad expecting to come back polished → you bring back nothing worth having
  they didn't bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes

The son slipped a love note into a customer's envelope; the customer mocks it while pressing a claim, the father berates the foreman before learning it was his own son, and the son answered the foreman with a joke.

A broker angling for the father's business lets slip that the son made a profit selling short; the father has the account closed and the profit given to an orphans' home.

In Sunday school he recited the whole chapter and was praised before everyone as an example, until his mother, at the back of the room, told him to tell them how he came to know it so well.

He confessed to stealing the watermelon before the laughing school, was punished again, and learned humility that lasted twenty years.

• do take the public humbling when you have claimed credit you did not earn → it purges false pride for years
  it sweat more cant and false pride out of my system than I could get back into it for the next twenty years

The father, seeing his son off to college, tells him to take every bit of education on offer, since it is the one thing in the world free for the hauling.

• do take every chance to learn that is offered → learning is the one thing you can have as much of as you will carry off
  it's about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away

Men learn the value of money, truth and sobriety by different roads; what matters is the soundness of the man inside, not the polish on him.

• do rely on sound character rather than polish → no amount of polish makes an unsound person any good
  it doesn't make any difference how much sugar and fancy pickle you soak into a fellow, he's no good unless he's sound and sweet at the core.

Character comes before learning; a preacher who pressed the father to be saved in public scared him off religion for five years; the son should test tempting things with his conscience.

• do test anything tempting against your conscience before taking it up → you will come to no harm
  probe into a thing which looks sweet and sound on the skin, to see if you can't fetch up a sour smell from around the bone, you'll be all right
• avoid press someone to do right loudly and in public → it drives them away from the very thing you want
  he scared me out of it for five years by asking me right out loud in Sunday School if I didn't want to be saved

Merchants doubt college because of its idle dandies, but training that teaches a young man to think quickly pays; college develops fools and bright men alike.

• do train yourself to think quickly and get the answer first → it pays
  Anything that trains a boy to think and to think quick pays
• avoid live as an idle, late-hours dandy while being educated → employers come to doubt what the education is worth
  up-all-night-and-in-all-day boys that make 'em doubt the cash value of the college output
• do put your education to work in someone's business → you make the business hum
  the shirt-sleeves and high-water-pants boys, who take their college education and make some fellow's business hum with it

The father started on two dollars a week and knew every penny's worth; a butcher who charged the same for a fine roast and a poor one had no sense of values and is now very poor.

• avoid price and trade without a clear sense of what things are worth → even a hard worker ends up poor
  Bill has always been a big, healthy, hard-working man, but to-day he is very, very poor.

Some clerks spend their energy devising reasons to draw ahead on their pay; if they spent half of it thinking for the firm they would double their salaries and rise.

• do put your energy into thinking for the firm instead of seeking advances on your pay → you could double your pay and your employer's profits within a year
  they could double their salaries and my profits in a year

The father refuses the son's proposed post-graduate course: a packer's advanced training is in the packing house, where theory tested against practice pays.

• do test what you learned from books against practice → that is what moves things forward and turns a profit
  knows enough about practice to test his theories for blow-holes that gives the world a shove ahead, and finds a fair margin of profit in shoving it

Business has grown so fine-margined and specialised that it takes trained men of every kind to run it, and a young man among them must be sharp or be eaten up.

• do keep yourself clean and sharp among able competitors → otherwise someone else overtakes you
  must be as clean and sharp as a hound's tooth, or some other fellow's simply going to eat him up

Copying letters, he gets typewriters brought in; sent out selling a new product that will not move, he tells the boss the firm is doing it wrong and keeps pressing for advertising until allowed a small trial.

• do keep pressing a new idea on a sceptical superior → you are eventually allowed to try it in a small way
  Jim just kept plugging away at me between trips, until finally I took him off the road and told him to go ahead and try it in a small way

The young man spends the firm's money lavishly on extravagant advertising, keeping the owner in a chill and a sweat and always promising a fortune around the corner.

Just before he is fired, orders rise and the young man keeps a permanent place; the father admits he was not broad-minded enough to see a better way, and warns his son that popularity and sporty habits cost time and jobs.

• do stay with a costly new approach through its early losses → the business comes and the approach wins a permanent place
  the orders for Extract began to look up, and he got a reprieve; then he began to make expenses, and he got a pardon
• avoid dismiss a new way because it is not your way → you nearly throw away a better way
  it was a new way, and I hadn't been broad-gauged enough to see that it was a better way
• do hire trained minds → the better trained they are, the faster they earn their raises
  I've learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised
• avoid chase popularity among your peers → it eats up time that work needs
  while the most popular man in his class isn't always a failure in business, being as popular as that takes up a heap of time
• avoid take up flashy dress and habits → the employer will not hire you
  There's nothing criminal about either, but I don't hire sporty clerks at all

The father closes trusting the son's good sense to see he has had enough college for now.

Take the medicine without playing with the spoon: putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and a hard one impossible.

• avoid put off an unwelcome task → easy things become hard and hard ones impossible
  Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.

A town sinner was always last to be saved at the yearly revival and first to backslide, and grew vain of how much effort his rescue took.

The new errand boy is behind a string of mishaps but has an excuse every time and is let off with a warning; a big customer's pampered son wanders into the errand boys' lunchroom.

The errand boys string the customer's son upside down in a game of pig-sticking; the customer cancels his contract, the boy is sent packing, and his mother blames the father.

• avoid play a rough prank on a customer's family → the customer takes their business away and you lose your place
  Willie's father canceled his bologna contract and marched off

As a war correspondent the young man makes news when there is none, and sends his paper a detailed account of his own capture and execution.

The invented death sells papers, brings a memorial service and a collection among the clerks; then a wire asks the father for money and to keep the survival quiet.

In the father's home town the owner's pampered little son thought himself a fine fellow.

The pampered son is a smooth, easy charmer the other boys hate and the girls like, and he confides his heart's secrets to every girl in town.

He wins sympathy by hinting at a tragic past until, at twenty-four, he courts a shrewd widow of forty and wakes up stepfather to her four children, kept firmly in hand and taken for her son.

Widowed at over fifty, he marries a girl of eighteen, and on the honeymoon train travellers mock him by treating her as his daughter.

The trip is an experiment; a salesman is mostly judgement and a little talk, and buyers care about price, not a drummer's stories.

• avoid show off before you have mastered the basics → you will never shine that way
  you will never become the pride of the pond by starting out to cut figure eights before you are firm on your skates
• avoid entertain buyers with stories instead of offering a price → a small price cut wins more than any joke
  I never saw one that liked a drummer's jokes more than an eighth of a cent a pound on a tierce of lard.

The son's selling costs came in within the limit only by decimals: he reached the tree ahead of the bull but is still stuck up it.

A rail-thin village joker lived on tobacco and liked to scare the boys by pretending to be the devil.

