Now for the last lap. Our journey has run four-fifths of its course. We have passed through the successive stages of analysis, planning, organization and handling the "help." They have all been child's play compared with the most important part of the manager's work—the task of GUARDING THE WELFARE OF A BUSINESS OR A JOB. All other managerial cares fade into insignificance before the necessity of conserving the general good of the business.

A business rises. A business falls. Its life must be protected. And, as has been said so often, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall."

A certain concern in New York State had been enjoying prosperity for lo! these many years. Established 'way back in the "Roaring Forties," it had passed through three generations of the same family.

Each morning at nine the president was at his desk opening the mail into three piles—taking great care that no checks fell into the waste basket—as might easily have happened had the task been delegated to the office manager or to his assistant.

It was unfortunate, of course, that no orders reached the stockroom until ten o'clock. But a president must earn his salt. Besides, is there a better way to keep one's finger on the pulse of the business than to know what's in the mail?

Let's take a look at those three piles, though. Here is the daily "take"—a fat pile of checks—with the big one from San Francisco laid carefully aside so that it can be admired a couple of extra times before being placed on the top of the heap.

Reverently the president carries the receipts to his head bookkeeper. With slow and majestic tread, almost.

And over here are the orders.

It's a fat pile, too.

The president casts one last lingering glance at the ½ doz. of something or other ordered by a famous name—and, secure in the knowledge that Fifth Avenue shoppers are still clamoring for his product, hands the sheaf to his office manager who has been pretty fidgety for the past hour and a half because he knows the stock department is going to have a heck of a time making the afternoon express.

Ho, hum! It's a busy life, this being the president of a successful concern doing over a million a year. Why, when grandfather started in, he didn't have a——

But that's another story, and there's that third pile.

A slim little pile scarcely demanding a president's attention—or a sales manager's. A few complaints. A retailer out in Butte. That San Antonio jobber Winchester had such a hard time landing. What's this? Didn't get the buttons he ordered? Stuff and nonsense—well, Henry will write nice, consoling letters and those will be those.

Now Henry is a good kid. Just out of school. Learning the business. Writes a bang-up letter.

But the San Antonio jobber doesn't want nice, consoling letters. He wants to know how come his pants came without the special buttons he ordered. And those special buttons are so important in his life that he has written to the head of the firm—whom he'd met at the Atlantic City convention—and he expects the head of the firm to tell him what he wants to know.

"Come, come," the president would have said to him, had he walked into the inner sanctum, "you know I can't give my time to such petty details—I've got department heads who attend to such matters. When you want an extra thirty days—or want to talk over handling our goods exclusively in the Southwest—why, those are the things for you and me to spend our time on."

But the San Antonio jobber, had he been there, and had he been asked, would have rejoined:

"I, too, have my department heads. I, too, leave many of the trivial details to them. But if a customer came to me with a complaint, I wouldn't care a rap what it was about. It wouldn't be that particular complaint which would interest me. It would be the mere fact that he had a complaint at all. A dissatisfied customer is a dissatisfied customer, and there isn't anything in my business that would get quicker and more personal attention from me."

Well, well, businesses come and businesses go. Our imaginary conversation will never take place between the president and the San Antonio jobber. The San Antonio jobber took his business elsewhere some five years ago. The president still comes in at nine and opens the mail. He never drops a check in the wastebasket. There are still three piles in front of him. Three slim piles. Even the pile of complaints is slim. There isn't enough business left to produce many complaints.

Henry? Oh, he got to writing letters to an heiress who was wintering on the Riviera. And when her daddy died, he wrote such a nice, consoling letter——

But we wander far afield. We're out in the rough somewhere, and it's going to take a real recovery to get us back on the fairway if we don't watch out.

For one thing and for instance: Is the customer always right?

A one-time shoe salesman reports the following incident in a Chicago department store. He was talking with the head buyer in the middle of the sales floor when up marched a thoroughly angry woman with the shoe adjuster tagging on behind.

"These shoes," she pointed to a pair of satin pumps in the adjuster's hands, "are too small."

"And she wants a new pair after having worn them half a dozen times," added the adjuster.

"Who sold them?" asked the buyer.

"Jones."

"Go get him."

Came Jones. "But, madam," he protested, "don't you remember I warned you that you needed a 5½? And don't you remember that I also suggested an A instead of a double A? And when you felt certain you wanted the 5AA, didn't I suggest that you try them again at home before having the cut-steel buckles sewn on?"

