Let us read further in the advertisement: "Eight hours a day; six days a week." One full day and one half day off each week, making a total of forty-four hours weekly which is the standard working week in most industrial occupations. At least two free Sundays a month should be given and a convenient week-day substituted for the other two Sundays. If Saturday is not the best half day to give, another afternoon may be arranged with the Home Assistant.

"Impossible," I can hear Mrs. Reader say, "I couldn't get along with eight hours' work a day, forty-four hours a week." No! Well, possibly you have had to get along without any maid at all, or you may have had some one in your kitchen who is incompetent and slovenly, whom you dare not discharge for fear you can not replace her. Would you rather not have a good interested worker for eight hours a day than none at all? During that time the Home Assistant works steadily and specialization is done away with. She is there to do your work and she does whatever may be called for. If she is asked to take care of the baby for a few hours, she does it willingly, as part of her duties; or if she is called upon to do some ironing left in the basket, she assumes that it is part of her work, and doesn't say, "No, Madam, I wasn't hired to do that," at the same time putting on her hat and leaving as under the old system.

The new plan seems expensive? "Twelve dollars a week is more than I have paid my domestic helper," Mrs. Reader says. But consider this more carefully. You pay from thirty-five to fifty dollars a month with all the worker's food and lodging provided. This is at the rate of eight to eleven dollars a week for wages. Food and room cost at least five dollars a week, and most estimates are higher. The old type of houseworker has cost us more than we have realized. The new system compares favorably in expense with the old.

"I can't afford a Home Assistant or a maid at the present wages," some one says. "But I do wish I had some one who could get and serve dinner every night. I am so tired by evening that cooking is the last straw."

Try looking for a Home Assistant for four hours a day to relieve you of just this work. You would have to pay about a dollar a day or six dollars a week for such service and it would be worth it.

How does the Home Assistant plan work in households where two or more helpers are kept? The more complicated homes run several shifts of workers, coming in at different hours and covering every need of the day. One woman I talked to told me that she studied out her problem in this way! She did every bit of the work in her house for a while in order to find out how long each job took. She found, for instance, that it took twenty-five minutes to clean one bathroom, ten minutes to brush down and dust a flight of stairs, thirty minutes to do the dinner dishes, and so on through all the work. She made out a time-card which showed that twenty-two hours of work a day was needed for her home. She knew how much money she could spend and she proceeded to divide the work and money among several assistants coming in on different shifts. Her household now runs like clockwork. One of the splendid things about this new system is its great flexibility and the fact that it can be adapted to any household.

Thoughtful and intelligent planning such as this woman gave to her problems is necessary for the greatest success of the plan. The old haphazard methods must go. The housekeeper who has been in the habit of coming into her kitchen about half past five and saying, "Oh, Mary, what can we have for dinner? I have just come back from down-town; I did expect to be home sooner," will not get the most out of her Home Assistant. Work must be scheduled and planned ahead, the home must be run on business methods if the system is to succeed. I heard this explained to a group of women not long ago. After the talk, one of them said, "Well, in business houses and factories there is a foreman who runs the shop and oversees the workers. It wouldn't work in homes because we haven't any foreman." She had entirely overlooked her job as forewoman of her own establishment!

"Will these girls from offices and stores do their work well? They have had no training for housework unless they have happened to do some in their own homes," some one wisely remarks. The lack of systematic preparation has always been one of the troubles with our domestic helpers. It is true that the new type of girl trained in business to be punctual and alert, and to use her mind, adapts herself very quickly to her work, but the trained worker in any field has an advantage. With this in mind the Central Branch of the Young Women's Christian Association in New York City has started a training-school for Home Assistants. The course provides demonstrations on the preparation of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and talks on the following: House-cleaning, Laundry, Care of Children, Shopping, Planning work, Deportment, Efficiency, and Duty to Employer. This course gives a girl a general knowledge of her duties and what is even more important she acquires the right mental attitude toward her work. The girls are given an examination and those who successfully pass it are given a certificate and placed as Trained Home Assistants at fifteen dollars a week.

The National Association would like to see these training-schools turning out this type of worker for the homes all over the country. This is a constructive piece of work for women to undertake. Housewives' Leagues have interested themselves in this in various centers, and the Y.W.C.A. will help wherever it can. There are always home economics graduates in every town who could help give the course, and there are excellent housekeepers who excel in some branch who could give a talk or two.

The course would be worth a great deal in results to any community. The United States Employment Bureaus are also taking a hand in this, and, with the coöperation of the High Schools, are placing girls as trained assistants on the new basis. I have talked with many women who are not only using this plan to-day but have been for several years.

It has been more than six years ago since Mrs. Helene Barker's book "Wanted a Young Woman to Do Housework" was published.

Let me give two concrete illustrations of the practical application of housework on a business basis.

Mrs. A. lives in a small city in the Middle West. Her household consists of herself, her husband, and her twelve year old son. She had had the usual string of impossible maids or none at all until she tried the new system. Through a girls' club in a factory in the city, she secured a young woman to work for her at factory hours and wages. Her assistant came at seven-thirty in the morning. By having the breakfast cereal prepared the night before, breakfast could be served promptly at eight, a plan which was necessary in order that the boy get to school on time. Each morning's work was written out and hung up in the kitchen so that the assistant wasted no time in waiting to know what she had to do. Lunch was at twelve-fifteen, and at one o'clock the Home Assistant went home.