The village preacher's religion allowed no compromises at all: no trading one vice for another, every habit had to go.

Lonely while the town was at the revival, the joker crept close, got converted, lost his tobacco and stuck to it for fear of being laughed at, then grew fat and kept retiring suits.

He saved fourteen outgrown suits to wear on the way down but never lost an ounce; you cannot count on coming back to something passed over, and thorough knowledge eventually wins the hardest buyer.

• avoid pass something over, counting on coming back for it later → the chance does not come again
  a fellow can't bank on getting a chance to go back and take up a thing that he has passed over once
• do know your own business thoroughly → sooner or later you win a share of even the hardest customer's trade
  will find an opportunity sooner or later of reaching the most hardened cuss of a buyer on his route and of getting a share of his

Instead of moving on, the quack praises the town's health while listing every epidemic creeping toward it, and warns against imitations.

The speech leaves the women uneasy, but the quack holds back from selling, entertains, and returns next day for a children's show, where a child starts howling.

A speculating clerk loses more than money: bad habits and self-respect; a man is broke only when character goes; the father has kept many clerks out of prison after they fed losses from his cash drawer.

• avoid chase your losses → you trade away your self-respect to win the money back
  if the market goes up, he's likely to go short his self-respect to win back his money
• avoid cover speculating losses from your employer's cash → it leads toward prison
  I've kept a heap smarter boys than you out of Joliet when they found it easy to feed the Board of Trade hog out of my cash drawer

The deacon preaches giving while hoarding safely, condemns his broker brother's high living, and goes to stay with him in the city because it is cheaper than a hotel.

Duty to most men is what the other fellow should do; a man's first duty is minding his own business. The deacon lectures his brother on cigars, fast horses and the sinful exchange.

• avoid spend your effort reforming other people's characters → you neglect building your own
  if a fellow's putting in five or six hours a day on his neighbor's character, he's mighty apt to scamp the building of his own

The broker pretends to take the sermon to heart and offers to quit; the deacon, heir to his money, starts to hedge; the broker confesses he speculated once, to make his brother a present.

Expecting to be asked to cover a loss, the deacon refuses gambling money on principle, then learns it was a two-hundred-dollar gain; the broker says he cannot now offer it or keep it.

The deacon lies awake over the money and next morning questions his brother about how speculation works, hoping to find it respectable.

Exchanges have their uses, but not for someone who owns no more pork than is on his plate; until then he can go there only as a sucker.

• avoid trade on a market where you hold none of the real goods → you are the sucker
  When you become a packer you may go on 'Change as a trader; until then you can go there only as a sucker.

The previous holder knew and loved his product and turned a rival product into an opportunity; enthusiasm lightens work; a boss is the one man who cannot do as he pleases or break his own rules.

• do bring enthusiasm to the job → it makes heavy work light
  Jack had enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the best shortening for any job; it makes heavy work light.
• avoid break your own rules once you are the one who makes them → the one in charge is the one who can least afford to
  He can make rules, but he's the only man who can't afford to break them now and then.

Make salesmen write in daily so they run out of excuses and hustle; watch your own faults while watching others'. A mean, adulterating village grocer is introduced.

• do make those under you report every day → they run out of excuses and go after results
  When a fellow has to write in six times a week to the house, he uses up his explanations mighty fast, and he's pretty apt to hustle for business
• avoid let authority swell your head → you stop seeing your own faults
  Authority swells up some fellows so that they can't see their corns

Since everyone else's meanness was discussed in his store but his own, the grocer thought himself the only decent man and called for public opinion; the town wrecked his saloon and ran him out on a rail.

• avoid call for public judgement of others' conduct when yours is worse → the judgement falls on you
  Most men get information when they ask for it, and in the end Lem fetched public opinion all right.

Having sized up others, step back and size yourself up, crediting them with unseen virtues and yourself with unseen faults.

• do judge others generously and yourself strictly → you get a fairly accurate picture
  add fifty per cent. to your estimate of your neighbor for virtues that you can't see, and deduct fifty per cent. from yourself for faults

Taking a cure abroad, the father spent a seasick crossing befriending two hundred export steers below decks, which arrived in England in prime condition.

A boyhood friend who made a fortune in gold calls on the father under a grand new double-barrelled name.

The newly rich friend explains his plans to be the grandest of swells in an old city; the father gives him congratulations rather than warnings, since that is what he came for.

• do give people what they came for rather than advice they did not ask for → not stated
  it was congratulations and not explanations that he wanted, and I make it a point to show a customer the line of goods that he's looking for

Fined on sixteen counts, he leaves town on a special train, posting a mocking notice for his neighbours.

A boyhood glutton boasted of his courage but always found an excuse to dodge a fight; he feared everything except the food that was harming him.

Dared to eat dirt, he did it rather than be called afraid, then made money at it and ended in a dime museum; many men eat a little dirt for show and more for easy money.

• avoid do something shameful on a dare or for show → you go on doing more of it once you find easy money in it
  fellows who'll eat a little dirt "for fun" or to show off, and who'll eat a little more because they find that there's some easy money or times in it

His mother thrashed him and confined him until he had learned a chapter of scripture and the commandments by heart.

The lady returns for a building, then cows, then paint, each time making him feel mean for not offering; he paints an advertisement for the firm on the long shed wall.

She tells the town he gave a cheap shed and took a costly advertisement, and shames him into paying; he sells the lot and quits, noting that worry is the one thing he put into business that never paid.

• avoid put worry into your business → it is the one thing that never pays back
  the only thing I've ever put into it which didn't draw dividends in fun or dollars was worry

Worry always picks the wrong thing: the refinery burns while you fret over the safe, and your health breaks while you fear for the business; a busy man leaves worrying to others.

• avoid worry over what might go wrong → the trouble comes from elsewhere, and worry itself ruins your health
  you worry because you're afraid your business is going to smash, and your health busts up instead

A widow with fourteen children let them roam all day; when her youngest's clothes were found by the swimming hole, she asked to see the body before any funeral.

The town stops work to praise the drowned boy and drag the river; after a week the widow pays a fortune-teller to reach him, who fails.

She pays more each day, and the fortune-teller raises the dead father and famous ghosts, but never the boy.

She concludes the boy is not dead, chases off the mourners, finds him hiding next morning and thrashes him; the men who had praised him cuff him for making fools of them.

The boy had run off to fight Indians and come back hungry; the time to worry is when a thing is over, and the way is to leave it to the neighbours.

• do hold off worrying until the outcome is known, and leave the fretting to others → the feared loss may never have happened
  the time to do your worrying is when a thing is all over, and that the way to do it is to leave it to the neighbors

The father was made trustee for a frivolous heir of a million until he turned twenty-five, and at a dance watched him court a young heiress with every sign of devotion.

Two other young women watch the heir jealously; next evening he raves to the father about the heiress, though a fortnight earlier he had called another girl a goddess.

Told to propose to the heiress and settle down, the heir confesses he is secretly engaged to one girl and has said things to another that she may take for a proposal.

