Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son by John Graham

This book is a series of letters written by a successful entrepreneur, John Graham, to his son, offering advice throughout the boy’s college years and early career. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

1. You’ll find that education’s about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it’s about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he’s willing to haul away.
2. Some men learn the value of money by not having any and starting out to pry a few dollars loose from the odd millions that are lying around; and some learn it by having fifty thousand or so left to them and starting out to spend it as if it were fifty thousand a year.
3. Some men learn the value of truth by having to do business with liars; and some by going to Sunday School. Some men learn the cussedness of whiskey by having a drunken father; and some by having a good mother.
4. Some men get an education from other men and newspapers and public libraries; and some get it from professors and parchments—it doesn’t make any special difference how you get a half-nelson on the right thing, just so you get it and freeze on to it.
5. The first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and the second thing is education.
6. Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible. Procrastination is the longest word in the language, but there’s only one letter between its ends when they occupy their proper places in the alphabet.
7. Remember, too, that it’s easier to look wise than to talk wisdom. Say less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk; for when a man’s listening, he isn’t telling on himself and he’s flattering the fellow who is.
8. Give most men a good listener and most women enough note-paper and they’ll tell all they know. Money talks—but not unless its owner has a loose tongue, and then its remarks are always offensive.
9. Poverty talks, too, but nobody wants to hear what it has to say.
10. A man’s got to keep company a long time, and come early and stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having. There’s nothing that comes without calling in this world, and after you’ve called, you’ve generally got to go and fetch it yourself.
11. Criticism can properly come only from above, and whenever you discover that your boss is no good, you may rest easy that the man who pays his salary shares your secret.
12. There are two things you just naturally don’t expect from human nature—that the widow’s tombstone estimate of the departed, on which she is trying to convince the neighbors against their better judgment that he went to Heaven, and the father’s estimate of the son, on which he is trying to pass him along into a good salary, will be conservative.
13. Never marry a poor girl who’s been raised like a rich one. She’s simply traded the virtues of the poor for the vices of the rich without going long on their good points. To marry for money or to marry without money is a crime. There’s no real objection to marrying a woman with a fortune, but there is to marrying a fortune with a woman. Money makes the mare go, and it makes her cut up, too, unless she’s used to it and you drive her with a snaffle-bit.
14. A real salesman is one part talk and nine parts judgment; and he uses the nine parts of judgment to tell when to use the one part of talk.
15. Real buyers ain’t interested in much besides your goods and your prices. Never run down your competitor’s brand to them, and never let them run down yours. Don’t get on your knees for business, but don’t hold your nose so high in the air that an order can travel under it without your seeing it.
16. And when a fellow knows his business, he doesn’t have to explain to people that he does. It isn’t what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about. Big talk means little knowledge.
17. When you make a mistake, don’t make the second one—keep it to yourself. Own up. The time to sort out rotten eggs is at the nest. The deeper you hide them in the case, the longer they stay in circulation, and the worse impression they make when they finally come to the breakfast table. A mistake sprouts a lie when you cover it up. And one lie breeds enough distrust to choke out the prettiest crop of confidence that a fellow ever cultivated.
18. Some salesmen think that selling is like eating—to satisfy an existing appetite; but a good salesman is like a good cook—he can create an appetite when the buyer isn’t hungry.
19. A man who does big things is too busy to talk about them. When the jaws really need exercise, chew gum.
20. There are two things you never want to pay any attention to—abuse and flattery. The first can’t harm you, and the second can’t help you. Some men are like yellow dogs— when you’re coming toward them they’ll jump up and try to lick your hands, and when you’re walking away from them, they’ll sneak up behind and snap at your heels.
21. I’ve put a good deal more than work into my business, and I’ve drawn a good deal more than money out of it; but the only thing I’ve ever put into it which didn’t draw dividends in fun or dollars was worry. That is a branch of the trade that you want to leave to our competitors.
22. Money ought never to be the consideration in marriage, but it always ought to be a consideration. When a boy and a girl don’t think enough about money before the ceremony, they’re going to have to think altogether too much about it after; and when a man’s doing sums at home evenings, it comes kind of awkward for him to try to hold his wife on his lap.
23. Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as they are, there’s nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us. I’ve seen a ten-cent shave and a five-cent shine get a thousand-dollar job,

Which lesson speaks to you?