She came back on regular duty at five-thirty to prepare and serve the dinner. Except for times when there were guests for dinner she was through her work by eight. When she worked overtime, there was the extra pay to compensate. Mrs. A. paid her thirteen dollars a week and felt that she saved money by the new plan. The assistant was off duty every other Sunday, and on alternate weeks was given all day Tuesday off instead of Sunday. Tuesday was the day the heavy washing was done and the laundress was there to help with any work which Mrs. A. did not feel equal to doing. Even though there are times in the day when she is alone, Mrs. A. says she would not go back to the old system for anything.

Mrs. B. lives in a city apartment. There are four grown people in the family. She formerly kept two maids, a cook-laundress, and a waitress-chambermaid. She often had a great deal of trouble finding a cook who would do the washing. As her apartment had only one maid's room, she had to give one of the guestrooms to the second maid. She paid these girls forty dollars apiece and provided them with room and board. Her apartment cost her one hundred and fifteen dollars a month for seven rooms, two of which were occupied by maids.

On this schedule the work was done better than ever before. There was no longer any grievance about the washing. Mrs. B. had some one continuously on duty. The morning assistant was allowed a half hour at noon to eat her luncheon which she brought with her. As Mrs. B. entertained a great deal, especially at luncheon, she arranged to have the schedule of the two assistants overlap at this time of day. The morning worker, it will be noted, was employed for only six hours. The afternoon worker was a trained assistant and, therefore, received fifteen dollars a week. She had an hour off, between three-thirty and four-thirty and was on duty again in time to serve tea or afternoon refreshments. If there were a number of extra people for dinner, the assistant was expected to stay until nine and there was never any complaining about too much company. Mrs. B. has a better apartment and saves money every month besides!

(New York Sun)

Business Career of a Woman College Graduate

"For the last three years I have cleared $5,000 a year on my tea rooms," declared a young woman who six years ago was graduated with distinction at one of the leading colleges of the country.

"In spite of the protests of many of my friends I decided to become a business woman instead of entering one of the professions. I believed that a well conducted tea room in a college town where there was nothing of the kind would pay well, and I proceeded to open a place.

"After renting a suitable room I invested $100 in furnishings. Besides having a paid announcement in the college and town papers I had a thousand leaflets printed and distributed.

"Though I couldn't afford music I did have my rooms decorated profusely with flowers on the afternoon of my opening. As it was early in the autumn the flowers were inexpensive and made a brave show. My only assistant was a young Irish woman whom I had engaged for one month as waitress, with the understanding that if my venture succeeded I would engage her permanently.

"We paid expenses that first afternoon, and by the end of the week the business had increased to such an extent that I might have engaged a second waitress had not so many of my friends persisted in shaking their heads and saying the novelty would soon wear off. During the second week my little Irish girl and I had so much to do that on several occasions our college boy patrons felt themselves constrained to offer their services as waiters, while more than one of the young professors after a long wait left the room with the remark that they would go elsewhere.

"Of course it was well enough to laugh as we all knew there was no 'elsewhere,' but when I recalled how ready people are to crowd into a field that has proved successful, I determined no longer to heed the shaking heads of my friends. The third week found me not only with a second assistant but with a card posted in a conspicuous place announcing that at the beginning of the next week I would enlarge my quarters in such a way as to accommodate more than twice as many guests.

"Having proved to my own satisfaction that my venture was and would be successful, I didn't hesitate to go into debt to the extent of $150. This was not only to repair and freshen up the new room but also to equip it with more expensive furnishing than I had felt myself justified in buying for the first.

"Before I realized just what was happening I was receiving letters from college boys who, after proclaiming themselves among my very first customers, demanded to know why they were discriminated against. I had noticed that everybody appeared to prefer the new room and that on several occasions when persons telephoning for reservations had been unable to get the promise of a table in there, they had said they would wait and come at another time. What I had not noticed was that only men coming alone or with other men, and girls coming with other girls, would accept seats in the first room.

"I learned from the letters of 'my very first patrons' that no gentleman would take a girl to have tea in a second class tea room. They were not only hitting at the cheaper furnishings of my first room but also at the waiter whom I had employed, because I felt the need of a man's help in doing heavy work. The girl in her fresh apron and cap was more attractive than the man, and because he happened to serve in the first room he also was second class.

"No, I couldn't afford to buy new furniture for that room, so I did the only thing I could think of. I mixed the furniture in such a way as to make the two rooms look practically alike. I hired another girl and relegated the man to the kitchen except in case of emergency.

"Although my custom fell off in summer to a bare sprinkling of guests afternoons and evenings and to almost no one at lunch, I kept the same number of employees and had them put up preserves, jams, syrups, and pickles for use the coming season. I knew it would not only be an economical plan but also a great drawing card, especially with certain of the professors, to be able to say that everything served was made on the place and under my own supervision.

"My second winter proved so successful that I determined to buy a home for my business so that I might have things exactly as I wished. I was able to pay the first instalment, $2,500, on the purchase price and still have enough in bank to make alterations and buy the necessary furnishings.

"Three summers ago I opened a second tea room at a seashore resort on the New England coast. I heard of the place through a classmate whose family owned a cottage down there. She described it as deadly dull, because there was nothing to do but bathe and boat unless you were the happy possessor of an automobile or a horse.

"I was so much interested in her description of the place that I went down one warm day in April and looked things over. I found a stretch of about three miles of beach lined with well appearing and handsome cottages and not a single place of amusement. The village behind the beach is a lovely old place, with twenty or more handsome old homes surrounded by grand trees. There are two or three small stores, a post office, two liveries and the railroad station half a mile away.

