How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) Part 50

Heartiest congratulations on your nomination (election).

Your nomination (election) testifies to the esteem in which you are held by your fellow citizens. Heartiest congratulations.

Congratulations on your victory, a hard fight, well won by the best man.

Your splendid majority must be a great satisfaction to you.

Sincerest congratulations on your election.

Congratulations upon your nomination. You will have the support of the best element in the community and your election should be a foregone conclusion. I wish you every success.

You fought a good fight in a good cause. Heartiest congratulations on your splendid success.

Nothing in your career should fill you with greater satisfaction than your successful election. I congratulate you with all my heart.

No man deserves success more than you. You have worked hard for your const.i.tuents and they appreciate it. Heartiest congratulations.

Your nomination (election) is received with the greatest enthusiasm by your friends here and by none more than myself.

Heartiest congratulations.

I congratulate you upon your new honors won by distinguished services to your fellow citizens.

Your campaign was vigorous and fine. Your victory testifies to the people's confidence in you and your cause. Warmest congratulations.

Congratulations upon your well-won victory and best wishes for your future success.

You deserve your splendid success. Sincerest congratulations.

I cannot refrain from expressing my personal appreciation of your eloquent address. Warmest congratulations.

Your address last night was splendid. What a gift you have.

Sincerest congratulations.

Heartiest congratulations on your splendid speech of last night. Everybody is praising it.

CHAPTER XI

THE LAW OF LETTERS--CONTRACT LETTERS

There are forty-eight states in this Union, and each of them has its own laws and courts. In addition we have the Federal Government with its own laws and courts. In one cla.s.s of cases, the Federal courts follow the state laws which govern the particular occasion; in another cla.s.s of cases, notably in those involving the interpretation or application of the United States statutes, the Federal courts follow Federal law. There is not even a degree of uniformity governing the state laws, and especially is this true in criminal actions, for crimes are purely statutory creations.

Therefore it is extremely misleading to give any but the vaguest and most elementary suggestions on the law which governs letters. To be clear and specific means inevitably to be misleading. I was talking with a lawyer friend not long since about general text-books on law which might be useful to the layman. He was rather a commercially minded person and he spoke fervently:

"If I wanted to build up a practice and I did not care how I did it, I should select one hundred well-to-do people and see that each of them got a copy of a compendium of business law. Then I should sit back and wait for them to come in--and come in they would, for every mother's son of them would decide that he had a knowledge of the law and cheerfully go ahead getting himself into trouble."

Sharpen up a man's knowledge of the law and he is sure to cut himself.

For the law is rarely absolute. Most questions are of mixed fact and law. Were it otherwise, there would be no occasion for juries, for, roughly, juries decide facts. The court decides the application of the law. The layman tends to think that laws are rules, when more often they are only guides. The cheapest and best way to decide points of law is to refer them to counsel for decision. Unless a layman will take the time and the trouble most exhaustively to read works of law and gain something in the nature of a working legal knowledge, he had best take for granted that he knows nothing whatsoever of law and refer all legal matters to counsel.

There are, however, a few principles of general application that may serve, not in the stead of legal knowledge, but to acquaint one with the fact that a legal question may be involved, for legal questions by no means always formally present themselves in barristers' gowns. They spring up casually and unexpectedly.

Take the whole question of contract. A contract is not of necessity a formal instrument. A contract is a meeting of minds. If I say to a man: "Will you cut my lawn for ten dollars?" and he answers, "Yes," as valid a contract is established as though we had gone to a scrivener and had covered a folio of parchment with "Whereases" and "Know all men by these presents" and "Be it therefore" and had wound up with red seals and ribbons. But of course many legal questions could spring out of this oral agreement. We might dispute as to what was meant by cutting the lawn. And then, again, the time element would enter. Was the agreement that the lawn should be cut the next day, or the next month, or the next year? Contracts do not have to be in writing. All that the writing does is to make the proof of the exact contract easier.

If we have the entirety of a contract within the four corners of a sheet of paper, then we need no further evidence as to the existence of the contract, although we may be in just as hopeless a mess trying to define what the words of the contract mean. If we have not a written contract, we have the bother of introducing oral evidence to show that there was a contract. Most contracts nowadays are formed by the interchange of letters, and the general point to remember is that the acceptance must be in terms of the offer. If X writes saying: "I will sell you twenty tons of coal at fifteen dollars a ton," and Y replies: "I will take thirty tons of coal at thirteen dollars a ton," there is no contract, but merely a series of offers. If, however, X ships the thirty tons of coal, he can hold Y only at thirteen dollars a ton for he has abandoned his original offer and accepted Y's offer. It can be taken as a general principle that if an offer be not accepted in its terms and a new condition be introduced, then the acceptance really becomes an offer, and if the one who made the original offer goes ahead, it can be a.s.sumed that he has agreed to the modifications of the unresponsive acceptance.

If X writes to Y making an offer, one of the conditions of which is that it must be accepted within ten days, and Y accepts in fifteen days, then X can, if he likes, disregard the acceptance, but he can waive his ten-day time limit and take Y's acceptance as a really binding agreement.

