?88 



(;lp:anings in bee culture. 



May 1 



OUR 



HOMES, 



BY A I ROOT 



Blessed are the pure in heart, for thej- shall see God. 

 — Matt. 5: 8. 



While I write, April 17, we are busy 

 with the seed business. In fact, we are al- 

 most alwaj's bus3' at this season of the 

 j'ear; and we are trj'ing hard to profit by 

 experience in preventing' the mistakes, mis- 

 understandings, and oversights of the past 

 years, bj' doing- better this j'ear than we 

 ever did before in serving our customers 

 promptlj' and honestlj^ Well, daj' before 

 yesterday a letter was put in the tray from 

 one of the friends, asking- what we meant 

 bj' charging him 75 cents for an ounce of 

 Red Wethersfield onion seed. I went at 

 once to the cop5'-book, and there it was in 

 plain white and black — "One ounce onion 

 seed, 75 cents." I asked the clerks who 

 put it up how thej' came to send him an 

 ounce, and charge him the price of 16 

 ounces. Before the}' would admit they had 

 sent onlv' an ounce the}' wanted to see the 

 order. This was hunted up, and here is a 

 portion of it: 



Cissna Park, 111., Apr. 3, 1902. 



1 oz. G-and Rapids lettuce 5 



1 oz. Rocky Ford cantaloupe muskmelon 5 



1 oz. l,andi eth's Boss watermelon 5 



1 oz. Prizetaker onion 20 



I oz. Red Wethersfield onion '. 75 



1 oz. radish. Wood's Early Frame 5 



1 oz. Trophy tomato 10 



1 oz. salsify 10 



1 iK)talo-pldnter 75 



Dr. C. S. Dietz. 



You will see by the above that our 

 g-ood friend Dietz made the mistake himself. 

 He had been writing "1 oz." so many 

 times that, when he got down to where he 

 meant to say a potitid, althoug-h he carried 

 out the price for a pound, he continued writ- 

 ing "1 oz. " 



Now, some people (perhaps some seeds- 

 tnen) would say it was the man's own fault, 

 and would send him exactly what he order- 

 ed, and charge him exactly the price he 

 put in the order. Of course, any reliable 

 seedsman would rectify the mistake bj' send- 

 ing- him the other 15 ounces of onion seed; 

 but perhaps not ei'ery seedsman would pay 

 the postage (the whole order went by ex- 

 press), because these 15 ounces did not g-et 

 in the package. I suppose, however, the 

 greater part of the up-to-date seedsmen 

 would say at once it was the business of 

 the seedsman to examine and scrutinize ver}' 

 carefully ever}' item of the order to see that 

 the man was ordering by the advertised 

 catalog prices, charging him no more no 

 less, even if he did send 75 cents for 8 cents' 

 worth of onion seed. In fact, we do have 

 just that arrangement here in our seed de- 

 partment. Our young friend Frank, who 

 almost never makes a mistake, did go over 

 this order and correct the prices. For in- 

 stance, in the last item he put the potato- 

 planter at 60 cents, instead of 75, the last 



year's price. But for some inexplicable 

 reason he did not notice that our friend was 

 charged 75 cents for an ounce of common 

 onion seed. The clerk after him did not 

 notice it; and I suppose the typewriter clerk 

 who makes the invoice did not consider it 

 any of her business to notice whether onion 

 seeds were worth 10 cents an ounce or SIO. 

 We sent the man a humble apology, and 

 paid the postage on the 15 ounces of onion 

 seed. Let me say for friend Frank, I do 

 not believe that, in all the fourteen years 

 he has been in my employ, he ever made a 

 mistake like that before. I had the order 

 in my hand, it is true, and I noticed that 

 the man had put the old price on the potato- 

 planter; but I did not go through the other 

 items; for where I have good careful help- 

 ers I do not give my attention to these little 

 details now unless the clerks come to me 

 for something that is not clear, and needs 

 my maturer judgment. 



You may wonder why I have given this 

 illustration. Well, there are several points 

 I wish to make right here. The first is, 

 that every thing of this kind gives the man 

 who is building up a business an excellent 

 opportunit}' to prove to his patrons that he 

 is not altogether " after the almighty dol- 

 lar." Somebody wrote a few days ago, 

 "Mr. Root, for certain peculiar reasons I 

 was going to send my order for seeds some- 

 where else this time; but when I got a let- 

 ter from you, inclosing 5 cents in stamps, 

 saying I sent that amount too much for the 

 things I ordered, it turned the scale. I am 

 going to continue doing business with a 

 man who is so conscientious that he takes a 

 two-cent stamp to send back 5 cents that 

 was left over." 



Now, we did not do that because we 

 thought it would pay, or advertise our bus- 

 iness, but because we decided it was the 

 only fair, straight, honest way. Five cents 

 is not enough to place to a man's credit, 

 and our book-keeper decided it would be 

 the best and simplest way just to send him 

 the surplus, even if it did cost a little to do 

 it. We want to be right and square with 

 our friends in every deal. We want all of 

 our clerks to lose sight entirely as to wheth- 

 er money comes into our pocket or that of 

 somebody else, in every transaction. We 

 want to love our neighbor as ourselves. 



I am now going to say something that 

 will sound very much like boasting and 

 bragging; but if you will wait till I get 

 through with my story, perhaps you will 

 change your mind. First, if this transac- 

 tion had passed through my hands I do not 

 think I would have overlooked the fact that 

 this man sent nearly ten times as much 

 money for his onion seed as he needed to. 

 The reason is this: When I first started 

 the seed business (and, in fact, when I 

 started Gleanixgs), I felt so thankful to 

 every one who sent me an order, or decided 

 to subscribe to our little journal, that I 

 tried to show my gratitude by reading his 

 letter over carefully just to see if I could 

 not give him a "happy surprise" by doing 



