Dawson Black: Retail Merchant.

by Harold Whitehead.

INTRODUCTION

A boy, just graduated from high school, was looking over some of his father's business books and magazines. The more he read, the more disappointed he became, until finally he blurted,

"Say, dad, I don't want to be a business man!"

"Why not?" asked his father, with a tolerant smile.

"Aw, there's no fun in business."

"Get that foolish idea out of your head, son. There's nothing I know of that is quite so much fun--as you call it--as business. Where did you get your ideas of business?"

"From them books," said son, emphatically, if ungrammatically. "All they talk about is efficiency, getting results, checking people up, and things of that kind."

Just ask yourself, Friend Reader, if your business reading has not given you an idea that business should be more or less a cold-blooded proposition, and our business life something apart from our home and social relationships.

Unfortunately, many books, excellent in their presentation of principles, ignore the human side, as it were, of business. I believe--nay, I am sure--that the influence of our home life is an important factor in the development of our business career. Our loves, our dislikes, our jealousies, our unfortunate, yet often lovable, unreasonablenesses are reflected in our business life. Our impetuous business decisions are often made through the subconscious influence of some dear one at home.

Our ambitions.--Are you, Friend Reader, so cold-blooded that you can say your ambition is a selfish one? Honestly now, wasn't it that you want to win something (whatever it may be)? Didn't you want to "make good" just to please some little woman?

When you faltered and weakened in your struggle for success, wasn't it she who gave you the necessary loving sympathy and encouragement to keep everlastingly at it? And wasn't your ambition encouraged a little bit by the delight you knew its attainment would give to that sweet little woman, who thinks "her boy" is just all right? Didn't you want to "make good" so as to please your mother and your father?

I don't care if you are a big, six-foot, bull-necked husky who smokes black cigars and swears, you have to admit the truth of this a.s.sertion so far as you are concerned.

Sounds like moralizing, doesn't it? And yet it's G.o.d's own truth!

It was convictions such as these which caused me to write "Dawson Black." I wanted to give the world a book which would not be a learned and technical treatise on retail merchandising, but would give a picture of business life as it really is--not as the world mis-sees it.

I have tried to make "Dawson Black" a human being, not an automaton to go through a series of jerky motions to ill.u.s.trate principles. I wanted him to do some things wrong and suffer for it, and some things right, and perhaps still suffer a little; but I wanted to make his business life _REAL_. I wanted the reader to say to himself, "By Jove! I did just that same fool thing myself!"

And, underneath all this, I wanted to present a few of the principles of retail merchandising. I wanted to show that the result of the correct application of principle was sure, and that a principle of retail merchandising is applicable to every kind of retail store--be it the little corner Italian fruit stand, or be it the largest department store in the country; be it hardware, drygoods, drugs, shoes, plumbing, or what not.

This book will have answered its purpose if it encourages you to persevere by showing that the majority of people make the same mistakes that you do,--and inspires you with the n.o.bility of business, and in particular convinces you that you are not working for money, but for the happiness you can give somebody else in addition to yourself.

HAROLD WHITEHEAD.

DAWSON BLACK

RETAIL MERCHANT

CHAPTER I

AN UNEXPECTED INHERITANCE

I hadn't seen Aunt Emma for five years, and, candidly, I had never thought a great deal of her; so you can imagine how surprised I was when a long-whiskered chap blew in at the Mater's to-day and told me that Aunt Emma had died, and--had left me eight thousand dollars in cash and a farm in the Berkshires!

Of course my first thought was to hunt up Betty and get her to help me celebrate!

We had a bully good time! Betty was delighted with my good fortune; but scolded me for not being sorry aunty had died. I suppose I should have pretended I was sorry, although, having met her only twice in my life, she was practically a stranger to me.

I told Betty I thought I'd throw up my job with Barlow--he runs the Main Street Hardware Store--and get a store of my own.

We had quite a talk over it. Betty approved of it and said she was sure I would succeed. She reminded me, though, that I was only twenty-two, and said that if I did buy a store I should get some one to advise me about it. She's a fine girl, Betty, but of course she knew nothing about business.