"Before I left that afternoon I had paid the first month's rent on the best of the only two cottages to be rented on the beach. Of course it needed considerable fixing up and that had to be done at my own expense, but as I was getting it at a rental of $200 for the season I was not worried at the outlay. The cottages told me enough of the character of the people who summered on that beach to make me sure that I would get good interest on all the money spent.

"Immediately after commencement I shut up my college tea rooms, leaving only the kitchen and storeroom open and in charge of an experienced woman with instructions to get more help when putting up preserves and pickles made it necessary. Then I moved.

"The two first days on the beach my tea room didn't have a visitor. People strolled by and stared at the sign, but nobody came in to try my tea. The third day I had a call from my landlord, who informed me that he had been misled into letting me have his cottage, and offering to return the amount paid for the first month's rent, he very politely requested me to move out.

"After considerable talking I discovered that the cottagers didn't like the way my waitresses dressed. They were too stylish and my rooms appeared from the outside to be so brilliantly lighted that they thought I intended to sell liquor.

"Well, they came, they saw, and I conquered. That evening all the tables on my piazza were filled and there was a slight sprinkling indoors. A few days later the classmate who had told me of the place came down for the summer and my troubles were at an end.

"The secret of my success is hard work and catering to the taste of my patrons. Had I opened either a cheap or a showy place in the college town, I would not have gained the good will of the faculty or the patronage of the best class of students. If my prices had been too high or the refreshments served not up to the notch, the result would not have been so satisfactory.

"Knowing one college town pretty well, I knew just about what was needed in the student's life; that is, an attractive looking place, eminently respectable, where you can take your best girl and get good things to eat well served at a reasonable cost.

"The needs of the beach were pretty much the same. People can't stay in the water all the time, neither can they spin around the country or go to an unlighted village at night in their carriages and automobiles. My tea room offers a recreation, without being a dissipation.

"Another point about which many people question me is the effect of my being a business woman on my social standing. I haven't noticed any slights. I receive many more invitations than it is possible for me to accept. I go with the same set of girls that I did while I was in college.

"Two of my classmates are lawyers, more than one is a doctor, and three have gone on the stage. I know that my earnings are far more than any of theirs, and I am sure they do not enjoy their business any more than I do. If I had to begin again I would do exactly as I have done, with one exception—I would lay out the whole of my $300 in furnishing that first tea room instead of keeping $75 as a nest egg in bank."

Two illustrations:

• 1. Half-tone reproducing photograph of dressed chickens with the caption, "There is this rule you must observe: Pick your chickens clean."
• 2. Reproduction in type of shipping label.

One Man's Way of Serving the Direct-to-Consumer Market

By A. L. SARRAN

If you live within a hundred and fifty miles of a city, if you possess ordinary common sense and have the ability to write a readable and understandable letter, you may, from September to April of each year, when other farmers and their wives are consuming instead of producing, earn from fifty to a hundred and fifty dollars net profit each month. You may do this by fattening and dressing chickens for city folks, and by supplying regularly fresh country sausage, hams, lard and eggs.

This is not an idle theory. Last September I began with one customer; today—this was written the end of March—I have nearly 500 customers to whom I am supplying farm products by parcel post.

Instead of selling my chickens to the huckster or to the local poultry house for twelve cents a pound, I am selling them to the consumer in the city for twenty cents a pound, live weight, plus the cost of boxing and postage. Not only that, I am buying chickens from my neighbors at a premium of one to two cents over the huckster's prices, "milk feeding" them, and selling them to my city customers at a profit of six to seven cents a pound.

I buy young hogs from my neighbors at market prices and make them into extra good country sausage that nets me twenty-five cents a pound in the city, and into hams for which I get twenty-five cents a pound, delivered. The only pork product on which I do not make an excellent profit is lard. I get fifteen cents a pound for it, delivered to the city customer, and it costs me almost that much to render and pack it.

I got my customers by newspaper advertising—almost exclusively. It is a comforting belief that one satisfied customer will get you another, and that that customer will get you another, and so on, but it has not so worked out in my experience. Out of all my customers less than twelve have become customers through the influence of friends.

My experience has taught me another thing: That direct advertising does not pay. By direct advertising I mean the mailing of letters and circulars to a list of names in the hope of selling something to persons whose names are on that list.

I tried it three times—once to a list of names I bought from a dealer in such lists; once to a list that I myself compiled from the society columns of two Chicago dailies; and once to a classified list that I secured from a directory.

The results in these cases were about the same. The net cost of each new customer that I secured by circulars and letters was $2.19. The net cost of each new customer that I secured by newspaper advertising was fifty-four cents.

Not every city newspaper will get such results. In my case I selected that paper in Chicago which in my judgment went into the greatest number of prosperous homes, and whose pages were kept clean of quack and swindling advertisements. I used only the Sunday issues, because I believe the Sunday issues are most thoroughly read.

The farmer will want to use, and properly so, the classified columns of the paper for his advertising. But he should patronize only that paper whose columns provide a classification especially for farm and food products.

I spent twelve dollars for advertising in one clean Chicago daily with a good circulation, and got three orders. The trouble was that my advertisement went into a column headed "Business Personals," along with a lot of manicure and massage advertising.

When I wrote my advertisements I did not stint myself for space. An advertisement that tells no reason why the reader should buy from the advertiser is, in my opinion, a poor advertisement. Therefore, I told my story in full to the readers of the Sunday paper, although it cost me six cents a word to do it. Here is a sample of my advertising:

Notice that I told why the reader should buy one of my chickens rather than a chicken of whose antecedents he knew nothing. That it paid to spend six cents a word to tell him so is proved by the fact that this particular advertisement brought me, in four days, twenty-three orders, each accompanied by a check. I repeated my advertisements in Sunday issues, stopping only when I had as many customers as I could take care of.

