The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1898-12-08
RUNNING A WAKE-UP ROUTE
The vicissitudes' Of the Business and
Why the Protector Finally
Gave 1t I'm.

The vicissitudes Of the Business and
Why the PROTECTOR Finally
Gave 1t Up.
I'm the course of my hustling," said
a man who has done many things for
living, Il got up once in western
town a wake-up route, waking up peo-
pie that wanted to get up at some
fixed hour in the morning. It was q
lively town, with lot of people in it
that made practice of sitting up
nights, and who found it hard work
to get up in the morning, and had
no trouble in getting subscribers. I
had hard work in serving 'em all. My
man had to move sharp to get around
to 'em all in time. He couldn't stay
and argue with man that was stupid
and sleepy. If he wouldn't get up after
fair warning he had to let him go,
and it was this that finally made trou-
BILE, because these men wanted to be
walked up with club, so to speak, if
necessary, and while my man was
runctuality itself and never failed to
be there at the appointed hour and to
wake the man up, yet he was slight
and rather delicate man and he couldn't
enforce his demands, quite aside from
the question Of having time to stay.
Some big burly chap would say to him:
"'You go way or I'll break you in
two,' and what could my man do?
"But in the morning these folks
would always be sorry they hadn't got
up and I suppose that was natural
enough, but they used to come to the
Office and kick because I hadn't got
'em up. They said they'd contracted
to be got up and they wanted to be
got up.
"Well, I stood this sort of nonsense
for awhile, and then I imported a
waker-up from the east, powerful, up
to-date slugger, who could wake up
anybody at any hour of the night, no
matter how sound asleep he might be
and keep him awake. I sent this man
cut one night with my little man for a
pilot. 1t was like this:
"They'd go into the mans room, and
the little fellow'd do the talking.
"'Come, now,' he'd say, it's time to
get up
"'You go way says the sleeper.
"'No,' says the little man, you want
to get up right now, and if you don't
I'm going to get you up
"And in a minute or less the big fell
low would tackle him. He'd wake him
up all right, and the sleeper realized
in a minute every time what had hap
pened. Then they'd go at it, right
there; but my man was a hummer with
loud hum, and he cleaned out his
man every time in short order. He
licked Is subscribers that morning in
an hour and forty minutes.
'But knew that while we could lick
'em easy in detail, we couldn't begin to
touch 'em in bunch, and they were
sure to come; and so along in the morn
ing, before they'd got around, we
moved out.
1--WE started a wake-up route in an
ether town, and profting by our ex-
perience we started in with the big
man at the beginning. We had every
subscriber take look at him, and have
e little talk with him, and agree to be
walked up sure. Each man knew what
he was running up against, and we had
very little trouble there. We never had
to lick more'n one or two, and every
thing was going along slick and smooth
as could be, and we were just coming
money, when there was a man come
along and started an electrical wake
up exchange in the town. BY that
system they put a gong on the head of
a mans bed. with a wire connection to
a central office, where the subscribers
name and the hour he wanted to get
up at were entered. When the time
came the man on duty there would just
simply press a button and start the
gong over the mans head. The gong
was so adjusted that it would keep on
ringing till the man got up. His get
ting up, taking that weight off the bed,
operated cutoff that stopped it.
''There were some men that could
sleep right through the gong, but not
many; and as a general proposition the
system was a great success. Our meth
Cd was effective enough in it's way,
but we couldn't begin to compete with
it, and in the course of time we went
out of business altogether Y Sun.