East Goes West

by Younghill Kang

  BOOK THREE

  1

  I HAD NO SOONER reached the steep black streets of Boston, than the easy bread and butter of charity which I had eaten for a year seemed far behind. I was in the land of opportunity once more, and very glad to be there. But again I must attack the problem of American efficiency, American business methods. In Boston I met Hsun, by means of a memorandum from George telling me our friend would be found here. Hsun had come up on an excursion ticket to interview some Boston Orientals about a business loan to start a restaurant. He was having great trouble about the funds for this restaurant. Nobody believed that Hsun would succeed. He told me that he was still trying to get money out of Hung-Kwan Pang for the tea business the latter had taken over. Pang owed him forty dollars, but Hsun would squeeze none of this out of him. Instead, Pang told him he would make a discount, and give Hsun in payment a quantity of valuable fountain pens. To hear Pang talk, you would think he was giving Hsun a great business opportunity. Pang said he had sold these pens all over the country, and had netted $3000 with no trouble at all. After that he had bought out all the pens that this Japanese store had, but was willing to hand over his stock to Hsun on account of the friendship he felt for him. With money from the sale of pens, he gave Hsun to understand, he, Pang, had bought stocks and step by step climbed up the ladder to be a rich man. Hsun had had no luck so far in selling pens, but Pang insisted it was because he had no guts, no business method.

  Hsun had brought these pens with him to Boston—a whole suitcase of them—hoping to give these as security for a loan, but nobody except Pang believed these pens were any good. We got them out and examined them. There were hundreds and thousands of them, pens with glass points. Pang had reported their wholesale price was thirty-five cents each, and that they easily sold for one dollar. Both Hsun and I were sceptical. Hsun suggested lowering the retail price, and seeing if we could sell them at once, here in Boston, before we went down to New York.

  Well, the upshot was, we started out at once, with the suitcase. We sold a few the first morning, but it did not more than pay for our lunch. In the afternoon, because the suitcase was heavy, Hsun invested fifty cents with a Jewish drugstore man for permission to hold a demonstration in his window. We were given room there for the display purpose, and we stuck the pens up, using a soft sheet of cork provided by the pen company. Since Hsun could not write very well, he had me write in my best style, “Guaranteed. Come in and buy.” This seemed to us like business efficiency. We drew a crowd, but they only laughed, and we hardly sold enough to pay for the space in the window. By evening we were both tired and discouraged, and Hsun was again cursing Pang.

  Next morning, we tried again, each going in a different direction. I took part of the pens in a Corona typewriter case, lent me by a Chinese restaurant man. I had the idea of trying business offices. But many of these buildings had “No Canvassing” signs. Then an office caught my eye with familiar letters written upon the window. “The Universal Education Publishing Company.” Perhaps I might find D. J. Lively there. Maybe he would not kick me out, even if I were trying to sell him worthless pens. But I was unprepared for the hearty welcome which awaited me. At the end of the office, behind a fence and surrounded by typewriters and stenographers, the good-looking shiny gentleman I had already encountered once in Stratford was leaning back in his swivel chair and he caught my eye almost instantly, leaning forward with a beaming smile. I stepped up, still with misgivings.

  “May I talk to you a moment, sir? That is, if you are not too busy.”

  “Why of course! I am never too busy to talk. You know, my boy, people who run up and down with papers in their hands all the time—these people who seem very busy and never talk to others and never try to help others—these are the kind that never get much done. No, my lad, D. J. is never too busy to talk,” (here he gave me a sly wink), “but he makes investment and profit out of his talks. Sit down, sit down.”

  Having shaken hands with him and seated myself in a straight chair by his side, I hardly knew how to begin.

  “Well, my boy, I see you lost no time in looking me up. And you are interested in selling, that is it?”

  I almost jumped. He seemed to have read my mind.

  “Well—I want to make some money for the coming college year. I must have it if I am to stay in Boston,” I began, hesitating.

  “Out with it! Straight from the shoulder! Don’t beat around the bush. You knew that D. J. Lively is your man. College—yes, very fine, very fine. Do you see that man over there in the far corner of the room?” he lowered his voice. “I pay that man a college president’s salary every year. Yes sir! I never had a college education myself, but then I know by heart our great educational work—Universal Education, in three volumes. And I have been of untold service to countless boys going to college.”

  I was still too bashful to mention the pens. And anyhow, Mr. Lively kept right on.

  “How I do like to see manly independence! The spirit that inspired Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. The spirit back of these United States of America. Nothing is too small by which to make honest money. George Washington, the father of his country, was only a poor bookseller once. Did you know that, my boy? Yes, a poor bookseller.” He made an impressive pause. “And the man you see before you, too. D. J. Lively. That’s how he got his start. The selling business. Have you ever tried it before?”

  “Not in Boston, sir.—Er—I have these pens,” I brought them out, mumbling.

  “What? So you are a salesman!” Mr. Lively leaned back in his swivel chair and laughed heartily.

  “But I’m afraid they’re not much good. . . .”