He kept both engagements quiet by telling each girl that his trustee disliked her and controlled his money; he has also as good as proposed to the heiress.

The father dictates plain letters breaking off both engagements, makes the heir sign them, and has the butler post them before he can lose them.

Kept overnight at the father's house, the heir dreads the letters' arrival; one of the girls telephones him at breakfast.

Both girls, puzzled rather than angry, ask him to call and explain; the father tells him to be a man, say plainly he does not love them enough to marry, and hold firm.

• do tell each person plainly that you do not love them enough to marry, and stick to it → not stated
  Tell 'em plain and straight that you don't love 'em as you should to marry 'em

On his way to be firm the heir sends flowers to all three women, and returns hours later claiming a satisfactory beginning.

The heir swears at the father's meddling and claims to be breaking off more gently; the father tells him he is tied tighter than ever, and goes to the evening's dance to watch.

• avoid break off gently and in person, with gifts and soft words → you end up more tightly bound than before
  You're tied up to them harder and tighter than ever.

At the dance one girl's married sister publicly congratulates the heir on his engagement while he is with the heiress; then the other girl appears, carrying his lilies.

A second man congratulates him on the other engagement, the heiress laughs at her twice-lucky suitor, and the heir flees to Europe, begging the father to hush it up.

• avoid try to hush up a scandal that is already public → it cannot be stopped
  Hush it up! You might as well say 'Shoo!' to the Limited and expect it to stop for you.

On the ship the heir is already charming another young woman; a widow has since tamed him; the father wants no second such case in the family and asks the son what's what.

The father judges the young woman pretty, sensible and without a fortune to make fools of them; he distrusts women in business, and recalls the picturesque, impractical cottage where he began married life.

The young couple took their fun as they went instead of deferring happiness; the father bought a pig to fatten on credit, and his wife made a pet of it.

• avoid put off being happy until later → the later never comes; it is always put off again
  Don't accept notes for happiness, because you'll find that when they're due they're never paid, but just renewed for another thirty days.

In autumn the fattened pet pig was butchered, and at dinner the father absent-mindedly offered his wife a piece of it by name.

His wife wept, called him a cannibal and begged a burial; he reasoned her out of an expensive funeral but lost his appetite, and sold the pork at the crossroads store.

The father prefers to hire husbands rather than women, since a wife makes a man steadier and worth more pay; he will raise the son to seventy-five a week when he marries and stop writing letters.

• do settle down and marry → your employer rates you worth more pay
  A married man is worth more salary than a single one, because his wife makes him worth more.

Not part of the letters: the father's sign-off, then the publisher's advertisements for other humour books.

Not part of the letters: publisher's advertisements for other humour books.

Not part of the letters: publisher's advertisements for books of verse.

Not part of the letters: publisher's advertisements for children's verse and a series of biographies.

Not part of the letters: press notices for the biography series.

Not part of the letters: the list of titles in the American biography series.

Not part of the letters: the list of titles in the English biography series.

You can have money, success or a meal if you go along with something you think wrong or false.

1. Chase your losses, whatever it takes. chunk:110 · inferred
   standing - money risk
   if the market goes up, he's likely to go short his self-respect to win back his money
2. Talk yourself out of your principles to take the money. chunk:117 · inferred
   money risk standing -
   when he reaches down to pick up the money there's usually a string tied to it and a small boy in the bushes to give it a yank

A plausible person offers an easy fortune that is probably a trap set for you.

1. Accept the offer to get in on the ground floor. chunk:36 · inferred
   money risk relationships.schemer +
   whenever any one offers to let you in on the ground floor it's a pretty safe rule to take the elevator to the roof garden
2. Check hard why the return is so high before you trust it. chunk:111 · inferred
   judgment +
   when it makes twenty you own a blame good critter or a mighty foolish one, and you want to make dead sure which
3. Take up the sure thing or the straight tip. chunk:111 · stated
   money -
   looking as innocent as if they hadn't just killed a lamb, but they'll bite
4. Count on the easy money, or the easy loan. chunk:117 · stated
   money -
   Easy-come money never draws interest; easy-borrowed dollars pay usury.

You have money, or are thought to, and people around you are suddenly courting it.

1. Lend the schemer a little rather than hire them. chunk:37 · inferred
   money - relationships.schemer +
   I have always found it cheaper to lend a man of that build a little money than to hire him.
2. Tell them exactly what you earn. chunk:63 · stated
   relationships.partner -
   tell her you're making twelve a week and ain't going to get any more till you earn it, you'll find that you can't push within a mile of her

You are pretending to be more, or other, than you are, to impress someone, and may be found out.

1. Rely on sound character rather than polish. chunk:1 · inferred
   standing +
   it doesn't make any difference how much sugar and fancy pickle you soak into a fellow, he's no good unless he's sound and sweet at the core.
2. Go away somewhere grand to pick up polish. chunk:29 · inferred
   money -
   they didn't bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes
3. Build your name on the quality of your work, not on borrowed rank. chunk:31 · stated
   standing + money +
   and it's a heap more profitable. It's got so now that every jobber in the trade knows that it stands for good quality
4. Go about looking slovenly. chunk:100 · stated
   standing -
   If you look as if you had slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclusion that you have
5. Turn yourself out neatly when it counts. chunk:101 · stated
   money +
   a ten-cent shave and a five-cent shine get a thousand-dollar job
6. Take as much care to look right as to be right. chunk:102 · stated
   standing +
   it isn't enough to be all right in this world; you've got to look all right as well, because two-thirds of success is making people think you are all right
7. Look like someone of consequence before you are one. chunk:104 · inferred
   standing + money -
   while a young fellow isn't anything in particular, it is a mighty valuable asset if he looks like something special
8. Rise on talk and show. chunk:139 · stated
   standing risk
   Hot air can take up a balloon a long ways, but it can't keep it there.
9. Climb slowly by the steady path. chunk:139 · stated
   standing +
   You don't get up so quick, but you don't come down so sudden.
10. Let your pride drive your work, not your show. chunk:144 · stated
    hustle +
    it keeps his conscience straight and his back humped over his work; it makes him appreciate the little things and fight for the big ones
11. Keep up appearances beyond your means. chunk:144 · inferred
    money - standing -
    it makes him live to-day on to-morrow's salary; it makes him a cheap imitation of some Willie who has a little more money than he has

You have been caught, or are about to be seen, doing or being what you meant nobody to see.

1. Let yourself be seen doing something that looks like a sign of trouble. chunk:101 · stated
   money -
   There wasn't even a grease spot left of that corner when they got through.
2. Let your private affairs get mixed into the firm's dealings. chunk:44 · inferred
   relationships.boss -
   I just had to allow Donnelly his claim on those hams, though I was dead sure our weights were right, and it cost the house sixty dollars.

Someone at home blames you or demands their way, and you must decide whether to give way to keep the peace.

