Of course, I don’t mean by this that you want to play one man against another or try to minimize to a good man his importance to the house.  On the contrary, you want to dwell on the importance of all positions, from that of office-boy up, and make every man feel that he is a vital part of the machinery of the business, without letting him forget that there’s a spare part lying around handy, and that if he breaks or goes wrong it can be fitted right in and the machine kept running.  It’s good human nature to want to feel that something’s going to bust when you quit, but it’s bad management if things are fixed so that anything can.

In hiring new men, you want to depend almost altogether on your own eyes and your own judgment.  Remember that when a man’s asking for a job he’s not showing you himself, but the man whom he wants you to hire.  For that reason, I never take on an applicant after a first interview.  I ask him to call again.  The second time he may not be made up so well, and he may have forgotten some of his lines.  In any event, hell feel that he knows you a little better, and so act a little easier and talk a little freer.

Very often a man whom you didn’t like on his first appearance will please you better on his second, because a lot of people always appear at their worst when they’re trying to appear at their best.  And again, when you catch a fellow off guard who seemed all right the first time, you may find that he deaconed himself for your benefit, and that all the big strawberries were on top.  Don’t attach too much importance to the things which an applicant has a chance to do with deliberation, or pay too much attention to his nicely prepared and memorized speech about himself.  Watch the little things which he does unconsciously, and put unexpected questions which demand quick answers.

If he’s been working for Dick Saunders, it’s of small importance what Dick says of him in his letter of recommendation.  If you want Dick’s real opinion, get it in some other way than in an open note, of which the subject’s the bearer.  As a matter of fact, Dick’s opinion shouldn’t carry too much weight, except on a question of honesty, because if Dick let him go, he naturally doesn’t think a great deal of him; and if the man resigned voluntarily, Dick is apt to feel a little sore about it.  But your applicant’s opinion of Dick Saunders is of very great importance to you.  A good man never talks about a real grievance against an old employer to a new one; a poor man always pours out an imaginary grievance to any one who will listen.  You needn’t cheer in this world when you don’t like the show, but silence is louder than a hiss.

Hire city men and country men; men who wear grandpa’s Sunday suit; thread-bare men and men dressed in those special four-ninety-eight bargains; but don’t hire dirty men.  Time and soap will cure dirty boys, but a full-grown man who shrinks from the use of water externally is as hard to cure as one who avoids its use internally.  It’s a mighty curious thing that you can tell a man his morals are bad and he needs to get religion, and hell still remain your friend; but that if you tell him his linen’s dirty and he needs to take a bath, you’ve made a mortal enemy.