The next morning I put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the county paper. Fellows, a chap I know who works at the Flaxon Advertising Company--he's some relation to Betty--said I ought to have used a trade paper, but I told him I didn't want to go far from home, and a trade paper would probably bring me answers from Oshkosh and Kankakee and such funny places, and I would simply be paying out good money to get offers from places I didn't want to go to. Not that I wouldn't like to travel, but Betty would . . .

well, never mind what Betty would or wouldn't.--There goes the telephone bell. . . .

Isn't it funny! I had just got back from seeing Fellows when I had a telephone call from Jim Simpson. Jim was a young fellow, only a little older than I, who ran a hardware store right here in Farmdale. I used to go to school with him. He called it a hardware store, but his business was confined to kitchen furnishings and household hardware. It seemed he wanted to go out West and offered to sell me his store cheap.

Fancy! Jim Simpson, right here in our town, wanting to sell out, and me wanting to buy a store, and neither of us knowing it! I telephoned to Betty to tell her about it, and she said to be careful, because she didn't like him. Aren't women funny, with their likes and dislikes, without knowing why! Jim was a pretty smart fellow, and while the store wasn't just exactly what I had in mind, he did a fairly good business. I made an appointment with Jim to see him the next day.

Well I guess a streak of lightning has nothing on me! Before night I was the owner of the Black Hardware Store, for I had bought Jim out and was to take possession the following Monday! I had seen Jim's books and I knew everything was all right. Jim was a good fellow, and he promised to give me all the help and advice that I wanted. He said he'd like to stay in town with me for a few weeks, only he was anxious to go out West right away.

The store had $9460.00 worth of goods, reckoned at cost. Jim agreed to let me have all his fixtures and show-cases, which he said had cost him over a thousand dollars, and good-will, for $540.00, making the cost of the store to me $10,000.00.

When Jim told me the cost would be $10,000.00 I was considerably disappointed, for I had only $8000.00 besides the farm. I told Jim the farm was worth, I thought, about $8500.00, but I couldn't sell that right away and, of course, I couldn't pay out all my ready cash, because I wouldn't have anything left for operating expenses.

Jim was pretty decent about it, and said:

"You give me $7000.00 in cash and a mortgage on the farm and I'll give you a year to pay the balance. With the big profit you can make in this store, you'll be able to pay that $3000.00 in no time at all. Besides, if you couldn't quite manage it in a year, I'd renew it, of course."

But I thought I ought to have more than $1000.00 left, and finally it was agreed that I should give him $6500.00 in cash and a mortgage on the farm for $3500.00

I had my $8000.00 deposited in the Farmdale Trust Company, so we went over there and I gave him a check for the $6500.00. I thought I ought to do well with $1500.00 besides that splendid store of goods.

Jim had started out to be a lawyer and had studied law for a while, and he said he would draw up the mortgage himself so there wouldn't be any delay about it. I brought him over some legal-looking papers I had from Aunt Emma's estate--deeds, he called them--and we fixed that up without any trouble.

I asked Jim if we ought not to take stock together, and he said, "Sure, if you want to;" but I found that he had an exact stock-keeping system, and Jim suggested that we pick out about a dozen items and just check those up--"for," said he, "what's the use of checking up fifty cents'

worth of this and thirty cents' worth of that? Your time is too valuable for that."

I agreed with him, for I couldn't afford to waste my time now that I was the owner of a store.

Betty asked me that night if I had had a lawyer to go over the thing with me, but I laughed at her and said, "I don't want a lawyer for a little deal like this between Jim and me." I told her it would have been almost an insult to have suggested that I wanted a lawyer. She shook her head sadly and said something about a man who was his own lawyer having a fool for a client--which I thought was not at all called for!

Before going to bed, I figured out what the store should be worth to me.

Jim had told me he turned over his stock about three times a year, and that he made about 10 per cent. clear profit. Three times $9460.00 would be $28,380.00; and if he made 10 per cent., clear profit, that would be $2838.00 a year--call it $3000.00 a year. That was $60.00 a week!

Gee!--some jump from what I was getting at Barlow's! I thought how easy it was to make money when you had some to start with! Here I had been working my head off for a year and a half and getting only $10.00 a week, and now I would be making $60.00. I decided to ask Betty to--oh, well, I'd wait a month or two until I saw if it worked out just like that. Better be on the safe side!