My rule is to select, weigh, dress, draw, handle, wrap and box the chicken with the same scrupulous care that I would exercise if the customer were actually present and watching me.

I have another rule: The customer is always right. If he complains I satisfy him, immediately and cheerfully. It is better to lose a chicken than to lose a customer.

I am now about to make a statement with which many of my readers will not agree. It is more than true; it is so important that the success of a mail-order business in dressed chickens depends upon a realization of it. It is this: A majority of farmers and their wives do not know what constitutes a fat chicken.

I make this statement because of the experience I have had with country folks in buying their chickens for my feeding coops. If they really consider to be fat the chickens which they have assured me were fat, then they do not know fat chickens. A chicken can be fat to a degree without being so fat as he can or should be made for the purpose of marketing.

There is a flavor about a well-fattened, milk-fed chicken that no other chicken has. Every interstice of his flesh is juicy and oily. No part of him is tough, stringy muscle, as is the case if he is "farm-fattened" while being allowed to range where he will.

If you think your chicken is a fat one, pick it up and rub the ball of your thumb across its backbone about an inch behind the base of the wings. If the backbone is felt clearly and distinctly the chicken is not fat.

I fatten my chickens in coops the floors of which are made of heavy wire having one-inch mesh; underneath the wire is a droppings pan, which is emptied every day. My coops are built in tiers and long sections. I have ninety of them, each one accommodating nine chickens. I have enough portable feeding coops with wire bottoms and droppings pans underneath to enable me to feed, in all, about one thousand chickens at one time.

Chickens should be fed from ten to fourteen days in the coops. I give no feed whatever to the chicken the first day he is in the coop, but I keep a supply of sour milk in the trough for him. I feed my chickens three times a day.

The next morning the troughs are emptied—if anything remains in them—into the big kettle where the feed is mixed for the morning feeding. The idea is this: More fat and flesh are made at night than in the daytime; therefore see that no chicken goes to bed with an empty crop.

About the eighth to tenth day force the feeding—see to it that the chicken gets all it will eat three times a day.

By keeping an accurate account of the costs of meal, milk, and so on, I find that I can put a pound of fat on a coop-fed chicken for seven cents. When one considers that this same pound brings twenty cents, and that milk feeding in coops raises the per pound value of the chicken from twelve to twenty cents, one must admit that feeding chickens is more profitable than feeding cattle.

Do not feed your chicken anything for twenty-four hours before killing it. Do not worry about loss in weight. The only weight it will lose will be the weight of the feed in its crop and gizzard, and the offal in its intestines—and you are going to lose that anyway when you dress and draw it. If you will keep the bird off feed for twenty-four hours you will find that it will draw much more easily and cleanly.

Hang the chicken up by the feet and kill it by bleeding it away back in the mouth. Let it bleed to death. Grasp the chicken's head in your left hand, the back of its head against the palm of your hand. Do not hold it by the neck, but grasp it by the bony part of its head and jaws. Reach into the throat with a three-inch, narrow, sharp knife and cut toward the top and front of the head.

You will sever the big cross vein that connects the two "jugular" veins in the neck, and the blood will pour out of the mouth. If you know how to dry-pick you will not need to be told anything by me; if you do not know it will do you no good to have me tell you, because I do not believe a person can learn to dry-pick chickens by following printed instructions. At any rate, I could not. I never learned until I hired a professional picker to come out from town to teach me.

On the other hand, there are those feed-specializing, accurate-to-the-ten-thousandth-part-of-an-inch experts, who say that the dry-picked chicken keeps better than the scalded one. If the weather is warmer than, say, seventy-five degrees, it might; under that, there is no difference.

I do the most of my selling in Chicago, and my place is a hundred and fifty miles south of that city; if a scalded chicken will keep when I am selling it that far away it will keep for almost anyone, because none of you is going to sell many chickens at any point more than a hundred and fifty miles from your place.

There is this caution to be observed in scalding a chicken: Do not have the water too hot. I had trouble on this score, and as a result my chickens were dark and did not present an appetizing appearance. Finally I bought a candy thermometer—one that registered up to 400 degrees. By experimenting I found that 180 degrees was the point at which a chicken scalded to pick the easiest, but that a chicken scalded at 165 degrees presented a better appearance after being picked and cooled. Whichever method you use, observe this rule: Pick your chicken clean.

After my chicken has cooled out enough so the flesh will cut easily, I draw it. I chop off the head close up, draw back the skin of the neck a couple of inches, and then cut off the neck. The flap of skin thus left serves to cover the bloody and unsightly stub of the neck. Next I open up the chicken from behind and below the vent and pull out the gizzard—if the chicken has been kept off feed for twenty-four hours the empty crop will come with it—intestines and liver. I remove the gall bladder from the liver, open and clean the gizzard, and replace it and the liver in the chicken.

Then I cut a slit across the chicken just back of the keel of the breast bone. I cut the feet off at the knee joint and slip the drumstick through this slit. Then I lay the chicken up to cool out overnight. The next morning it may be wrapped and boxed, and is then ready for mailing.

Each chicken is wrapped in one sheet of this waxed paper, and is then packed in a corrugated paper box made especially for sending chickens by parcel post.

