Chapter 9
The aristocracy of brains differs from the aristocracies of birth and boodle as the sun differs from the jack-o-lantern, or as the music of the soul differs from the bray of the burro, or as a pure woman's love differs from the stolen affections hashed up by the fourth husband.
Brains like air and water, are not always appreciated until we have analyzed and investigated thoroughly. The foolish man thinks champagne is the finest drink. The wise man knows water is the best drink, even though water costs nothing. The foolish man has for his ideal--money or birth. The wise man takes off his hat to brains.
The measure of a man is his brain and not his birth or his boodle. Thought, reason and knowledge are possible to the man who has a brain. No man can buy brains, and truly he is an aristocrat of the highest order who is blessed with a good brain.
Some people whose ancestors came over with the Pilgrim Fathers have a picture of the Mayflower in their homes and they seem to take a great deal of pride in the picture of the Mayflower. There seems to be a halo around the Mayflower. The descendants of the passengers of that ship look upon the picture of the Mayflower as a sort of seal or guarantee of the good qualities of their forefathers, and consequently, being direct descendants they take unto themselves a lot of credit for something in which they had no hand in the making.
The Mayflower was afterwards used as a slave ship, but our disciples of birth do not want to know about this. Some of the passengers in the Mayflower performed acts and violated laws and conducted themselves in such a manner that would cause people of these days to be put in jail for the same offenses. Some of these good ancestors of the present descendants of birth burned witches at the stake.
Time wipes out a lot of things, and this is probably as it should be, but certainly it is true that the world is progressing and the good man of today is probably better and broader than some of these glorious ancestors to whom so many take off their hats. Some of our forefathers in Europe were little less than pirates and buccaneers. Their descendants today knowing that they can make great claims with little fear of contradiction, extol the virtue of their forefathers and complacently take on a superior air. They have thought over the matter of birth so much that they really think they are superior beings.
Grizzly Pete of Frozen Dog, Idaho, doesn't take much stock in the aristocracy of birth. He says, "It ain't what's on a man and it ain't what his father was that counts. The only thing to judge a man by is what's in him and what kind of brains he has."
One thing about this glorious Western country of ours is that a man gets credit for and he is punished by his own individual acts. It doesn't make any difference how far back his pedigree runs, if he doesn't make good himself, people have no use for him.
The heritage of birth is mighty thin fabric and mighty weak material for a man to use in making a cloak of exclusiveness to put around him.
We anticipate that some of our readers will take exception to our attitude on the matter of birth. We wish to be plainly understood that the matter of good birth and good ancestors is a good thing to have. The writer has a pedigree that would be his passport into the aristocracy of birth if he chose to belong to that lodge. Your good ancestors is no handicap. It is a credit to you, but mark this down well: You, yourself, are entitled to no credit for any acts of your ancestors. Your measure is and should be taken for what your own net worth is.
The aristocracy of boodle is the slimmest aristocracy of all. Yet there are more people who try to get into that lodge than any other. The possession of the dollar seems to be the ambition of everyone, and usually the first thing we try to find out about a man is "how much is he worth?" The thinker, however, knows that the possession of money doesn't make a man any better than his neighbor who has no money--their morals and their acts being even.
Brains. That's the true aristocracy. The professor in college who has spent a lifetime in study and has devoted his talents to uplifting mankind is an aristocrat. He may be getting two or three thousand dollars a year, while his brother with lesser knowledge is getting ten times that much in another vocation. The aristocracy of brains always has been, is now and ever will be the enduring aristocracy. Even those who belong to the aristocracies of birth and boodle find they are sham counterfeits and many of them turn to study and to good impulses hoping they may get into the lodge of the aristocracy of brain.
In business the aristocracy of birth or the aristocracy of boodle is a decided handicap. They make the individual think he is superior and he is above doing things which seem to him trivial, because he thinks he is a superior being. The man with brains, however, digs as well as climbs. Without brains, business would go to the dogs, for if business were conducted by men of birth and boodle without brains, you can easily see that the whole fabric would fall to pieces.
Backbone and Wishbone
In proportion as a man's backbone weakens his wishbone seems to develop.
The ten dollar a week man spends his time saying: "I wish I had the luck other people have." He says: "I wish I had this place, or I wish I had that job." He is ever wishing.
