Concerning Credit Men

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Title:     Concerning Credit Men
Author: Charles N. Crewdson [More Titles by Crewdson]

The credit man was the subject of our talk as a crowd of us sat, one Sunday afternoon, in the writing-room of the Palace Hotel at San Francisco. The big green palm in the center of the room cast, from its drooping and fronded branches, shadows upon the red rugs carpeting the stone floor. This was a peaceful scene and wholly unfitting to the subject of our talk.

"I would rather herd sheep in a blizzard," blurted out the clothing man, "than make credits. Yes, I would rather brake on a night way- freight; be a country doctor where the roads are always muddy; a dray horse on a granite-paved street; anything for me before being a credit man! It is the most thankless job a human being can hold. It is like being squeezed up against the dock by a big steamship. If you ship goods and they're not paid for, the house kicks; if you turn down orders sent in, the traveling man raises a howl. None of it for me. No, sir!"

"I have always been fairly lucky," spoke up the hat man. "I've never been with but two houses in my life and I've really never had any trouble with my credit men. They were both reasonable, broad-minded, quick-witted, diplomatic gentlemen. If a man's credit were doubtful in their minds, they would usually ask me about him, or even wire me, sometimes, if an order were in a rush, to tell them what I thought of the situation. And they would always pay attention to what I said."

"Well, you are one in a hundred," spoke out the clothing man. "You ought to shake hands with yourself. You don't know what a hard time I've had with the various men who've made credits on the goods I have sold.

"The credit man, you know, usually grows up from office boy to cashier, and from cashier to bookkeeper, from bookkeeper to assistant credit man and then to credit man himself. Most of them have never been away from the place they were born in, and about all they know is what they have learned behind the bars of their office windows. You couldn't, for all sorts of money, hire a man who has been on the road, to be a credit man. He can get his money lots easier as a salesman; he has a much better chance for promotion, too. Still, if the salesman could be induced to become a credit man, he would make the best one possible, because he would understand that the salesman himself can get closer to his customer than any one else and can find out things from him that his customer would not tell to any one else and, having been on the road himself, he would know that really about the only reliable source of information concerning a merchant is the salesman himself.

"When a merchant has confidence enough in a man to buy goods from him --and he will not buy goods from him unless he has that confidence--he will tell him all about his private affairs. He will tell him how much business he is doing, how much profit he is making, how much he owes, what are his future prospects, and everything of that kind. The credit man who was once a salesman would also know that these commercial agency books--the bibles of the average credit man--don't amount to a rap. For my own part, I wish old Satan had every commercial agency book on earth to chuck into the furnace, when he goes below, to roast the reporters for the agencies. A lot of them will go there because a lot of reports are simply outright slander. Commercial agencies break many a good merchant. The heads of the agencies aim to give faithful reports, but they haven't the means.

"Now, just for example, let me tell you what they did to a man who did one of my customers when he first started in business. This man had been a clerk for several years in a clothing store over in Wyoming. He was one of the kind that didn't spend his money feeding slot machines, but saved up $3,500 in cold, hard cash. This was enough for him to start a little clothing shack of his own.

"Now, Herbert was a straight, steady boy. I recommended him to my house for credit. He didn't owe a dollar on earth. He bought about five thousand dollars' worth of goods and was able to discount his bills, right from the jump. Now, what do you suppose one of the commercial agencies said about him? Mind you, he had for four or five years run his uncle's store. The uncle was sick and left things really in the hands of Herbert. The agency said he was worth not over five hundred dollars and that he was no good for credit.

"I, of course, learned of this through our office and I told Herbert all about it and insisted that he ought to get that thing straightened out. He said, when I spoke to him of it, 'Why, I did fill out the blanks that they sent in to me--told them the straight of it, exactly what I had, $3,500, and they surely reported it as I gave it to them.' 'No, they haven't done any such thing, Herbert, because I looked into the matter myself when I was last in your office.'

