who give talks and discuss the
actual letters, good ones and bad, which have been written. They go over
the carbons and hold conferences with the correspondents who need help.
In other places courtesy campaigns for a higher standard of
correspondence are held, while in others the matter is placed in the
hands of the heads of the various departments, acting on the assumption
that these heads are men of experience and ability or they would never
have attained the position they hold.

The president of a bank which has branches in London and Paris and other
big foreign cities used every now and then to stop the boy who was
carrying a basket of carbons to the file clerk and look them over. If he
found a letter he did not like, or one that he did like a great deal, he
sent for the person who wrote it and talked with him. It was not
necessary for him to go over the letters often. The fact that the people
in the office knew that it was likely to happen kept them on the alert
and nearly every letter that left the organization was better because
the person who wrote it knew that the man at the head was interested in
it and that there was a strong chance that he might see it.

What is effective in one place may not be so in another. Each house must
work out its own system. But one thing must be understood in the
beginning, and that is that the spirit of courtesy must first abide in
the home office before the people who work there can hope to send it
out through the mail.

Roughly speaking there are eight types of business letters which nearly
every business man at one time or another has to write or to consider.

The first is the letter of _application_. The applicant should state
simply his qualifications for the place he wants. He should not make an
appeal to sympathy (sob stuff) nor should he beg or cringe. He should
not demand a certain salary, though he may state what salary he would
like, and he should not say "Salary no object." It would probably not be
true. There are comparatively few people with whom money is no object.
If it is the first time the applicant has ever tried for a position he
should say so; if not, he should give his reason for leaving his last
place. It should not be a long letter. A direct statement of the
essential facts (age, education, experiences, etc.) is all that is
necessary.

Many times the letter of application is accompanied by, or calls for, a
letter of _recommendation_.

No man should a