282 The Psychology of the Business Man 



oped in Helen Keller, l.aura Bridgeman, and even in the 

 merely blind. 



Watch a business man rapidly going through a huge pile 

 of correspondence, dictating letters in the midst of a noisy 

 store or crowded office, reading his trade journal in the street 

 car, or talking '"business" on the street corner, and one sees a 

 strong concentration of attention. The life insurance agent 

 looks you straight in the eye and is not troubled with mind- 

 wandering. The trader seizes the kernel of your proposition 

 without being distracted by the blinding chafif. The drug 

 buyer can turn from sulphur to patent medicines, from Christ- 

 mas fancy goods to figuring complicated rebates, all with the 

 greatest rapidity and no sign of confusion. Even in the 

 midst of fatigue and sickness from overwork, it is often 

 pathetic to see the business man's bulldog tenacity of atten- 

 tion. 



Yet this astounding concentration of attention applies 

 again, like the sense of acuteness, to each man's own busi- 

 ness. The grain man's eyes wander and he yawns when he 

 is talked to about violins or bricks ; but mention chicken feed 

 by chance and he wakes up. While I once enthused over the 

 wonderful fall foliage of a grove of oaks on a vacant residence 

 block of land, my companion, a real estate man, could only 

 see and remark the burden of taxes as compared with the 

 rising value of the unearned increment of the land and on pass- 

 ing his flat building which was being renovated and so much 

 improved architecturally, that I could not help but compli- 

 ment him on it, he could only reply by a long tale of his tribu- 

 lations with his Union workmen. And, on my trying to sug- 

 gest whether there were not some compensating advantages 

 for co-operation in Trades Unions to ofifset his Union plumb- 

 ers deserting him in the midst of a torn-up bathroom because 

 they spied his janitor doing a little floor varnishing, he could 

 not be brought to give these "theoretical" things any atten- 

 tion. 



In remembering his own business matters, a man is also 

 remarkable. Never can I forget the fun we used to have as 

 young people with an apprenticed hardware clerk as we often 

 called on him at social gatherings to reel off the long price lists 

 of nails and glass, with their complicated discounts. He had 

 of course never sat down and studied these lists ; they had 



