OPPORTUNITY 1. Universally desired.—All of us have wants and are looking for opportunities for their gratification. The intensity of our nature, the quality of our char acter, the tenacity of our purpose, are all revealed by the vigor or sloth with which we pursue oppor tunity. It is one of the most important words in language. It means much more than chance. Chance comes to us unasked, unexpected, and often undesired, but opportunity comes only as the result of our desiring, willing and acting. It is a precious, aolden thin°. and must be worked for.
Men who succeed in business somehow seem never to lack opportunity, while those who fail often com plain that opportunity has been denied them. On account of the importance of opportunity in business it has seemed to pie necessary to devote a chapter to a consideration of the various conditions that develop or create it. Young men trying to get their start in business should have a fairly clear idea of what op portunity means. They are too prone to think that their chances of getting a good start depend upon "pull" or luck.
2. Gronth creates a country where business is at a standstill, population not in creasing, no fresh capital accumulating, no new wants developing, opportunity cannot flourish. In such a country a definite amount of business is done, and the demand for the services of men is comparatively fixed; young men are able to get into business only as the older ones drop out; they are waiting for dead men's shoes. In such a country, business opportuni ties, like insurance, are a matter of calculation and prediction.
But in a growing country like the United States, where conditions are constantly changing, where in ventions are forever improving processes, where mar kets are widening, business opportunities are as plen tiful as in the fabled "Eldorado." The vacuum cleaner displaces the broom and builds new fortunes. In a decade the automobile develops the latent love of travel and fresh air, gives rise to an insistent de mand for good roads, and creates industries of gi gantic proportions. Tbe commercial motor truck brings opportunity to the manufacturer, making him independent of the railroad. The automobile has
greatly augmented the value of farm property, and has made it possible for large farms to be operated on a business basis. The rising prices of food-stuffs due to the growing population have opened up to farmers opportunities for profit which were unknown to the farmers of fifty years ago.
On account of the rapid changes taking place in the industrial and commercial life of the United States, the great increase in wealth, the consumer's buying power, the broadening of markets, a business man today is sumunded by opportunities much more numerous and attractive than any known to his.father.
3. Business opportunities increasing in the United States.—We often hear people remark dejectedly that business opportunities are not what they used to be ; that the small man has no longer any chance; that great corporations have absorbed all the opportuni ties for making money, and that a man now cannot hope to be more than an employe. That kind of talk is radically erroneous. It is true that a great part of the country's business is conducted by men organized in the form of a corporation, but there is no ground for the statement that corporations kill opportunity. On the contrary, they create oppor tunities. Many of the successful business men of to day, who have great executive ability and have ac cumulated fortunes, were lifted from obscurity by the needs of corporations. If the necessary statistics were collected by the census bureau, I have no doubt we should discover that a majority of our successful business men began life as poor boys and worked up to the top, not in spite of corporations, but because of the opportunities opened up to their abilities by the corporate form of business control. And I feel confident that the same statistics, if they should be gathered twenty years hence, would then warrant a similar conclusion. The notion that business oppor tunities are relatively decreasing, that the good things of the earth have already been pre-empted by others, and that newcomers from now on must be satisfied with scraps, is utterly fallacious. It is born of a plete misunderstanding of the nature of opportunity.