Things in our body, whether muscle or bone, develop by usage, and if we use the wishbone all the time it will develop into huge proportions. On the other hand if we develop our backbone and use it frequently, we may not have cause to use the wishbone so much.
Brace up. Stand erect. Strengthen your backbone and, with it, your jaw bone.
Say "I will" instead of "I wish." The world bestows her prizes on men with backbone and the blanks on those who use their wishbone.
Do Good
Doing good is planting seed, the harvest may not show at present but in the future you are going to reap it.
A man is paid back precisely in the same coin he pays out. If he plants weeds or mean impulses the harvest will be weeds and mean impulses. If he plants seed of good deeds he will harvest good deeds.
Centuries ago it was said "Cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you many-fold."
The man who is doing good as he goes along, who is lending help, kindly counsel and encouragement will find the world is a pretty good place to live in after all. As he journeys along through life he will find the good he has done in the past has flourished and returned to him in greatly increased proportions, like the bread cast upon the waters.
It is not only the good one actually gets for the good, he has done, but it is the profit that comes in the way of happiness he gets for his actions. The true way to obtain happiness is to do something for somebody. You get back out of the general exchequer of good in the world full payment for the good you have done, plus a profit of happiness which comes from the very doing of good.
The Get-Away
After you have driven the nail home make your get-away.
Many a solicitor has lost his prestige because, after having accomplished his point, he hung on.
It is quite an art to know when to make the get-away. Study your customer carefully, and when you have made your point clear and your proposition is presented to him in the best possible manner, then get away.
The bore is a bore because he does not know how to get away. The solicitor is always welcome if it is known he is not a hanger-on, and that he gets in and gets out quickly.
Double Equipment
For the employe there is nothing better to possess than double equipment, by which we mean the ability to do two things well.
From the employer's standpoint nothing will stand his business in such good stead as to have his employes doubly equipped.
In the printing business, for instance, the old time printer knew how to set type, lock up forms and to run a press.
Nowadays we seldom find a printer in the broad sense of the word.
In the big printing establishment we find the various branches of the printing trade have employes who are specialists at one thing. In the printing trade the craftsman is either a compositor a proof-reader, a make-up man, a pressman or a binder.
The employe who can set type and also run a press is a decided advantage to the employer. The writer knows a certain publishing house whose every employe is doubly equipped. The rule of the proprietor is that every job or branch of the business must have more than one person competent to run it, and that every person must know how to do two things.
Double equipment on the part of the employe gives the employer great resources.
When sickness, accident or other causes prevent the employe from filling his accustomed place, then the proprietor can call on others who have the double equipment, to fill in the gap.
The employe who is following a particular line in the establishment should acquaint himself with some other branch of the business or some other trade, if he is a craftsman.
The employe who is doubly equipped is decidedly at an advantage over the employe who knows but one thing.
Initiative
Initiative is simply the willingness and ability on the part of an employe to do things that are not simply routine, to do things he is not told to do, to look for opportunities to help the boss or to improve the business wherever possible.
The employe who has no initiative in his make up is going around a circle and when you go around a circle you don't go forward. There is no one thing outside of honesty, ability and hard work that will help the employe to go forward like initiative.
In every great business there are many opportunities for the employe to do things he is not told to do and when an employe gets the initiative habit he is not long in attracting the attention of the boss.
Look over the work you are doing, study the matter carefully, figure out some plan whereby the value of the work you are doing will be increased.
Find a chance to lessen the expense in your department.
Put into practice some idea that will increase the receipts.
Acquaint yourself with the operations of other employes in similar work. Wherever you find a plan better than yours, take advantage of it.
Keep your eyes wide open and you will find many opportunities for doing things you are not told to do.
Every employe should carry out to the letter the directions given him by the boss and in addition to this he should have initiative, which is doing things the boss did not tell him.
It is the plus or initiative in a man's make-up that helps him to the front.
Night Work
It is always a question among experienced business men whether night work and Sunday work help the game of business.
Of course there are occasions when a job must be finished or work completed within a specified time and if you are behind with your hauling, it is necessary to turn all your resources into a singleness of purpose to get the thing done.
The trouble is, however, that many business men figure on this night work as part of the regular scheme and in this they overdo the matter.
The law of compensation says that a man is good for just so much work and if he spreads the work over into longer hours the intrinsic value of each hour is lessened.
A man who habitually takes work to his home to finish and counts upon these extra hours, will soon find the value of his work decreases.