"Well, Herbert had no trouble in getting goods from the houses whose salesmen he knew real well, but he had to suffer the inconvenience of having a great many orders turned down that he placed--either that or else he was written that he would have to pay cash in advance before shipping. It caused him a whole lot of worry. The boy--well, he wasn't such a boy after all, he was nearly thirty years old and strictly capable--was worried about all this, and I saw it. I told him, 'Look here, Herbert, you must get this thing straightened up. You write the agencies again and tell them just how you stand and that you want them to give you the proper sort of a report.'

"It wasn't a great while before the representative of this agency came around. Herbert went at him hammer and tongs for not doing him justice--then what do you think that fellow did? Nothing!

"In spite of all this Herbert paid up all his bills all right and soon established his credit by being able to give references to first-class firms who stated that he paid them promptly. So, he became independent of the agencies altogether and when they asked him for any statement after that, he told them, 'Go to ----.' Now, of course, this wasn't the thing for him to do.

"A merchant should see that the commercial agencies give him a good report because, if he doesn't, he is simply cutting off his nose to spite his face. If he ever starts to open a new account with some house, the first thing the credit man of that concern will do, when he gets his order, will be to turn to his 'bibles' and see how the man is rated. These commercial agencies are going to say something about a man. That's the way they make their living. If they don't say something good, they will say something indifferent or positively bad. So, what's the merchant to do but truckle to them and take chances on their telling the truth about him?"

"Yes, you're right," chimed in the drygoods man, "but even then, try as hard as he will, the merchant can't get justice, sometimes. One of my customers, who is one of the most systematic business men I know of, for years and years had no report. Half the goods he bought was turned down simply because the agent in his town for the commercial agency was a shyster lawyer who had it in for him. And he had all he could do to retain his credit. Just to show you how good the man was in the opinion of those with whom he did business, let me say that right after he had had a big fire and had suffered a big loss, one firm wired him: 'Your credit is good with us for any amount. Buy what you will, pay when you can.'

"Well, sir, this man was mad as fire at the agencies, and for years and years he would have absolutely nothing to do with them, but I finally told him: 'Look here, Dick; now this thing is all right but there's no use fighting those fellows. Why don't you get what's coming to you?' And I talked him into the idea of getting out after a right rating, and told him how to go about it.

"One day, in another town where he had started a branch store, he met one of the representatives of the agency that had done him dirt, and said to him: 'Now, Mr. Man, I sometimes have occasion to know how various firms that I do business with over the country stand, and if it doesn't cost too much to have your book, I'd like to subscribe.' 'Well, that won't cost you a great deal,' said the agent. My friend subscribed for the agency book, and in the next issue he was reported as being worth from ten to twenty thousand dollars. Another agency soon chimed in and had him listed as worth from five to ten thousand and with third-grade credit. Now, one or the other of these wrong--and the truth of the matter is that both of them had slandered him for years; he hadn't made ten to twenty thousand dollars in ninety days. And just to show you how much good that rating did my friend, he soon began to receive circulars and catalogues galore from houses which, before that time, had turned him down."

"The worst feature of turning down an order," said the drygoods man, "is that when you have an order turned down you also have a customer turned away. I was waiting on a man in the house. He was from out West. He was about half through buying his bill. The account was worth over twelve thousand a year to me. He thought so much of my firm that he had his letters sent in my care and made our store his headquarters while in the city. One morning when he came in to get his mail I saw him open one of his letters and, as he read it, a peculiar expression came over his face. When he had read his mail I asked him if he was ready to finish up. He said to me, 'No, Harry, I want to go over and see your credit man.'

"I went with him. One of the old man's sons, who had just come back from college, had taken charge of the western credits. The old man would have been a great deal better off if he'd pensioned the kid and put one of the packers in the office, instead. My customer went up to the credit boy and said to him: 'Now, Mr. ----, I've just received a letter from home stating that you've drawn on me for three hundred and eighty-five dollars. What explanation have you to make of this, sir? I have always, heretofore, discounted every bill that I have bought from this establishment, and this bill for which you have drawn on me is not yet due.'