1. Try openly to please both of them. chunk:92 · stated
   relationships.family - relationships.partner -
   when he tried to make them both happy he only succeeded in making them both mad
2. Keep them apart, and let each think they have slightly the better of it. chunk:92 · inferred
   judgment + relationships.family + relationships.partner +
   kept them in separate houses, and have let each one think that she was getting a trifle the best of it

Someone with power over you treats you with contempt, or must be humoured though you resent them, and you want respect or to turn the tables.

1. Tell them you cannot work under them. chunk:45 · inferred
   relationships.boss - standing -
   the house isn't interested in knowing how you like your boss, but in how he likes you
2. Go over their head and report that they are no good. chunk:46 · inferred
   relationships.boss -
   whenever you discover that your boss is no good you may rest easy that the man who pays his salary shares your secret
3. Give way to them and let them have the best place. chunk:46 · stated
   relationships.boss +
   let the village fathers get their feet on the fender and the sawdust box in range, and you'll find them making a little room for you in turn
4. Keep your temper, whether you are right or wrong. chunk:46 · inferred
   relationships.boss + judgment +
   Remember that when you're in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and that when you're in the wrong you can't afford to lose it.
5. Approach them gently and with respect. chunk:46 · stated
   relationships.boss +
   if you want peace and her nine quarts, you will naturally approach her from the side, and say, So-boss
6. Keep well away from one who is vicious on principle. chunk:46 · inferred
   flags.kept_clear set
   There's never any use fooling with an animal of that sort, brute or human. The only safe place is the other side of the fence
7. Take their criticism in sulky, long-suffering silence. chunk:88 · stated
   relationships.boss -
   I know it's not meekness, but meanness, that I've got to fight, and it's hard to tell which is the worst.

You once wronged someone, and now face them, or a stand-in, and must decide how much to admit or how to make amends.

1. Confess in front of everyone how you really came by the praise. chunk:147 · inferred
   standing - flags.humbled set
   it sweat more cant and false pride out of my system than I could get back into it for the next twenty years

You are new to a place or household that ignores you, warns you, or leaves you lost, and you must find your footing.

1. Tell your new superior straight off that they are doing it wrong. chunk:6 · stated
   relationships.boss -
   he told his principal right on the jump that he was doing it all wrong, and that made him sore
2. Play a rough joke on a visitor. chunk:55 · inferred
   relationships.customer - flags.dismissed set
   Willie's father canceled his bologna contract and marched off
3. Show off before you have mastered the basics. chunk:73 · inferred
   standing -
   you will never become the pride of the pond by starting out to cut figure eights before you are firm on your skates
4. Dress as the local people of standing do. chunk:78 · inferred
   standing +
   it's safer when you're out of his sphere of influence to follow the styles that the hotel clerk sets

You are the plain or overlooked one beside someone admired, and want, once, to be noticed.

1. Work your connections to get noticed. chunk:89 · inferred
   relationships.patron + standing risk
   I never saw one strong enough to lift a man any higher than he could raise himself by his boot straps
2. Complain that you are being held down. chunk:89 · inferred
   relationships.boss - standing -
   when a fellow whines that he's being held down, the truth is, as a general thing, that his boss can't hold him up
3. Keep telling your superiors how good you are. chunk:138 · inferred
   relationships.boss -
   There's never any use trying to hide the fact that you're a jim-dandy--you're bound to be found out.
4. Give more than you are paid for, and let it speak. chunk:138 · inferred
   money - standing +
   a man who's giving a dollar's worth of himself for ninety-nine cents doesn't need to throw in any explanations
5. Work quietly and speak only when there is a result. chunk:140 · inferred
   standing +
   But when you hear from a hen, she's laid an egg, and she don't make a great deal of noise about it, either.

An old habit gives you away at exactly the moment you need to be someone new.

1. Give the habit up yourself as you correct them for it. chunk:103 · inferred
   relationships.staff + flags.swore_off set
   I just went up to the boy and put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Let's swear off, son." Naturally, he swore off
2. Carry on as you please now that you are high up. chunk:103 · stated
   standing risk
   a man can't do what he pleases in this world, because the higher he climbs the plainer people can see him

A warning of real danger has come, and it would be easy to dismiss: either you have heeded it and others will not, or someone is urging it on you.

1. Talk over the warnings instead of listening to them. chunk:47 · inferred
   judgment -
   Jeff was a good talker, but a bad listener, and so we learned a heap about how things were done in Wisconsin, but he didn't pick up much information

Someone in trouble with nowhere else to turn asks for help that will cost whoever gives it; you are the one asking, or the one asked.

1. Keep calling back on the one who turned you away. chunk:19 · inferred
   hustle + flags.given_a_chance set
   Finally, after about a month of this, he wore me down so that I stopped him one day
2. Take on a friend's child as a favour. chunk:59 · stated
   relationships.friend - money -
   it cost me the old man's trade and friendship. I want to say right here that the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.
3. Hold out for work worthy of your old position, and live on others meanwhile. chunk:141 · inferred
   standing - money -
   He's one of those fellows who start in at the top and naturally work down to the bottom, because that is where they belong.

Someone has vanished or been given up for lost, and you may be the only one still looking.

1. Hold off grieving until you know, and leave the fretting to others. chunk:157 · inferred
   flags.kept_calm set
   the time to do your worrying is when a thing is all over, and that the way to do it is to leave it to the neighbors

Someone accepted among you, perhaps close to you, is not who they claim, and the signs are there if you let yourself see them.

1. Be on your guard against anyone too smooth. chunk:48 · inferred
   judgment + relationships.counterpart -
   those gentlemen who have more oil in their composition than any two-legged animal has a right to have, that you should be on the lookout for concealed deadly weapons
2. Be cautious, but not suspicious. chunk:104 · inferred
   judgment +
   A suspicious man makes trouble for himself, but a cautious one saves it.
3. Try them out in the work before you commit. chunk:105 · inferred
   judgment +
   There's nothing like trying a man in harness a while before you bind yourself to travel very far with him.
4. Trust them for their manners and polish. chunk:107 · stated
   money -
   I consider the little lesson that Charlie gave me as cheap at eight hundred and fifty dollars

Someone sharper than you sees what you missed or meant to hide, keeps a step ahead, or shows you up in front of others.

1. Know your goods well enough to turn their trap round. chunk:82 · inferred
   money + standing +
   And you'd have driven a spike right through that fellow's little joke and have nailed down his order hard and tight with the same blow.

Someone's trust is being used for another's hidden ends: you realise you were only a pawn, or you could use someone who trusts you.

1. Keep away from the crowd following its charming leader, even if it leaves you alone. chunk:15 · stated
   relationships.peers -
   If you find your crowd following him, keep away from it. There are times when it's safest to be lonesome.

Something in you keeps pulling towards the one act that will undo you: giving yourself away, or becoming someone worse.

