Over at credit.com, I took a look at P.T. Barnum’s 1880 advice book, The Art of Money-Getting.
P.T. Barnum, the great circus showman of the 19th century, is probably best remembered for saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” That’s a shame, because he never said it; his competitor did. And as a result of this misattribution, many people think Barnum was nothing but a brash huckster who wasn’t worth learning from. I counted myself among those who thought Barnum was a con artist, but fortunately my curiosity got the better of me when I saw that Amazon was offering a free Kindle version of his book, The Art of Money-Getting, and I downloaded it. (If you don’t have a Kindle or tablet you can read it here.)
I learned that Barnum didn’t think of his customers as suckers. In fact, he had a great deal of respect for his customers, and in this book he warned that anything less than scrupulous treatment of customers would lead to financial ruin and a worthless reputation. He wrote, “the public is wiser than many imagine.”