"'I'll look the matter up,' said the young credit man. He looked over his books a few minutes and then tried to make some sort of an explanation in a half-haughty kind of a way. My customer interrupted him right in the midst of his explanation and said, 'Well, you needn't say anything more about this, sir. Just see what I owe you.'

"This was looked up and my customer right then and there wrote his check for what he owed and said to me:

"'Old man, I'm mighty sorry to have to do this, but I cannot interpret this gentleman's conduct (pointing to the credit man) to mean anything but that my credit is no longer good here. I shall see if there is not some one else in the city who will trust me as I thought that this firm was willing to trust me. This thing hurts me!'

"I couldn't explain matters in any way, and my customer--and my friend!--walked out of the store and has never been back since. That piece of Tom foolery on the part of our snob of a credit man lost the house and me an account worth over twelve thousand dollars a year."

"That fellow," broke in the clothing man, "should have got the same dose that was once given a credit man in the house I used to work for. He had been turning down order after order on good people, for all of us boys. When we came home from our fall trip we were so dissatisfied that we got together and swore that we would not sign a contract with the house unless the credit man they had was fired. We all signed a written agreement to this effect. Also, we agreed, upon our honor, that if one of us was fired for taking the stand, we would all go.

"Now, you know, boys, it is the salesmen that make the house. The house may have a line of goods that is strictly it, but unless they have good salesmen on the road they might as well shut up shop. A salesman, of course, gets along a great deal better with a good line than he does with a poor one, but a wholesale house without a line of first-class representatives cannot possibly succeed. And the house knows this, you bet.

"Well, sir, I was the first salesman the old man struck to make a contract with for the next year. I, had been doing first rate, making a good salary and everything of that kind, and when the old man called me into the sweat-box, he said to me:

"'Well, I suppose we haven't very much to talk over. What you have done has been satisfactory to us, and I hope we've been satisfactory to you. If it suits you we will just continue your old contract.'

"'There will have to be one condition to it,' said I to the old man. 'Well, what's that?' 'I simply will not work for this establishment if the fool credit man that you have here is to continue. He has taken hundreds of dollars out of my pocket this year by turning down orders on good people who are worthy of credit. Now, it doesn't make any difference as to his salary if he turns down good people; in fact, if he is in doubt about any man at all, or even the least bit skittish, what does he do but turn him down? This is nothing out of his jeans, but it's taking shoes away from my babies, and I simply won't stand for it.'

"The long and short of it was that I didn't sign with the old man that day but he soon 'caved' after he had talked with a few more of the boys--one of whom told him point blank that we would all quit unless he gave the credit man his walking papers. And, you bet your life, the credit man went and today he is where he ought to be--keeping books at a hundred a month!"

"It is not alone against the credit man who turns down orders that I have a grudge," said the furnishing goods man, "but also against the fellow who monkeys with old customers. If there is anything that makes a customer sour it is to be drawn on by a firm that he has dealt with for a long time. Some of the merchants out in the country, you know, get themselves into the notion of thinking that the house they deal with really loves them. They don't know what a cold-blooded lot our houses really are. What they're all looking for is the coin and they don't care very much for a man when they believe he can't pay his bills. I know I never felt cheaper in my life than I did last trip. I went into an old customer's store and what should I see upon his shelves but another man's goods. I felt as if somebody had hit me between the eyes with a mallet, for he was a man I had nursed for four or five years and brought him up to be a good customer. He had a sort of a racket store when I started with him--groceries, tin pans, eggs, brooms, a bucket of raw oysters, and all that sort of stuff. One day I said to him, 'Why don't you throw out this junk and go more into the clothing and furnishing goods business? Lots cleaner business and pays a great deal more profit. Furthermore, this line of goods is sold on long datings and you can stretch your capital much further than in handling other lines.'