1. Start speculating at all. chunk:109 · stated
   money risk flags.speculator set
   When a speculator wins he don't stop till he loses, and when he loses he can't stop till he wins.
2. Cover your losses out of your employer's cash. chunk:110 · stated
   flags.embezzled set standing risk
   I've kept a heap smarter boys than you out of Joliet when they found it easy to feed the Board of Trade hog out of my cash drawer
3. Do something shameful on a dare, or for show. chunk:143 · inferred
   money + standing -
   fellows who'll eat a little dirt "for fun" or to show off, and who'll eat a little more because they find that there's some easy money or times in it

Something shameful is coming out, and hiding it, or keeping it hidden, may cost far more than owning it would.

1. Keep the mistake to yourself. chunk:93 · stated
   relationships.boss - flags.covered_up set
   A mistake sprouts a lie when you cover it up. And one lie breeds enough distrust to choke out the prettiest crop of confidence that a fellow ever cultivated.
2. Try to hush up a scandal that is already out. chunk:170 · inferred
   standing -
   Hush it up! You might as well say 'Shoo!' to the Limited and expect it to stop for you.

Someone who holds your living will give you what you need only if you bow to them on something personal.

1. Keep your flashy clothes and habits. chunk:23 · stated
   flags.not_hired set
   There's nothing criminal about either, but I don't hire sporty clerks at all
2. Settle down and marry, as your employer would like. chunk:178 · stated
   money +
   A married man is worth more salary than a single one, because his wife makes him worth more.

Someone whose judgement you need is examining your conduct, and you want to show yourself in a better light than the facts allow.

1. Make the same mistake a second time. chunk:29 · inferred
   standing -
   When a fellow makes the same mistake twice he's got to throw up both hands and own up to carelessness or cussedness.
2. Explain at length how a rival beat you. chunk:76 · inferred
   relationships.boss -
   We aren't specially interested in orders that the other fellow gets, or in knowing how it happened after it has happened.
3. Send explanations in place of results. chunk:78 · inferred
   flags.resigned set relationships.boss -
   I saw then that the time for explaining was gone and that the moment for resigning had arrived

You have misread who stands high and who stands low, or what is precious and what is cheap, and are about to act on it.

1. Price things without a sense of what they are worth. chunk:12 · stated
   money -
   Bill has always been a big, healthy, hard-working man, but to-day he is very, very poor.
2. Buy the fine things on offer where you cannot judge them. chunk:30 · stated
   money -
   In London, for the first time in my life, I was taken for an easy thing. Every time I went into a store there was a bull movement.
3. Get an outsider's valuation of what you are fond of, in figures. chunk:56 · inferred
   judgment +
   if you really want a look at the solid facts of a thing you must strain off the sentiment first
4. Hire them on their looks. chunk:105 · stated
   flags.bad_hire set
   giving a nice-looking, clean-shaven fellow a job on the billing-desk, just on his looks, but he turned out such a poor hand at figures
5. Rate people by the family and fortune behind them. chunk:131 · inferred
   judgment -
   when you separate them from their money there's nothing left, not even their friends

You and a parent cannot accept how the other lives, and neither will give way.

1. Let them try the work they are set on. chunk:57 · inferred
   relationships.family +
   If it really is the wrong thing you won't have to argue with him to quit, and if it isn't you haven't any right to.
2. Keep their leaning bottled up. chunk:57 · inferred
   relationships.family -
   the longer you keep it bottled up the harder it comes
3. Leave the family trade for work that suits you. chunk:62 · inferred
   money + relationships.family -
   drawing ten thousand a year, which was more than he could have worked up to in the leather business in a century

Something shows you a fuller or warmer life than yours, others celebrating or what might have been, and you are on the outside of it.

1. Force your way in with a lavish public show. chunk:135 · inferred
   money - standing - flags.police_called set
   they had to turn in a riot call and bring out the reserves before they could break up Hank's little Boston tea-party
2. Count on standing won elsewhere to carry you here. chunk:137 · stated
   standing -
   Because a fellow cuts ice on the Arctic Circle, it doesn't follow that he's going to be worth beans on the Back Bay.

You stand between two sides who each want your loyalty, and favouring either openly will cost you with the other.

1. Skin one side to keep the other sweet. chunk:94 · stated
   relationships.customer -
   If you skin the buyer you will lose your trade; and if you play tag with the house you will lose your job.
2. Explain your orders below, or excuse yourself above. chunk:128 · stated
   standing - relationships.boss -
   if he explains his orders to the clerks he loses his authority, and if he excuses himself to the manager he loses his usefulness
3. Need telling twice. chunk:129 · inferred
   relationships.boss -
   It's easier for a boss to do a thing himself than to tell some one twice to do it.
4. Make yourself your superior's right hand. chunk:129 · inferred
   relationships.boss + relationships.staff +
   An assistant who becomes his manager's right hand is going to find the left hand helping him
5. Look for the good in those under you. chunk:129 · stated
   relationships.staff +
   it's not hard for a clerk to find good points in a boss who finds good ones in him
6. Ignore both the abuse and the flattery. chunk:149 · inferred
   judgment +
   There are two things you never want to pay any attention to--abuse and flattery. The first can't harm you and the second can't help you.
7. Please your own side and let the other grumble. chunk:149 · inferred
   relationships.boss + relationships.other_side -
   As long as you can't please both sides in this world, there's nothing like pleasing your own side.

A customer is hard to please or out to test you, and how you handle them decides whether you keep their trade.

1. Answer their complaint with a smart retort. chunk:71 · inferred
   relationships.customer - money -
   Repartee makes reading lively, but business dull. And what the house needs is more orders.
2. Make a joke about your own goods. chunk:71 · inferred
   standing -
   Half the people in the world take a joke seriously from the start, and the other half if you repeat it often enough.
3. Entertain them with stories instead of a better price. chunk:73 · inferred
   relationships.customer + money -
   I never saw one that liked a drummer's jokes more than an eighth of a cent a pound on a tierce of lard.
4. Win them with flattery. chunk:74 · inferred
   relationships.customer + standing -
   I never knew smoking to do anything good except a ham, or flattery to help any one except to make a fool of himself
5. Hold yourself above the small orders. chunk:74 · stated
   money -
   don't hold your nose so high in the air that an order can travel under it without your seeing it
6. Settle a fair complaint on the spot, bargaining down from the first figure. chunk:75 · inferred
   money - relationships.customer +
   a man who's making a claim never underestimates his case, and that you can generally compromise for something less than the first figure
7. Treat every complaint alike, without sorting honest from false. chunk:75 · stated
   standing -
   if you don't learn pretty quick you'll not travel very far for the house
8. Hint that they badly need what you are selling. chunk:77 · inferred
   relationships.customer - money -
   he wouldn't even look at my samples, and when I began to hint that the people were pretty ornery dressers
9. Know your own business thoroughly. chunk:86 · inferred
   judgment + money +
   will find an opportunity sooner or later of reaching the most hardened cuss of a buyer on his route and of getting a share of his
10. Say something about them that they will take as praise. chunk:93 · stated
    relationships.customer + money +
    when that comes back to Bill he is half tickled to death, because he doesn't know that the higher criticism has hurt the Baron's reputation. That man gets the trade.
11. Give them what they came for, not advice they did not ask for. chunk:133 · inferred
    relationships.customer +
    it was congratulations and not explanations that he wanted, and I make it a point to show a customer the line of goods that he's looking for

The people around you are spending their time and money on amusement, and you must decide how far to go along.

