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throughout the various islands as at home. Having no medical colleges there, the big majority of the physicians are graduates of English or Scotch universities. An American or Canadian college graduate, who wishes to practice medicine on a British West Indian island,

Going to market.

must cross over to England and obtain an English degree. This keeps the standard high.

PHYSICIANS AND DRUG STORES.

Unfortunately, however, many of the physicians cannot practice their profession as they would like to, on account of the poverty of the masses, due to the cheapness of labor. The dispensing physician in particular, especially if he be a District Medical Officer of the Government, must be careful in the selection of his drugs, for John Bull limits him to a maximum charge of 50 cents per individual, and he must supply medicine. About one-third of the doctors are subsidized by the Government, receiving from $1000 to $3000 yearly, depending on length of service, for doing necessary work such as vaccinations, post-mortems, attending to the poor of the district, etc.

With a few exceptions, West Indian physicians make good money and live well. Most of them have motors-and this in a land where the laboring man receives an average of 30 cents a day and a woman about half that

amount.

A big asset is the predilection of the colored person for medicine. The average native of the tropics is swallowing something in the medical line three or four times a day and every day, and he never becomes well. He is always hunting for a cure for his ills, real and imaginary.

There are several cities of from 30,000 to 65,000 population in my itinerary, possessing drug stores that compare very favorably with our modern American stores, as far as fixtures and the carrying of good stocks are concerned. A $20,000 assortment of goods is not unusual. These stores have splendid prescription departments, several of them running from 40 to 50 prescriptions a day:

HUSTLING IN THE HEAT.

One of the great drawbacks in covering this territory is the heat. It is at all times terrific and, until one becomes accustomed to it, almost unendurable. Many a man of the North, full of energy and with a desire to teach the lazy South how to do business, has gone down to the tropics and rushed around for a few days or a few weeks, then his friends back North have received a cablegram that the energetic gentleman was on his way home by the next steamer-in a box.

He rushed around until he did not feel quite right and a million tropical bugs were waiting for the white gentleman to do just as he did. One of them stuck his nozzle into the white man's skin and his friends were notified. Typhoid fever and malaria are usually prev

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cent are syphilitic, not forgetting the periodical visitations of smallpox, yellow fever and plague that occasionally ravage all hot countries, the fear of a hasty exit while covering the job is not without some foundation.

Men of various nationalities are in the drug business among the many islands. In one colony, containing four good-sized stores, English, French, Scotch and Portuguese are represented, while on other islands we find East Indians, Chinese, Spanish, and native drug merchants.

But whatever the nationality the druggists are a uniformly well-educated lot of men. The educational requirement for a pharmacist is high, and the men know their work. They are also good business men, and seldom purchase goods that their more or less restricted market cannot absorb. With true West Indian courtesy, a stranger in their country is always given a hearty welcome and made to feel that

A West Indian Dan Patch.

the best their hospitality can offer is at his disposal.

EARLY IN THE MORNING.

The West Indian is an early riser, as a rule getting up soon after daylight. The inevitable cup of strong black coffee and a piece of toast is disposed of, usually in the bedroom, before rising, brought in by one of the many servants that constitute the household; and, by way, a 'real good servant earns as much as three shillings (72 cents) a week.

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when every one partakes of a big creole meal. In quantity of food consumed this breakfast has got a good hearty dinner beaten to a frazzle.

All business places close at 4 P.M. for the day, and men go to their clubs or homes. The afternoon tea is an institution among all classes, served on the veranda or out in the garden. Business men often invite their traveling friends up for the evening, which means that one is expected to arrive about 4:30 and have tea, cake, etc., under the palm trees at the man's home, leaving for the hotel about 6:30. If your friend wants you for dinner, he will distinctly mention the fact, and it is then a case of a Tuxedo and an 8 P.M. appearance.

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WOMEN WORKERS.

In all islands there are splendid roads of coral or volcanic rock, mostly made by the slave labor of generations ago, and kept up by the women workers. It is a common sight along the highway to see a native woman, scantily clad, a-straddle a pile of stones, swinging a hammer and smoking a pipe of native tobacco. She earns about a shilling a day.

When she feels hungry it is easy to make a fire and roast some bread-fruit, which is then rubbed on about a penny's worth of salt fish she has bought at the Chinaman's shop in the early morning. The lady looks satisfied and happy, and is probably just as much so as the blonde along Broadway or the baby doll at Rector's.

As a rule, the man of the peasantry class is a drone, and he makes the female member of

his family shift for herself, and often for him as well. As a result of this lack of desire to work on the part of the native, the large employers of labor, such as sugar estate owners, many years ago imported indentured coolies from India, and now there are probably a quarter of a million of these interesting people in the various colonies, principally Demerara, Trinidad, and Jamaica.