  “Here, here! That’s not the way to sell anything, boy,” sputtered Mr. Lively. “You’re going against the first law of salesmanship!” His round eyes protruded. He looked shocked. “Dear, dear. But give me those pens. I think I can use a couple.” And he winked, with twinkling eyes.

  I handed the Corona case over to him. He selected six. I was overwhelmed.

  “Why—why do you want so many,” I stammered, “when you already have a good one?” For I saw it on his desk.

  “You see, I have plans for you, my boy. I want to give you confidence in your first venture. But that isn’t the point. Let this be a lesson to you. You have sold yourself to me already. I stand before you favorably impressed. So your pens have sold themselves. But see here, my boy, between you and me, you should be selling something better than this.” He examined the pens with a thoughtful frown, much to my humiliation. “Don’t you think so?”

  I said that it was very hard for an Oriental to learn American salesmanship.

  “Come, come, my boy, that isn’t the spirit of American optimism. Your background may be a good thing. Only you must reap advantage out of that. You must select some field where that will help. New England, now. An Oriental salesman for books. H’m!” Mr. Lively paused, and looked at me inquiringly. “A fine clean Christian young Oriental earning his way through college.” Lowering his voice he asked my views on life under two headings, whether I ever smoked or drank. I replied, “No.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Lively with relief. “Now, my boy, everything’s all right. I wouldn’t smoke. I have never smoked because I think smoking is morally wrong. As for drink, I wouldn’t associate with anybody who touches it.”

  I was thinking that Mr. Lively looked just the kind of man who would enjoy a good cigar. His was also the energetic temperament, I was almost sure, that would like to swear sometimes, but observing his big, morally shiny face, I was sure he was speaking the truth and that he never did.

  “Good. And you are very much in earnest, eh . . . about this education?”

  “Yes sir. I came to the West especially to study Shakespeare. I have already read all his plays that have been translated into the Japanese.”

  “Shakespeare? Good, good.” Here Mr. Lively clapped me on the shoulder and
remarked to the air with boundless magnanimity. “H’m, this fine boy seems the genuine article. Why, nobody could doubt it. Everybody in New England will want to help you. D. J. Lively is a man hard to fool. Certainly I could never doubt a fine, earnest Christian lad.” Then he said to me with beaming eye, “How would you like to sell our Universal Education, my boy, and earn the money to put yourself through college?”

  “Great!” I exclaimed. (I wished George could have been there to see him! . . . It was just what I had always thought . . . so the American man did business . . . such a generous man, his charity shining out to every corner of the earth—even to the interior of Asia—you could see it in the good-looking Y.M.C.A. building in Seoul, or in the Educational Institutions in Peking. So many schools and hospitals—all, I thought, coming from the charitable feelings of a man like this.)

  “But look here, Han, you must learn something of salesmanship. Your approach in selling me these pens was very very poor. My boy, you evidently have no notion of the veriest fundamentals. I was startled, I was almost discouraged when I heard what you said about those pens being no good. I was your prospective customer, you know. But you’ll learn. I can see that. Cultivate your faith in yourself. And in the goods you are selling. Did you ever stop to think what a noble calling for any man—that of selling books? selling Universal Education to all men?”

  “Almost like a missionary,” I was thinking. While Mr. Lively went on in inspired tones, like a man cupping his ear to the Muse.

  “Yes, just north of Boston. We will let you monopolize that field, I think. Never forget the fine earnestness of one who is seeking help to educate himself. Never swerve from the straight, the narrow path. . . . And in salesmanship, just as in Life, you must have Faith. Faith in all the finer, nobler things—in yourself, in the goods you are selling. . . .”

  We parted with the understanding that I should come in tomorrow and learn about this business opportunity.

  2

  When I reported my interview with Mr. Lively to Hsun in glowing terms, he agreed that it was for me a business opportunity, and he advised me to stay in Boston for a while until it materialized, rather than come to New York where he himself found it so hard to make a living. He saw now that the pens were no good. And Hsun was right. Anybody who was such a fool as to buy our pens would tell others not to buy, and if he saw us again would try to get his money back. In a sense, it was like begging, taking money away from people for nothing, and not from rich people but from poor—for people who had money would never buy such pens. The poor who could not afford a decent pen were the only possible customers. So it was not even Robin Hood heroism. We were both disgusted with the pen business. And that very night Hsun took the boat for New York.

  But my future did not look so rosy to me, either, after calling on Mr. Lively the following morning. For first I found that I was required to buy a Prospectus—a fat, handsome volume, bound in leather, and containing the most telling extracts from those three superlative volumes, Universal Education. But this prospectus cost ten dollars—as much as a copy of the work itself. In other words, each of Mr. Lively’s salesmen automatically became a customer to him before earning any money at all. I would have been discouraged, if Mr. Lively had not taken me around with his hand on my shoulder and introduced me to all the office force as his future salesman. They greeted me with “Very glad to meet you,” which was a lot. Thus I was persuaded. I invested my ten dollars. And Mr. Lively gave me a businesslike receipt and the prospectus, together with a number of papers, sales talks of various kinds to be memorized. Some were as long as twelve pages, others only eight or six, and a few, as short as three. But there was still a contract to be signed with the company. Mr. Lively refused to sign this contract with me yet.