1. Test anything tempting against your conscience first. chunk:2 · inferred
   judgment +
   probe into a thing which looks sweet and sound on the skin, to see if you can't fetch up a sour smell from around the bone, you'll be all right
2. Go slow, and pick your amusements. chunk:3 · inferred
   judgment + relationships.peers -
   It's down among the sweets, among his amusements and recreations, that he's going to find his stomach-ache, and it's there that he wants to go slow
3. Do as everyone around you does. chunk:14 · inferred
   relationships.peers + money -
   The boy who does anything just because the other fellows do it is apt to scratch a poor man's back all his life.
4. Think and act for yourself, against the crowd. chunk:14 · inferred
   relationships.peers - standing +
   It's the fellow who has the spunk to think and act for himself
5. Chase popularity with the crowd. chunk:23 · inferred
   relationships.peers + hustle -
   while the most popular man in his class isn't always a failure in business, being as popular as that takes up a heap of time
6. Wear yourself out after hours with drink or worry. chunk:25 · stated
   flags.health_broken set
   It's not what a man does during working-hours, but after them, that breaks down his health.
7. Spend your evenings carousing with the crowd. chunk:26 · inferred
   relationships.peers + hustle -
   They're the men who are always needing vacations, and never getting any good out of them.
8. Make time for plenty of leisure. chunk:102 · stated
   money -
   You can take your choice, but the two lines of business don't gee. The more money, the less fish.
9. Take working afternoons off to play. chunk:130 · inferred
   relationships.boss -
   Any one who lets sinkers take the place of bread and meat gets bilious pretty young

You are tempted to gamble your small means on prices, sure that you know more than the market does.

1. Gamble on the market while you work for the firm. chunk:109 · stated
   flags.dismissed set money risk
   the particular one is that Graham & Co. will fire you if you do
2. Trust your inside knowledge of the trade to win. chunk:109 · stated
   money risk
   Because you are the son of a pork packer you may think that you know a little more than the next fellow about paper pork. There's nothing in it.
3. Trade where you hold none of the real goods. chunk:118 · stated
   money -
   When you become a packer you may go on 'Change as a trader; until then you can go there only as a sucker.

You have goods to sell and buyers who feel no need of them.

1. Dress the same goods up as something new. chunk:51 · inferred
   money -
   after he had schemed out ten different combinations, the other ninety turned out to be corned-beef hash. So that was no use.
2. Give them a grander label and a higher price. chunk:52 · inferred
   money +
   Of course, people just naturally wanted it. There's nothing helps convince some men that a thing has merit like a little gold on the label.
3. Take them where the money already is. chunk:78 · stated
   money +
   the place to sell clothes is in the city, where every one seems to have plenty of them
4. Stage a show that makes the need feel real. chunk:98 · inferred
   money + flags.sharp_practice set
   leaving his stock of the Priceless Boon distributed--for the usual consideration--among all the mothers in town
5. Create a demand where the buyer feels none. chunk:99 · inferred
   money + hustle +
   a good salesman is like a good cook--he can create an appetite when the buyer isn't hungry

Someone under you is slack, wrong for the post, or needs correcting, and it falls to you to act.

1. Correct them loudly and in public. chunk:2 · stated
   relationships.staff -
   he scared me out of it for five years by asking me right out loud in Sunday School if I didn't want to be saved
2. Hand a favoured newcomer a ready-made success. chunk:9 · inferred
   relationships.staff + money -
   I can't hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no good, and it would do the house harm.
3. Put off dismissing a bad worker. chunk:28 · stated
   money -
   he would keep putting off firing his bad clerks until they had lit out with the petty cash
4. Put off raising a good worker. chunk:28 · stated
   flags.lost_good_hand set
   he would keep putting off raising the salaries of his good ones until his competitor had hired them away
5. Value loyalty in those under you above cleverness. chunk:49 · inferred
   relationships.staff +
   It is the one commodity that hasn't any market value, and it's the one that you can't pay too much for.
6. Let the branch you run fall behind the others. chunk:50 · stated
   flags.dismissed set
   if they don't do better next month I am coming back here with a shotgun, and there's going to be a pretty heavy mortality among our head men
7. Break your own rules now and then. chunk:120 · inferred
   relationships.staff -
   He can make rules, but he's the only man who can't afford to break them now and then.
8. Set the example: come early and work hard. chunk:121 · inferred
   hustle + relationships.staff +
   There's no alarm clock for the sleepy man like an early rising manager; and there's nothing breeds work in an office like a busy boss.
9. Wound their pride. chunk:121 · stated
   relationships.staff -
   A hundred men will forgive a blow in the face where one will a blow to his self-esteem.
10. Tell them the blunt truth about their faults. chunk:121 · inferred
    relationships.staff -
    you won't shame the man you're trying to reach, because he won't believe you
11. Set them on the road to seeing it for themselves. chunk:121 · inferred
    relationships.staff + judgment +
    if you can start him on the road that will lead him to the truth he's mighty apt to try to reform himself
12. Praise good work when you see it. chunk:121 · inferred
    relationships.staff +
    Praise judiciously bestowed is money invested.
13. Let the wrong hire go at once, with a month's pay. chunk:122 · inferred
    money - relationships.staff +
    Pay him an extra month, but don't let him stay another day. A discharged clerk in the office is like a splinter in the thumb--a centre of soreness.
14. Threaten them. chunk:122 · stated
    standing risk
    Never threaten, because a threat is a promise to pay that it isn't always convenient to meet, but if you don't make it good it hurts your credit.
15. Rule by fear. chunk:122 · stated
    relationships.staff -
    a man who is feared to his face is hated behind his back
16. Make them report to you every day. chunk:123 · inferred
    relationships.staff - money +
    When a fellow has to write in six times a week to the house, he uses up his explanations mighty fast, and he's pretty apt to hustle for business
17. Use your new authority to keep them at a distance. chunk:128 · stated
    relationships.staff -
    a boss with a case of big-head will fill an office full of sore heads

You are quick to see and correct other people's faults, and slow to see your own.