Well, yes, that was all quite true. But it didn't offset the fact that the shoes were too small and she couldn't wear them.

Two guesses as to what she got. And if each guess is a satin pump you may step quickly and quietly to the head of the class. She got a new pair of shoes.

"Well," sighed the buyer, when peace and quiet had been once more restored, "they tell me upstairs the customer is always right. Certainly it's true that one dissatisfied woman has more effect on our business than four or five satisfied customers. Oh, no, she won't go and tell her friends about the fair treatment she got here, but oh, man, if we'd let her get away! What a story that would have been—in spite of admitting she was wrong!"

Innumerable examples of that sort of thing might be introduced. There is the story of the North Shore matron who had an expensive rug sent out, kept it three months and then decided she didn't like the color. In its place she wanted a certain oriental, but oh, dear, it was just a bit too big for her purpose.

Of course the rug was cut to fit. And when she decided a week later that it, too, wouldn't do and went and bought another rug somewhere else, the management thanked her kindly and credited her account with the full amount. It knew that the life of the business had to be protected, and every now and then found it distinctly worth while to take time out to LOOK AFTER THE WELFARE OF THE ENTERPRISE.

And here we face another question: "Must the manager occupy his time with every minor complaint, just because it happens to be one which comes from a good customer?"

To answer it, we must go back to our New York State manufacturer and strip the scenery from his particular enterprise.

His is a business of few customers. Except for a half-dozen famous retailers whose accounts cost more than they earn, but to whose stores he may point the finger of gesticulating pride as being among his outlets (it would be better for him if they were among his souvenirs), his business is handled through thirty or forty jobbers. Naturally each of his customers is a very important unit in the business.

The loss of one account is serious.

So a customer to him is an outlet for business greater than the trade a big department store gets from a hundred good customers. One customer to him is as a score of customers to the manufacturer who sells to the retail trade.

To him, then, a complaint from a San Antonio jobber that the buttons on his pants aren't right has all the importance that the same complaint, echoed by a hundred different customers, would have to the retail merchant. Looked at in this light, is it not logical that any complaint—no matter how trifling its nature—should have his prompt, personal attention? Had he but known it, the letters he turned over to Henry were danger signals. They warned of the need for GUARDING THE WELFARE OF THE BUSINESS—LOOKING AFTER ITS GENERAL GOOD HEALTH.

And that task, as we have said, overshadows in importance every other task which the successful manager, in his daily business of managing, may have to perform.

The maintenance foreman in a New England mill walked into the agent's office one day—why the manager of a mill is called an agent is just one of those things—and said:

"Something's got to be done about that freight elevator over in Building C, Mr. Dearle. I've monkeyed with it and monkeyed with it. It's just worn out, and one of these fine days, it's going to drop a couple of floors and pile up in the basement."

And one fine day it did. You see, the manager was all tied up in a labor controversy. Labor squabbles aren't any fun. And presumably their speedy settlement is far more important to the business than the matter of what to do about a tired freight elevator which has seen far better days.

So Frank the maintenance man had to run along and sell his papers. And the elevator kept on working.

The day it quit, Henry Fitts was aboard. And when the elevator man picked himself up off the cellar floor, Henry couldn't.

But why go into that? Henry's broken leg and Henry's lost time cost the company more than a new elevator. And Henry was one of the company's best technical men. Lots of bum sheets and pillow cases got made and shipped and returned while Henry was laid up. The damage done by that falling elevator could hardly be measured in dollars.

Now, then, settling the differences of capital and labor was a big job to the mill agent. Saying "No" to Frank was merely postponing a trifling detail. Yet what a heap of difference a "Yes" would have made. That defective elevator, because it endangered lives, overshadowed all else in importance, had the agent viewed his job from the standpoint of CARING FOR THE BUSINESS. THE KNACK OF SAFEGUARDING ITS WELFARE lies not merely in doing tasks that preserve the safety of the business or job, but also in the ability to discern when such tasks are really mere trifles, and when, because of their potential effect, they are details vital to the life of the business.

How is a manager to know when he shall devote his entire attention to settling wage rates, and when listen to the maintenance man's song? How can the president of a million-dollar concern tell when it is good business to drop a tremendously important managerial task and listen to a customer's tale of woe about pants buttons—and personally set the complaint right?

