AN AMERICAN PARABLE

Evening Star, Issue 12397, 10 January 1905, Page 5

AN AMERICAN PARABLE

Old Goroon. Graham, the Self-made Merchant of Chicago, in writing another of Ms Inimitable letters to his son, relates in 'Pearson's Magazine' the following characteristic parable:—

"Some years ago I knew a Ann who did business under the name of Foreman and Sowers. They were a regular business vaudeville team—one big and broad-g*uged in all his ideas, the other unable to think in anything but boya' and misses' sizes. Foreman believed that men got rich in dollars; Sowers, in cents. Of course, you can do it either way; but the first needs brains, and the Second only hands. It's been my experience that the best way is to go after both; the dollars and the cents. "Well, sir, these fellows launched a specialty, a mighty good thing—the Peepo' Daisy Breakfast Food—and started in to advertise. Sowers wanted to use inch space and sell single cases. Foreman kicked because full pages weren't bigger, and wanted to sell in car-lots, leaving the case trade to the jobbers. Sowers only half beliercd in himself, and only a quarter in the food, and only

■ —An Eighth in Advertising.— So he used to go home nights and lay awake with a living picture exhibit of himself being kicked out of his store by the sheriff, and out of his house by tlie'landlord, and, finally, oft the corner where he was standing with his luit out for pennies by the policeman. He hadn't a big enough imagination even to introduce into this last picture a sport dropping a dollar into his hat. But Foreman had a pretty good opinion of himself, and a mighty big opinion, of the food, ami ho believed that a clever, well-knit ad. was strong enough to draw toeth. So he would go home and build steam yachts and country places in his sleep. Naturally, the next morning Sowers would come down haggard and gloomy, and grow gloomier as he went deeper into the mail, and saw how small th 9 orders were. But Foreman would start, out as brisk and busy as a hummingbird, tap the advertising agent for a new line of credit on his -way down to the office, and extract honey and hope from every letter. Sowers begged him, day by day, to stop the useless fight and save the remains of their business. But Foreman simply laughed Said there wouldn't be any.remains when he was ready to quit. Allowed that he believed in cremation, anyway, and that tlte only way to fix a brand on the mind of the people was to burn it in with money. Sowers worried along a few days more, and then one night, after he had been buried in the potter's field, he planned a final stroke to stop Foreman, who. he believed, didn't know just how deep in they really were. Foreman was in. a particularly jolly mood the next morning, fur lie spent the "night —Bidding Against Picrpont Morgan—at an auetion of old masters; but he listened patiently whilo Sdwers called off the figures in a sort of dirge-like sing-song, and until he Lid wailed out his final note of despair, a brass-drum crash, which he 'thought would bring Foreman to a realising sense of their loss, so to speak. 'That,' Sowers wound up, ' makes a grand total of 800,000 dollars that wo have already lost.' Foreman's head drooped, and for a moment ho was deep in thought, while Kowers stood over him, Kid, but triumphant in the feeling that he had at last brought this madman to his senses, now that his dollars were gone. ' Eight hundred thou. !' the senior partner repeated mechanically. Then, looking up with a bright srnijfo, he exclaimed: ' Why, old man, that kaves us two hundred thousand still to spend before we hit the million mark.' They say that Sowers could only gibber back at him, and Foreman kept right on, and managed some way to float himself on to the million mark. There the tide turned, and after all these years it's still running his way, and Sowers, against his better judgment, is a millionaire."