1. Spend your effort reforming other people's characters. chunk:113 · inferred
   relationships.family - judgment -
   if a fellow's putting in five or six hours a day on his neighbor's character, he's mighty apt to scamp the building of his own
2. Let authority swell your head. chunk:123 · stated
   judgment -
   Authority swells up some fellows so that they can't see their corns
3. Call for public judgement of others when your own conduct is worse. chunk:124 · inferred
   standing -
   Most men get information when they ask for it, and in the end Lem fetched public opinion all right.
4. Judge others generously and yourself strictly. chunk:125 · inferred
   judgment +
   add fifty per cent. to your estimate of your neighbor for virtues that you can't see, and deduct fifty per cent. from yourself for faults

You could keep your place with half your effort, and must decide whether the other half is worth giving.

1. Scheme for yourself at night while you work for the firm by day. chunk:37 · stated
   relationships.boss - money risk
   A man who tries that is usually a pretty poor thinker, and he isn't much good to either
2. Do your own business on your employer's time. chunk:40 · inferred
   relationships.boss - flags.petty_theft set
   Your time is money--my money--and when you take half an hour of it for your own purposes, that is just a petty form of petty larceny.
3. Let your mind drift from a dull task. chunk:40 · inferred
   relationships.boss -
   A man can't have his head pumped out like a vacuum pan, or stuffed full of odds and ends like a bologna sausage, and do his work right.
4. Work the plain, everyday virtues into your job. chunk:41 · inferred
   hustle + standing +
   if a boy will take these commonplace generalities and knead them into his job, the mixture'll be cake
5. Come in slow and leave the moment you can. chunk:41 · stated
   relationships.boss - standing -
   I'm a little afraid that if I sent him off to take charge of a branch house he wouldn't always be around when customers were
6. Leave it to others to keep hauling you back into line. chunk:43 · stated
   relationships.boss -
   Very few men are worth wasting time on beyond a certain point, and that point is soon reached with a fellow who doesn't show any signs of wanting to help.
7. Keep work and play apart, and give full measure. chunk:44 · stated
   relationships.boss + flags.promoted set
   He's pretty apt to pick some one who keeps separate ledger accounts for work and for fun, who gives the house sixteen ounces to the pound
8. Come in late and leave early. chunk:44 · stated
   flags.passed_over set
   to pass by the one who is late at the end where he ought to be early, and early at the end where he ought to be late
9. Do just enough to keep from being dismissed. chunk:80 · inferred
   relationships.boss - standing -
   you are bright enough to be a half-way man, and to hold a half-way place on a half-way salary by doing half the work you are capable of
10. Put in the second half of the effort. chunk:80 · inferred
    hustle + money +
    It looks to me as if you were trying only half as hard as you could, and in trying it's the second half that brings results.
11. Learn more of the business than your own job needs. chunk:81 · stated
    judgment + flags.promoted set
    invests in more knowledge of the business than he has to have in order to hold his job has capital with which to buy a mortgage on a better one
12. Ask sensible questions. chunk:81 · inferred
    judgment +
    Nothing earns better interest than judicious questions
13. Take on every extra job going, and cheerfully. chunk:87 · inferred
    hustle + flags.promoted set
    I want to see you grow into a car-lot man--so strong and big that you will force us to see that you are out of place among the little fellows.
14. Make yourself indispensable to your chief. chunk:119 · inferred
    relationships.boss + hustle +
    to do your work so well that the manager can't run the department without you, and that you can run the department without the manager
15. Bring enthusiasm to the work. chunk:120 · stated
    hustle +
    Jack had enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the best shortening for any job; it makes heavy work light.

You have more schooling than experience, and must show it has made you useful and not merely polished.

1. Take every chance to learn that is offered. chunk:0 · inferred
   judgment +
   it's about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away
2. Train yourself to think fast and answer first. chunk:4 · stated
   judgment + money +
   Anything that trains a boy to think and to think quick pays
3. Live it up as an idle dandy while you study. chunk:4 · stated
   standing -
   up-all-night-and-in-all-day boys that make 'em doubt the cash value of the college output
4. Put your education to work in someone's business. chunk:4 · inferred
   relationships.boss + hustle +
   the shirt-sleeves and high-water-pants boys, who take their college education and make some fellow's business hum with it
5. Add training to hard work, and keep working hard. chunk:5 · inferred
   hustle + standing +
   the fellow with a little science is the better man, providing he's kept his muscle hard. If he hasn't, he's in a bad way
6. Learn to use what you know rather than to know more. chunk:7 · inferred
   judgment +
   it isn't so much knowing a whole lot, as knowing a little and how to use it that counts
7. Test what the books taught you against practice. chunk:16 · stated
   judgment + money +
   knows enough about practice to test his theories for blow-holes that gives the world a shove ahead, and finds a fair margin of profit in shoving it
8. Get trained, and find ways to earn your raises. chunk:23 · stated
   money +
   I've learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised

You are tempted to say more than you need to: a joke, a retort, an opinion, or a complaint about someone.

1. Start talking before you know what you want, and keep on after you have said it. chunk:32 · stated
   money -
   Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse
2. Say less, and listen more. chunk:33 · stated
   relationships.counterpart +
   Say less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk; for when a man's listening he isn't telling on himself and he's flattering the fellow who is.
3. Run down your last employer to a new one. chunk:49 · stated
   relationships.boss - flags.not_hired set
   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.
4. Let people know your likes and dislikes. chunk:50 · inferred
   relationships.peers - standing -
   It's generally expensive to have either, but it's bankruptcy to tell about them.
5. Crack a joke while bargaining. chunk:72 · inferred
   standing -
   I was pretty hot, I can tell you, but I had laid myself open
6. Tell them to their face that they are a liar. chunk:93 · stated
   flags.fought set relationships.counterpart -
   Some men deal in facts, and call Bill Jones a liar. They get knocked down.

You, or someone under you, have a new way of doing things that the people in charge laugh at.

1. Keep pressing your new idea on a sceptical superior. chunk:21 · stated
   hustle + flags.idea_tried set
   Jim just kept plugging away at me between trips, until finally I took him off the road and told him to go ahead and try it in a small way
2. Stay with the costly new approach through its early losses. chunk:23 · stated
   money risk
   the orders for Extract began to look up, and he got a reprieve; then he began to make expenses, and he got a pardon
3. Dismiss the new way because it is not your way. chunk:23 · inferred
   money -
   it was a new way, and I hadn't been broad-gauged enough to see that it was a better way
4. Keep doing things the same way year after year. chunk:99 · inferred
   relationships.customer -
   Doing the same thing in the same way year after year is like eating a quail a day for thirty days.

A task or a chance is in front of you now, and it would be easy to let it wait.

1. Put off the unwelcome task. chunk:27 · inferred
   hustle -
   Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.
2. Put off paying what you owe, even when you have the money. chunk:28 · stated
   money -
   Running a business on those lines is, of course, equivalent to making a will in favor of the sheriff and committing suicide so that he can inherit.
3. Let the chance to learn something slip by. chunk:82 · inferred
   judgment -
   if he misses the first opening he will lose a good deal of blood before he gets the second
4. Pass the chance over, meaning to come back for it. chunk:86 · stated
   flags.missed_chance set
   a fellow can't bank on getting a chance to go back and take up a thing that he has passed over once

Rivals are getting the better of you in the trade, and you must decide whether to explain it, shrug it off or go after them.

