SELLING LUMBER 



165 



in business until business was dead. The business soul, which is 

 nothing else than bigness, was killed. Soon we had to bury the 

 reeking body of it, and then we had no business left until the 

 war came along and artificially inflated our markets. But in the 

 meantime there are some of us, particularly in the city of Detroit, 

 from which I hail, who have learned the practical business sense 

 of giving the producers of our business growth a share in that 

 growth with us. And so it seems especially appropriate that this 

 city which has prospered so prodigiously through the practice of 

 this principle of participation should endeavor at the "FIRST 

 WORLD'S SALESMANSHIP CONGRESS" to which it is giv- 

 ing birth, to forcefully remind business men that the underlying 

 principle of salesmanship is the natural law of equal compensation. 

 Nature will not tolerate the arbitrary taking of anything. In 

 nature all things are sold, measure for measure, tit for tat, an 

 eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. Everything has its price and if 

 that price be not paid, not that thing but its inferior substitute is 

 procured. Therefore, I say to those of your who are business 

 proprietors, employing salesmen, seek more than ever to have 

 your producers of your growth participate in that growth with 

 you. For, if you do, you will not only thereby get more busi- 

 ness from the men already attached to you, which is obvious, but, 

 what is still more important, and what you employers who have 

 unsuccessfully tried to get good producers will appreciate, you will 

 be able to bind to you other more productive co-workers, whom 

 you now do not even know and cannot get, and thereby obtain 

 a legitimate monopoly of efficiency in your line, while your poor 

 competitors are limping along with their old methods and their 

 pathetic machinery of watching every man and suspecting one 

 another in a way that makes it impossible for them to compete 

 with free-moving, sincere employers who deal directly and openly 

 with their employes, without any vast machinery of suspicion to 

 bother about. 



It is a last century delusion to maintain that for sheer indus- 

 trial economy and guaranteed growth there is anything on earth 

 in business that can take the place of good, old-fashioned TRUST. 

 It is simple folly to deny that you can get the most out of a red- 

 blooded growing man until you take him into partnership. 



Do not, therefore, employ servants. And don't be a servant. 

 If you are content to live the life of a servant, if you are satisfied 

 to think in terms of servitude, your penalty for annihilating your 



Producers of 

 Growth 

 Should 

 Share in 

 Growth 



