Project Gutenberg''''s The Book of Business Etiquette, by Nella Henney potx

Project Gutenberg's The Book of Business Etiquette, by Nella HenneyThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.. It would be a plea

Project Gutenberg's The Book of Business Etiquette, by Nella Henney

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The Book of

BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING

CITY, N Y

First Edition

RESPECTFULLY

(AS BEFITS AN AUTHOR)

TO THREE BUSINESS MEN

It would be a pleasure to call over byname and thank individually the businessmen and the business organizations that sograciously furnished the material uponwhich this little book is based But theauthor feels that some of them will notagree with all the statements made and theinferences drawn, and for this reason isunable to do better than give this meagerreturn for a service which was by nomeans meager

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

CHAPTER PAGE

Congress lists NellaHenney as the author.

PART I

THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

he is not without the noble (and ignoble)qualities which have characterized thetribe of man since the world began.America, in common with other countries,

has had distinguished statesmen andsoldiers, authors and artists—and theyhave not all gone to their gravesunhonored and unsung—but the hero storywhich belongs to her and to no one else isthe story of the business man.

Nearly always it has had its beginning

in humble surroundings, with a little boyborn in a log cabin in the woods, in awretched shanty at the edge of a field, in acrowded tenement section or in the slums

of a foreign city, who studied and worked

by daylight and firelight while he made hisliving blacking boots or selling papersuntil he found the trail by which he couldclimb to what we are pleased to callsuccess Measured by the standards ofGreece and Rome or the Middle Ages,

when practically the only form ofachievement worth mentioning wasfighting to kill, his career has not been aromantic one It has had to do not withdragons and banners and trumpets, butwith stockyards and oil fields, withrailroads, sewer systems, heat, light, andwater plants, telephones, cotton, corn, ten-cent stores and—we might as well make aclean breast of it—chewing gum.

We have no desire to crown thebusiness man with a halo, though judgingfrom their magazines and from the storieswhich they write of their own lives, theyare almost without spot or blemish Most

of them seem not even to have had faults

to overcome They were born perfect.Now the truth is that the methods of

accomplishment which the Americanbusiness man has used have not alwaysbeen above reproach and still are not Atthe same time it would not be hard toprove that he—and here we are speaking

of the average—with all his faults andfailings (and they are many), with all hisvirtues (and he is not without them), issuperior in character to the business men

of other times in other countries Thiswithout boasting It would be a great pity

if he were not

Without trying to settle the question as

to whether he is good or bad (and hereally can be pigeon-holed no better thanany one else) we have to accept this: He

is the biggest factor in the Americancommonwealth to-day It follows then,

naturally, that what he thinks and feelswill color and probably dominate theideas and the ideals of the rest of thecountry Numbers of our magazines—andthey are as good an index as we have tothe feeling of the general public—aregiven over completely to the service orthe entertainment of business men (the T.

B M.) and an astonishing amount of space

is devoted to them in most of the others

It may be, and as a matter of factconstantly is, debated whether all this isgood for the country or not We shall not

go into that It has certainly been good forbusiness, and in considering the men whohave developed our industries we have totake them, and maybe it is just as well, asthey are and not as we think they ought to

There was a time when the farmer wasthe principal citizen And the politicianingratiated himself with the people bydeclaring that he too had split rails andfollowed the plow, had harvested grainand had suffered from wet spells and dryspells, low prices, dull seasons, hungerand hardship This is still a pretty sureway to win out, but there are others If hecan refer feelingly to the days when heworked and sweated in a coal mine, in aprinting shop, a cotton, wool, or silk mill,steel or motor plant, he can hold his ownwith the ex-farmer's boy We have become

a nation of business men Even the “dirt”farmer has become a business man—hehas learned that he not only has to

produce, he must find a market for hisproduct.

In comparing the business man of thepresent with the business man of the past

we must remember that he is living in amore difficult world Life wascomparatively simple when men dressed

in skins and ate roots and had their homes

in scattered caves They felt no need for acode of conduct because they felt no needfor one another They depended not onhumanity but on nature, and perhaps humanbrotherhood would never have come tohave a meaning if nature had not provedtreacherous She gave them berries andbananas, sunshine and soft breezes, butshe gave them trouble also in the shape ofwild beasts, and savages, terrible

droughts, winds, and floods In order tofight against these enemies, strength wasnecessary, and when primitive mendiscovered that two were worth twice asmuch as one they began to join forces.This was the beginning of civilization and

of politeness It rose out of the oldestinstinct in the world—self-preservation

When men first organized into groupsthe units were small, a mere handful ofpeople under a chief, but gradually theybecame larger and larger until the nations

of to-day have grown into a sort of worldcommunity composed of separatecountries, each one supreme in its owndomain, but at the same time bound to theothers by economic ties stronger thansentimental or political ones could ever

be People are now more dependent onone another than they have ever beenbefore, and the need for confidence isgreater We cannot depend upon oneanother unless we can trust one another.

