A young man entering business in a humble position among the rank-and-file workers should possess or quickly acquire certain virtues that are highly appre ciated. He should be eager for work and eager to do it right. He should be conscientious in the perform ance of every task,. and not pretend that a thing has been well done when it has been badly done, or only half done. He must not lose his temper when blamed or criticized even tho he feels sure that he does not deserve the blame. He must be willing to do more work than he was hired to do or is paid for. He must obey instructions and do exactly as he is told and what he is told. In business hours he must give his mind to his work, think about nothing else and talk about nothing else. In short, he must be a faith ful, loyal, industrious, obedient servant.
But you will ask: "Does not the rank-and-file worker do any thinking?" The rank-and-file worker who does not like to think, whose mind does not re act quickly in an emergency, is only a machine and sooner or later a machine will take his place. The humblest worker in any business sometimes finds him self confronted by a situation entirely new to him, for the handling of which he has received no instruc tions. He must think and decide promptly what to do. Then he. has a chance to prove whether or not he has in him the making of a real business man.
6. The cheerful people realize the commercial value of cheerfulness. In business the youth of sunny disposition, doing his work gladly and finding fault with nobody, has a thousand chances to get on, where the sour-looking, gloomy, discon tented fellow has barely one. The fat man is not al ways a winner, but he has a decided advantage over his lean brethren; he is usually so cheerful and good natured that people are glad to have him around. In business it pays to be an opthnist and look on the bright side of things, especially if you are looking for a job or for promotion.
To the rank-and-file worker cheerfulness is cer tainly a valuable asset. Cheerfulness to be real must be in a man's soul. Its outward expression need not and should not be in any way effusive or conspicuous. A man who is taking a hopeful, cheerful view of him self and his life and his prospects need make no ef fort to prove the fact. He cannot conceal it; you will see it in his eyes and bear it in his voice.
If a man is not naturally a cheerful person be should cultivate cheerfulness, not by wearing an artificial smile, but by making his mind always dwell on the things in this world and in his lot which are so much better than they might be. Cheerfulness, I admit, is
tinder certain circumstances a. very hard quality to cultivate.
The cheerful man who takes hard k-nocks with good grace, who is glad when you are promoted even tho he is not, who will sympathize with your troubles but seems to have none of his own, has a decided advan tage in business over the sad-visaged, gloomy man who makes you feel somehow that you are not doing him justice.
I like to think now and then of the old lady who bad lost all of her teeth except two and she thanked God "because they hit." By the way, altho it is probably unnecessary, I may as well warn the reader that by cheerfulness and optimism I do not mean the sniggering, thoughtless, purposeless quality which animates the countenance of the so-called "cheerful idiot," nor do I mean the voluble optimism of the man who is always gripping your band, slapping you on the back and bidding you to brace up. Nobody has any use for the Cheshire cat brand of cheerfulness. It is the expression of a shallow soul. • 7. very successful business men have not been conspicuous examples of courtesy either in their dealings with subordinates or in their rela tions with outsiders. Despite their brusqueness or gruffness or other disagreeable qualities, they have won success because of their great strength of char acter, their strong wills and their powerful intellects. When a man has made his mark in business, or in any calling, we are all inclined to overlook his faults. If his signature is illegible, we even think that his bad handwriting is one of the signs of his greatness, and if he speaks roughly or crossly to us we are apt to think that his bad temper is also a necessary attri bute of his greatness. The successful man gets for giveness easily.
But the young man must not deceive himself and imagine that Ile can get on by imitating the faults and defects of his superiors. He must build for him self an ideal and use it as the model in shaping his character. A very little thinking will convince him that courtesy must be an essential quality of his ideal. Courtesy in business makes you treat every man you meet with such consideration that his memory of you will be pleasant. He may have thought your price too high and have bought nothing from you, or you may have bought nothing from him because his terms were not satisfactory; nevertheless he remembers you personally as being a man with whom it is a pleasure to deal.