History of American Sales Culture - Part Two
If ever there should be a Salesmen's Hall of Fame, one of the first pedestals must be reserved for Jay Cooke. There is no doubt that some of the abundant glory that has gone to Grant and Lincoln ought to have gone to this Philadelphia banker-salesman. As one editor very fitly said: "The nation owes a debt of gratitude to Jay Cooke that it must remember." Without his valuable aid the wheels of government might have been seriously entangled."
A state park of rolling hills, rushing waters, pines and birches is named in his honor just south of Duluth, Minnesota. A most enjoyable stop on your trip north to Canada.
The truth is that salesmen have done more for progress and civilization than anyone imagines. They have done more than all the colleges to develop the peasantry of Europe into enterprising American citizens. They have transformed the "Man with the Hoe" into the person with the computer. They have given us the radiator for the fireplace, the piano for the dulcimer, the automobile for the push-cart, the computer and voice recognition for the quill pen. They have put more comforts into our homes than the king used to have in his palace.
How quickly we forget the great Sales Battles of our own day! Whenever a new commodity appears, we ridicule it, and oppose it, and refuse to buy it at any price. Then the Salesman trains his energies on us. We fight for a while, and finally we surrender. But we give no credit, or glory, to the Salesman. We walk up to the counter and buy the commodity, remarking to the clerk that it is just exactly what we needed for the past twenty years."
It is not true that new goods are manufactured to supply the demand. There is no demand. Both the demand and the goods have to be manufactured. The public has always held fast to its old-fashioned discomforts, until the salesman persuaded it to let go.
There was no demand for the Railroad, and for years many people believed that thirty miles an hour would stop the circulation of the blood. There was no demand for the Steamboat, and when Brunei drove the first boat by steam on the Thames, he became so unpopular that the London hotels refused to give him a room. There was no demand for the Sewing-machine, and the first machine that Howe put on exhibition was smashed to pieces by a Boston mob. There was no demand for the Telegraph, and Morse had to plead and beg before ten Congresses before he received any attention. There was no demand for the Air-brake, and Westinghouse was called a fool by every railroad expert, because he asserted that he could stop a train with wind. There was no demand for Gas-light, and all the candle- burners sneered at Murdoch for trying to have a lamp without a wick. There was no demand for the Reaper, and McCormick preached his gospel of efficient harvesting for fourteen years before he sold his first hundred machines. Today there is another Murdoch and his media empire, built almost entirely on salesmanship with the help of technology. Few thought it possible.
No, it is not true, as learned theorists have said that every great invention springs into life because it is demanded by the nation. It springs into life and nobody wants it. It is the Ugly Duckling. Everybody prefers ten cents to it, until a few salespeople take it in hand and explain it.
When Frederick E. Sickles first exhibited his steam steering-gear, now used on all the seas of the world, all the sailors looked upon it with contempt. "Nobody seemed to take the slightest interest in it," wrote Sickles. When Charles T. Porter first showed his high-speed engine in England, it was not taken seriously by anyone. "My engine," says
Porter "was visited by every engineer in England and by a multitude of engine-users; and yet in all that six months not a builder ever said a word about building neither it, nor a user said a word about using it. I was stupefied with astonishment and distress."
When Bell first showed his telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial, it was endorsed by the greatest scientists of America and England. It was tested and proved. But the average man called it a "scientific toy" and refused to either use it or finance it. Bell preached telephony for years before the public bought it. (Last phrase stricken as out dated).
There are men now alive who can remember how their mother sat down and cried when the first cook-stove came into the house, displacing the clumsy and wasteful fireplace. They can remember their first store boots and store clothes. They can remember the old battles between labor and management and the men who built the pipe-lines for petroleum, between the paddlers and the experts who developed the Bessemer process, and between the news agents and the pioneers who established the first ten-cent magazines-then later the internet.
End of Part II
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