The American community is in manyrespects the most complex the world hasever seen, and the hardest to manage Inother countries the manners have been thenatural result of the national development.The strong who had risen to the top in thestruggle for existence formed themselvesinto a group The weak who stayed at thebottom fell into another, and the bulk ofthe populace, which, then as now, camesomewhere in between, fell into a third orwas divided according to standards of itsown Custom solidified the groups into

classes which became so strengthened byyears of usage that even when formaldistinctions were broken down thebarriers were still too solid for a manwho was born into a certain group toclimb very easily into the one above him.Custom also dictated what was expected

of the several classes Each must begracious to those below and deferential tothose above The king, because he wasking, must be regal The nobility must,

noblesse oblige, be magnificent, and as

for the rest of the people, it did not mattermuch so long as they worked hard andstayed quiet There were upheavals, ofcourse, and now and then a slave with abraver heart and a stouter spirit than hiscompanions incited them to rebellion Hishead was chopped off for his pains and he

was promptly forgotten The majority ofthe people for thousands of years honestlybelieved that this was the only orderlybasis upon which society could beorganized.

Nebulous ideas of a brotherhood, inwhich each man was to have an equalchance with every other, burned brightlyfor a little while in various parts of theworld at different times, and flickered out.They broke forth with the fury of anexplosion in France during the Revolutionand in Russia during the Red Terror Theyhave smoldered quietly in some placesand had just begun to break through with asteady, even flame But America struck thematch and gathered the wood to start herown fire She is the first country in the

world which was founded especially topromote individual freedom and thebrotherhood of mankind She had, tochange the figure slightly, a blue-print tostart with and she has been building eversince.

Her material came from the easternhemisphere The nations there at the timewhen the United States was settled were

at different stages of their development.Some were vigorous with youth, somewere in the height of their glory, and somewere dying because the descendants of themen who had made them great were futileand incapable These nations weredifferent in race and religion, in thought,language, traditions, and temperament.When they were not quarreling with each

other, they were busy with domesticsquabbles They had kept this up forcenturies and were at it when the settlerslanded at Jamestown and later when the

Mayflower came to Plymouth Rock Yet,

with a cheerful disregard of the past and

an almost sublime hope in the future theyexpected to live happily ever after theycrossed the Atlantic Ocean Needless toadd, they did not

Accident of place cannot change aman's color (though it may bleach it ashade lighter or tan it a shade darker), norhis religion nor any of the other racial andinherent qualities which are the result ofslow centuries of development And thesame elements which made men fight inthe old countries set them against each

other in the new Most of the antagonismswere and are the result of prejudices,foolish narrow prejudices, which,nevertheless, must be beaten down before

we can expect genuine courtesy

Further complications arose, and arestill arising, from the fact that we did notall get here at the same time Those whocame first have inevitably and almostunconsciously formulated their ownsystem of manners Wherever there iscommunity life and a certain amount ofleisure there is a standard of cultivatedbehavior And America, young as she is,has already accumulated traditions of herown

It is beyond doubt that the men whocame over in the early days were, as a

rule, better timber than the ones who comenow They came to live and die, ifnecessary, for a religious or a politicalprinciple, for adventure, or like thedebtors in Oglethorpe's colony in Georgia,

to wipe clean the slate of the past andbegin life again To-day they come tomake money or because they think theywill find life easier here than it waswhere they were And one of the chiefreasons for the discontent and unrest (and,incidentally, rudeness) which prevailsamong them is that they find it hard Weare speaking in general terms There areglorious exceptions

The sturdy virtues of the pioneers didnot include politeness They never do Solong as there is an animal fear of existence

man cannot think of minor elegances Hecannot live by bread alone, but he cannotlive at all without it Bread must comefirst And the Pilgrim Father was too busylearning how to wring a living from theforbidding rocks of New England withone hand while he fought off the Indianswith the other to give much time to teaparties and luncheons Nowhere inAmerica except in the South, where theleisurely life of the plantations gaveopportunity for it, was any great attentionpaid to formal courtesy But everywhere,

as soon as the country had been tamed andprosperity began to peep over the horizon,the pioneers began to grow polite Theyhad time for it