We should all remember that we should work while we work and play while we play.
Work hard during your business hours, conserve your energies, but outside of business hours, let play, study and recreation occupy your time.
If you go home from business at night and forget the things you have been doing in the day and use your time for the things in life outside of business, the next day, when you go to your office, you can make things fly.
It is proverbial that the busy man is the one to go to if you wish things done promptly.
Those of us who were born and reared in the country know a familiar type that is to be found in every country town.
He may be a carpenter or blacksmith, or may run a repair shop of some kind. We find him going to the post office in the middle of the day to get his mail. We frequently find him in the back part of the country store playing checkers. At other times he is watching a horse trade. Again he is arguing politics. This man does not get in over four or five hours' simon pure hard work in a day.
You take a job to this man and it will drag days and weeks. You become impatient at the delay. You get after the man and his answer is that he has not the time.
It is practically a truism that those who offer the excuse that they have not the time are really the ones that have the time.
Some of our friends treat us shabbily in the matter of correspondence and when you get a letter from one of them, he says: "Excuse me for not writing sooner, but I really have been so busy that I have not had the time to write."
As a matter of fact it takes five or ten minutes to write a letter and the person who pleads for forgiveness through lack of time has wasted a hundred times the minutes necessary to write a letter.
The busy man, accepts his duty as a matter of course, a ranges his correspondence and work in systematic order and goes at the thing, hammer and tongs, and gets the thing done.
Night work is usually evidence that the man does not do his work properly in the day time and he is like our friend in the country who wastes time in the day and tries to make up for it by night work.
The thing to do is to work hard in the day time and rest at night.
Obedience
Several years ago, our friend Elbert Hubbard wrote a little sermonette entitled "Carrying the Message to Garcia." The story was simply this: President McKinley called an orderly and gave him a letter and said: "Deliver this letter to General Garcia."
The employe did not stand around and ask a lot of fool questions about the trains and things. He put on his hat and duster and he delivered the letter to Garcia. These facts were stretched out in many words and made a little booklet. That booklet reached the sale of more than a million copies.
It seemed to make a hit with business men throughout the country. A certain railroad bought and gave a copy to every employe. Business men followed the example. The great sale of the book and the wide-spread interest it created would seem to indicate that carrying the message to Garcia was an unusual thing and so remarkable that it attracted attention.
As a matter of fact the whole theme of the story was simple obedience.
There are thousands of institutions in this country who have employes who will carry the message to Garcia.
Richard Harding Davis, you remember, was dining with friends in London. The discussion was along the lines of obedience and the like.
On a wager he called a messenger boy, gave him a letter addressed to his fiancee in Chicago, told the messenger boy to deliver the letter to the lady and bring back an answer. That fifteen year old boy carried the message to Garcia, or in other words to Mr. Davis' sweetheart.
The Colonel of a regiment has under him about twelve hundred men. Directly under him are his majors, and then come the captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals and privates. The first rule in the army is obedience of orders without question.
If obedience were subject to question on the part of the subordinates, the colonel could win no battles.
When your superior gives an order, the thing to do is to carry it out. If the order is wrong you will not be to blame, but your superior will suffer.
There are times, of course, when an order is given that is manifestly impracticable and initiative on the part of the employe might save trouble.
On the other hand, an executive would be greatly handicapped if his orders were subject to interpretation and analysis by his subordinates.
The executive may give an order and in the giving have in his own mind the relation of this order to some other order he has given in an entirely different department and upon the proper execution of all the orders given through the various departments depends the ultimate success of his plan.
The thing for the employe to do is to obey orders willingly, quickly and to the letter.
The employe is not blamed when he does his duty.
It is a source of great satisfaction to the boss to know he has dependable employes and that when he gives an order the thing is done so far as further effort on his part is concerned.
Pay Day
We have all tried all sorts of plans regarding pay day, but the plan most satisfactory to all concerned is to pay each Tuesday or each Monday for the previous week. If the nature of your business is such that Monday is an unusually busy day, then Tuesday should be your pay day.
Monday is usually called blue Monday, because the employes blot out some of the sunshine on Sunday by thinking of the hard week's work ahead of them. Much of the blueness is driven away, however, if in looking forward they know that Monday or Tuesday they will get their pay checks.
The old fashioned habit of paying off Saturday nights is a bad one, especially if most of the employes are men.
