The Book of Business Etiquette

Book of Business Etiquette, by
Nella Henney

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Title: The Book of Business Etiquette
Author: Nella Henney
Release Date: October 13, 2007 [EBook #23025]
Language: English
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The Book of BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

The Book of Business Etiquette
Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING
THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE
PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
First Edition

RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED (AS BEFITS AN AUTHOR)
TO THREE BUSINESS MEN

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
It would be a pleasure to call over by name and thank individually the
business men and the business organizations that so graciously
furnished the material upon which this little book is based. But the
author feels that some of them will not agree with all the statements
made and the inferences drawn, and for this reason is unable to do
better than give this meager return for a service which was by no means
meager.

CONTENTS

PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 1
II. THE VALUE OF COURTESY 17
III. PUTTING COURTESY INTO BUSINESS 40
IV. PERSONALITY 70
V. TABLE MANNERS 94
VI. TELEPHONES AND FRONT DOORS 108
VII. TRAVELING AND SELLING 130
VIII. THE BUSINESS OF WRITING 153
IX. MORALS AND MANNERS 183
PART II
X. "BIG BUSINESS" 209
XI. IN A DEPARTMENT STORE 242
XII. A WHILE WITH A TRAVELING MAN 250
XIII. TABLES FOR TWO OR MORE 268
XIV. LADIES FIRST? 279

[Transcriber's Note: Please note that the book does not credit an author.
The Library of Congress lists Nella Henney as the author.]

PART I

THE BOOK OF BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

I
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN
The business man is the national hero of America, as native to the soil
and as typical of the country as baseball or Broadway or big advertising.
He is an interesting figure, picturesque and not unlovable, not so
dashing perhaps as a knight in armor or a soldier in uniform, but he is
not without the noble (and ignoble) qualities which have characterized
the tribe of man since the world began. America, in common with other
countries, has had distinguished statesmen and soldiers, authors and
artists--and they have not all gone to their graves unhonored and
unsung--but the hero story which belongs to her and to no one else is
the story of the business man.
Nearly always it has had its beginning in humble surroundings, with a
little boy born in a log cabin in the woods, in a wretched shanty at the
edge of a field, in a crowded tenement section or in the slums of a
foreign city, who studied and worked by daylight and firelight while he
made his living blacking boots or selling papers until he found the trail
by which he could climb to what we are pleased to call success.
Measured by the standards of Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages,
when practically the only form of achievement worth mentioning was
fighting to kill, his career has not been a romantic one. It has had to do
not with dragons and banners and trumpets, but with stockyards and oil
fields, with railroads, sewer systems, heat, light, and water plants,
telephones, cotton, corn, ten-cent stores and--we might as well make a
clean breast of it--chewing gum.
We have no desire to crown the business man with a halo, though
judging from their magazines and from the stories which they write of

their own lives, they are almost without spot or blemish. Most of them
seem not even to have had faults to overcome. They were born perfect.
Now the truth is that the methods of accomplishment which the
American business man has used have not always been above reproach
and still are not. At the same time it would not be hard to prove that
he--and here we are speaking of the average--with all his faults and
failings (and they are many), with all his virtues (and he is not without
them), is superior in character to the business men of other times in
other countries. This