How, on the other hand, are you to know when to lay off such tasks?

Some few men—seventh sons of seventh sons—may be born with that instinct or knowledge. The rest of us must cultivate a true knack of conserving the business—a knack which carries with it the finest sense of discrimination and the best of business judgment.

And not until we have acquired this important knack and added to it all the other knacks we've been talking about, can we consider ourselves successful managers. Not until then shall we have acquired THE TRUE KNACK OF MANAGING.

"I've learned how to pick out the tasks that are vital to the business and make them my own special responsibilities," a successful newspaper publisher once said, "by setting up a sort of yardstick to judge every job that comes along.

"My paper was in the 'red' when I bought it. It was a weak sister. It carried the least advertising, had the least circulation and exercised the least influence. Today its lineage is nearly one-third more than its nearest competitor's—and circulation has more than doubled in four years, so now it tops all the rest.

"I analyzed my job something like this: I bought the paper because I thought I could make money with it. To make money, I must carry a large volume of advertising. To get advertising, I must show results to advertisers. To show results, I must make my paper a real "home" paper—a paper really read and appreciated—not merely a paper with which people are only satisfied. To get that kind of circulation, I must put into the paper what people who read a paper at home wouldn't 'miss for anything.'

"What did this analysis show me? Simply this: That while more advertising and more circulation meant more profits, the attitude of my readers toward their paper meant even more—it meant business life or death.

"So my yardstick is never to let anything get by me that might change our standing with our readers. The toughest business problem is shoved aside when something comes up that means loss of respect among our public.

"I made it my first business to get to know our type of reader. Never was a good hand at guessing. So had to learn about human nature.

"After a lot of hiring and firing, picking and sorting, coaching and drilling, I got me four women who could go out and get exactly the kind of information I had to have.

"Each of the four took a section of the city. Each section represented a distinct type of home-dweller—and it takes all kinds of people to run a world, you know—or to buy a newspaper.

"Every week those four women canvassed close to a thousand homes between them. Their method was to tell the housewife that we were going to deliver our paper free for a week—and hoped they'd take it in and read it. A week later they went back over the same ground, soliciting subscriptions, of course, but also gathering information for me.

"More important than getting a subscription was finding out why a woman subscribed—or why she wouldn't subscribe. They asked what the women thought about certain special features.

"I got a lot of good pointers. For instance, I'd been a bitter opponent of the 'funnies.' But I put them back when I learned that people really wanted them. You see, I was getting a good cross section of the likes and dislikes of all my customers and my prospects.

"After the 'funnies' were in—and after various other changes had been made—I sent my four scouts back once more to tell of the improvements. Then we checked the new reports with the old ones. There was plenty of deadwood. I knew there would be. But there was enough good live stuff to furnish food for thought.

"Some needed changes couldn't be made right away. Many people preferred a competing paper because it carried more department store ads. Well, I couldn't do anything about that for the moment. But I could and did improve the sports page, put in more home-stuff for the women, more society news, funnier 'funnies' and so on. Those were things our readers wanted which I could gradually give them.

"Then it was time to tackle the advertising problem. I had my ammunition. Carried a bunch of reports around with me. Told the merchants frankly what I was up to. Showed them the reports from women who said they'd subscribe if we had more advertising as well as the reports from those who did subscribe for certain good reasons.

"And I quoted a rate on what we were worth at the time, not on what I knew we could do in the future. I didn't begrudge a full day spent in one small store, if that small store advertised the stuff I felt was wanted by the people I wanted for readers.

"Well, they came 'round one by one—the stores and the people. And I think the results prove that I was keeping busy on the right tasks—the tasks on which the welfare of my business depends—and not on the tasks that mean only increased volume.

"How does it affect my readers? That is my yardstick for measuring everything about my business. That is my guide to whether or not I should worry. If a little error in last night's paper has the power to affect my readers' opinion of the paper, then it's my job to run it down to earth, find out how it happened—and see that it never happens again. But if there's a big advertising contract in the offing which won't affect the permanent standing of the paper in any way whatsoever—except to increase the number of dollars that come clinking into the coffers—I don't give thirty seconds of my time to it. I hire a sales manager to do that. That's his job. The other's mine.

"I'll spend a week with my managing editor trying to figure out a way to get our afternoon editions on the street a few minutes earlier. It may involve some minor change in the pressroom running into only a few hundred dollars—but it does affect our permanent place in the sun. On the other hand, the managing editor can go ahead and spend $5000 of my good money on something that has nothing to do with our readers' interest, and all I'll do is okay the expenditure. He'll do the worrying this time."

