ich has at its head an
astonishingly buoyant and optimistic--and, it is hardly necessary to
add, successful--man, teaches that character is nine-tenths of success
in salesmanship and technique is only one-tenth. They study technique
and character along with it, in a scientific way, like the students in
a biological laboratory who examine specimens. Their prospects are their
subjects, and while they do not actually bring them into the
consultation room, they hold experience meetings and tell the stories of
their successful and unsuccessful contacts. The meetings are held at the
end of the day, when the men are all tired and many of them are
depressed and discouraged. They are opened with songs, "My Old Kentucky
Home," "Old Black Joe," "Sweet Adeline," and the other good old familiar
favorites that make one think of home and mother and school days and
happiness. One or two catchy popular songs are introduced, and the men
sing or hum or whistle or divide into groups and do all three with all
their might. It is irresistible. Fifteen or twenty minutes of it can
wipe out the sourest memory of the day's business, and trivial
irritations sink to their proper place in the scheme of things. The
little speeches follow, and the men clap and cheer for the ones who have
done good work and try to make an intelligent diagnosis of the cases of
the ones who have not. When the leader talks he sometimes recounts his
early experiences--he, like most good salesmanagers, was once on the
road himself--and if he is in an inspirational mood, gives a sound talk
on the principle back of the golden rule. The spirit of cooeperation
throughout the institution is amazing and the morale is something any
group of workers might well envy them.

Most business houses recognize their responsibilities toward the young
people that they hire. Well-organized concerns build up from within. The
heads of the departments are for the most part men who have received
their training in the institution, and they take as much pains in
selecting their office boys as they do in selecting any other group, for
it is in them that they see the future heads and assistant heads of the
departments. In hiring office boys "cleanness, good manners, good
physique, mental agility, and good habits are primary requisites,"
according to Mr. J. Ogden Armour in the _American Magazine_.

In one of the oldest banks in New York each boy who enters is given a
few days' intensive training by a