When you analyze carefully the career of a man who seems to have been born lucky, you will find that he earned his luck, that in all his undertakings lie took every precaution to guard against evil chances. On the other hand, the man of notoriously bad luck will be found to have been weak in some of the qualities essential to success.
All Americans know something about the part that luck plays in baseball, and they ought to know that the most "breaks" usually fall into the lap of the team that is most fit.
11. Opportunity and age.—It is evident that the opportunities for which a man of forty is or should be fitted are entirely different from those open to the young man. But has the man of middle age already exhausted opportunity? Must he not be con tent with his present rank in business? If he has been in business for himself, has he a right to hope that he can accomplish more during the next ten or fifteen years than he bas accomplished in the past? Should a man between forty and fifty years of age enter into nel,v business or new connections? Questions like these have come home personally to many men and have proved very difficult to answer.
Everything depends upon the man. Some men are old at forty-five; they have ceased to learn or to take interest in new things and are ambitious merely to maintain their present status, or to retain a posi tion or a business which gives them a comfortable living. Such men should beware of severing old con nections or of undertaking new enterprises. Other men are still young at forty-five and fifty; their minds are on the future, not the past ; they take no pride in what they have accomplished, hut are impatient for more work and bigger tasks ; they still have vision and ambition. To men of this sort, if they have guarded their health, opportunity offers its biggest prizes.
A man of sixty-five, who bad begun life as a farmer's boy and had built up a business of interna tional dimensions, once said to me: "I wish I were twenty again. I see so many opportunities in busi ness that I cannot take advantage of, things that ought to be done, that would make the nation richer. It is not the money I think of—I already have more of that than I need—but I do not like to see oppor tunities for good business going to waste. Now what I cannot understand is, why I cannot make my boys see these .opportunities. I have given them both a good education, but they simply do not understand me when I try to show them how they can do as inuch as I have done over and over again." He was a man who could,not really get old. If he had early learned to take proper care of his body, he would be doing new things in business at eighty with the same vigor, vision and judgment that made him succeed at forty.
The man of fifty who has lost his job and does not know how to do anything particularly well, or who has failed in business, certainly has a sorry outlook. He cannot complain if his applications for work are turned down because of his age, nor because his friends listen rather indifferently when he brings to them an opportunity for investment or for business. A man in this unhappy condition can save himself from complete wreck only if Ile keeps going. If
he despairs and relies solely on his friends to help him, as many do, there is no hope for him. But if he can only be made to seek opportunity- with the cour age and ardor of youth, the chances are that he will succeed despite the prejudice against his age. As a, rule, men who are stranded at fifty have not mastered the art of rendering really valuable service and are suffering the penalty of ignorance and inaptitude. Needless to say, the young man can protect himself against any such fate.
12. conclusion, let us sum up the things essential to opportunity, and decide how a man may best fit himself for it. Externally, as we have seen, an opportunity in business consists of cer tain conditions which if handled by the right man may be made to yield a profit. Those conditions con stitute an opportunity only to the right man. An opportunity exists only for those who have the mental qualities, the will and the knowledge neces sary for its perception and use or exploitation. For men of small powers only small opportunities exist.
Can a man prepare himself for opportunity? Can a man of average intellectual ability hope ever to fit himself for large opportunities? Both these ques tions can be answered positively in the affirmative. There is practically nO limit to what a man can ac complish in business if he only will.
Here are the things he must do : work, study, read, think, observe—and then do more work.
In this chapter I have laid so much stress on the importance of mental power or ability that some of my more diffident readers may have been a little dis couraged. Let me say right now that no man, young or old, who can read the Texts of the -Modern Busi ness Course and Service understandingly, need worry about his mental quality. He has brains enough and can accomplish anything he wishes in business, if he will work and equip himself for opportunity.
For such a man the Modern Business Course and Service is itself an opportunity. So is a university school of commerce, if he can get to one. In these days every man has an abundance of opportunity to develop and strengthen his mental power, store his memory with information about business, and to train his judgment to an understanding of business oppor tunities. Any man who sets himself at the perform ance of these tasks diligently, faithfully and perse veringly, will find himself courageously facing larger and larger opportunities as the years add to his ex perience in business.
Brains are tremendously important in business. Yet an ordinary brain, dominated by the highest type of character—the essential principle of which is a will resolute to know the truth, to do the right thing, and to work with all one's might for a worthy pur pose—may win first prizes in business. But the brain must be properly trained and the character must be such as inspires complete and absolute confidence among men.
Therefore, let the man who wishes to prepare for opportunity put his brains into harness and, if neces sary, rebuild his character. This any man can do. Hence opportunity is potentially within the reach of all.