He inspired and built confidence

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HE INSPIRED AND BUILT CONFIDENCE
Robert D. Palmer founded The Citizens' Wholesale Supply Company, of Columbus, Ohio, on absolute fairness and squareness with every Salesman and Customer.



Reproduction of Article Appearing in Monthly Magazine, How to Sell



A Pure Food Pioneer
Robert D. Palmer Established Standards of Quality With Which Uncle Sam Never Yet Has Caught Up.  His Salesmen Are Given Facts and Told to Deal Only in Facts

By SAM SPALDING

THIS IS THE story of Robert D. Palmer.

The pity of it is that Mr. Palmer is no longer here to tell it.  He passed away in 1922.  But he left an impressive monument—a living monument.  That monument is The Citizens' Wholesale Supply Company, of Columbus, Ohio, better known as The golden Rule House.

He built nobly, too, in the hearts and memories of those who were associated with him. Of these associates, two were with him from the beginning: James O. Cutler and J. Willis Blue.  Mr. Blue is now president, and the only survivor.

It was from this gentleman during a recent visit to Columbus that I obtained the facts upon which this article is based, and for the sake of convenience I shall put the whole story into his mouth.

Palmer's revolutionary idea had its birth years ago, back in 1894, Mr. Blue told me.  He was then about 24 years of age, a high school graduate with a year or two of college training at Ohio Wesleyan.  He had sold for a few months only, acting as an agent for 'Dr. Chase's Book,' a popular medical work of those days.

He was introducing this book from house to house, with no great success, in Millersburg, Holmes County, Ohio, in 1894, when he met a young fellow who was selling groceries direct to the farmers for a concern in Cincinnati.

It was apparent to Palmer that there ought to be more nourishment in selling groceries than a medical book and that such a line held out the prospect of frequent resales.  He decided, therefore, to become a grocery salesman and obtained an opening with this same Cincinnati company.

But he soon found—to put it mildly—that his hope of repeat orders would be a vain one so long as he maintained that particular connection.  It was a great shock to him to discover that the house in question was not interested in 'repeats.'  It was operating on the sell-'em-and-run basis.  In other words, its goods were not up to sample and its salesmen had to make themselves as scarce as possible after they had worked—'worked' is right—a territory.

That was an impossible situation to one with the exceptionally high ideals which governed Robert Palmer.  On the other hand, he had become greatly impressed with the possibilities of an enterprise which should undertake to supply highest quality foods and other products direct to the homes at fair prices and strictly in accordance with the Golden Rule, which you of How To SELL have since adopted to read, 'Sell as you would be sold to.'

We three, Palmer, Cutler, and myself, had been boyhood friends in Delaware, Ohio.  Palmer in his enthusiasm painted a glowing picture.

'These farm women and small town women can be sold, boys, he urged.

'That's been proved.  In spite of the sort of treatment they have received in the past, many of them still believe the salesman—because they want to believe him; because they would be only too glad to be saved the time and trouble of going to a distant store to order their groceries and household supplies.

'If somebody would only play fair with them and actually give them what they pretend to give them—give them the best to be had—they would gladly pay a fair price for it.  Of course they would because it would be to their own advantage to do so.

IT'S RANK folly as well as dishonesty to destroy their confidence—to sow weeds of dissatisfaction wherever you go and never to be able to return to a house where you have once sold an order, in spite of the fact that that family has to keep on ordering and reordering similar goods from somebody.

'I tell you, boys, it will pay, it must pay, to build such a business—any business—on the Golden Rule to be absolutely fair and square with every customer.  If you give satisfaction you will inspire confidence and you will make friends.  Then you can go back to these friends again and again and sell them more.  And they'll tell their friends about what good things you have, and how reasonable your prices are, and how convenient it is to have you come right to the house to get the order, and so on, instead of warning those friends of theirs that you're a crook.'

Well, Palmer and Cutler went into partnership and I, who was three or four years older than Palmer, also put a little into the venture and joined them as a salesman.  In all $240 was scraped together.  It was the entire capital.

We had another associate, Edward M. Bryant.  He was sent by the Cincinnati house to see what we were up to, but he saw the light and joined us.  He withdrew from active participation in the affairs of the company in 1913 or 1914.

