| "Vintage Reading® Stories Heard Over the Back Fence"
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The Hercules Guard
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Adapted from an 1906 Short Story
By Rita Buday
MAY 2007 :: © 2007 Buday Books / Vintage Reading®
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For years, business houses used armies of traveling salesmen; it was an expensive, slow process. And guessing at future price changes (which did not always happen just as predicted) made showing a consistent, comfortable profit more of an art than a science.
Then, Alexander Graham Bell's new technology--the telephone--put market news on a "fast track"; traders still had to forecast price changes but now they were based on the latest information--vastly more up-to-date than postal mails (taking days and weeks) could provide.
Ben Mason went a step further. Though he had a few salesmen making in-person courtesy calls, most employees worked in his office 'phoning every subscribing customer on an agreed day each week with market news and specifics about how to profit from this latest knowledge.
Costs were far less (Ben always watched the bottom line like a hungry hawk watches its prey); employees had a predictable home life in which to raise their families; customers knew when they'd be contacted each week--snow, ice storm, or sun--and they profited from every call. It was a "win-win" for the customer, Ben Mason, and his employees.
His business plan was radical for the time, but in less than ten years Ben's enterprise went from a one-man start-up to the best-known, most prosperous trading firm in the Midwest.
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Ben's one big extravagance was living in the tiny town of Brookburg, an hour's ride by rail- road. "It's therapeutic..." he said; "a pleasant ride that calms daily tension."
"Maybe so,"Art Rimms replied, "but the papers report many robberies up this way, Ben. You should keep a watch-dog--a big dog with a booming bark, large mouth, and the certainty that this is his house."
"There's something in what you say," said Ben. "When I came here to Brookburg, I heard robbers had periodically paid visits, so I invested one hundred dollars in a guard dog. He was a real beauty--a full-grown mastiff--and while he was on the place, only one burglar ever had the poor judgment to come near here. He wouldn't have thought of it if he'd known Hercules was on the job, and he changed his mind just three seconds after he quietly opened the side door.
"Hercules made some very convincing remarks and concluded by removing the seat of the poor devil's pants as he vaulted over the fence."
"That's exactly the kind of guard dog to have," said Art; "why didn't you keep him?"
"I had too much sense to keep him. He was expensive and not very discriminating. He had a roving nature, you see; I 'lost' him at least twice a month. By the end of the year I had spent seventy-five dollars in rewards to get the wanderer home.
It became a steady income for small boys in Brookburg to find Hercules and let him pull them back here for the reward! He must have thought I had a bottomless purse that could play his game forever.
"Then, a new postman was put on our route; right away I got in trouble with the Post Office because Hercules did not recognize the official, overturned him on the lawn and chewed up two packages of letters before being persuaded to cease his guarding. That cost another thirty-two dollars. Other, equally expensive diversions ran the bills higher.
Altogether, at year's end, Hercules cost me--besides the original investment and his enormous appetite-- two hundred and sixty-seven dollars!--mighty expensive insurance against burglars! I gave him away, resolving to take my chances on being robbed the following year."
"And--were you?"
"I was," Ben replied. "Two times. I opened a "Burglar Account" in my records. I found that the thieves, costing one hundred thirty dollars in stolen goods, were much cheaper than a guard dog and don't require near the same attention since they look after themselves.
"The result is I now live with robbery...until the cost catches up with that of owning and maintaining a good guard dog."
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