Many men are weak and it is difficult for them to pass a lot of saloons on Saturday night without the money in their pockets burning a hole.
The Saturday pay day may mean that a percentage of your employes will not show up on Monday morning. Many men will go on a spree on Saturday night on the theory that they can rest up on Sunday, who would not think of going on a spree on Monday night or Tuesday night, for it would interfere with the work next day.
The writer does not know of a single concern that has adopted this Monday or Tuesday pay day plan and practiced it for a reasonable time without finding it works admirably. Try it in your business and you will not go back to the Saturday pay day.
Saving
We will not indulge in the proverbs handed out by the savings bank in the matter of saving. We are not pessimistic when we say that no man ever became wealthy through the savings bank plan of putting away a certain amount each week. We will say, however, that there is no better training for the employe than this one thing of saving. Saving a part of your weekly income and putting it away, if carried on for a number of years becomes a habit and it means that you will keep your expenses within your income. It is the saving habit that makes the benefit, for later on when you are in business the habit stands you in good stead and teaches you the value of having a reserve.
By all means, put away a certain amount each week. If it is not a dollar, put away fifty cents. If that is too much, put away half of it, or even ten cents a week.
Have some amount as a fixed charge in your operations and put this amount in the savings bank. Later on your balance will grow and you will have much satisfaction in watching its development to better proportions.
Habitual saving makes you careful in the things you do. It teaches you the relationship between principal and interest. It shows you that when you buy something useless and pay ten dollars for it that it is costing you interest each year to maintain it.
The man who does not save is pretty sure to live beyond his means and some day trouble or affliction will come and he will be out of a job and then he appreciates the difference between the butterfly and the bee.
When you haven't anything to fall back upon, the world is a mighty blue place. When you have money in the bank it is a mighty good place to live in.
Waiting For Success
It takes a good poker-player to know when to lay down his hand.
It's a wise business-man who knows when to quit a forlorn hope.
It's all right to build up a business. It is all wrong to play a losing game in business for a succession of years in the hopes of ultimate success.
As years go by the business man is establishing matters on a firmer and more solid foundation. Sales generally increase; the volume of the business gradually grows greater. This fact is responsible for many business men continuing their business at a loss, lured on by the hope of final success. It's all right to build a reputation and to be patient, but when the odds are against you and by all the changes you make and all the brains and ingenuity you put into your business, you cannot turn it into a profitable basis, then get out of that business and start something new.
It's all right to build, provided that as you go along you are making a living profit, but dogged determination to play a losing game year after year is not to a man's credit.
Every man has some particular channel in which his talents will fit and produce good results. If your business goes along year after year at a loss, it is evident that your talents are not in the right channel.
The great thing in business is that it shall respond quickly and show signs of life right away. If it does not, then the business is wrong.
The shores of the great ocean of business are strewn with wrecks which have been dashed to pieces on the rocks sailing for that false beacon light, "keep everlastingly at it brings success."
This saying is true, providing you are making expenses and some profit as you go along, but to keep everlastingly at it when your business shows a loss means failure.
The thing that lures many on is the increased sales. Meanwhile, the expenses are increasing proportionately, and if these two lines are always parallel, there is no hope of your making a success. Better quit before you get too deep in the hole and have a lot of "dead horses" to pay for.
It's all right to have ambition, tenacity and patience in business and to look forward to the far future as crowning success of your efforts, but it's all wrong unless you are paying expenses and making a living while doing these things.
Our Sons
The noblest and most important work we have to do is the training and teaching of the coming generation.
The successful business man has no more difficult problem to solve than what he will do with his son.
It is a fact that the greatest successes in the business world today are those men who had to start in the battle early, and fight their way to the front.
The successful business man usually tries to arrange matters so that his son will not require to go through the hard working school of experience he himself attended, and in this the business man rather goes to the other extreme in that he tries to make things easy for his boy.
As the twig is bent so the tree is inclined. The young mind is plastic and capable of receiving impressions, and we know that the impressions made in our youth are lasting all our days.
The problem in the country is not so difficult, for there are so many things to do about the home that the young country boy usually has plenty of chores and duties to perform.
Occupation is a decided blessing and a present benefit to a boy.
People in the cities have all creature comforts about the homes, transportation facilities are ample, the homes are heated by steam, stores are in abundance, people buy from day to day, and every little convenience is at hand to keep the scheme of living going along smoothly.