Another point, sometimes of considerable importance, concerns the time when a letter takes effect, and this is governed by the question of fact as to whom the Post Office Department is acting for. If, in making an offer, I ask for a reply by mail or simply for a reply, I const.i.tute the mail as my agent, and the acceptor of that offer will be presumed to have communicated with me at the moment when he consigns his letter to the mails. He must give the letter into proper custody--that is, it must go into the regular and authorized channels for the reception of mail.

That done, it makes no difference whether or not the letter ever reaches the offerer. It has been delivered to his agent, and delivery to an agent is delivery to the princ.i.p.al. Therefore, it is wise to specify in an offer that the acceptance has to be actually received.

The law with respect to the agency of the mails varies and turns princ.i.p.ally upon questions of fact.

Letters may, of course, be libelous. The law of libel varies widely among the several states, and there are also Federal laws as well as Postal Regulations covering matters which are akin to libel. The answer to libel is truth, but not always, for sometimes the truth may be spread with so malicious an intent as to support an action. It is not well to put into a letter any derogatory or subversive statement that cannot be fully proved. This becomes of particular importance in answering inquiries concerning character or credit, but in practically every case libel is a question of fact.

Another point that arises concerns the property in a letter. Does he who receives a letter acquire full property in it? May he publish it without permission? In general he does not acquire full property. Mr. Justice Story, in a leading case, says:

"The author of any letter or letters, and his representatives, whether they are literary letters or letters of business, possess the sole and exclusive copyright therein; and no person, neither those to whom they are addressed, nor other persons, have any right or authority to publish the same upon their own account or for their benefit."

But then, again, there are exceptions.

CHAPTER XII

THE COST OF A LETTER

Discovering the exact cost of a letter is by no means an easy affair.

However, approximate figures may always be had and they are extremely useful. The cost of writing an ordinary letter is quite surprising. Very few letters can be dictated, transcribed, and mailed at a cost of much less than twelve cents each. The factors which govern costs are variable and it is to be borne in mind that the methods for ascertaining costs as here given represent the least cost and not the real cost--they simply tell you "Your letter costs at least this sum." They do not say "Your letter costs exactly this sum." The cost of a form letter, mailed in quant.i.ties, can be gotten at with considerable accuracy. The cost of letters dictated by correspondents or by credit departments or other routine departments is also capable of approximation with fair accuracy, but the cost of a letter written by an executive can really hardly be more than guessed at. But in any case a "not-less-than" cost can be had.

In recent years industrial engineers have done a great deal of work in ascertaining office costs and have devised many useful plans for lowering them. These plans mostly go to the saving of stenographers'

time through suitable equipment, better arrangement of supplies, and specialization of duties. For instance, light, the kind or height of chair or desk, the tension of the typewriter, the location of the paper and carbon paper, all tend to make or break the efficiency of the typist and are cost factors. In offices where a great deal of routine mail is handled, the writing of the envelopes and the mailing is in the hands of a separate department of specialists with sealing and stamp affixing machines. The proper planning of a correspondence department is a science in itself, and several good books exist on the subject. But all of this has to do with the routine letter.

When an executive drawing a high salary must write a letter, it is his time and not the time of the stenographer that counts. He cannot be kept waiting for a stenographer, and hence it is economy for him to have a personal secretary even if he does not write enough letters to keep a single machine busy through more than a fraction of a day. Many busy men do not dictate letters at all; they have secretaries skilled in letter writing. In fact, a man whose salary exceeds thirty thousand dollars a year cannot afford to write a letter excepting on a very important subject. He will commonly have a secretary who can write the letter after only a word or two indicating the subject matter. Part of the qualification of a good secretary is an ability to compose letters which are characteristic of the princ.i.p.al.

Take first the cost of a circular letter--one that is sent out in quant.i.ties without any effort to secure a personal effect. The items of cost are:

(1) The postage.

(2) The paper and printing.

(3) The cost of addressing, sealing, stamping, and mailing.

The third item is the only one that offers any difficulty. Included in it are first the direct labor--the wages of the human beings employed; and, second, the overhead expense. The second item includes the value of the s.p.a.ce occupied by the letter force, the depreciation on the equipment, and finally the supervision and the executive expense properly chargeable to the department. Unless an accurate cost system is in force the third item cannot be accurately calculated. The best that can be done is to take the salaries of the people actually employed on the work and guess at the proper charge for the s.p.a.ce. The sum of the three items divided by the number of letters is the cost per letter. It is not an accurate cost. It will be low rather than high, for probably the full share of overhead expense will not be charged.

It will be obvious, however, that the place to send out circular letters is not a room in a high-priced office building, unless the sending is an occasional rather than a steady practice. Costs in this work are cut by better planning of the work and facilities, setting work standards, paying a bonus in excess of the standards, and by the introduction of automatic machinery. The Post Office now permits, under certain conditions, the use of a machine which prints a stamp that is really a frank. This is now being used very generally by concerns which have a heavy outgoing mail. Then there are sealing machines, work conveyors, and numerous other mechanical and physical arrangements which operate to reduce the costs. They are useful, however, only if the output be very large indeed.