  “We must do nothing hastily,” said Mr. Lively, and he broke it to me that I would need to take a long course of training in his school for salesmanship. Then I was indeed discouraged and explained that I had no means of getting along while learning to be a star salesman.

  “Oh, I’ll fix that,” said Mr. Lively, who radiated optimism. “You are my boy from now on. Why, I’m going to take you out and show you what a real American home looks like from the inside. You can live in my home with my own children scot-free while you are memorizing these talks. I’ll give you some private lessons, too. After that, you can attend some of the meetings in my office and brush up a little on the finer points of salesmanship, and then I think you’ll make good.”

  Then he told me to be at his office at five o’clock and he would take me out to his home in the suburbs. “Be prompt, my dear boy. This is the first lesson for the future business man.”

  At five o’clock, I found Mr. D. J. singularly fresh and unexhausted, as full of good will as ever, after pumping it out all day.

  “Sit down, my boy. Be with you in a minute.” He took down the receiver of his desk telephone. “Mildred, Mildred, is that you, Mildred? This is Daddy talking. What can I get?” Then I heard a shrill woman’s voice at the other end of the wire sounding mad and nervous. “I don’t care! You get anything you want to.” And Bang! She hung up while Mr. Lively was still talking.

  D. J. turned around to me. Gently he beamed, like a bald mountain with sunshine. He winked, conveying to me an air of conspiracy.

  “I’ll fix it. I know how to handle Mrs. D. J.”

  We stepped into Mr. Lively’s big Cadillac car, as expansive, good-looking and morally shiny as its owner. “We’ll take Mother out a real good steak,” he chuckled, winking again, as he drove around to a large clean shiny meat shop in the city, and purchased an exceptionally big, tender, thick cut of beefsteak. “With her that ought to close the deal. We’ll put this one over.”

  And not losing his good humor for a moment, he went on talking about Mrs. Lively, telling me what a good cook she was, how she was a college graduate, and a distant relative of a New England poet, as we drove out of Boston.

  “A superior wife and mother,” Mr. Lively summed up in the same tones of hearty eulogy which he used toward Universal Education. “A noble example of womankind. Tender heart—boundless energy. High-strung . . . but a real helpmate. Makes fine lemon pies. Yes, sir, I knew the stuff of Mrs. Lively as soon as I saw it. None of your bob-haired type for me. So the sale was cinched, you might say—well,” Mr. Lively looked at me with solemn gravity. “I stepped another rung up the great American ladder of Success when I married Mrs. Lively.” Then he went on in his hearty optimistic way, “My boy, Mrs. Lively is going to be a mother to you. You’ll be Mrs. Lively’s boy as well as mine.”

  He talked more about boys he and Mrs. Lively had raised, on the selling of Universal Education, until today they were big successes, making large incomes. One or two schoolteachers he had saved from their fates . . . now they had large cars, like this one—he pointed to the long shiny hood of the one we were riding in—and much bank stock.

  “You and I are going to get on well,” reiterated Mr. Lively confidently. “I know the value of Shakespeare, though I am a practical man and not a college graduate. Between you and me, the best business men are not college graduates. But I always say, give me Shakespeare and the Bible . . . and the three volumes of Universal Education. ‘Speak the speech, I pray thee’ . . . you know that quotation? . . . Oh, you must work hard to memorize these sales talks, my boy. . . . You will have plenty of time to study them out here with Mrs. Lively, even though you help Mother a little about the house . . . um . . . I don’t suppose you drive a car, my boy?” Mr. Lively glanced at me appraisingly, almost as if he were measuring me for a suit.

  “Well, I have not had much experience,” I murmured modestly. But evidently not modestly enough, for he seemed to be hopeful. He said it would be a fine thing if I could take him in and out of the city after a hard day’s work sometime. And he let me take the wheel in hand. It was the first time I had ever handled the steering wheel of an automobile. My experience, I had meant, was
with bicycles.

  “For mercy’s sake, boy, that’s not the way to drive.” His big florid face became quite faded as he snatched the wheel just in time to save us from the ditch. The car tottered a moment on two wheels.

  “Whew! Whew!” sputtered Mr. Lively, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “I see you’re the go-ahead, no-stopping kind. But this lesson of yours—my boy—this lesson of yours—it almost cost me $7000.”

  He repeated the price several times, as he got out and rubbed the fenders with a dust cloth on the ditch side.

  “My boy,” he resumed, when we were driving safely once more, “I know you’ve got the stuff from which good salesmen are made. I can’t be fooled on your personality. But I don’t believe you’ll ever be able to drive a car—if you take my advice, you’ll keep away from machinery!—a car—don’t forget—worth $7000!”

  We came into a small suburban town also of a morally shiny character, with trees, big shiny houses, and beautifully shiny lawns, hedges, and flower beds. Mr. Lively stopped before a handsome, tall three-story house built neatly of yellow bricks. Its back was on a large park.