We came to Columbus.  Palmer and Cutler ran the office, while Bryant and I sold goods.  We nearly froze that first winter.  But the business grew.  It was built on the solid rock of service.  Palmer's faith that 'Right is might' in business as well as everywhere else, carried us over the many steep hills we encountered those first few years—and pulled us out of the holes.

It is impossible today to realize the extent of the suspicion which house-to-house salesmen encountered in those days on almost every hand.  And it was altogether too well-founded for the most part.

The farmers, particularly, among whom much of our work lay, were more than skeptical.  Setting the dogs on us

This plant and warehouse were built by the Golden Rule—the home of The Citizens' Wholesale Supply Company, Columbus, Ohio
 was one of their milder methods.  And as I look back I cannot blame them.  They had been victimized too many times—by red line wheat men and Bohemian oats men, and by lightning-rod agents who used four times the footage they had led the farmer to expect—and charged for it by the foot, you may be sure.  Selling is much cleaner now and sailing is correspondingly easier.

One thing that made it mightily hard sledding, especially on such small capital, was the fact that we asked no deposits and orders were not paid for until the goods were actually delivered.  But that has been our rule from the first day to this.  We have never asked our customers to pay us or our representatives a cent in advance.  When they actually receive the goods and have had an opportunity to examine them, then we present our bill in full, not before.

There is no 'sight unseen' business about the Golden Rule.

The words 'Golden Rule,' with the monogram of the company, were adopted as our trade mark and registered in the United States Patent Office at Washington only a few months after we started in business in June, 1894.  Therefore, we have the sole legal right to designate our products as Golden Rule products.

But it is much more than a legal formality with us.  The words 'Golden Rule' were adopted not merely for commercial purposes but primarily because they expressed as nothing else could the principle we were determined from the outset to embody in every product and every detail of our relationship with customers and salespeople alike.  It is the principle of highest practicable quality, lowest practicable prices, absolute openness and honesty and square dealing.

As a result we have built up a reputation which is priceless to us.

'And our business has grown accordingly.  We have never catered to the demand for 'cheap' goods.  We carry nothing that is merely standard.  All our goods are fancy or extra fancy.  Quality always has been our first consideration, not price.  Palmer insisted upon that.  But throughout we have bent every effort to effect a distinct economy to every user of Golden Rule Products.

There was no National pure food law when Palmer and the rest of us started or for years afterward.  He blazed the trail.  He set up standards of his own so high that the United States Government in spite of all its splendid pure food and drugs legislation, has never yet caught up with us.  Astounding as it may appear, that is literally true.

HAS IT paid?  Judge for yourself.  Professor Lewis B. Allyn, the famous originator of the Westfield standard of pure foods, in charge of the Westfield Pure Food laboratories at Westfield, Massachusetts, has given us this unqualified endorsement:

'The writer has extensively examined the 'Golden Rule' Food Products of The Citizens' Wholesale Supply Co., of Columbus, Ohio, and has found them exceedingly high grade, free from adulteration or substitution.  Not only the goods themselves are high grade, but the company which puts them out is among the leaders in the promotion of purity foods products.'

Not only that but Professor Allyn admitted no less than forty of our products to the exclusive Westfield Pavilion at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco in 1915, from which were barred any and all foods that had not come up to the very high Westfield standard.  A standard far higher than the legal requirements under national or state pure food laws.  And thirty-seven of those forty exhibits received awards.

As for our salesmen, we have always given them the biggest share we could give them with safety, have always treated them as 'white' as we knew how, and have backed them to the limit wherever they have found local authorities inclined to be unfriendly.

We have a thick book devoted exclusively to legal proceedings entered into by us in order to combat the occasional local interference with which most direct selling houses have had to contend at times.  In fact, one of the classic decisions of the United States Supreme Court in favor of direct sellers, which is always quoted when such questions are up, was handed down in one of our cases, Rearick vs. Pennsylvania, 203 U. S., 507.  We won that case, as we have won all others where the rights of our sales representatives have been at stake and that decision of the Supreme Court is final and absolutely binding on every other court in the United States.

It is instructive, though, to note that we won that far-reaching victory only after the case had been decided against us in every lower court.