I buy three sizes of these boxes. One size, which costs me four cents each, will hold one four-pound chicken when dressed and drawn. The next size, costing five cents each, will hold two very small chickens, or one large chicken. The third size, costing six cents each, will hold two large chickens, three medium-sized ones, or four small ones.

Do not use makeshifts, such as old shoe boxes. In the first place, your shipment is not properly protected by such a box; in the second place, your postmaster is likely to refuse to accept it for mailing, as he would be justified in doing; and in the third place, your customer receives his chicken in a box that has been used for he wonders what, and has been in he wonders what places.

It is for this reason that I never ask a customer to return a box to me. I do not want to use a box a second time. If I were a city man, getting my chickens by mail, I should want them sent to me in a brand-new box, made for the special purpose of sending chickens by mail—and I'd want them in no other box. Then I'd feel sure of them.

The cost of shipping by parcel post is low. I live ten miles from my county seat, and the postage required to send a five-pound, live-weight chicken, dressed and boxed, from my place to town is eight cents. The postage required to send that same five-pound chicken from here to Chicago, one hundred and fifty miles, is eight cents. The express company charges twenty-six cents for the same service, and does not deliver so quickly.

But parcel-post delivery was not always so admirably done in Chicago. When I began shipping up there last September it was no uncommon thing for my packages to be so delayed that many chickens would spoil.

In due time I received the desired permission, and ordered the labels printed. The scheme worked. Every time a package was not delivered on schedule time the customer notified me, and I made complaint to the postmaster at Chicago.

Gradually the service improved until now I have no trouble at all. If I were to ship two packages today to the same address in Chicago, sending one by parcel post and the other by express, I believe the parcel-post package would be delivered first. At any rate, it has been done for me.

The weakness in the parcel-post delivery lies in the fact that perishable products—such as dressed chickens—cannot be handled in warm weather. I think that if the Post Office Department would cut some of its red tape and permit the shipment of air-tight packages in air-tight conveyors this particular problem could be solved.

You will, of course, have more or less correspondence with your customers. By all means use your own letterheads, but do not let your printer embellish them with cuts of roosters, chickens, pigs, or the like. Not that we are ashamed of them; far be it from such. You do not, however, need to have a sheet of paper littered up with pictures of imaginary animals in order to convince your customer that you are selling the meats of that animal. I like a plainly printed letterhead that carries my name, my address and my business. That's all.

By all means keep books on your farm-to-table venture, if you undertake it. Set down on one side of the page what you pay for boxes, labels, postage, and so on, including what you pay yourself for chickens at your huckster's prices. On the other side of the page set down what your city customer pays you. Add up the pages, do a simple sum in subtraction, and you will know just how much you have made.

If I kept only twenty-five hens I should sell my eggs and my chickens direct to the city consumer. When the farmer learns to sell direct instead of letting the huckster, the poultry house, the commission man, the dresser and the retailer stand between him and the consumer, then poultry raising will become really profitable.

There are too many folks who sell their eggs and "take it out in trade."

One large illustration, a wash drawing, made by a staff artist.

BY JAMES H. COLLINS

"Say, you're a funny salesman!" exclaimed the business man. "Here I make up my own mind that I need two motor trucks and decide to buy 'em from your company. Then I send for a salesman. You come down and spend a week looking into my horse delivery, and now you tell me to keep my horses. What kind of a salesman do you call yourself anyway?"

"What made you think you needed motor trucks?" was the counterquestion of the serious, thick-spectacled young chap.

"Everyone else seems to be turning to gasoline delivery. I want to be up to date."

"Your delivery problem lies outside the gasoline field," said the salesman. "Your drivers make an average of ninety stops each trip. They climb stairs and wait for receipts. Their rigs are standing at the curb more than half the time. Nothing in gasoline equipment can compete with the horse and wagon under such conditions. If you had loads of several tons to be kept moving steadily I'd be glad to sell you two trucks."

"Suppose I wanted to buy them anyway?"

"We could not accept your order."

"But you'd make your commission and the company its profit."

"Yes; but you'd make a loss, and within a year your experience would react unfavorably upon us."

So no sale was effected. Facts learned during his investigation of this business man's delivery problem led the salesman to make suggestions that eliminated waste and increased the effectiveness of his horse rigs.

About a year later, however, this business man sent for the salesman again. He contemplated motorized hauling for another company of which he was the president. After two days' study the salesman reported that motor trucks were practicable and that he needed about five of them.

"All right—fill out the contract," directed the business man.

"Don't you want to know how these trucks are going to make you money?" asked the salesman.

A new kind of salesmanship is being developed in many lines of business—and particularly in the rebuilding of sales organizations made necessary by the ending of the war and return to peace production. "Study your goods," was the salesman's axiom yesterday. "Study your customer's problem," is the viewpoint to-day; and it is transforming the salesman and sales methods.

Indeed, the word salesman tends to disappear under this new viewpoint, for the organization which was once charged largely with disposing of goods may now be so intimately involved in technical studies of the customers' problems that selling is a secondary part of its work. The Sales Department is being renamed, and known as the Advisory Department or the Research Staff; while the salesman himself becomes a Technical Counsel or Engineering Adviser.

Camouflage? No; simply better expression of broader functions.

As a salesman, probably he gave much attention to the approach and argument with which he gained his customer's attention and confidence. But, with his new viewpoint and method of attack, perhaps the first step is asking permission to study the customer's transportation needs, or accounting routine, or power plant—or whatever section of the latter's business is involved.

