3. Capital got only by you study the saving process, you will understand why that first thousand dollars appeared so large in the memory of Marshall Field. He had had a thousand chances to spend it, but he had turned them all down. He had ,c saved" it.
People are prone to think of saving as an easy nega tive virtue requiring no great energy or effort. The man who produces, who makes money, is usually thought of as the dynamic force in business and as deserving the most credit for industrial progress and development. The man who saves is often con temptuously referred to ,as a "tight-wad." He is not thought of as a, doer, but as one who refrains from doing. As a matter of fact, saving is the result of positive qualities and is very hard work. In the United States, indeed, it is much harder to save money than it is to make it. Saving means the firm, the con stant, the strenuous exercise of the will to forego cer tain pleasures or satisfactions today in order that your future may be more golden. You must trample ruth lessly on certain wants now in order that you may gratify them more generously a year or ten years hence.
The saving habit is one most difficult to acquire, and like all habits, it is sometimes carried to extremes, producing the miser. Or it is persisted in illogically, as in the case of the old lady who remarked that she and her husband had "slaved and slaved and saved and saved all our lives in order that we might have some thing to live on when we came to die." At any rate, no man can get into business with his own capital, unless it has been saved by himself or by bis ancestors. If he has no capital of his own and cannot bonow the use of a 'friend's capital, he can not go into business on his own account. He must be an employe.
While a vast amount of business is done on bor rowed capital, yet in almost all cases the borrowed dollar works side by side with a dollar belonging to the proprietor. Experience has proved that it is not safe to lend money to men who have not proved their ability to save money. A young man once asked a Ns-ell-to-do friend to back him in an attractive business venture. The older man said, "3Iy boy, when you come to me with a thousand dollars of your own money saved out of your income, I Nvill match it."
The first difficulty in the business man's path, the necessity for capital and for saving, is usually much underestimated by young men. Listen to the great railroad builder, James J. Hill: If you want to know whether you are destined to be a success or a failure in life, you can easily- find out. The test is simple, and it is infallible. Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may think not, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in y-ou.
4. Nature of competition.—If Nve analyze any busi ness, whether a small cigar shop, a large depart ment store or an automobile factory, we find in each case that the making of profit would be a very simple matter but for the behavior of certain other people. Across the street from our cigar store an other man fits up a cigar shop more attractive than ours. He even undersells us on some popular brands and draws away some of our best customers. The automobile manufacturer discovers that other manu facturers are offering on the market an automobile apparently as good as his at a lower price. The owner of the department store sees his profits begin to decline because many of his customers are learning to patron ize mail order houses and are getting goods by parcel post, or perhaps because his large profits of the pre ceding years have convinced another man that the town is big enough for two department stores.
In the foregoing paragraph we have concrete in stances of what is known as competition, a word de rived from the Latin and meaning etymologically a "seeking together." Whenever there are two or more men trying to sell the same article in the same market, there we have competition. If there is only one pro ducer and one salesman, we have monopoly, a word coming from the Greek and meaning "to sell alone." It needs no argument to show that a man who is go ing to succeed in the face of competition must be very wide-awake, for he cannot get trade or hold it long unless he is the best in his line. If the competitor across the street is a closer buyer, a harder worker, a better advertiser or a better salesman our friend will lose his customers and his chance of profit.