If I Knew by R. A. Underwood

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jun 8, 1911

If I Knew

By R. A. Underwood

(Second Reading—Part 1)

I HAVE heard some say: “If I knew that I could succeed in selling books, or that God would bless me in selling them, I would enter the canvassing work. If I knew that some soul would be saved in the kingdom of God as a result of such labor, I would not hesitate to enter the field.”

Let me quote a few lines from a recent news-letter sent out by the Pacific Press. Brother F. E. Painter is quoted in this letter as saying:—

“Some of the workers who attended our institute at Nevada, Iowa, have made a very good beginning. I had a letter from one of them last week, and he had sold $103 worth of books his second week out; another sold $71 worth his first week out.”

In a report from Utah it is stated that the agents in that field sold an average of $1.54 worth of books for every hour’s work in the three previous weeks. In California and Nevada the agents sold $1.45 worth of books during the same time. In Southern California they had sold $1.79 worth of books for each hour’s work during three weeks. In Arizona the agents averaged, during this time, $2.55 for every hour of labor.

Now, on the basis of even the eight-hour plan of labor, and taking the smallest average of these reports, which is $1.45 an hour, the agent would sell $11.60 worth of books each day. This would certainly give him five dollars a day for his work, and that is a better average than a man usually gets in mechanical work, and certainly about three times as much as one would make working on a farm. You will notice others sold $1.79 worth of books each hour for the given period, and others as high as $2.55 worth on the average.

When the canvassing work is undertaken with the determination to work as faithfully and diligently as one must work to succeed in other business, there is no failure if the individual is at all adapted to the work; and there are very few who can not, with proper training, become splendid canvassers. Most of the agents who are selling Life and Health, Liberty, the Signs Monthly, and the Watchman are making from three dollars to ten dollars a day. A little girl only thirteen years old, told me some time ago that she had made five dollars a day clear, selling the Signs Monthly, and had made enough in three months to take her through one of our academies for a year, besides assisting other members of her father’s family. What a little girl can do, others can certainly do.

And then “if I knew” that as a result of faithful canvassing, I could meet some dear soul in the kingdom of God, who had been saved as a result of faithful service on my part, that would be a hundredfold, yea, a thousandfold more than all else besides. This is the privilege and assurance held out as an investment for many to enter this noble, God-appointed work. Who will say: “Here am I; help me and send me; I am ready to enter the work?”

R. A. UNDERWOOD.