PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY

The stage properties that go with a bully change as we grow older.  When one thinks of a bully, one usually sees a picture at once in one’s mind.  It is a big boy lording it over a little one, or getting him down and sitting on him.

Everybody recognizes what is going on immediately, pitches in nobly and beautifully, and licks the big boy.

The trouble with the bully in business has been that he is not so simple and easy to recognize.  He is apt to be more or less anonymous and impersonal, and it is harder to hit him in the right place.

But when one thinks of it perhaps this pleasant and inspiring duty is not so impracticable as it looks, and is presently to be attended to.

Any man who relies, in getting what he wants, on being big instead of being right, is a bully.

Modern business is done over a wide area, with thousands of persons looking on, and for a long time and with thousands of people coming back.  The man who relies on being big instead of being right, and who takes advantage of his position instead of his inherent superiority, is soon seen through.  His customers go over to the enemy.  A show of force or a hold-up works very well at the moment.  Being bigger may be more showy than being right, and it may down the Little Boy, but the Little Boy wins the crowd.

Business to-day consists in persuading crowds.

The Little Boy can prove he is right.  All the bully can prove is that he is bigger.

The Liar in Business is already going by.

Now it is the turn of the bully.

Not long ago a few advertisers in a big American city wanted unfairly low rates for advertisements and tried to use force with the newspapers.  Three or four of the biggest shops combined and gave notice that they would take their advertising away unless the rates came down.  After a little, they drew in a few other lines of business with them, and suddenly one morning five or six full pages of advertisements were withdrawn from every newspaper in the city.  The newspapers went on publishing all the news of the city except news as to what people could buy in department stores, and waited.  They made no counter-move of any kind, and said nothing and seven days slipped past.  They held to the claim that the service they performed in connecting the great stores with the people of the city was a real service, that it represented market value which could be proved and paid for.  They kept on for another week publishing for the people all the news of the city except the news as to how they could spend their money.  They wondered how long it would take the great shops with acres of things to sell to see how it would work not to let anybody know what the things were.