Guide to the Archive: Alexander Botts

Who was Alexander Botts?

Botts is a traveling salesman—and eventually a sales manager—for the fictional Earthworm Tractor Company, a comic stand-in for Caterpillar.

He was created by William Hazlett Upson (1891–1975), who drew heavily on his own experience working with crawler tractors. Botts first appeared in the Post on April 16, 1927. Upson ultimately wrote more than 100 Botts stories, with the last one appearing in the Post in 1975.

Botts himself is a wonderful comic creation. He is supremely confident, endlessly optimistic, resourceful, boastful, accident-prone and almost impossible to discourage. He regularly gets himself into situations that ought to end his career—and somehow turns catastrophe into a tractor sale.

The central joke is that Botts thinks of himself as a brilliant salesman and mechanic. To everyone around him, he frequently looks like a lunatic.

And yet Botts is often right.

Botts versus Mr. Henderson

One of the best features of the series is Botts’s relationship with his long-suffering boss, Gilbert Henderson, president of the Earthworm Tractor Company.

Henderson is essentially the straight man.

Botts reports some outrageous new development. Henderson orders him to stop. Botts doesn’t. Things get worse. Henderson threatens to fire him. Botts sends another communication explaining that he has just sold six tractors.

Then Botts behaves as though this was obviously his plan all along.

A number of stories exploit letters, telegrams and memoranda between Botts and Henderson, which gives them a particularly effective comic rhythm.

In modern terms, some Botts stories read almost like an email chain between an increasingly horrified CEO and his uncontrollable salesman.

Illustrations

Members can access all of the Alexander Botts stories

Below is an interactive, searchable chronological list of of all 63 of the Alexander Botts stories published in The Saturday Evening Post, from the first story “I’m a Natural-Born Salesman” published on April 16, 1927 through “Alexander Botts, Detective” published in the January 1975 issue.

Members can click on the “View the full issue flipbook” link with each story, to be directed to the issue in our archive that contains that story.