In consequence of our policy, we have been enabled to hold customers year after year.  And our salesmen, too, I am glad to say.  You hear much about salesmen jumping the fence so frequently in direct selling.  They do not need to.  We have many men who have been with us for thirty years or more.  In Pennsylvania we have one whole crew, a manager and three men, who have worked together continuously for The Citizens' Wholesale Supply Company for over twenty years.  And another crew of four stayed intact for twenty years—until death took one of its members.

How many salespeople have you, Mr. Blue?  asked the interviewer.

About five hundred.

All over the country?

No, confined, generally speaking, to the Atlantic half, New England to the Rocky Mountains.  And we do little business south of the Mason and Dixon line.

How is your sales army platooned and officered?

We have three to eight or more men

Golden Rule tea is not only Made in Japan but carefully selected and packed there especially for the Golden Rule company.  Here is a consignment ready for shipment from the land of cherrv blossoms and Geisha girls.

 in a crew.  Roughly speaking, there are thirty-five to sixty-five men under a territorial sales manager.  We have in all eight territorial managers, and over them a general sales manager. D. O. Poppleton, the 'Old Sycamore,' one of our sales managers who has been with us more than a third of a century, is one of the directors of the International Association of Salesmen.

I know Dan and I am proud of it, I assured Mr. Blue.  But, tell me, how do you apply the Golden Rule in your instruction to your salesmen?

We tell them facts and only facts.  And we tell them to tell facts and facts only.

WE GIVE them no set speech, continued Mr. Blue.  That would be out of the question as they have over four hundred different items to sell.  We give them the plain truth about every item, that is all.  We encourage them to pass on those truths to the housewife because we know the facts will speak for themselves.

If the salesman is discouraged, we tell him some of the things men of his calling were up against when we sold from door to door, thirty-seven years ago.  If he is inclined to lay too much stress on all the 'agents' that have been ahead of him at every door, we remind him that every other salesman who approaches that door hereafter will have to follow him.  It's a case of six in one hand and half a dozen in the other.

What are your requirements for salesmen?

We take them anywhere from twenty to sixty years of age—good clean fellows, pluggers, well spoken of.  Experience is preferable, but we don't draw the line.  Some diamonds in the rough have become sparklers—that is the experience of every sales manager.

The president looked beyond me for some moments.

I'm telling you all this, not in order to beat the big drum for the company, he resumed, but because everything we have done and are doing is in a very real sense Robert D. Palmer's doing.  He planned it all, laid the corner stone, and put most of the bricks in place.

We go to the four corners of the earth to make sure that each of our products shall be the choicest we can command, and that they shall be picked and packed at just the right time whether that product be tea in Japan, pineapples in Hawaii or corn in Illinois.  But we do so because Robert Palmer would have nothing that did not represent the most conscientious search and the greatest care in selection and preparation.

We will have nothing to do with any coal tar derivatives and our baking powder contains no alum because Palmer drew an absolutely straight line over a third of a century ago and we have hewed to that line ever since.

He required 100 per cent fidelity from himself and us to the company, from the company to its representatives, from both to the public.

He began by driving a milk wagon for his father.  He ended by driving his ideals so deep into this business of his that nothing can ever part them.

Robert Palmer was a military man.  He was a member of the Ohio National Guard for many years.  He was with the army on the Mexican border, with the rank of major.  In the World War he rose to a colonelcy and was attached to the Inspector General's department.  He was a strong disciplinarian, and a bulldog for tenacity, a tiger when aroused.  At the same time he was a patient listener, a big hearted comrade and employer.

We could go to him with anything—except a lie.

WE ARE all familiar with the saying that every movement or business is the lengthened shadow of its founders.  With such men as Robert D. Palmer, however, the figure of speech appears somewhat inappropriate.  It would seem more fitting to say that their influence continues to be seen and felt not as a shadow but as a long brilliant beam of light to guide us all in our struggles to make ourselves felt in the world and to earn our keep.




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GOLDEN RULE C W S CO.

The GOLDEN RULE Trademark Is Emblematical of PURITY AND OUTSTANDING VALUE

The Policy of the Founders Is Being Continued by the Officers, Each of Whom Has Been With the Company for Twenty-five Years or More.

The Citizens' Wholesale Supply Company Has Openings for Energetic Men Between 25 and 50 Years of Age.  If You Know of Such a Man It will Be a Favor to Us and to Him to Bring This Circular to His Attention