"Well, sir, he talked with me seriously about the matter and from that time on he began to drop out the tin pan and grocery end of his line. When I saw he was doing this, I asked him to let me have the hook in the ceiling from which for so long had swung his bunch of blackening bananas, so I could have a souvenir of his past folly! I had worked him up until his account was strictly a good one.

"In fact, he prospered so well with this store that after a while he had started another one. When he did this he, of course, stretched his capital a little and depended upon his old houses to take care of him. He had always discounted his bills in full, sometimes even anticipating payments and making extra discounts.

"I was tickled to sell him about twice as much as usual, on one of my trips. It was just ninety days after this when I got around again and saw the other fellow's goods in the store. When I looked at the strange labels I felt like some fellow had landed me one on the jaw. You know it hurts to lose a customer, especially if he is one that you have fed on the bottle and thinks a great deal of you personally.

"Well, when I saw the other stuff, all I could do was to march right up and say, 'Well, Fred, the other fellow's been getting in his work, I see. What's the matter? The sooner we get through with the unpleasant part of it, the better.' 'Now, there isn't anything the matter with you, old man,' said my customer. 'Come up here in the office. I want to show you how your house treated me.'

"And there he showed me a letter he had received from the house stating that he must pay up his old account before they would ship him any more goods; and the old bill was one which was dated May 1st, four months, and was not due until September 1st. They wrote him this before the first of June, at which time he was entitled to take off six per cent. He simply sent a check for what he owed them and, to be sure, wrote them to cancel his order. There was a good bill and a loyal customer gone--all on account of the credit man."

"Once in a while, though," said the shoe man, "you strike a fellow that will take a thing of this sort good-naturedly, but they are rare. I once had a customer down in Missouri who got a little behind with the house. The credit man wrote him just about the same sort of a letter that your man received, but my friend, instead of getting mad, wrote back a letter to the house, something like this:

"'Dear House: I've been buying goods from you for a long time. I have paid you as well as I knew how. You know I am pretty green. I started in life pulling the cord over a mule and when I made a little money at this I started a butcher shop. My neighbors who sold other stuff, drygoods and things of that sort, it looked to me didn't have much more sense than I, and they lived in nice houses and had sprinklers and flowers in their yards. So it looked to me like that was a good business to go into. I tried my hand at it and have got on fairly well. Of course, I have been a little slow, you know, being fool enough to think everybody honest and to do a credit business myself.

"'Now I really want to thank you for telling me I must pay up before I can get any more goods. I kind of look on you people as my friends, I have dealt with you so long, and if you are getting a little leery about me, why I don't know what in the world the other fellows that don't care anything about me must be beginning to think. When I got your letter telling me to pay up before you would ship the bill I had bought, I felt like I had run into a stone fence, but this lick over the head has really done me a whole lot of good and I am going to go a little more careful hereafter.

"'Just now I am not able to dig up all that I owe but here is my check for a hundred. Now, I want to keep out of the hole after this so you had better cut down the order I gave your man about a half. After all, the best friend that a man has is himself, and hereafter I am going to try a little harder to look after Number One.

"Yours truly,
"'__'"

"Another thing that makes it hard for us," said the furnishing man, "is to have the credit man so infernally long in deciding about a shipment, holding off and holding off, brooding and brooding, waiting and waiting, and wondering and wondering whether they shall ship or whether they shall not, and finally getting the notion to send the goods just about the time a man countermands his order. A countermand, you know, is always a pusher and I would advise any merchant who really wants to get goods, to place an order and then immediately countermand it. Whenever he does this the credit man will invariably beg him to take the stuff. Oh, they're a great lot, these credit men.

"I know I once sold a man who, while he was stretching his capital to the limit pretty far, was doing a good business and he wanted some red, white, and blue neckties for Fourth of July trade. I had sold him the bill in the early part of May. About the 2Oth of June, I received a letter from the credit man asking me to write him further information about my man. Well, I gave it to him. I sent him a telegram that read like this: 'Ship this man today by express sure. Heavens alive, he is good. You ought to make credits for a coffin house for a while.'"