The experience of the thick-spectacled motor-truck salesman was typical. Originally he sold passenger cars. Then came the war, with factory facilities centered on munitions and motor trucks. There being no more passenger cars to sell, they switched him over into the motor-truck section. There he floundered for a while, trying to develop sales arguments along the old lines. But the old arguments did not seem to fit, somehow.

It might have been possible to demonstrate the superior construction of his motor truck; but competitors would meet point with point, and customers were not interested in technicalities anyway. He tried service as an argument; but that was largely a promise of what motor trucks would do for people after they bought them, and competitors could always promise just as much, and a little more.

Company reputation? His company had a fine one—but motor-truck purchasers wanted to know the cost of moving freight. Price? No argument at all, because only one other concern made motor trucks calling for so great an initial investment.

The purchaser could lose money in two ways at swift ratios, and perhaps unsuspectingly: He might not use his full hauling capacity each day or would use it only half the year, during his busy season. Or he might underestimate costs by overlooking such items as interest and depreciation.

Thick-Specs' first actual sale was not a motor truck at all, but a motorcycle, made by another company. Within three months, however, this motorcycle added two big trucks to a fleet of one dozen operated by a wholesale firm. That concern had good trucks, and kept them in a well-equipped garage, where maintenance was good. But at least once daily there would be a road breakdown. Usually this is a minor matter, but it ties up the truck while its puzzled driver tries to locate the trouble.

When a motorcycle was bought for the garage, drivers were forbidden to tamper with machinery on the road—they telephoned in to the superintendent. By answering each call on his own motorcycle—about an hour daily—the repairman kept equipment in such good shape that valuable extra service was secured from the fleet each day.

The salesman-adviser did not originate this scheme himself, but discovered it in another concern's motor-truck organization; in fact, this is the advantage the salesman-adviser enjoys—acquaintance with a wide range of methods and the knack of carrying a good wrinkle from one business to another. He brings the outside point of view; and, because modern business runs toward narrow specialization, the outside point of view is pretty nearly always welcome, provided it is honest and sensible.

In another case he had to dig and invent to meet a peculiar situation.

A city ordinance prohibited dumping coal on the sidewalk except by permit. Coal men had never tried to have that ordinance changed. But the salesman-adviser went straight to the city authorities and, by figures showing the expense and waste involved, secured a modification, so that his customer, the coal company, got a blanket permit for dumping coal and gave bonds as an assurance against abuse of the privilege. Then a little old last year's runabout was bought and followed the coal trucks with a crew to carry the coal indoors, clearing sidewalks quickly.

This salesman-adviser's philosophy was as simple as it was sound. Confidence is the big factor in selling, he reasoned. Your customer will have confidence in you if he feels that you are square and also knows what you are talking about. By diligent study of gasoline hauling problems in various lines of business he gained practical knowledge and after that had only to apply his knowledge from the customer's side of the problem.

"Put it another way," he said: "Suppose you had a factory and expected to run it only one year. There would not be time to get returns on a costly machine showing economies over a five-year period; but if you intended to run your factory on a five-year basis, then that machine might be highly profitable.

"In sales work it was just the same; if you were selling for this year's profit alone, you'd close every sale regardless of your customer's welfare. Let the purchaser beware! But if you meant to sell on the five-year basis, then confidence is the big investment, and the most profitable sale very often one you refuse to make for immediate results."

He had a fine following when the draft reached him; and during the eight months he spent in an Army uniform he utilized his knowledge of gasoline transportation as an expert in Uncle Sam's motor service. Upon being discharged he returned to his job and his customers, and to-day the concern with which he is connected is taking steps to put all its motor-truck salesmen on this advisory basis.

War shot its sales force to pieces—the Army and the Navy reached out for men and tied up production facilities; so there was nothing to sell. But war also gave a clean slate for planning a new sales force.

Engineering teaches people to think in curves. This youngster had to make a curve of the grocer's trucking before he could visualize it himself. His curve included factors like increase in stuff that had been hauled during the past three years and additions to the motor equipment. When you have a healthy curve showing any business activity, the logical thing to do, after bringing it right down to date, is to let it run out into the future at its own angle. This was done with the grocery curve, and its future extension indicated that not more than three months later the grocery house would need about four more five-ton motor trucks.

Closer investigation of facts behind the curve revealed an unusual growth in sugar hauling, due to the increase in supply and removal of consumer war restrictions. And that grocery concern bought additional trucks for sugar within two months. With the insight made possible by such a curve a salesman might safely have ordered the trucks without his customer's knowledge and driven them up to his door the day the curve showed they were needed.

"Here are the trucks you wanted to haul that sugar."

"Good work! Drive 'em in!"

What has been found to be sound sales policy in the motor truck business applies to many other lines. Yesterday the salesman of technical apparatus sought the customer with a catalogue and a smile—and a large ignorance of the technical problems. To-day that kind of selling is under suspicion, because purchasers of technical equipment have been led to buy on superficial selling points and left to work out for themselves complex technicalities that belong to the manufacturer of the equipment.

It might have been dangerous for the salesman to show up again in an irrigation district where a lot of his pumps were "acting up," armed only with his catalogue and smile. But when an engineer appeared from the pump company to help customers out of their difficulties, he won confidence immediately and made additional sales because people felt that he knew what he was talking about.

The superintendent of a big machinery concern found that his expense for cutting oils was constantly rising. Salesmen had followed salesmen, recommending magic brands of the stuff; yet each new barrel of oil seemed to do less work than the last—and cost more in dollars.