The labor question brought over the Chinese also, but John no longer is a laborer but a prosperous storekeeper. There are many wealthy Chinamen throughout the islands, and they are considered good and desirable citizens.

In fact, I doubt if there is a more cosmopolitan place in the wide world than the average West Indian port. Descendants of Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese ancestors are very common, and the population is also tinctured with a sprinkling of South Americans.

Without question one who goes on an extended trip among the many islands undergoes real hardships, physical and mental. The intense heat, the absence from friends, newspapers, and recreations are severely felt.

But, on the other hand, there are compensations. One is seemingly in another world, distinctly different from the commercialized, cold-blooded, and money-mad North. On every island there are many sights of historic interest antedating by a century or more anything in this country, and your customer-host takes great pleasure in showing you around. The islands that produced Alexander Hamilton, Empress Josephine, Dumas the elder, where Nelson married the Nevis widow, and where for centuries the European nations were battling for supremacy on land and water, will always be interesting to a browser among things historical, and there are relics innumerable as milestones of the past.

TO THE EDITORS:

ON THE SUBJECT OF TURNOVER.

I was glad to see your editorial in the September BULLETIN on the subject of stock turnovers. I had seen the argument that all one had to do to make more money was to turn over his stock about two or three times as fast as ordinary and thereby increase the profits many hundred per cent.

I received a very nice little booklet a year or so ago from a certain patent medicine concern, in which was set forth the argument that there was a much greater profit to the dealer selling Blank's Pills, which cost the dealer $4.50 a dozen, than there was to sell a slow-mover which cost the dealer less.

The argument sounded plausible, but I knew that there was "a nigger in the fence" somewhere, because I either had to have more volume of business or less expense or I would have no profit at the end of the year. In fact, if my entire stock consisted of Blank's Pills and my sales remained the same as they were, I knew exactly that my gross profits would be only 25 per cent.

Then again the argument in the little booklet named above assumed that I bought the fast sellers and the slow sellers in the same proportion.

If I am selling 1 dozen Blank's Pills each month and also 1/12 dozen of some other pill, do I buy a dozen of each kind in the beginning and turn over one kind once a month and the other once a year?

Well, hardly.

I buy as nearly as possible in the proportion in which the two articles are selling, and in that way keep down the amount of investment.

If I buy right, my proportionate rate of interest on so-called slow-movers is no greater than on the fastest sellers, although this, of course, would not hold true where an article moves so slowly that one has it on the shelf year after year.

Your article has cleared the matter up to my entire satisfaction, and I am glad to see such points made plain. VAN I. WITT.

GRAND HAVEN, MICH.

Three Papers on Salesmanship.

A number of months ago we solicited articles on this broad subject. The first group of papers appeared in our July issue; this is the second group selected from the same mass of material. We let each author speak for himself; his views are distinctly his own and as such should be extended the courtesy of consideration.

AS I VIEW IT.

BY J. E. WEIs, Detroit, Mich.

Salesmanship-what is it?

I wish I knew!

Does anybody know? If there is a man on earth who does, he is keeping awful still about it.

I have listened to two sales-masters, socalled. They were fine speakers, both, and one of them has the happy faculty of turning out nice, smooth phrases which will ring like new coins, fresh from the mint. You've heard of him.

It cost car-fare to hear these speakers twenty cents that I never got back.

I took in a whole course of lectures on salesmanship one winter, at an expense of $25. Three or four of those who read papersthat's what the course consisted of, for the most part-were captains of finance. They were really big men; heads of corporations. They told how they did business, with heavy emphasis on the upright pronoun. When they let up on this they sank to the level of merest commonplaces.

Most of the other speakers were efficiency experts, college professors, and writers of the hack variety.

I lost $25.

But, you argue, the principles of salesmanship are the same, whether they are enumerated by a corporation head, a college head, or a fat-head.

WHAT ARE THEY?

What are the principles of salesmanshipanswer me that! For if we could arrive at an understanding of the principles, the remainder would fall out of its own weight. But did you ever hear anybody make a statement of the fundamentals of salesmanship?

Not if you have depended on the hack writers. There are books, too, in which the subject is taken up at what is supposed to be the beginning, but these books are not popular numbers at a circulating library. I have read three of them, and came out of the ordeal

much nearer the nut school than I was when I braced myself and began the perusal.

But if there is such a thing as salesmanship -and there surely must be-we ought to be able to get down to bedrock merely by the exercise of what brains the good Lord gave us. Let us see.

