The Psychology of the Business Man 283 



**just come to him in the store'' by frequent use and by a pride 

 he felt as a "promising young 1)usiness man."' The veteran 

 oJd book store man can carry a])out more old editions and 

 magazines in his head than the professional librarian. The 

 life insurance solicitor hardly needs to refer not merely to his 

 •own book of rates but also to those of his competing com- 

 panies and fraternal orders, nor does he forget the horde of 

 solicited men who "don't need any insurance just now but 

 may a little later." An old sewer foreman can give a new 

 brick inspector a history of all the sewers he had built for the 

 city during twenty-five years. The bank cashier carries in his 

 responsible head a summary of business lives which far excels 

 in detail the card catalogs of the mercantile agencies. 



Thus what is useful to the business man he has precious 

 little troui)le in remembering. He needs no more coaching 

 by patent memory systems to recall his necessary business de- 

 tails than to recognize his own stenographer or keep an ap- 

 pointment to sell a lot. The clan of Loisette trainers of 

 ^'Memory" (as though it were a special muscle or rubber com- 

 partment instead of a complicated brain function attendant on 

 all our sense perceptions and thought associations) have 

 waxed strong by the despairing credulity of teachers, preach- 

 ers, lawyers, and candidates for examinations who are forced 

 to learn rules of mere words or gradgrind facts which fill no 

 longing in their own or others' lives. 



When it comes to doing things, the business man is a 

 wonderful study in ideo-motor reaction or ''Will," as such 

 motor life was personified by the older psychologists. The 

 idea of sluicing ofif a city mountain of dirt to tide flats for a 

 great railway terminal no sooner comes into a vigorous Pacific 

 coast man's head than he begins to do it, though it requires 

 a long series of attempts at persuading the railway officials 

 that the terminal can be made, the city officials that they 

 should rent him the reserve water pumps, and the bank officials 

 that they can risk him money for the venture. The idea of 

 unusual profits in Kansas oil stimulated thousands of men to 

 scrape together some money to put into the speculation. 

 The idea comes to an insurance clerk to break away from his 

 business master and set up for himself; he finds a little agency 

 buys it with hardly money enough to pay his first month's 

 rent, but he hustles about among his friends and makes a go 