One day a new kind of visitor showed up and sent in the card of a large oil company. He was not a salesman, but an investigator of oil problems. The superintendent took him through the plant. He studied the work being done by screw-cutting machines, lathes and other equipment operated with cutting oil. Where salesmen had recommended brands without technical knowledge of either the work to be done or the composition of the oil, this stranger wrote specifications that cut down the percentage of costly lard oil used on some work; and he eliminated it altogether on others.

Moreover, he pointed out sheer losses of oil by picking up a handful of metal cuttings from a box, letting them drip, measuring the oil that accumulated and recommending a simple device for reclaiming that oil before the waste metal was sold.

People who purchase such products have been accustomed to meeting two different representatives of manufacturers: First, the salesman skilled in selling, but deficient in technical knowledge.

"This chap is here to see how much he can get out of me," said the prospective consumer to himself; and he was on his guard to see that the visitor got as little as possible, either in the way of orders or information.

The other representative came from the mechanical department to see how present equipment was running, or perhaps to "shoot trouble." He was long on technical knowledge, but probably dumb when it came to salesmanship.

"This fellow is here to help me out of my troubles," said the customer. "I'll see how much I can get out of him."

Presently manufacturers of equipment woke up to the fact that their mechanical men—inspectors and trouble shooters—had a basis of confidence which the salesman pure and simple was rapidly losing. Moreover, the technical man gained a knowledge of the customer's requirements that furnished the best foundation for selling new equipment.

The salesman discovered the technical man and went to him for tips on new equipment needed by customers whose plants he had visited. The technical man also discovered the salesman, for it was plain enough that equipment well sold—skillfully adjusted to the customer's needs—gave the least margin for trouble shooting.

So there has been a meeting of minds; and to-day the salesman studies the technicalities, and the technical man is learning salesmanship, and their boss is standing behind them both with a new policy. This is the policy of performance, not promises—service before sales. Under that policy the very terms salesmanship and sales department are beginning to disappear, to be replaced by new nomenclature, which more accurately indicates what a manufacturer's representative can do for the customer, and gives him access to the latter on the basis of confidence and good will.

How a Mighty Modern Industry Owed its Beginning to Gottfried Keller and a Wasp

BY PARKE F. HANLEY

On the day when President Wilson was inaugurated to his second term, this country had its fiftieth anniversary of the introduction of wood-pulp. Were it not for a series of lucky chances that developed into opportunity, this wood-pulp anniversary might have remained for our children's children.

Have you ever given thought to the accidentalism of many great discoveries? The element of haphazard is generally combined with a series of coincidences. Looking back over the developments that led to gigantic contributions to our civilization, one cannot fail to be struck by the coordination of events. Apparently there always has been a conspiracy of natural forces to compel men of thought and resourcefulness to add another asset to progress.

Your earliest school readers have been full of these—for instance, Watt and his steam-kettle, Franklin and his kite. Now the youngsters are reading that the Wrights derived a fundamental principle of aviation—the warping-tip—from the flight of crows. With the awe comes a disquieting thought. How far back should we be were it not for these fortuitous circumstances?

Among all the great things that have been given to the world in the last three-quarters of a century, few measure beside the wood-pulp industry. With its related trades and sciences, it is comprised within the ten great activities of mankind. In manufacture and distribution, it employs an army matching in size the Russian battle hordes. Its figures of investment and production are comparable to the debts of the great war.

Yet it remained for a wasp and Gottfried Keller to bring us out of the era of rag paper. Together, they saved us from a retardation of universal thought. Therefore, let us consider the agents.

Maeterlinck, who attributes emotions to plants and souls to bees, might wrap a drama of destiny about this insect. She would command a leading place in a cast which included the butterfly that gave silk to the world, the mosquito that helped to prove the germ theory of disease, and the caterpillar that loosed the apple which revealed the law of gravitation to Sir Isaac Newton.

As to Keller, he was a simple German, by trade a paper-maker and by avocation a scientist of sorts. One day in 1840—and this marks the beginning of the accidents—returning home from his mill, he trod upon the abandoned nest. Had not the tiny dwelling been deserted, he probably would have cherished nothing but bitter reflections about the irascibility of wasps. As it was, he stooped to see the ruin he had wrought.

The crushed nest lay soft in his hand, soft and pliable, and yet tough in texture. It was as soft as his own rag-made paper. It was not paper, and yet it was very much like paper. Crumbling It in his fingers, he decided that its material was wood-pulp.

Keller was puzzled to know how so minute a creature had welded wood into a paperlike nest. His state of mind passed to interest, thence to speculation, and finally to investigation. He carried his problem and its possibilities to his friend, Heinrich Voelter, a master mechanic. Together they began experiments. They decided to emulate the wasp. They would have to granulate the wood as she had done. The insect had apparently used spruce; they used spruce under an ordinary grindstone. Hot water served as a substitute for the wasp's salivary juices.

Their first attempts gave them a pulp astonishingly similar to that resulting from the choicest rags. They carried the pulp through to manufacture, with a small proportion of rags added—and they had paper. It was good paper, paper that had strength. They found that it possessed an unlooked-for advantage in its quick absorption of printing-ink.

Leaving Gottfried Keller and Voelter in their hour of success, we find, sixteen years afterward, two other Germans, Albrecht and Rudolf Pagenstecher, brothers, in the export trade in New York. They were pioneering in another field. They were shipping petroleum to Europe for those rising young business men, John D. and William Rockefeller. They were seeking commodities for import when their cousin, Alberto Pagenstecher, arrived from the fatherland with an interesting bit of news.

"A few weeks ago, in a paper-mill in the Hartz, I found them using a new process," he said. "They are making paper out of wood. It serves. Germany is printing its newspapers on wood-pulp paper."

