Twenty-five years ago the very worst men that I had anything to do with in my travels as a lecturer were the traveling salesmen. They were full of all manner of evil suggestions. They always took me for a salesman, and would call me up in the night to come down and play poker or have a drink. Once they sent a bottle of whisky up to my room as a compliment from other salesmen, thinking I too was a salesman. Once a salesman staggered on to a New York ferry so intoxicated that he could hardly manage his satchels. He finally fell into a seat, and seeing me with my two satchels he said, "Partner, won't you wake me up when I get across to New York?" He went sound asleep, and by the time we reached Twenty-third Street it was difficult to awaken him. I had to shake him, finally did awaken him, and balanced him, and as he stepped off the boat he turned and said to me, "I've got a pretty heavy jag on, but you know how it is yourself!" Each salesman thought every other salesman "knew how it was himself." I protested with one salesman in Illinois, and said: "I cannot believe that is good business; I think you will be sorry you took advantage of the farmers." They were boasting they had done so. That salesman said: "You cannot sell goods unless you can overreach men. You have to lie and keep lying until you sell the goods." That salesman quoted as an illustration the case of the salesman who was arrested for murder and tried in the court. When they asked him to plead, he pleaded "Guilty," and the judge said, "Gentlemen of the jury, you do not need to go out to bring in your verdict, you hear what he said about it." Then when the jury gave their verdict as "Not guilty," the judge looked at them and said, "Did you not hear him say that he was guilty?" "Yes," said the foreman, "but you can't believe a word a traveling salesman says!"
Anyhow they were the most unprincipled class of people I have ever traveled with. I was ashamed to be seen in their company because I did not wish to inform them that I was a preacher. I learned many things about dishonest methods I never knew before. But it has all changed since then. The very best class of people that you now meet on the road are the traveling salesmen. The merchants have found out that that selfish way of dealing was only a loss to them, and that they should not overreach or cheat the farmers or the ignorant people of the city. One firm in Boston sent their salesman to Bradford, Pa., when I was lecturing there, and he seemed so weary when he came in to supper that I asked, "Did you sell a lot of goods?" He said, "Yes, I never sold so many in my life, but I did not sell a penny's worth for my firm in Boston." I asked him what he meant by that, and he said, "My firm in Boston tells me that if I arrive in a town and have spare time, I am to make sales for the local merchants whether they handle our line or not." And he canvassed the village as best he could to see how many orders he could get. He went out for the local groceryman and had canvassed the village, and he said he believed that man would be more than a week trying to deliver the orders he got for him that day, and not a penny did his firm make on it. I happened to know that firm, and had passed their little store in Boston, and now they are the largest firm in the wholesale business in the city of Boston. They have grown by being satisfied and by stopping at the Angel's Lily. They have been satisfied with reasonable profit; they have been willing to turn in and help some one else when they have gotten all they could honorably get from that community. The business that ever takes this middle course of commerce is the business that succeeds; and, anyhow, happiness is success whether you get much money or not.
One day a traveling salesman illustrated this thing to me at the Pennsylvania Station. There was a great excursion and a crowd there, and my train was within ten minutes of departing. There was such a crowd between me and the gateway I tried to look up some other way. A traveling salesman I had never seen before heard me, and said, “Do you need to get that train?” And I answered, "If it is possible!" Then he said, "Don't worry, step right up behind me, hold on to your satchel!" I stepped close to him, and then he stepped into the edge of the crowd. There was an old lady there with a basket on the floor, and he put forward his foot and moved the basket. She reached down and picked up the basket, and he stepped in the place where the basket had been. In front of him was a gentleman with an umbrella under his arm, and he took hold of the end of the umbrella and slightly moved it, and the man turned around to see what was going on, and he then stood edgewise and the salesman pushed in. So he went from one to another with deliberation, and finally asked the last man to step aside, and that man let me through, and then the salesman bade me good-bye and went his way. I have never known who did me that kindness, but I was in the train a minute before it started.
Successful life and successful business is the one that works like that; that touches the basket and moves that; that touches the umbrella and moves that; and steps inch by inch into the advanced places. That steady, permanent advance is a much better place in business than is any sudden speculation which overloads a man with responsibility and anxiety. The way to be happy in getting rich is to proceed in that steady and careful way.