To Rise in Business Life

1910

Some Few Essentials Must Be Kept In Mind, and One of These Is Advertising.

A man may have several carloads of ability. He may have brains and ideas and other desirable things. But all the ideas ever "ideated" will not avail to raise a man who neglects that all important item of advertising. You simply must get attention. Of course, you can get attention by firing off a revolver during office hours, or you can do it by wearing loud clothes and proclaiming your kinship in the sporting fraternity. But most men who have risen from the ranks have carefully neglected to use methods of this kind.

Every office man must act as his own salesman. He must first prepare himself by increasing his efficiency. He must be able to do the work for which he is hired. Not only should he do that for which he is hired, but he must do that work better than it ever was done before. When that item has been attended to it is then time to look about for more work.

The wise employee will keep his eye on the job ahead, or, better still, will look at a job which does not exist, but which should exist for the good of the business. The next step is to think out a selling talk that will get the attention, arouse the interest, create a desire, and bring about in the mind of the employer a desire to do what the live employee desires him to do. — The Bookkeeper.

A Useful Literary Work

1910

Good Literature and Adjustment for Ironing Board Made Most Enticing Combination

It was hard work selling books. The volumes, one of which the agent had to carry with him as a sample, were very bulky and heavy, and nobody seemed to want them. But the agent was a persistent fellow, and even the stubborn Mrs. Butts could not send him away unheard.

"We have all the books we can use," she was saying, "and we really can't afford any more reading matter. Why I haven't even opened the second volume of that Roman History you sold us last spring. Now, if you were selling one of those adjustable ironing boards—"

"I've got just the thing," said the agent, cheerfully. "There are 12 books in this set and you can use either one or two or three, and so on up to six to tilt your board any way you want to. And between whiles when your iron is heating you have good literature right at hand." — Youth's Companion.

A Traveling Man Does An Indecent Thing

Wisconsin, 1920

A Traveling Man Gets Into Trouble

Plymouth Review — A young lady, whose name we shall withhold because she was entirely innocent of the slightest wrong-doing, was accosted by a traveling man from Milwaukee, on the highway between this city and Greenbush one day last week.

She was driving towards her home while the Milwaukee traveling man was just ahead of her in an automobile. He stopped the machine and got out of it as if to make some adjustment. As she drove up, he asked the young lady whether she was going to Greenbush. Thinking that the question was impertinent she did not reply, when he stepped away from his auto and did an indecent thing.

At this the young lady turned her horse around and started back towards Plymouth. She stopped at a house and reported what had happened and a gentleman went in pursuit of the malefactor. The young lady accompanied him as she had taken the number of his auto. The auto was standing in front of the Stannard store at the village of Greenbush. While someone went after the young lady's father the traveling man drove to Glenbeulah. Here an officer got into the car with him and they came to Plymouth. The only justice of the peace was out of the city and the police justice has no jurisdiction over a criminal act committed outside the city. The parties went before some attorney and the traveling man paid a certain sum.

We have failed to state that the young lady was accosted twice by the traveling man.

If the story is true and there seems to be no reason to doubt it, the miscreant got off rather lightly. He is said to be a young man about twenty-five years of age, and his experience may be sufficient to deter him from repeating an act of that kind.

—The Sheboygan Press, Sheboygan, WI, Sept. 25, 1920, p. 4.