We have already seen how the success of a busi ness depends upon the energetic thinking and plan ning done by the executive and his assistants whom we call "junior officers." All that thinking and plan ning will be futile if the rank-and-file workers shirk or blunder. They need the guiding mind of the , executive, but he needs equally the work of their willing and capable hands. In a factory a good fore man will turn out a botched job if his workmen are careless, shiftless and incompetent. A business or ganization has equal need of first-class routine workers. This fact is so well known by business men that many large corporations today will not give a youth the humblest job until several men have exam ined him carefully and found him to be made morally, mentally and physically of the right stuff.
Let no rank-and-file worker be discouraged be cause his work is like that of a machine ; the rnachine is tied to its job, but lie is free. The machine cannot improve itself ; the rank-and-file worker's potentiali ties are infinite.
3. Training for higher work' of the Tank-and-file worker is specially important because it yields that training and experience without which the higher positions cannot be properly filled. Thru out this book I have tried to make it plain that a man has little chance of success in a business if he starts in at the top. Good business managers will be found almost without exception to have served faithfully in the beginning as rank-and-file workers. Vast amounts of money are lost every year by men who go into businesses which they do not understand. The young man who inherits $100,000 from a father who did not make him serve his time in the lower ranks is almost certain to lose his fortune if he risks it in a business enterprise. The metropolitan newspapers are full of alluring advertisements of "business chances." A lawyer or a doctor who has a. few thousand dol lars, being weary of his practice and not satisfied with the five or six per cent lie can get from a conservative investment, decides to give up his profession and go into business. It does not enter his head that he should take a humble position and learn something about business before he risks his money or assumes to be a manager. Only luck or good fortune can saN-e such a man froth loss.
In business, it is much easier to lose money than it is to gain it. It is a game which your opponents know from Alpha to Omega. That is one of the reasons why the rank-and-file workers' tasks must not be scorned or belittled.
4. Choosing one's youths of eight een are linable to decide upon their career. Their parents are at an equal loss. The boy has gone thru the high school all right and has been reasonably studious, but Ile has never shown any particular in terest in anything but sports. Ought he to study a profession, or should he go into business? That ques tion has been put to me i.Tery frequently by young men and by fathers and mothers, and I have always found it a difficult one to answer.
Of one thing I am certain. If a young man really wants to be a physician or a lawyer, or to enter any of the professions requiring much preliminary train ing and education, his parents should not try to make him a business man. If they are too poor to give him a professional education, he should master ste nography and typewriting or bookkeeping and learn to support himself. If Ile has energy and resource fulness be will get bis professional training without the aid of his parents, or while seeking to earn his living and education Ile may develop a taste for busi ness, cling to it and be successful.
5. Certain, cardinal if a youth mani fests no leaning toward a profession, shall he go into business, or ought he to learn a trade or go to work on a farm? If he is marked for a business career he will possess sOme of the following qualities in a striking degree: First, he will have an instinctive, almost jealous at tachment to those things that are his own. A youth who lets others rob him of his belongings without a vigorous protest may be a very fine and generous fel low, but it is doubtful if he was meant to be a busi ness man.
Second, he will be inclined to be neat, systematic, orderly, punctual. Business has use for such men.
Third, he will be energetic, self-reliant, masterful. If a youth is lazy and listless, his body being, in sound health, it is to be feared that his sluggishness is deeply rooted in his nature. He will be mediocre in what ever calling he enters, but in business he will be an abject failure.
Fourth, he will show some taste for swapping or trading with good judgment. The boy who likes to trade and swap and buys carefully has in hiin certain fundamental elements of business wisdom.
Fifth, lie will not shirk responsibility or continually blame others when things go wrong. Business is es sentially a co-operative affair in which every man must do his part in harmony with others.