PART VIII

A MAN AMONG MEN

The new management employs not only science but humanity, and by humanity I do not mean merely or chiefly sympathy but rather a larger thing, the recognition that all men, regardless of race, origin or experience, have powers for greater things than have been believed.-Ida M. Tarbell.

Man efficiency is today of far greater importance than the further development of machine efficiency.-JAMES LOGAN, General Manager, United States Envelope Company.

Learn to work with your fellows. It is not enough that you should tolerate them and avoid wronging them. It is not enough that you should mind your own business and be selfsupporting. Civilization has been created and is carried on by team-work. Get into the game. Take your part in the great collective struggle to make life more worth while.PROFESSOR FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.

CHAPTER XXIV

TEAM-WORK

If I had not been able to get along with people I would not have been able to get on in this world.-LORD Kitchener.

Business Today Beyond the One-Man Stage

The business man who renders himself effective in all the phases of personal management hitherto discussed thereby completes successive stages in a conquering offensive. Even so, full victory may yet be denied him. His final test, which must be passed if he is to achieve notable rank in business, can be well set before us through an incident drawn from the early career of the late Mr. Frank Woolworth, the chain store magnate.

It was in 1886, that Mr. Woolworth, having demonstrated in a small way up-state the feasibility of the five-and-ten-cent chain stores, opened a tiny office in New York at 104 Chambers Street, at $25 a month rent. Here he worked almost day and night, personally answering his correspondence, making leases for the various promising locations he had investigated, buying for all his stores, and doing all his own bookkeeping. But these overstrenuous efforts soon told upon his health. Although he was a large-framed man of above-average height, his weight at the time he was running the New York office single-handed fell off to 135 pounds, and an attack of typhoid fever with which he was soon stricken rendered him. for eight weeks unable to attend to business at all.

"This experience taught me a lesson," said Mr. Woolworth. "Up till then I thought I must attend to everything myself. But now I indulged in the luxury of a bookkeeper and I also, at great effort, broke myself of the conceit that I

could buy goods, display goods, run stores and do everything else more efficiently than any man associated with me. That really marked the beginning of my success and enabled me to expand in a large way. From then on I confined my attention to important matters, to looking ahead, thinking up new plans, giving instructions to other people, placing responsibilities on them, and contenting myself with general supervision of the conduct of the business. So many thousands of merchants never get over the conceit that they must do everything themselves, with the result that they struggle along in one little

store.

"A business is like a snowball. One man can easily push it along for a while, but the snowball becomes so large if pushed ahead that help must be obtained to roll it—and if you don't keep rolling it, it will soon melt."

Reaching the Consumer

The field in which Mr. Woolworth operated was merchandising; it is pertinent to observe to what extent his experience was typical. Let us examine the various channels of distribution by means of which commodities are transferred from producer to consumer, our aim being to note the present tendencies in merchandising with respect to the one-man business. (See Figure 33.)

The usual channel of distribution is designated by (1) in the diagram. The manufacturer turns over his products to a limited number of selling agencies, who in turn pass them along to a larger number of jobbers, who dispose of the merchandise in turn to a still larger number of retailers, who supply the ultimate consumers.

The feature here is the growth of the large-scale department store. The old-fashioned general store of the country crossroads supplied nearly every line of merchandise which the limited wants of its community demanded. The increased