To his cousins it seemed preposterous that wood could be so converted, but Alberto was convincing. He showed them Voelter's patent grants and pictures of the grinders. The Pagenstechers went to Germany, and when they returned they brought two of the grinders—crude affairs devised for the simple purpose of pressing wood upon a stone. They also brought with them several German mechanics.

A printer in New York, named Strang, had already secured the United States rights of the new process. He was engaged in the manufacture of calendered paper, and, therefore, had no occasion to use wood-pulp; so he was willing to surrender the patents in exchange for a small interest.

The Pagenstechers wanted water-power for their grinders, and they located their first mill beside Stockbridge Bowl, in Curtisville, now Interlaken, Massachusetts. On an outlay of eleven thousand dollars their mill was built and their machinery installed. Two or three trials, with cotton waste added to the ground wood, gave them their paper. Their first product was completed on the 5th of March, 1867.

It was a matter of greater difficulty to dispose of the stock. The trade fought against the innovation. Finally Wellington Smith, of the near-by town of Lee, Massachusetts, was persuaded to try it. Rag-paper had been selling at twenty-four cents a pound. Smith's mill still exhibits the first invoice with the Pagenstechers, which shows the purchase of wood-paper at eleven cents.

Manufacturers tumbled over themselves to get the benefit of the new process. The originators in this country held the patent rights until 1884, letting them out on royalties until that time. With each new plant the price of paper fell, until at one period it sold at one and a half cents a pound.

Trial had proved that spruce was the only suitable wood for the pulp. Until 1891 rags were combined in about one-quarter proportion. Then it was found that other coniferous woods might be used to replace the rags, after being submitted to what is called the sulfite process. In this treatment small cubes of wood, placed in a vat, have their resinous properties extracted, and the wood is disintegrated. A combination of ground and sulfite wood makes the paper now used for news-print.

As has been told, the primary advantage of the wood-pulp paper was its immediate absorption of ink. This made possible much greater speed in printing, and led in turn to the development of the great modern newspaper and magazine presses, fed by huge rolls of paper, which they print on both sides simultaneously. These wonderful machines have now reached the double-octuple stage—monsters capable of turning out no less than five thousand eight-page newspapers in a single minute, or three hundred thousand in an hour.

With the evolution from the flat-bed to the web or rotary presses there came further development in typesetting-machines—the linotype, the monotype, and others. With paper and presses brought to such simplification, newspapers have sprouted in every town, almost every village, and the total number of American periodicals is counted by tens of thousands. There are magazines that have a circulation of more than a million copies weekly. The leading daily newspapers in New York print anywhere from one hundred thousand copies to four times as many, and they can put extra editions on the streets at fifteen-minute intervals.

The annual production of wood-pulp in the United States and Canada is estimated by Albrecht Pagenstecher, the survivor of the innovators, to be worth nearly five hundred millions of dollars. Take into consideration the hundreds of thousands employed in the mills, the men who cut and bring in the raw product, the countless number in the printing, publishing, and distributing trades. Then hark back to the accident that put the wasp's nest under the toe of Gottfried Keller!

(Providence Journal)

One zinc-etching illustration reproducing an old wood-cut of the ship, with the caption, "The Savannah, First Steamship That Crossed the Ocean."

(7-column head)

One hundred years ago this week there was launched at New York the ship Savannah, which may be called the father of the scores of steamers that are now carrying our soldiers and supplies from the New World to the Old World.

The Savannah was the first ship equipped with steam power to cross the Atlantic ocean. It made the trip in 25 days, using both sails and engine, and the arrival of the strange craft at Liverpool was the cause of unusual stir among our English cousins. Like every step from the beaten path the idea of steam travel between the New World and the Old World was looked upon with much scepticism and it was not until about 20 years later that regular, or nearly regular, steamer service was established.

The ship, which was built by Francis Fickett, was 100 feet long, 28 feet broad and 14 feet deep. It had three masts which, of course, were of far greater importance in making progress toward its destination than was the steam engine.

Capt. Rogers had gained a reputation for great courage and skill in sailing. He had already had the honor of navigating the sea with a steamer, taking the New Jersey from New York to the Chesapeake in 1816, a voyage which was then thought to be one of great danger for such a vessel.

It was natural, then, that he was especially ambitious to go down in history as the first master of a steam ship to cross the ocean. As soon as the vessel had been purchased by the Savannah ship merchants, the work of installing the engine was begun. This was built by Stephen Vail of Speedwell, N.J., and the boiler by David Dod of Elizabeth, N. J.

The paddle-wheels were made of iron and were "detachable," so that the sections could be removed and laid on the deck. This was done when it was desired to proceed under canvas exclusively and was also a precaution in rough weather.

In short, the Savannah was an auxiliary steamer, a combination of steam and sail that later became well known in shipping. This is much like the early development of the gasoline marine engine, which was an auxiliary to the sail, a combination that is still used.

Capt. Rogers took the boat from New York to Savannah in eight days and 15 hours, using steam on this trip for 41½ hours. On May 26, 1819, under Capt. Rogers, the Savannah set sail from her home port for Liverpool and made the trip in 25 days.

As long as the trip took, the voyage was considerably shorter than the average for the sailing ship in 1819, and this reduction in time was accomplished in spite of the fact that the Savannah ran into much unfavorable weather. Capt. Rogers used steam on 18 of the 25 days and doubtless would have resorted to engine power more of the time except for the fact that at one stage of the voyage the fuel was exhausted.