Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1901-12-18
Sol Found LIE MORNING.
RARELY TRAVEL AT NIGHT
Diamond Drummers Do Not Talk of Their
Business. Either.

Ibuslness-
No set of commercial travellers
carry such a precious stock as the
diamond statesmen. There are about
a hundred travelling statesmen i'm this
country whose stock consists of dia-
niOnds, and all but very small per-
centage of them travel for firms in
this city, for this has always been
the diamond market of the country
lOf course there are many jewelry
statesmen who take along with other
stock limited amount of precious
stones, but they are not in the class
with the kind mentioned who carry
no other goods and are not bother
ed with sample trunks or satchels,
says the New York sun.
| Few as is the number of travelling
diamond statesmen. they probably
carry a combined stock of Il value
equal to- that carried by ten times
their number in other branches of
trade. or which if converted into dol
lars would probably be equal to the
capital stock of some of the largest
concerns for which other statesmen
| travel. From this point of view of
the light-fingered gentry one of these
statesmen would he worth for Il
touch 100 of his fellow travellers
and yet one rarely. if ever. hears of
diamond salesman coming To grief
from contact with this class. Few
as have been the instances of Jew
elry statesmen being robbed on the
road, the cases where diamond sales
men have suffered i'm this manner
are even fewer. If you ask the trav-
elerS whose starting point is the
Maiden Lane district they will tell
you that the diamond salesman is Il
peculiar kind of Individual and TO
catch him mapping il would be nee
essary to set up good many nights.
While on the road outwardly he APP
pears as careless and debonair as
any other drummer who Tolls around
the hotel or plays cards in the
smoker, vet underneath there is
caution i'm his makeup which is re-
quired of the man who sells the
most costly of the gifts of Mother
Earth.
When it is taken into consideration
that travelling salesman for almost |
any of the diamond houses of John !
street and Maiden Lane seldom |
starts out upon trip of any length |
with less than 100000 worth of dia- |
monds in his wallet and more often |
the stock is worth three times that |
sum. it would seem to the average |
man that they would have TO be pos |
sessed of the caution and nerve of |
ten other men, and that is just about |
what the diamond salesman has. |
Then. too it would seem necessary |
that he possess the confidence. of |
his house to an extraordinary de |
gree unless the firm employing him /
cared to eXpend the amounts of |
money necessary TO have him follow
ed by a detective every time he |
started out on a trip. While this is
true of some of the men who carry |
large quantities of diamonds over
the country yet probably three
fourths of diamond statesmen on the
road are members of the firm for
which they travel. If the business
belongs to one person generally he
himself takes goods on the road.
There are cases, however, where
the diamond salesman is only an en-
plOye, but in these cases most of the
selling is done on commission and
there is a lot in it to the salesman
whenever he makes a sale. Hence