A SALESMAN’S MEMORY.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIII, 17 May 1922, Page 1

A SALESMAN’S MEMORY.

(By John Lee). An interesting American has been a visitor to London lately. Forty-five years ago, he said, it fell to him to come to London as a missionary. He came to convert the heathen to the use of the typewriter. It was uphill work. He tramped the streets round the Royal Exchange, entered office after office and explained the beauties and the excellencies of this strange machine wllicli would write letters in clear type. He was received courteously, lie said, but not enthusiastically. All manner of objections were raised. “Just look at these ledgers,” said some of the men he interviewed. “Can you honestly say that a typewriter could turn out work as neatly as this writing?” Other critics took a different line. “I don’t think a really intimate letter should be written on a typewriting machine. It takes all the heart out of it. You know a lot of my letters have to be written by a. really confidential clerk.. Some of them I write myself. Life won’t be worth living if one’s secrets get into a machine like that. You can’t have your privacy robbed that way.”

Another well-known public man pointed out that it would be an expensive luxury. “You can’t expect me, with all I have to do, to work the niachine myself. I suppose I should have to hire a woman to work it. Now that’s going too. far. The world is coming to pieces with this Government, but I must draw the line somewhere, and I won’t have women in my office on any account. The idea is repulsive.”

It was a grim task, but he persevered. Our American friend succeeded at last in “fixing up” a typewriter in a certain insurance office. He called almost daily to see how it was getting on, and found it in excellent health — and rarely used. One of the managers declared that he had a dozen clerks who could write faster than “that Yankee affair,” and more than that, “they can write in books, which the machine will never do.”

He visited a lawyer’s office one day. The lawyer was very genial, but treated it all as a joke. “I say,-my young American friend, have you ever seen a brief?” The American declared that he had never had that privilege. “Look at this one,” said the lawyer, “and tell me, do you imagine that a writing machine will ever be trusted to do work like that?” The American loved to tell these and many other stories. Then he would close his eyes and! enter into a sort of reverie.

“And now,” he said, “wherever I go I can hear the beautiful music—the beautiful music of the click-clicking. Forty-five years ago. AVhat a revolution I”