COST OF HUSTLE

Southland Times, Issue 19345, 10 September 1924, Page 15

COST OF HUSTLE

WORRY AND LESS EFFICIENCY. CONVERTED (By Shaw Desmond, who contrasts British and American methods). LONDON, June 22. Dozens of shrewd American business men are “Wembleying” with a purpose—that of comparing American methods with British. “We are giving up ‘hustling,’ ” a Chicago friend said to me. “It doesn't pay. We’ve just discovered that the Britisher does more in a seven-hour day than we do in a ten.”

The man who with Pierpont Morgan steered the United States through its last banking crisis told me at the Savoy that, although he is at his desk in Wall street at 9 a.m., he leaves at 4. “Hustling for bustling’s sake has been America’s curse. Hustling means brain worry, heart worry, and loss of energy.” A fashionable New York society woman, one of the famous “Four Hundred,” was expansive at Claridge’s last week. “I can buy a dress in Regent street for half what it would cost me in Fifth Avenue,” she said. “The dress I am wearing would cost me £125 in New York. Here is the bill which came this afternoon.” She showed a bill for 50 guineas from a well-known house specialising in silks. “Your business methods must be better than ours to make such prices,” she went on. “And, then, the London house gives better service. Unobtrusive. Not so much fuss. One reason”—she laughed ruefully enough—“one reason why I am taking my trunks back to New York packed with English clothes. They sell you things here before you know it.” Her husband, by her side, also laughed ruefully as he thought of a depleted purse. “But, say,” he suddenly erupted, “have you ever heard of the telephone over here?” NEEDLESS TELEPHONE CALLS. “Getting through a ’phone call is like getting into heaven,” he went on. “Hardly a private house has a telephone in a bedroom. Even your business people don’t’ like using the ’phone if they can help it.” The man who was having a cup of afternoon tea with him and his wife, one of America’s first statisticians and the mathematical genius of the largest insurance company in America at Newark, New Jersey, who had hitherto said nothing, suddenly woke up. “And a good thing, too,” he said. “I have taken the trouble to make a calculation in a certain New York office, and discovered that of seventy-eight messages over the ’phone during that time, over fifty were superfluous and time-wasters. “Morning, noon and night the telephone is going. It is the biggest time-waster on the American continent. The ’phone is so handy —the temptation to use it for trifles that don’t matter extreme.” “We concentrate all the time,” said an American publisher to me. “You concentrate sometimes. That’s the main difference between America and England’s business as I see it over here.” “The secret of business success is the three ‘P’s,’ ” asserted a Chicago provision merchant from Michigan Boulevard, whose shop I had visited in the States. “Push, Pep, and Publicity. The British Empire hasn’t learned that yet.” The American is governed by three axioms in all his business boosting: (1) have the right article; (2) advertise it; and (3) keep on advertising it I He is great on the “cumulative advertisement”; that is, he believes in hammering on the advertisement iron until it is hot.

Behind the boosting there is that “business science” of which he rightly boasts, and for the teaching of which he is now establishing business colleges and giving business degrees. “British advertising,” said the head of the New York Advertisers to me, ‘fis haphazard. It lacks system. On the other hand, you must not kill your initiative by system. That is our golden rule.” But is not the American advertising sometimes too megaphonic ? I asked this very meeting of advertising experts, whilst I counted three, to give me six advertisements from Broadway hoardings—and all I got was a single advertisement, that of a famous chewinggum, which has living figures 20ft high, amidst a sort of Crystal Palace fireworks display. “I have been studying Imperial business methods at Wembley,” said a Philadelphia publicity expert, “and would put the difference between English and American methods in this way: “The performance of American business is sometimes behind the promise, whilst the English performance is generally a little better than the promise.’ ”