"The credit man is usually bullet-headed about allowances for another thing," said the shoe man. His kind will fuss around about making little allowances of a couple of dollars that come out of the house and never stop to think we often spend that much on sundries twice over every day. I had a man a great while ago to whom I had sold a case of shoes that were not at all satisfactory. I could see that they were not when I called upon him and I simply told him right out, 'Look here, Mark, this stuff isn't right. Now, I wish to square it. What will make this right?' 'Oh,' he said, 'I don't think these shoes are worth within two dollars a dozen of what you charged me.' 'No, they're not worth within three dollars,' said I. 'I will just give you a credit bill for three dollars and call it square.' It was nothing more than right because the stuff was bum.

"I came into the house soon after this and, passing the credit memo, into the office, the credit man howled as if I were pulling his jaw tooth. It hurt him to see that little three dollars go on the profit and loss account. 'Well, I won't insist upon it,' said I. 'I will just ask the man to return the goods.' 'All right,' he said.

"When I wrote out to my man, I told him the truth about the matter,-- that the house had howled a little because I had made the credit allowance, and to just simply fire the stuff right back, but not to forget to ask that he be credited with the amount of freight which he had already paid on the case of shoes. It was just a small item, but what do you think the credit man said when I showed him my customer's letter, asking for the freight?'

"He said, 'Well, that fellow's mighty small.'"

"I have never had any of these troubles that you boys are talking about," said the hat man.

"Lucky boy! Lucky boy!" spoke up the clothing man in his big, heavy voice.

"Yes, you bet," chimed in the others.

"It's a strange thing to me," chimed in the clothing man, "that credit men do not exercise more common sense. Now, there is one way, and just one way, in which a credit department can be properly conducted. The credit man and the man on the road must work in double harness and pull together. The salesman should know everything that is going on between his house and his customer. And when it comes to the scratch, his judgment is the judgment that should prevail when any matter of credits is to be decided upon. The salesman should have a copy of every letter that his customer writes his house, and he should be sent a duplicate of every line that the house writes to the customer. He should be kept posted as to the amount of shipment the house makes, and he should be notified whenever the customer makes a remittance. This puts the salesman in position to know how much to sell his customer, and also when to mark the new bill he sells for shipment. At the time of making the sale, it is very easy for the man on the road to say to his customer, 'Now look here, friend, as you haven't been quite able to meet your past obligations promptly, suppose that we stand off this shipment for a little while and give you a chance to get out of the hole. I don't want to bend your back with a big load of debt.' For saying this, the customer will thank his salesman; but the house cannot write the letter and say this same thing without making a customer hot.

"And another thing: If a salesman has shown himself strictly square in his recommendations, the salesman's recommendations regarding a shipment should be followed. The salesman is the man--and the one man --who can tell whether his customer is playing ball or attending to business. Now, for example, not a great while ago, I saw a merchant that one big firm in this country thinks is strictly good, playing billiards on the Saturday before Christmas. If there is any time on earth when a retail merchant should be in his store, it is on this day, but here was this man, away from his store and up at the hotel, guzzling high balls and punching ivory. That thing alone would have been enough to queer him with me and if I had been selling him and he was not meeting his bills promptly, I should simply tell the house to cut him off.

"The salesman also knows how much business a man is doing,--whether it is a credit business and all the other significant details. The merchant will take the traveling man that he buys goods from, and throw his books and his heart and everything wide open, and tell him how he stands. Even if he is in a little hole of some kind, it is of the traveling man that he asks advice as to how to get out.

"Again, the traveling man knows all about the trade conditions in his customer's town; whether there has been a good crop and prices high; whether the pay roll is keeping up or not; whether there is some new enterprise going to start that will put on more men and boom things. He knows all about these things, and he is on the spot and has a personal interest in finding out about them, if he is honest, and most salesmen are. It is to his interest to be so. And he can give information to the credit department that nobody else can.