1. Keep yourself as sharp as the ablest of them. chunk:17 · inferred
   judgment +
   must be as clean and sharp as a hound's tooth, or some other fellow's simply going to eat him up
2. Push for business in good times and bad. chunk:94 · stated
   hustle + money +
   When business is good, that is the time to force it, because it will come easy; and when it is bad, that is the time to force it, too
3. Take up every profitable branch instead of leaving some to them. chunk:127 · inferred
   money + hustle +
   Unless you do the whole thing you can't do anything in business as it runs to-day.
4. Dismiss the opening as not your line. chunk:127 · inferred
   money -
   it won't do to say that it's not in our line, because anything which carries a profit on four legs is in our line
5. Go for all of the trade, not a share of it. chunk:128 · inferred
   money + relationships.rival -
   the way to get a share of the trade is to go for all of it
6. Never promise what you cannot lay hands on. chunk:148 · inferred
   money +
   I never sell goods without knowing where I can find them when I want them

You are drifting toward marrying someone and have not yet taken a clear look at them, their family, or what it will cost.

1. Marry into a family whose head speculates or spends. chunk:64 · inferred
   relationships.partner + money -
   while he doesn't marry his wife's father, there's nothing in the marriage vow to prevent the old man from borrowing money of him
2. Marry someone raised above the means you can give them. chunk:65 · inferred
   relationships.partner + money -
   Never marry a poor girl who's been raised like a rich one. She's simply traded the virtues of the poor for the vices of the rich
3. Marry the wrong person. chunk:70 · stated
   flags.married set
   marrying the wrong girl is the one mistake that you've got to live with all your life
4. Leave money out of it until after the wedding. chunk:158 · inferred
   money - relationships.partner -
   When a boy and a girl don't think enough about money before the ceremony, they're going to have to think altogether too much about it after
5. Marry a sensible partner, even on modest pay. chunk:158 · stated
   relationships.partner +
   you can buy a whole lot of happiness with fifty dollars a week when you have the right sort of a woman for your purchasing agent
6. Marry a pampered heir without testing what lies under the money. chunk:159 · inferred
   relationships.partner - money +
   a lot of women will go right ahead without any preliminaries and wonder what's the matter when the walls begin to crack and tumble about their ears
7. Propose before you know them as they are day to day. chunk:172 · stated
   relationships.partner -
   Some fellows propose to a girl before they know whether her front and her back hair match, and then holler that they're stuck
8. Cross them a little before you commit, to see their temper. chunk:173 · inferred
   judgment + relationships.partner -
   there's nothing like stirring her up a little now and then to see if she spits fire and heaves things when she's mad
9. Put off being happy together until you can afford it. chunk:175 · inferred
   money + relationships.partner -
   Don't accept notes for happiness, because you'll find that when they're due they're never paid, but just renewed for another thirty days.

You are spending more than you earn, often to keep up with free-spending company, and the bills are coming due.

1. Bring your spending down to what you will earn. chunk:8 · inferred
   money +
   The sooner you adjust your spending to what your earning capacity will be, the easier they will find it to live together.
2. Keep saving, and keep expenses down. chunk:10 · stated
   money + flags.buying_in set
   It's the man who keeps saving up and expenses down that buys an interest in the concern.
3. Spend money as fast as it comes. chunk:10 · stated
   money -
   Pay day is always a month off for the spend-thrift, and he is never able to realize more than sixty cents on any dollar that comes to him.
4. Spend freely, so nobody thinks you mean. chunk:11 · inferred
   relationships.peers + money - standing -
   That same ambition to be known as a good fellow has crowded my office with second-rate clerks, and they always will be second-rate clerks.
5. Put your energy into the work instead of into asking for advances. chunk:13 · stated
   money +
   they could double their salaries and my profits in a year
6. Spend a large sum at once on gifts for the one you are courting. chunk:64 · inferred
   relationships.partner + money -
   there always comes a time to the fellow who blows fifty-two dollars at a lick on roses when he thinks how many staple groceries he could have bought

You are starting at the bottom on low pay and dull work, and must decide whether it is a first step or a resting place.

1. Do the lowest work properly before reaching higher. chunk:9 · inferred
   hustle + relationships.boss +
   the man who hasn't licked stamps isn't fit to write letters
2. Find a way to do the work cheaper, even if it abolishes your job. chunk:20 · stated
   money + relationships.boss +
   Jim was lazy, but he had put the house in the way of saving so much money that I couldn't fire him. So I raised his salary
3. Take the first job offered and use it as bait for a better one. chunk:26 · inferred
   money + standing +
   to take the first job that offered, and to use it for bait. You can catch a minnow with a worm, and a bass will take your minnow
4. Hold your own job firmly and reach for the next one. chunk:33 · inferred
   hustle + relationships.boss +
   holding down his own place with one hand and beginning to reach for the job just ahead of him with the other
5. Start at a pace you can improve on, and build to the finish. chunk:34 · inferred
   hustle + flags.promoted set
   Never start off at a gait that you can't improve on, but move along strong and well in hand to the quarter.
6. Come early, stay late and keep at it for a long time. chunk:35 · stated
   hustle + standing +
   A man's got to keep company a long time, and come early and stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having.

You are doing well, or want to seem to, and are tempted to make sure everyone knows it.

1. Put on airs around the office. chunk:50 · inferred
   standing - relationships.peers -
   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
2. Talk big about what you know. chunk:90 · inferred
   standing -
   It isn't what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about. Big talk means little knowledge.
3. Let success give you a big head. chunk:91 · stated
   standing -
   Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there's no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust
4. Announce your plans loudly and rush at them. chunk:140 · stated
   hustle -
   They mistake intention for determination, and after they have told you what they propose to do and get right up to doing it, they simply peter out.

You have let more than one person believe you are theirs, and must untangle it before they find each other out.

1. Trifle with someone who has made up their mind to marry. chunk:70 · inferred
   flags.married set
   the foolishness of thinking you can take any chances with a woman who has really decided that she wants to marry
2. Tell each of them plainly that you do not love them enough to marry, and hold to it. chunk:166 · inferred
   relationships.partner - standing -
   Tell 'em plain and straight that you don't love 'em as you should to marry 'em
3. Break it off gently, in person, with gifts and soft words. chunk:168 · stated
   flags.still_engaged set
   You're tied up to them harder and tighter than ever.

Something might go wrong, and you can fret over it now or leave it until you know.

1. Put your worry into the business. chunk:151 · inferred
   hustle -
   the only thing I've ever put into it which didn't draw dividends in fun or dollars was worry
2. Worry over what might go wrong. chunk:152 · stated
   flags.health_broken set
   you worry because you're afraid your business is going to smash, and your health busts up instead