First of all there must be something to sell. Then there must be the possessor who desires to sell. And then along comes

What?

The buyer? No, not yet; he isn't the buyer until he has bought.

Let us call him the "possible buyer." It may be that he has his mind all made up, and it may be that he has never thought of such a thing.

If he has come to get the article, calls for it, pays for it and goes away, no salesmanship has been brought into play. A slot-machine could have done what the man who waited on him did.

But suppose the man hasn't his mind made up-ah, there is where we approach deep

water!

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

It may be that he doesn't know exactly what the article is and seeks information. The possessor must then become an encyclopedia.

It may be that he has two or more articles of a similar character in mind and is see-sawing in uncertainty. The possessor must detail the good points of his article and must also learn the state of mind of the prospect, or possible buyer.

It may be that the possible buyer wants the article, but knows of a similar article that suits him and that he merely seeks enlightenment on price before he arrives at a choice. Here again the possessor must ascertain the state of the prospect's mind.

Or it may be that the possible purchaser without "malice aforethought" just happens along. His state of mind is neutral, not to say fallow.

A few lines back we said that "the possessor must then become an encyclopedia." There is

another way of expressing this same thought, but it is so hackneyed that we shall avoid it. Concise, definite information, logically expressed-isn't that what an encyclopedia contains?

A man can't be a salesman whose mind is loose and flabby, like a hound's ears. He can't even be a near-salesman. But his deficiency may be made up to a degree if a set speech describing a particular article is put into his mouth. Book agents memorize such songs.

As before stated, after the article is shown, and described if a description is called for, it then becomes necessary to learn in so far as possible what is going on under the prospect's thatch. The possessor now gets shrewd and calculating.

How is he to learn this state of mind? Through conversation.

A salesman, then, must be a clever conversationalist. This doesn't mean that he must outdo Balaam's ass. Some of the best conversationalists that the world has ever known have had the knack of saying very little. Geysers belong in parks and gushers in the oil districts.

DEFT MASTER-STROKES.

And now we come to the real test. The salesman grasps the situation as best he can and bases action on quick judgment. With deft master-strokes he convinces the prospect that his article is the article that he, the prospect, wants.

How does he do this? As I said at the beginning, I wish I knew..

Notice how I have slid around the crucial issue, the point of real importance in this discussion. "With deft master-strokes," etc.: note the words. A mere subterfuge, a writer's trick. Most of 'em do it.

Why have I done it? Because I had to. It is just as impossible to tabulate the "masterstrokes" of a salesman as it is to paint a chromo of the wind. There is no set formula, no rule of thumb, no x + y = q. Each case is a law unto itself, and all the learned dissertations that I have ever seen teach so little that a man turns from them in disgust.

Most of our literature on this subject that is of real value consists of a multiplicity of commandments what not to do. Such advice has its place, but a certain percentage of it is infantile.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that our young

men are confused? There isn't a cub in a single drug store in the United States that doesn't want to become a salesman, for he realizes that it's salesmen who draw down the big money nowadays. He is honestly in earnest. He wants help. He wants to be told how to equip himself. He seeks facts and tangible guidance.

He calls for bread and we give him a stone. We pass out something about service and courtesy and psychology.

But don't worry, young man. Rome wasn't burnt in a minute, and salesmen are made, not born. Don't get discouraged because you can't understand. I'm forty-three years old and have been a druggist half that time-and I don't understand. I've made some wonderful sales, though!

Don't misunderstand me. I do not mean to say that all the salesmanship literature, etc., is valueless. I mean to point out that no man can become a salesman by reading it. I go a step further: I claim that no man can find out what salesmanship is, even, by reading it. The field is as illimitable as heaven's blue dome -and in some of its phases just as remote.

A man can become a salesman by developing himself. Nothing just grows except Topsies, weeds, and incompetents. Self-improvement is one of the first duties of every human being, and the young man who earnestly strives to augment his intelligence will at the same time. be taking long strides in the general direction of becoming a proficient salesman.

LEARNING FROM OTHERS.

BY ALEX. F. PETERSON, MISSOULA, Mont.

Observing the methods of other salesmen and copying or trying to improve on them is really the best school in salesmanship. Whenever I do any shopping I remember every little word or act that particularly pleases, and also anything that is distasteful to me.

I then try to do a little better with my own. customers, scrupulously avoiding the things which have seemed objectionable to me.

Sometimes, upon entering a store, I am assailed with "What can I do for you?"

I invariably want to say: "Nothing!" I have found that it is best to greet a customer with a pleasant "Good-day" and let him be the first to mention business.

When a customer has made known his

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