Letters from a Self-Made Merchant relates the fictitious correspondence of John Graham, a wealthy Chicago pork packer, to his son. The elder Graham shares some timeless advice with his son on business, career, college, and life.
The Notes
- “You’ll find that education’s about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it’s about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he’s willing to haul away.”
- “Some men learn the value of money by not having any and starting out to pry a few dollars loose from the odd millions that are lying around; and some learn it by having fifty thousand or so left to them and starting out to spend it as if it were fifty thousand a year.”
- “Some men get an education from other men and newspapers and public libraries; and some get it from professors and parchments — it doesn’t make any special difference how you get a half-nelson on the right thing, just so you get it and freeze on to it.”
- “The first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and the second thing is education.”
- “Education’s a good deal like eating — a fellow can’t always tell which particular thing did him good, but he can usually tell which one did him harm.”
- “College doesn’t make fools; it develops them. It doesn’t make bright men; it develops them. A fool will turn out a fool, whether he goes to college or not, though he’ll probably turn out a different sort of a fool.”
- “…it isn’t so much knowing a whole lot, as knowing a little and how to use it that counts.”
- “The sooner you adjust your spending to what your earning capacity will be, the easier they will find it to live together.”
- “The only sure way that a man can get rich quick is to have it given to him or to inherit it.”
- “I can’t hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no good, and it would do the house harm. There is plenty of room at the top here, but there is no elevator in the building.”
- “Payday is always a month off for the spendthrift, and he is never able to realize more than sixty cents on any dollar that comes to him. But a dollar is worth one hundred and six cents to a good businessman, and he never spends the dollar.”
- “It’s the man who keeps saving up and expenses down that buys an interest in the concern.”
- “I know that when a lot of young men get off by themselves, some of them think that recklessness with money brands them as good fellows, and that carefulness is meanness.”
- “The boy who does anything just because the other fellows do it is apt to scratch a poor man’s back all his life.”
- “Use a little common sense, caution and conscience. You can stock a store with those three commodities, when you get enough of them. But you’ve got to begin getting them young. They ain’t catching after you toughen up a bit.”
- “Some men learn all they know from books; others from life; both kinds are narrow. The first are all theory; the second are all practice. It’s the fellow who 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 showing it.”
- “I’ve always made it a rule to buy brains, and I’ve learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised. The fellow who hasn’t had the training may be just as smart, but he’s apt to paw the air when he’s reaching for ideas.”
- “It’s not what a man does during working hours, but after them, that breaks down his health. A fellow and his business should be bosom friends in the office and sworn enemies out of it.”
- “A clear mind is one that is swept clean of business at six o’clock every night and isn’t opened up for it again until after the shutters are taken down next morning.”
- “Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.”
- “There is one excuse for every mistake a man can make, but only one. When a fellow makes the same mistake twice he’s got to throw up both hands and own up to carelessness or cussedness.”
- “Seeing the world is like charity — it covers a multitude of sins, and, like charity, it ought to begin at home.”
- “I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it’s been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.”
- “A business man’s conversation should be regulated by fewer and simpler rules than any other function of the human animal. They are: Have something to say. Say it. Stop talking.”
- “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, and the first is a short cut to the second.”
- “…in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods. Cut out the introduction and the peroration, and stop before you get to secondly.”
- “It’s easier to look wise than to talk wisdom.”
- “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.”
- “Money talks — but not unless its owner has a loose tongue, and then its remarks are always offensive.”
- “I want to say right here that whenever anyone offers to let you in on the ground floor it’s a pretty safe rule to take the elevator to the roof garden.”
- “…it seems to afford a fellow a heap of satisfaction to pull the trigger for himself to see if it is loaded; and a lesson learned at the muzzle has the virtue of never being forgotten.”
- “The fundamental principles which govern the handling of postage stamps and of millions are exactly the same. They are the common law of business, and the whole practice of commerce is founded on them. They are so simple that a fool can’t learn them; so hard that a lazy man won’t.”
- “When a packer has learned all that there is to learn about quadrupeds, he knows only one-eighth of his business; the other seven-eighths, and the important seven-eighths, has to do with the study of bipeds.”
- “I don’t know anything that a young business man ought to keep more entirely to himself than his dislikes, unless it is his likes. It’s generally expensive to have either, but it’s bankruptcy to tell about them.”
- “It’s all right to say nothing about the dead but good, but it’s better to apply the rule to the living, and especially to the house which is paying your salary.”
- “Superiority makes every man feel its equal. It is courtesy without condescension; affability without familiarity; self-sufficiency without selfishness; simplicity without snide.”
- “I have always found that, whenever I thought a heap of anything I owned, there was nothing like getting the other fellow’s views expressed in figures; and the other fellow is usually a pessimist when he’s buying… And if you really want a look at the solid facts of a thing you must strain off the sentiment first.”
- “There’s no easier way to cure foolishness than to give a man leave to be foolish. And the only way to show a fellow that he’s chosen the wrong business is to let him try it.”
- “I want to say right here that the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.”
- “The fun of the thing’s in the run and not in the finish.”