You and I aren't interested in the way this publisher went about building up his newspaper. That is to say, we don't care anything about his female quartette who went around and sang the paper's praises. His methods were sound, of course, and merit attention. But our interest right now is in his division between the tasks he watched personally and the tasks he left his business manager or his managing editor to work out for themselves.

Strip off the publishing scenery—just as a moment ago we stripped off the individual characteristics of a totally different business—and you find that HIS DIVISION IS APPLICABLE NOT ONLY TO ANY BUSINESS, BUT TO ANY SINGLE JOB. Which means once more that that's the way the successful manager of a steel mill or of a peanut stand will divide the tasks which confront him from nine to five every day.

Who are your "readers"?

Every business, every job has its "readers"—some element which, once injured or neglected, affects the welfare, the health, the profits, or the ultimate success of the business or job.

A file clerk may acquire tremendous speed in putting letters away in drawers, but if she can't get you the correspondence you need at a moment's notice, what good is all her speed? Your stenographer may keep up with you in your best and fastest moments of dictation, but if her finished letters don't say what you said, her facility isn't worth the proverbial thin dime. An accountant may work out a cost system that reflects conditions like a mirror, but what of it if his reports come out so late that they're ancient history by the time the plant manager gets them? A miller may produce a flour that contains more vitamins than any other flour on the market, but if the dough won't rise properly, it isn't much use. A small-town banker may have splendid reserves and a strong cash position, but he's going to lose your business if he asks 6½ per cent interest and 3 per cent commission to extend your mortgage when the big-city bank offers you the same loan at 6 per cent interest and 2½ per cent commission. That messenger boy of ours—no chapter is complete without him—may run all the way from the Tribune Tower to State and Madison, but what if in his haste he loses the message?

There is, then, in every business or job a VITAL ELEMENT. And no one can do a good job of managing unless he finds out definitely what that element is, and then proceeds to guard it through all the hustle and bustle of cost cutting, labor saving and so on.

One manager put it pretty plainly to his billing clerk. The latter tried out some short cuts. They were splendid from the billers' point of view. Saved time and money. But the customers weren't used to any of this new-fangled stuff and kicked like steers. They couldn't check the invoices. Or wouldn't.

"They just won't use their heads. It's all as simple as ABC," protested the billing clerk when the manager called him in on the carpet. "All they've got to do is check the numbers on the cartons against the numbers on the invoices. There's no need of all the description we've been giving them."

"Right you are, Johnson," replied the manager. "But sometimes you bump up against a stone wall when you try to educate the trade. Oftentimes life's too short. Your system saves us money. It's good up to a certain point. That point is where your labor saving and cost cutting begin to have an adverse effect on sales or sales satisfaction.

"I've seen you playing bridge at noon," he went on. "You score honors above the line, don't you? Below the line you keep your game score. If you hold 80 or 90 honors in your hand, it affects your play. But you can't give your entire attention to scoring above the line, for after all it's the score below which determines who wins games and rubbers.

"You can score your job in pretty much the same way. All this work you're doing along cost-cutting lines is fine. Those things determine the size of your department's profits. Sketch them out on a card and check them over and add to them. But below the line put down the main object of your work—to have your invoices correct and to have them so plain that no customer can fail to understand them. Keep plugging away above the line. Don't let me discourage any effort that will reduce costs. They're all-important. But at the same time keep your eye below the line and make sure your game score is piling up. That sort of thinking and playing wins in business just as it does in bridge."

It's a long time since we've drawn any charts. Let's study the newspaper publisher's policy and see if he wasn't doing mentally just what the manager recommended that his billing clerk do on paper.

You remember he made it his business to find out all about the error in last night's paper and to prevent its occurring again. That was something which, to his way of thinking, affected the permanent standing of his paper. When the department store stood ready to start a big institutional campaign which meant nothing more to his business than a big increase in volume, he left the job of closing the contract to his hired help. But when, in another newspaper, the same department store advertised a new type of radio which he thought his readers ought to know about, once more he made it his own business to go out and get a few lines for his own paper and his own readers.

Then, if we keep tally—and consider whether they "score" above the line as increased profits, or below the line as permanent success, our card will look something like the chart on this page.