What we must remember—and this is a

reason, not an excuse, for bad manners—

is that these new people coming into thecountry, the present-day immigrants, arepioneers, and that the life is not an easyone whether it is lived among awilderness of trees and beasts in a forest

or a wilderness of men and buildings in acity The average American brings a goodmany charges against the foreigner—some

of them justified, for much of the wash” of Europe and Asia has drifted intoour harbor—but he must remember this:Whatever his opinion of the immigrantmay be the fault is ours—he came into thiscountry under the sanction of our laws.And he is entitled to fair and courteoustreatment from every citizen who livesunder the folds of the American flag

“back-The heterogeneous mixture whichmakes up our population is a seriousobstacle (but not an insuperable one) inthe way of courtesy, but there is anothereven greater The first is America'sproblem The second belongs to theworld.

Material progress has raced so farahead of mental and spiritual progress thatthe world itself is a good many years inadvance of the people who are living in it.Our statesmen ride to Washington inautomobiles and sleeping cars, but theyare not vastly preferable to those whowent there in stagecoaches and onhorseback In other words, there has beenconsiderably more improvement in thevehicles which fill our highways than

there has been in the people who ride inthem.

The average man—who is, when all issaid and done, the most important person

in the state—has stood still while thecurrents of science and invention haveswept past him He has watched the work

of the world pass into the keeping ofmachines, shining miracles of steel andelectricity, and has forgot himself inworshipping them Now he is beginning torealize that it is much easier to make aperfect machine than it is to find a perfectman to put behind it, and that man himself,even at his worst (and that is pretty bad) isworth more than anything else in thescheme of created things

This tremendous change in environment

resulting from the overwhelmingdomination of machinery has broughtabout a corresponding change in manners.For manners consist, in the main, ofadapting oneself to one's surroundings.And the story of courtesy is the story ofevolution.

It is interesting to run some of ourconventions back to their origin Nearlyevery one of them grew out of a practicaldesire for lessening friction or making lifepleasanter The first gesture of courtesywas, no doubt, some form of greeting bywhich one man could know another as afriend and not an enemy They carriedweapons then as habitually as they carrywatches to-day and used them asfrequently, so that when a man approached

his neighbor to talk about the prospects ofthe sugar or berry crop he held out hisright hand, which was the weapon hand,

as a sign of peace This eventually becamethe handshake Raising one's hat is a relic

of the days of chivalry when knights worehelmets which they removed when theycame into the house, both because theywere more comfortable without them andbecause it showed their respect for theladies, whom it was their duty to serve.And nearly every other ceremony whichhas lasted was based on common sense

“Etiquette,” as Dr Brown has said, “withall its littlenesses and niceties, is foundedupon a central idea of right and wrong.”

The word “courtesy” itself did notcome into the language until late (etiquette

came even later) and then it was used todescribe the polite practices at court Itwas wholly divorced from any idea ofcharacter, and the most fastidiousgentlemen were sometimes the mostcomplete scoundrels Even the authors ofbooks of etiquette were men of greatsuperficial elegance whose moralstandards were scandalously low One ofthem, an Italian, was banished from courtfor having published an indecent poemand wrote his treatise on polite behaviorwhile he was living in enforced retirement

in his villa outside the city It wastranslated for the edification of the youngmen of England and France and served as

a standard for several generations.Another, an Englishman, spent the lateryears of his life writing letters to his

illegitimate son, telling him exactly how toconduct himself in the courtly (and more

or less corrupt) circles to which his noblerank entitled him The letters were boundinto a fat, dreary volume which still sits

on the dust-covered shelves of many alibrary, and the name of the author hasbecome a synonym for exquisite manners.Influential as he was in his own time,however, neither he nor any of the others

of the early arbiters of elegance could sethimself up as a dictator of what is polite

to American men, of no matter what class,and get by with it Not very far by, at anyrate

It is impossible now to separatecourtesy and character Politeness is afundamental, not a superficial, thing It is

the golden rule translated into terms ofconduct It is not a white-wash which, iflaid on thick enough, will cover everydefect It is a clear varnish which showsthe texture and grain of the wood beneath.

In the ideal democracy the ideal citizen isthe man who is not only incapable ofdoing an ungallant or an ungracious thing,but is equally incapable of doing anunmanly one There is no use lamentingthe spacious days of long ago Wishing forthem will not bring them back Ourproblem is to put the principles ofcourtesy into practice even in this hurriedand hectic Twentieth Century of ours Andsince the business man is in numbers, andperhaps in power also, the mostconsequential person in the country, it is

of most importance that he should have a