MY OLD MAN said the Government ought to hang up special awards of merit for long-term partnerships in business and professional life. He said by long-term partnerships he meant those that had lasted twenty years or more. He thought one of the most beautiful things in this world was an old business of professional partnership.
There used to be a partnership firm of two men back in our old home town of Pueblo that had been established upwards of fifty years. Every time my old man went past the sign of that firm he stopped and lifted his hat. He said two men who had been able to get along in business together for that period were entitled to his small tribute.
My old man said that the sign always served to revive his faith in human nature, especially if he happened to it at a time when something had happened that made him think his fellow man was pretty low down and ornery. He said the sign caused him to reflect that there must be some honesty and amity between men after all. He said a partnership might last a while without honesty or amity, but that it could not go on for years without both elements.
My old man said a fellow was mighty lucky when he found the perfect partner. He said of course the fellow himself had to be the perfect partner, too, so the luck was on both sides when the perfect partners first met. He said he was not prepared to analyze the perfect partner, because he had never been associated' with one, but judged it was the partner you could remain in business with for a long time.
My old man said he always envied the parties to an enduring and successful partnership. He said in those alliances one party might become ill or go away for a protracted period, but when he returned he found his interests had been carefully conserved by his partner. One might die, yet the other carried on in his name and protected his heirs.
He could not think of a happier picture than a partnership of that nature. He said it did not necessarily argue a close friendship, because he had known longtime partners who were not particularly friendly outside of business, but that it did argue a mutual understanding and trust that was a beautiful thing to behold.
He said he supposed a book could be written about each and every old partnership in existence. He said probably every old and successful partnership was something like a marriage and could contemplate many a year of adversity and struggle and partnership bickerings and makings-up, but that it must be a grand thing when two men could sit down in complete accord in the gloaming of their years and look back over their triumphs together.
My old man said he had tried partnerships many times in his life, but that he had always been unlucky in his choice of partners. He said he was willing to concede that they had been just as unlucky in their choice, too. He said he had never been able to find a partner who thought and felt the same way he did along business lines, so he never was able to hit it off with one.
He said he used to think it was always the partner’s fault and that after a dissolution he generally had a long recital of his wrongs at the hands of the partner. He said that when he found that the partner always had a recital of wrongs, too, and that analysis often disclosed that there was as much merit in the partner’s recital as in his own, he came to the conclusion that he was just not the perfect partner. He said this conclusion was strengthened by several of his former partners going into partnership with other fellows and doing all right.
My old man said, however, even when he had partners with whom he got along fairly well, they invariably managed to out-juggle him and wind up with all the enterprise, whatever it was. He said he was the type that always got out-j uggled. He said people told him that it was because he put too much faith in his partners, but that this was not it, at all.
He said it was his bad luck in partners. He said you had to put faith in your partner, or you did not have a real partnership. My old man said he always ran into the partner who had that curious trait of human nature that made him want 100 per cent of a proposition the minute it looked like a good thing and would go to almost any lengths to out-juggle his partner to get it, though the partnership might have been founded primarily on faith and friendship.
My old man said one thing about him, his partners never had to be dishonest to out-juggle him. He said that when he found he was being out-juggled, he generally got so hurt and disgusted that he was always willing to withdraw without a struggle. He said he realized that this was not good business sense, but it preserved his self-respect, although he admitted that offhand he could not remember a time when he had been able to use self-respect in lieu of hot cakes and coffee.