- “I want to say right here that 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 with the money. After all, there’s no fool like a young fool, because in the nature of things he’s got a long time to live.”
- “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 without going long on their good points. To marry for money or to marry without money is a crime.”
- “I want to say right here that to get any sense out of a proverb I usually find that I have to turn it wrong side out.”
- “I want you to remember that marrying the wrong girl is the one mistake that you’ve got to live with all your life.”
- “It has been my experience that, even when a man has a sense of humor, it only really carries him to the point where he will join in a laugh at the expense of the other fellow. There’s nothing in the world sicker-looking than the grin of the man who’s trying to join in heartily when the laugh’s on him, and to pretend that he likes it.”
- “A real salesman is one-part talk and nine parts judgment; and he uses the nine-parts of judgment to tell when to use the one-part of talk.”
- “If there’s one piece of knowledge that is of less use to a fellow than knowing when he’s beat, it’s knowing when he’s done just enough work to keep from being fired.”
- “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
- “Nothing earns better interest than judicious questions, and the man who 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.”
- “I ain’t one of those who believe that a half-knowledge of a subject is useless, but it has been my experience that when a fellow has that half knowledge he finds it’s the other half which would really come in handy.”
- “It isn’t what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about. Big talk means little knowledge.”
- “There’s a vast difference between having a carload of miscellaneous facts sloshing around loose in your head and getting all mixed up in transit, and carrying the same assortment properly boxed and crated for convenient handling and immediate delivery.”
- “Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there’s no known cure for a big head.”
- “Poverty never spoils a good man, but prosperity often does. It’s easy to stand hard times, because that’s the only thing you can do, but in good times the fool-killer has to do night work.”
- “Most men get cross-eyed when they come to size themselves up, and see an angel instead of what they’re trying to look at.”
- “Tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the right time; of being so agreeable yourself that no one can be disagreeable to you; of making inferiority feel like equality.”
- “When you make a mistake, don’t make the second one—keeping it to yourself. Own up. The time to sort out rotten eggs is at the nest.”
- “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, because we will need the orders.”
- “Some salesmen think that selling is like eating — to satisfy an existing appetite; but a good salesman is like a good cook—he can create an appetite when the buyer isn’t hungry.”
- “Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as they are, there’s nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us.”
- “…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.”
- “…a man can’t do what he pleases in this world, because the higher he climbs the plainer people can see him.”
- “There are two unpardonable sins in this World — success and failure. Those who succeed can’t forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can’t forgive him for being a success. If you do succeed, though, you will be too busy to bother very much about what the failures think.”
- “A suspicious man makes trouble for himself, but a cautious one saves it. Because there ain’t any rotten apples in the top layer, it ain’t always safe to bet that the whole barrel is sound.”
- “Trading on margin is a good deal like paddling around the edge of the old swimming hole — it seems safe and easy at first, but before a fellow knows it he has stepped off the edge into deep water.”
- “When a speculator wins he don’t stop till he loses, and when he loses he can’t stop till he wins.”
- “I wouldn’t bear down so hard on this matter if money was the only thing that a fellow could lose on ‘Change. But if a clerk sells pork, and the market goes down, he’s mighty apt to get a lot of ideas with holes in them and bad habits as the small change of his profits. And if the market goes up, he’s likely to go short his self-respect to win back his money.”
- “The only safe road to follow in speculation leads straight away from the Board of Trade on the dead run.”
- “Easy-come money never draws interest; easy-borrowed dollars pay usury.”
- “…enthusiasm is the best shortening for any job; it makes heavy work light.”
- “Praise judiciously bestowed is money invested.”
- “A good manager needs no detectives, and the fellow who can’t read human nature can’t manage it.”
- “Be slow to hire and quick to fire.”
- “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. Save a threat till you’re ready to act, and then you won’t need it.”
- “…it’s a good thing to step back from yourself and see how you look. Then add fifty percent. to your estimate of your neighbor for virtues that you can’t see, and deduct fifty percent. from yourself for faults that you’ve missed in your inventory, and you’ll have a pretty accurate result.”
- “The way to think of a thing in business is to think of it first, and the way to get a share of the trade is to go for all of it. Half the battle’s in being on the hilltop first; and the other half’s in staying there.”
- “A man’s as good as he makes himself, but no man’s any good because his grandfather was.”
- “A man who does big things is too busy to talk about them. When the jaws really need exercise, chew gum.”
- “It’s been my experience that pride is usually a spur to the strong and a drag on the weak. It drives the strong man along and holds the weak one back.”
- “I learned right there how to be humble, which is a heap more important than knowing how to be proud.”
- “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.”
- “There are mighty few people who can see any side to a thing except their own side.”
- “I’ve always found worrying a blamed sight more uncertain than horse-racing — it’s harder to pick a winner at it.”
- “Worrying is the one game in which, if you guess right, you don’t get any satisfaction out of your smartness.”
- “Money ought never to be the consideration in marriage, but it always ought to be a consideration.”
- “With most people happiness is something that is always just a day off. But I have made it a rule never to put off being happy till to-morrow. 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.”