"The report of a salesman to his firm is worth forty times as much as these little printed slips that have been sent in by some ninny, numskull reporter for a commercial agency. These fellows, before they go around soliciting reports from merchants, have usually been lily- fingered office boys who have never been in a place where a man can learn much common sense until they have grown too old to get on to things that have come in their way."

"Yes, you bet," spoke up the furnishing goods man. "They are the fellows who do us boys on the road a whole lot of harm. If the agencies wanted to get men who would know how to secure good, sound reports from merchants, they should hire first-class salesmen and send them out instead of office boys.

"The credit man," he continued, "should do another thing. He should not only send to the salesman the letter he writes, but he should confer with the man on the road before he writes. What he should do, if the references the merchant gives return favorable reports and the salesman recommends the account, he should, without going any further, pass out an order to save himself a whole lot of worry. But it matters not how bad are the reports from any and all sources, the credit man should write the salesman if he is near, or even wire him if he is far away, laying before him the facts and asking for further information and judgment. I once asked our credit man to do this but he kicked because a telegram would cost the house four bits. He hadn't stopped to think that it cost me out of my own pocket from ten to twenty dollars expenses on every order I took. Oh, they are wise, these credit men!

"It is strange, too, that credit men do not average better than they do. If the heads of firms really knew what blunders their credit men make, I believe that two-thirds of them would be fired tomorrow. There isn't any way of getting at their blunders except through the kicking of the traveling man and when he makes a howl, the heads of the house usually dismiss him with, 'You sell the goods and we'll attend to the rest.'

"A really 'broad minded, quick witted, diplomatic, courteous credit man,' as you say, is worth a great deal to a house. They are almost as rare as roses on the desert. Now, just to show you how the credit man and the salesman can pull together, let me give you an example.

"I sold a man a fair bill of goods. I knew he was a straightforward, square, capable man of good character. He was a pusher. I was in a rush and I took from him just a brief statement of his affairs. I wrote the house that I thought well of the man but didn't especially recommend him. You see, if you recommend strongly every man you sell, it is the same as recommending none. So, unless it comes to a hard pinch, I say no more than is necessary. Our credit man got the agency reports on this man, which made him out as no good and having no capital, and a whole lot of things of that sort and he wrote the man refusing to ship the bill. It looked to him that this man's condition was so hopeless that it was unnecessary for him to write me. He simply turned the order down straight out. When I came in and went over my list of turn-downs, I simply broke right out and said to the credit man, 'Here, you've made a bull on this.' 'Do you really think so?' said he. 'Heavens alive, yes! I know it. Why, this fellow made five thousand dollars last year on a saw mill that he has. He is in a booming country. Maybe he had a little bad luck in the past but he is a hustler and sinks deep into the velvet every time he takes a step now.' 'Why, I am awfully sorry. What shall I do about it?' 'Leave it to me,' said I.

"I wrote out to my man and told him the straight of it, that the agencies had done him a great injustice, and for him to write me personally exactly how he stood and that I would see things through for him in the office; that my house meant him no harm; that he was a stranger to them, but upon my recommendation, if his statement were anything like what I thought it should be, they would fill the order. At the same time, I suggested that the bill be cut about half for the first shipment.

"Well, sir, that man sent me in his statement showing that he not only had merchandise for which he owed very little, but also over four hundred dollars in the bank. I remember the amount. His statement showed that he had a net worth of nearly eleven thousand dollars,--and that man told the truth. Now, this information he would give me direct, but the house was not able to obtain it elsewhere.

"Now, this is a case, you know, where there is now good feeling all around and this is so just because the credit man paid attention to the salesman."

The outer door of the hotel was opened. In blew a gust of wind. The green leaves of the big palm rustled noisily as we scattered to our rooms, thankful we were not credit men.

[The end]
Charles N. Crewdson's short story: Concerning Credit Men

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